A minute later Mr. Larson looked at Joey and Cara over the top of his newspaper. “The library?” he said. “You want to go to the library?”
Joey nodded. “We need your permission to use the computers there for a . . . a project.”
Mr. Larson looked from Joey’s face to Cara’s. Without showing any approval or disapproval, he lay down his paper, pulled open the top drawer of his desk, and found a memo pad with his name on the top. He picked up a pen and said, “What’s the date?”
Cara said, “October eighth.”
As Joey and Cara watched, Mr. Larson started writing, saying the words out loud as he did. “Dear Ms. Steinert—Joey DeLucca and Cara Landry have my permission to use the resource-center computers for a . . .”
Mr. Larson lifted his pen off the paper and looked up at Cara, and then at Joey. Then he wrote the last word, and said, “For a . . . project.” He added his initials below the sentence, tore the memo from the pad, and folded it in half.
Handing the note to Cara, Mr. Larson said, “Hope this project is a good one.”
Cara nodded and said, “Oh, it is. It’s a good one.”
“Well,” said Mr. Larson, “you’ll have to tell me all about it one of these days.” As he dropped the memo pad into his drawer and opened up his newspaper again, Mr. Larson said, “Please be sure you’re both back here five minutes before the last bell.”
Looking over the top of his reading glasses, Mr. Larson watched Cara and Joey walk quickly out the classroom door.
And sitting there behind his newspaper, Mr. Larson grinned.
CHAPTER 9
K-9 UNIT SNIFFS SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITIES
LATE IN THE DAY on that same Monday afternoon, all the kids were gone, and the school was quiet. Mr. Larson had picked up his briefcase, his red thermos, and his raincoat, and he was headed toward the back door of the school. As usual, he walked past the window wall in front of the resource center. Through the glass he saw Ms. Steinert pushing a cart of books.
She looked up as he was going past, and Mr. Larson nodded and gave a friendly smile. But when Ms. Steinert saw him, she stopped in her tracks and waved excitedly, motioning him to come inside. She trotted over and met him at the door.
“Karl, I’m so glad I caught you! This journalism project you are doing with your afternoon group?— it sounds sooo interesting—but I just wanted to give you a heads-up about the possible extra expenses.”
Mr. Larson thought, Journalism project? What journalism project?! He was surprised, but he didn’t let it show. He just asked, “Expenses? Expenses for what?”
Ms. Steinert said, “Now before you get all worried, just let me say that Joey DeLucca is a very trustworthy young man, and I know that he will not be wasting any materials. But the children have asked to use the big printer and the eleven-by-seventeen paper, and that’s an extra expense. However, I really agree with them that if it’s going to feel like a real newspaper, it needs to be on a large sheet, don’t you think so, too? Now, the little Landry girl said that eventually they will want to be printing on both sides of the paper, and that can be pretty hard on the toner cartridges and the imaging rollers—so that’s another possible expense.”
Katherine Steinert had always reminded Mr. Larson of a schnauzer—the kind of small dog that runs around and around in circles, yipping and jumping up and chasing its tail. Her close-cropped, gray-and-white curly hair added to this impression. Ms. Steinert talked so fast that she often seemed to be panting. Mr. Larson admired her energy and enthusiasm, but talking with her always made him feel tired. He wanted to ask her what Cara and Joey had said about this newspaper they wanted to print, but before he could get a sentence started, she was talking again.
“Now, as you know from the memo that Mr.—I mean Dr. Barnes sent around at the start of the school year, the office is now tracking expenses for supplies and materials. You’ll recall that the principal said they are tracking the expenses by grade, by team, and also by teacher. Each teacher and each team is allotted so much credit for each semester, and then, if you haven’t used up your credits before . . .”
Mr. Larson nodded and smiled, but he was lost. The details of school administration were not one of his strong points, and Ms. Steinert was talking too fast anyway. But he waited patiently for her to be done, because he wanted more information.
“So if you’ll just step over to my desk,” Ms. Steinert continued, “I have the requisition forms all ready for you to sign, and then your students can come in anytime and have what they need. It’s such a good idea, and they are sooo excited about it.”
