The Red Tide
A Classic Words Novel
Michael Clay Thompson
Royal Fireworks Press
Unionville, New York
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The Red Tide ,<, 1
Copyright © 2013, Royal Fireworks
Publishing Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved. No copying or reproduction
of any portion of this book is permitted
without the express written consent of the publisher.
Royal Fireworks Press
First Avenue, PO Box 399
Unionville, NY 10988-0399
(845) 726-4444
fax: (845) 726-3824
email: [email protected]
website: rfwp.com
ISBN: 978-0-89824-841-8
Printed and bound in the United States of America
using vegetable-based inks on acid-free recycled paper
and environmentally-friendly cover coatings
by the Royal Fireworks Printing Co.
of Unionville, New York.html/
Design and text by Michael Clay Thompson
Paintings by Milton N. Kemnitz
Beetle illustration by Michael Clay Thompson
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Michael Clay Thompson ,<, 2
Classic Words
For years I have dreamed of writing novels for young
readers and incorporating, in a methodical way, the
literary words that I have identified in my Classic Words
vocabulary research.
In this research I have developed a computer database
that analyzes and collates hundreds of words that
appear in great British and American novels of several
centuries, and I have learned that powerful words such
as countenance, manifest, odious, serene, and grotesque
appear not only in mature novels by Hawthorne and
Austen, but also in great books that children read, such
as Treasure Island, The Wind in the Willows, and Peter Pan.
A national neglect of formal vocabulary instruction
has left many children unable to read standard books
that have been the favorites of children for generations,
and so you will find these words emphasized in this Mud
the Fish trilogy, with definitions at the bottoms of the
pages so that the vocabulary is not an obstacle but a
treat. These novels about Mud will prepare children to
read children’s classics with ease and enjoyment.
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The Red Tide ,<, 3
Michael Clay Thompson (1947---)
If indications may be believed, Michael Clay
Thompson was once a boy, lost in a stack of classics and
archeology books, looking through his telescope at night,
dangling his feet off of the dock that extended from his
back yard, and walking the muddy banks of canals in
Florida, catching fiddler crabs and watching barracuda
patrol the rich water.
There are reports that he once had a duck, with
muddy feet and ill manners, and that his mother refused
the duck proper entrance into the family, though this
can scarcely be credited.
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Michael Clay Thompson ,<, 4
Table of Contents
Ch. 1. Ch. 2. Ch. 3. Ch. 4. Ch. 5. Ch. 6. Ch. 7.
Ch. 8.
Truth and the Good Life . . . . . . . . . 7
Baldwin Tells the Truth . . . . . . . . . 21
Queequack Arrives . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
The Red Tide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
The Angry Gang . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
The Declaration of It Depends . . . . . 69
The Tall, Green Stranger . . . . . . . . . 87
A Group of Individuals . . . . . . . . . 105
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The Red Tide ,<, 5
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Michael Clay Thompson ,<, 6
CHAPTER ONE
Truth and the Good Life
Here is the thing about calamities: They
happen when you least expect them. In an
unexpected calamity, Mud the fish and his
friends had risked their lives by going to
the most dangerous island, Fragment Crag,
to rescue Click the sandpiper. The risky
rescue went well, but they had been lucky,
and they knew it. Fortunately, their courage,
their teamwork, and their careful planning
had paid off, and every animal made it
home to Sentence Island safely. Gradually,
life returned to normal. The animals were
happy again. They assumed that their days of
calamity were now over. They were sure of it.
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calamity: n. a disaster
The Red Tide ,<, 7
Click, the rescued poet-sandpiper, wrote a
ballad in honor of his friends who had saved
him. Basing it on the well-known ballad by
Lobster Burns, Clack’s grandlobster, Click
wrote his friends’ names into the poem. Here
is the first stanza:
Eeet TWEET eeeet BALDWIN CLACK eeet CLICK
Eeeet CLICK eeets MERP fweeeet MUD,
Eeeet TURNER CLACK skeeeet BALDWIN freeep,
Eeeet MERP eeeet CLICK yeats FLOOD.
Mud observed that Click’s own name
appeared more than any other animal’s, but
no one wanted to discuss that.
Like all of his friends on Sentence Island,
Mud tried to put the odious memories of
Fragment Crag behind him. He tried to
forget about the scary rat. He turned his
mind to the ideas he enjoyed most: ideas
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odious: adj. hateful
Michael Clay Thompson ,<, 8
about sentences. He spent long, serene
days discussing sentences with his amiable
friends, and everyone said that he was making
sentence progress.
