Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great by Judy Blume

Healstrom. You'll see. I've even got a name picked out."
     
        "What is it?" he asked.
     
        "It's a surprise. You'll find out next Friday when you read the first issue."
     
        "Well . . ." Mr. Healstrom said, "you seem determined to try it on your own. So, good luck!"
     
        "Oh thanks, Mr. Healstrom! Thanks a lot!"
     
        I ran back to pottery and told everyone about our camp newspaper.
     
        "When's it coming out?" Mouse asked.
     
        "On Friday," I said. "And I'm going to be very busy between now and then. I may have to skip pottery. You know, it's a big job to put out a paper all by yourself."
     
        "That's just what I was thinking," Denise said. "What you need is a committee. Maybe you could get a reporter from each group to tell you what's going on.',
     
        "I'll help you," Mouse said. "I'd like to be a reporter."
     
        "I don't need any reporters," I told everyone. "I can do all that myself."
     
        "But if I'm a reporter we can work together," Mouse said. "We can be a team."
     
        "It's my idea and I'm doing everything!" I told her.
     
        "Well, if that's the way you want to be about it," Mouse said. I could tell that Mouse was wishing she had thought up the idea of having a camp newspaper. And Russ and Sam were really surprised that I knew so much about it.
     
        "Is my mother going to type the newspaper for you?" Russ asked.
     
        "Of course not," I told him. "I'll type it myself."
     
        "You know how to type?" he asked.
     
        "There's nothing to it!" I said.
     
        That night I wrote my first story. I called it "Babar Strikes Again." It was all about Sam Sweeney and his clay elephants, but of course I never mentioned him by name.
     
        Starting the next morning I made my rounds of all the activities. I carried my pad around with me and kept a pencil tucked behind my ear. I jotted down all kinds of interesting things and story ideas such as "Libby the Dancing Skeleton" and "The Real Reason Denise Goes Barefoot." I discovered that at lunch. I was crawling around listening to bits of conversation when I noticed the bottoms of Denise's feet. She was sitting on the grass, leaning against a tree, and the bottoms of her feet pointed up. I don't know how I ever missed seeing them before. They are covered with warts! No wonder she doesn't wear shoes.
     
        The next day was very hot, and as I trudged around from activity to activity I wondered what Mouse, Russ, and Sam were doing at pottery. I didn't come up with any new story ideas so I wrote a weather report, arranged a list of Do's and Don't's about the camp bus, and made up a crossword puzzle of counselors' names. I offered a prize to the first person to hand it in with all the right names.
     
         On Thursday I went to the office to type out the first edition of my camp newspaper. I figured it would only take a few minutes and then I could go back to pottery. I was starting to miss Mouse and my regular camp routine. Mouse and Russ were probably having a lot of fun with the pottery wheel, and with me out of the way they'd each have extra turns.
     
        But after typing for the longest time I was still working on "Babar Strikes Again" and the wastebasket was full of my mistakes. Finally Mrs. Bindel told me she really had to use her typewriter and I had better handwrite my newspaper on the stencil. I said that was fine with me because everyone in New York knows I have the best handwriting in the whole fourth grade.
     
        I found out pretty fast that it's not so easy to write your best on a stencil. I kept goofing. And none of my lines came out straight. They all ran downhill. I threw away the first two stencils and made up my mind that the third one would be it, no matter what!
     
        Across the whole top of the page I printed:
     
        NEWSDATE
        by Sheila the Great
     
        That looked really neat except it took up a lot of