Before she could take another breath, Mr. Larson blurted out, “Did they say when they wanted to have something ready to print?”
“Oh my, yes!” said Ms. Steinert. “Cara was convinced that they would have a paper all finished by this Friday—imagine—this Friday! Of course, I expect it will be more like three weeks from now—but they were sooo eager to get going that I didn’t have the heart to tell them that they are looking at an awful lot of work here. You know, kids underestimate things like this all the time. Why, just last week . . .”
Mr. Larson signed the expense forms. As Ms. Steinert went on talking about a South America project that a group of second-graders had just finished, Mr. Larson smiled and nodded and began backing toward the door. She walked right along with him, held the door open for him, and when he was all the way out in the hallway, Ms. Steinert finished up by saying, “And, Karl, I really do think this is a wonderful idea you’ve had, and like I was saying, the kids should finish up a great little newspaper project in about three weeks or so—I’ll be watching! Now, you have a safe drive home tonight, Karl.”
Mr. Larson smiled, turned, and walked. He took several deep breaths. Finishing a conversation with Ms. Steinert always made him feel like he had just escaped from drowning.
As he walked along the familiar corridor, he thought over what Ms. Steinert had told him. It shouldn’t have surprised him. When Cara and Joey left the room earlier to go use the computer, hadn’t he known that their “project” would have something to do with Cara’s newspaper? Of course he had. And hadn’t he expected Cara to keep on publishing her newspaper? Absolutely.
There was only one thing Ms. Steinert had told him that Mr. Larson knew wasn’t true. There was no way it would take three weeks to produce the next Landry News. If Cara Landry said she would be ready to print by Friday, then Friday it would be.
CHAPTER 10
NEW TEAM PICKS UP STEAM
JOEY HADN’T BEEN bragging. He really did know what he was doing with that new computer. The first time he and Cara went to the resource center on Monday afternoon, it took him only twenty minutes to set up the basic framework of the newspaper. Cara watched as the newspaper took shape in front of her eyes on the computer monitor. Joey selected the eleven-by-seventeen-inch paper size, and then across the top he typed THE LANDRY NEWS in ninety-point type. Seeing the name like that, large and crisp and clear, gave Cara a thrill. The finished paper would not be quite as large as the newspapers she had made by hand, but it would look much more real, more important. It was like a new beginning.
Joey showed Cara how she could choose different styles of type, and after trying five or six, she decided that the one called Palatino looked best for the name of the newspaper—clear and readable without being show-offy.
“Now we can draw some boxes where the columns will go,” Joey explained. The paper is eleven inches wide . . . and there needs to be about a quarter-inch margin on both sides . . . so we have ten and a half inches to work with. How about five columns that are each two inches wide? That will leave an eighth of an inch between them.” Almost as quickly as Joey said it, the columns appeared on the screen. He pointed at the lines around each column and said, “On the real paper, these lines won’t be there, but we can leave them for now so you can see how much space there is to fill.”
Cara gulped and said, “There’s a lot of space to fill, isn’t there.”
br /> “Well . . . yeah,” Joey said, “but remember, there can be headlines and drawings and pictures and dingbats—they all take up space, too.”
“Pictures?” asked Cara. “I can put pictures in the paper?”
“Yup,” said Joey. “Pictures, drawings, cartoons—whatever you want.” He pointed at a little machine on the table beside the monitor. “That thing is called a scanner. You can put a sheet into that slot, the scanner will make a copy of whatever’s on it, then you can add it to the newspaper on the screen and print it out—bingo!”
Cara was feeling a little overwhelmed by all the choices. “So . . . so do I have to type up all my news stories on a computer now?” she asked.
“Well, someone does,” said Joey. “But it doesn’t really have to be you. If you like, write things down the way you want them, then me or Ed could type it up—or even someone else. Alan’s real good at keyboarding, and so is Sarah. I bet they’d help out if you ask.”
Joey turned back to the computer screen. “Now I’m going to print out a copy. Then you can use a pencil to sketch in where headlines should go . . . what pictures you want—whatever. I’ll print out two copies. They’ll be good for your planning.”