Mud was proud of himself.
Life was perfect.
One sparkly morning, after a supportive
rain had completed its responsibilities by
sweetening the salt sea and watering the
island’s flowers, Mud had a good talk with
Fidget, his cricket pal, and Click, the sandpiper whose little foot had soon healed from
the injury suffered at Fragment Crag. They
sat in the shade of a cooperative palmetto and
talked about sentences, words, and truth.
“The more I think about it,” said Mud
placidly, “the more I like what words do.
Each word is like a chip of truth.”
Somewhere back in the jungle, Baldwin
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serene: adj. calm, peaceful
amiable: adj. friendly
placidly: adv. calmly, serenely
The Red Tide ,<, 9
the big-horned beetle went vvvvvvvooooom
through the air and banged into a big palm
tree. “You buffoons!” they heard him cry.
When they stopped thinking about
Baldwin’s latest collision, Fidget and Click
looked back at Mud and waited for him to
explain.
“For example,” he continued, “things have
words. Each noun is the true name of a thing,
so you have the thing itself, such as a snail,
and then you have the noun snail that is the
snail’s true name. Snail is the true name of a
snail, but fish is not the true name of a snail.”
“Get it!” said Fidget. “Everything has two
sides: the thing itself and its name, get it?
There is a fish, and there is the noun fish.
Language is like a copy of the world—in
words.”
“Eeeeet!” said Click, who always expressed
himself forcibly.
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Language: Notice that Fidget’s favorite phrase, “Get it,” is
reminiscent of the cricket sound: cricket, get it, Fidget.
Michael Clay Thompson ,<, 10
“Right now,” said Mud, I want a real
breakfast, not just the noun breakfast.”
“Eeeteeeteeeteeet,” Click laughed.
“So get it,” said Fidget, “there are many
things on our island, and each of these things
has its own noun, get it? We can make a true
sentence about anything!”
But Mud looked troubled.
Fidget looked at Mud.
Click said, “Eeet?”
“Well,” said Mud, “what if we do not
have a noun for something? Could there be
things that have no nouns—things that are
nameless? Or what if there is a noun, but we
do not know it? Can we still say true things
when we do not know the true nouns? Take
birds, for example. We know that Click is a
sandpiper, and Cow Loon is a loon, but what
is the noun for that bird up there?”
“Up where?” asked Fidget.
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The Red Tide ,<, 11
Mud pointed up with his left fin.
They looked up and to the left, and high
above the sea their friend Julie, a gray seabird
with long wings, soared in the sky over
the marching blue waves, performing her
morning inspection of the fish schools. She
could see through the pellucid water all the
way to the yellow, sandy bottom, and she was
watching a school of thirty-seven striped fish
conduct its morning parade practice, turning
first left, then right in perfect unison.
The friends watched Julie glide in the
wind, but no one knew that she was a tern.
They did not yet know the noun tern.
They were stumped.
A bird with no noun?
Now Fidget looked troubled.
They stared down at the sand in profound
silence until Fidget had an idea. “Get it!” he
cried. “We could beckon Julie to land and
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pellucid: adj. crystal clear
profound: adj. very deep
beckon: v. to gesture, inviting someone to approach
Michael Clay Thompson ,<, 12
ask her what kind of bird she is!”
“That seems reasonable,” said Mud,
relieved, “but how could we tell the truth in
the meantime?”
“Eeeeet…,” said Click pensively, and they
knew what he meant.
“So….” Mud thought aloud, “if there are
forty-seven nouns, does that mean that there
are forty-seven things? Is it always true that if
there is a noun, there is a thing it names?”
Click did not peep.
“Ummm,” said Fidget, who was not often
perplexed. “Do you mean that a noun could
be false? There could be a noun for something,
but the thing would not really exist? A noun
about nothing? A noun that was not true but
false?”
Fidget looked worried.
Mud looked at him.
There was a moment of silence.
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pensively: adv. thinking deeply and seriously
perplexed: adj. puzzled, baffled
The Red Tide ,<, 13
“You have heard of dragons, right?” asked
Mud.
“Yes,” said Fidget.
“Eeeeeet,” said Click.
“Well, are there dragons?” asked Mud.
This put fresh light on the matter. Fidget
did not know what to say. He had heard of
dragons, but he had never seen one. Could
it be that there were no dragons—anywhere—
even though the noun dragon was known
to every animal? Could the noun dragon be
untrue?
