The Landry News (5 page)

“I . . . I don't really know how to use a computer,” stammered Cara, blushing. “At least not well enough for something like this. We . . . I don't have one at home, and the school where I used to live only had a couple of computers, and no one ever let me get near them. I think I had a . . . a bad reputation there.”

“A bad reputation?” Joey grinned. “You? Hmmm. Let me guess . . . could that have had something to do with making newspapers?” Then he went on seriously, “But really, it's not hard to use a computer. I talked with Ed, and we want to be on your staff, you know, like work for the newspaper. You can do your writing right here in the classroom, or anywhere. Ed and me, we're really good with the computers down in the resource center—those are the newest ones in the school. And as long as a teacher says it's okay, Ms. Steinert will let us use the whole setup—printers, paper, everything. What do you think?”

Cara hesitated. She wasn't expecting this.
The Landry News
was
her
newspaper, something she did all by herself.
Still, this offer was something to think about. If she kept on making just one copy by hand, yes, she could keep total control of it. But with only one copy, not many kids would ever get to read the
News.
And as Mr. Larson had proved, making only one copy means that it only takes one angry reader to shut off the whole circulation instantly.

Cara thought about what she had said to her mom. It was true. She wasn't making
The Landry News
now because she was angry. She was making it because she was good at it, because she liked being a reporter and a newswriter. She was determined to be a good journalist, and every good journalist knows that circulation is important.

And besides all that, it was Joey DeLucca standing here smiling at her, offering to help. So Cara made a decision.

She smiled at Joey and stood up. She said, “Sounds good. Let's ask Mr. Larson if we can go and talk to Ms. Steinert right now.”

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.

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.

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 T
HE
L
ANDRY
N
EWS
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.”

“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: M
RS
. P
ALMER
C
HOSEN
F
AVORITE
T
EACHER.

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 H
OLD
Y
OUR
N
OSE
! 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?”