A minute later, Joey handed Cara the sheets, still warm from the printer. Holding the actual pieces of paper, seeing the name large and clear across the top, Cara stopped worrying. She didn’t understand all the computer stuff—not yet—but she understood paper. In the end it was just going to be a piece of paper—paper and ink and ideas.
With a big smile Cara looked up and said, “This is great, Joey.”
* * *
And four days later, there it was—paper and ink and ideas. Joey DeLucca and Ed Thomson were standing at the doorway of room 145, handing out crisp, clean copies of The Landry News. It had not been easy, but they had made the Friday deadline.
The lead story was the results of a survey that Cara and LeeAnn had taken on Tuesday and Wednesday. They had asked seventy-five fifth-graders to name their favorite teacher at Denton Elementary School, and to explain their choice. The headline was: MRS. PALMER CHOSEN FAVORITE TEACHER.
There was a “Top-Ten List of the Least-Favorite Cafeteria Foods.” The list ended with:
And the number one least-favorite cafeteria food at Denton Elementary School—two words: creamed corn.
There was sports news about the recreation department basketball season, with the total wins and losses so far for each of the fifth-grade teams.
In the center of the page there was a picture of the boys’ locker-room door. Ed had brought his dad’s instant camera to take the picture, and Joey had scanned it in. The headline below the picture said HOLD YOUR NOSE! and the article was about why the locker rooms—boys’ and girls’—smell so bad.
And of course there was an editorial.
As Ed and Joey handed out papers, Cara took a copy from the four or five papers she was keeping for herself and walked up to Mr. Larson’s desk. He saw Cara coming out of the comer of his eye but kept reading the sports page until she said, “Mr. Larson?”
He said, “Yes? Oh—hi, Cara. What can I do for you?”
Cara was nervous. She held the copy of The Landry News behind her back and, trying to smile, she said, “You know that project Joey and I wanted to go to the library for? Well, it’s done, and I wanted to show it to you . . . here.” And Cara handed him the newspaper.
Mr. Larson leaned forward across his desk to take it, acting surprised. “Project? Oh, yes . . . the project in the library.” Looking over the newspaper quickly and then back up at Cara’s face, he said, “Yes, I remember—I asked you if it was going to be a good project . . . What do you think? Are . . . are you happy with the way it turned out?”
Cara gulped and nodded. “Uh-huh. We had to work kind of quickly, and there’s not all that much in it, but . . . but we like the paper, and I . . . and we just wanted you to have a copy.”
“Well . . . thank you, Cara,” said Mr. Larson, a little haltingly. “I’ll enjoy reading this.”
Cara nodded, smiled awkwardly, and said, “You’re welcome,” and backed away from Mr. Larson’s desk. She turned and headed for her space in the back comer of the room.
Mr. Larson leaned back in his chair and held up The Landry News to get a better look at it. He really didn’t know what to expect. As he scanned the page, his eye fell to the lower right-hand corner of the paper—to the editorial.
From the Editor’s Desk
New Looks
The Landry News has a new look this week. A lot of people helped to make the improvements. Without Mr. Larson, Ms. Steinert, Joey DeLucca, Ed Thomson, LeeAnn Ennis, Sharon Gifford, and Alan Rogers, the changes and also some of this week’s stories would not have been possible.
This paper has taken another new look this week, a look at what a newspaper is for. Above all, a newspaper has to tell the truth. Telling the truth can sometimes make people angry. Does that mean that a newspaper should try to stay away from a story that might bother someone? It all depends on the thought behind the newspaper—the newspaper’s heart.
A mean-hearted newspaper tries to find out things that are bad, and then tries to tell the truth in a way that will hurt others. Newspapers can get famous that way, but they don’t do much good—for anybody.
A good-hearted newspaper tries to tell the truth in a way that helps people understand things better. A good-hearted newspaper can tell the same story as a mean-hearted paper, but it tells the story in a different way because it’s for a different reason.