“If I say,” added Mud, “that ‘A dragon
lives on Sentence Island,’ then that is a perfect
sentence, but it is not true.…” His voice
trailed off as he reflected on the meaning
of his words. His countenance revealed the
uncertainty he was feeling.
The three perplexed animals avoided eye
contact and looked in different directions,
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countenance: n. facial expression
Michael Clay Thompson ,<, 14
each pretending to watch the sea, and
Fidget moved five of his feet about, to fill
the disturbing silence. It was a melancholy
moment; they all wanted every correct
sentence to be true.
“Eeeeeet,” tweeted Click suddenly, and he
whispered in Fidget’s ear.
It was not really an ear, but no one said
that in Fidget’s presence, and to be blunt
about it, none of them had ears. Not exactly,
even though they often used the noun ear.
Fidget listened to Click’s little eeeps and
then turned to Mud. “Click has an idea,”
he said. “He was hesitant to say this aloud,
but he thinks that there might be more than
one kind of noun. There might be nouns for
tangible things in the world, and there might
also be nouns for things in the mind, for
things that we imagine, for imaginary things.”
They smiled and began to breathe more
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melancholy: n. deep sadness
tangible: adj. touchable, concrete
The Red Tide ,<, 15
easily. This was a reasonable idea. Mud and
Fidget were impressed with Click’s insight.
Once again, they had made progress by
talking together and listening respectfully to
an individual’s idea. The imagination could
have its own group of nouns for imaginary
things. Not bad.
Mud, however, still looked worried. After
a moment he cleared his throat and said,
“First, if a sentence has a grammar mistake,
then it is not true, right? If I say that ‘A rat are
here,’ that sentence cannot be true because
the noun rat means one rat, but the verb are
means more than one rat. So if the grammar
is wrong, the sentence is false. On the other
hand, could we agree that if a sentence is
complete, and correct, and about things that
really exist, then the sentence always will be
true? Sentences that are correct in grammar
will be true? That seems reasonable.”
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Michael Clay Thompson ,<, 16
“What?” Fidget asked.
“Eeeeep?” Click asked.
“Yes,” said Mud. “A sentence that has no
error in its logic must always be true. That is
what I think...I think.”
Fidget stared at Mud, thought, stole an
oblique look at Click, and then said, “All fish
are ridiculous.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Mud, tremulous
with astonishment.
“Ridiculous, get it?” said Fidget. “All fish
are ridiculous.”
“Well,” said Mud, “I am a fish, and I hope
you do not think I am ridiculous. You cannot
mean that all fish are ridiculous!”
“Is there an error in the sentence?” asked
Fidget. “Is there a mistake in the grammar?”
“Noooo,” said Mud, his voice beginning
to trail off.
“Then all fish are ridiculous, including
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oblique: adj. indirect, at an angle
tremulous: adj. trembling
The Red Tide ,<, 17
you,” said Fidget, “because it is a correct
sentence so it must be true, get it? All fish are
ridiculous. Furthermore, Mud the fish has a
foolish mustache.”
“A mustache!” said Mud. “I do not have a
mustache. Fish do not have mustaches.”
“Yes, you do,” said Fidget. “You must have
a mustache because I said that you do, and I
did not make an error in my sentence, get it?”
This was a singular turn of logic. It was too
much to take in. Click fell over on his side
with a poof, and Mud opened his eyes wide
in consternation.
“But, but,” said Mud, “how can a true
sentence not be true?”
“Exactly, get it?” said Fidget.
They spent the rest of the morning
resolutely studying the difference between
good sentences that are true, such as “Up is
the opposite of down,” and good sentences that
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singular: adj. unique, remarkable
consternation: n. amazement
resolutely: adv. with purpose, with determination
Michael Clay Thompson ,<, 18
are not true, such as “Up is down.”
They began to understand a maxim of
good thinking: that to be completely true,
the sentence has to agree with itself, but it
also has to agree with the world. They began
to understand that they should compare a
sentence to the facts of the world to see if the
sentence is reasonable. To be true, a sentence
has to agree with the truth of the world.
It was most perplexing. They all tried
to think clearly, they all tried to be honest
animals, and they all had a wonderful time
exploring ideas together. Each animal liked
to hear what another one thought.
That is what life was like for the friends of
Sentence Island—lots of profound discussions
and no more calamities.
Or so they thought.
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maxim: n. a short statement of truth
The Red Tide ,<, 19
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Michael Clay Thompson ,<, 20