Girl Reporter Snags Crush! by Linda Ellerbee

Author:Linda Ellerbee [Ellerbee, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-06-203357-4
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2000-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Hello, stranger!”

Gram was in the kitchen when I got home, which is weirder than it sounds. Gram doesn’t know what to do with herself in a kitchen. Her idea of cooking is stirring something halfway through its seven minutes in the microwave. A habit possibly learned from living in New York City and ordering lots of takeout.

She was puzzling over a canister of instant biscuits.

“How the heck do these work?” she quizzed me. “Do I just put the whole thing in the oven?”

I took the canister from her and whacked it on the edge of the counter. It gave a satisfying pop, and the dough inside squidged out. I got out a round pan and started putting the soft raw dough pats into it.

“What’s up, Betty Crocker?” I asked, setting the temperature on the oven.

Gram sighed and riffled her short hair with one hand. It’s sort of multishine: red with streaks of gold and silver. “I’m procrastinating,” she admitted. “I was working on my book and I hit a knotty part. I just couldn’t stare at that computer anymore. So I’m making up excuses not to work.”

“Now I know where I get it from,” I teased.

“Ha ha, junior,” she said, watching me put the pan in the oven as if I was launching the space shuttle. “So what’s going on at school?”

I pulled out my copy of Real News from my backpack. Since I rarely do editorials, I’d sort of saved it as a surprise. “Gram, you have to read my editorial. Mr. Baxter said it went too far and that it was way over the line. But it got a lot of people fired up. One student even vandalized the new Crush machines, and Ms. Nachman called me into her office. But I remembered all the things you told me about the media, and she listened to me. But tomorrow there’s going to be a student protest, and—”

Gram held up her hand, which meant “Slow down, Casey.” She holds up her hand a lot. Then she told me to get out the milk while she read my editorial. She sat down and read, and a frown creased her brow. I knew not to be worried by that, though. She always frowns when she’s concentrating.

“Over the line?” she asked, when she finished reading. “No. Definitely not. If this were a news article, Mr. Baxter might have a point saying it was biased and coming on too strong. But this is an editorial. It’s supposed to give an opinion. And make people want to react. Oh, and you did a good job, by the way.”

“Thanks, Gram.” A compliment on my writing from Gram had a lot of weight. “So why do you think he got so upset about it?”

“Well, Casey, he is the advisor for Real News,” she pointed out. “He was probably getting a lot of heat about your editorial from the administration.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I was a little bummed that Mr. Baxter would cave so easily. But I guessed I could see Gram’s point.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.