As a reminder that The Landry News is trying to be a good-hearted newspaper, starting with the next edition, below the name of the paper, there will be a new motto: Truth and Mercy.
And that’s the view this week from the News desk.
Cara Landry, Editor in Chief
Mr. Larson had started slowly swiveling his chair around toward the chalkboard when he was about halfway through the editorial. He could feel his eyes misting up, and he was pretty sure someone would be watching him while he read the paper. When Mr. Larson finished it, he smiled as he blinked hard, and he reached for his coffee to help gulp away the lump in his throat. He hadn’t felt this good about being a teacher for a long, long time.
After a minute, Mr. Larson got up and walked back toward Cara’s mini-office. Now it was Cara’s turn to pretend she didn’t see someone coming.
Looking down on her over the top of the tripod map, Mr. Larson said, “Excuse me, Cara . . . would you happen to have an extra copy of this newspaper? My wife’s a teacher, too, and I just know she’d love to read this editorial. It’s really a good piece of writing.”
Beaming with pleasure, Cara said, “Sure . . . sure, Mr. Larson. Here’s another copy.”
* * *
The second edition of The Landry News was a big hit. All seventy-five copies had been distributed in less than six minutes.
And late Friday afternoon, one copy of The Landry News ended up on the desk of Dr. Philip K. Barnes, Principal.
CHAPTER 11
TREMORS POINT TO MAJOR QUAKE
A COPY OF the second edition found its way to the office because the principal’s secretary, Mrs. Cormier, had found one on the floor in the hallway. She thought Dr. Barnes would enjoy reading the article about the best teachers.
Dr. Barnes sat down at his desk and read every word of the newspaper carefully, nodding and smiling now and then. This was good, clean fun—excellent writing, a fine learning experience. The bit about the top-ten least-favorite foods was cleverly done, and the story about favorite teachers was written in a very positive way. The writers didn’t take any cheap shots. There was no foul language. There was no criticism of the school, the school administration, or school policies. There was nothing even a little bit controversial about the second edition of The Landry News.
But when Dr. Barnes read the editorial, his eyes narrowed, and his heartbeat quickened. A scowl formed on his broad, fleshy face, and his nostrils flared and quivered. He
reached for a red pen, took off the cap, and starting over, he read through the entire paper again, looking for a problem, any problem. But when he was done, he had only circled one item on the whole page. It was in the editorial. He had drawn a heavy red circle around one name: Mr. Larson.
Dr. Barnes had strong opinions about Mr. Larson. For the seven years Dr. Barnes had been the principal of Denton Elementary School, Mr. Larson had been a constant problem.
Dr. Barnes didn’t hate Mr. Larson. That would be too strong a word—too emotional. This had nothing to do with feelings, he told himself. This was a matter of professionalism. Dr. Barnes disapproved of Mr. Larson because Mr. Larson did not behave professionally. For Dr. Barnes, education was serious business, and Mr. Larson took his educational responsibilities too lightly.
Dr. Barnes opened his desk drawer and took out the key to the file cabinet where he kept the records about each teacher at Denton Elementary School. Swiveling around in his chair, he unlocked and opened the wide file drawer. It wasn’t hard to find Mr. Larson’s file. It was three times fatter than any other file in the drawer.
Every year Dr. Barnes got letters about Mr. Larson from worried parents. Parents asked if it was normal to have no homework in social studies, no homework in reading, and no homework in English—no homework at all for the whole year! Parents wrote to ask if their children could be transferred to the red team, and the real reason was always the same: getting out of Mr. Larson’s class.
At the end of every school year each teacher was required to have a meeting with the principal. It was called a performance review. Dr. Barnes flipped through the stack of performance review sheets he had filled out for Mr. Larson—one for each of the last seven years. Poor. Poor. Unacceptable. Poor. Unacceptable. Unacceptable, and—Unacceptable.
At the bottom of each review form, there was room for a brief statement from the teacher. Over the past seven years, every statement from Mr. Larson had been pretty much the same. Turning to last year’s review sheet, Dr. Barnes gritted his teeth and read what Mr. Larson had written: