The hot topic of the day is the three R's: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Billy, Lydia, Marcus and Ruby are doing their part to help protect the environment by cleaning up the school. Earl, watching from the boiler room, scoffs, ""Foolish children! Who cares about garbage?"" He hands Raticus a pizza box with the remains of his lunch. Raticus throws the box into an old coal storage room, which is already stuffed with garbage. He quickly slams the door shut. The Phantom cackles, ""Out of sight, out of mind!"" The kids echo those sentiments with their first solution to the school's garbage problem: they stuff all of it down the unused coal chute. But the extra garbage is too much for the storage room, and it explodes into the boiler room, burying Earl and Raticus. Furious, the Phantom transforms the trash pile into a living garbage monster! Our heroes must make use of everything they know about reducing, reusing and recycling to strip the garbage monster of, first, its organic elements, then it

• Ray Nelson Jr.

• Tracey Moore
• Ron Rubin
• Terri Hawkes