Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great by Judy Blume Page A

room, so by the time I got to my crossword puzzle on the bottom of the page, I had to make it very small. I think I spelled "counselor" wrong, but you can't erase when you're using a stencil so I had to leave it that way. By the time I finished drawing little pictures of all our activities along the side margins of my newspaper, it was time to go home. And was I glad!
     
        On Friday morning I was ready to use the mimeograph machine. I thought I'd zip out the seventy-five copies I needed and still make it back to pottery. Denise would probably let me use the wheel the whole time because I haven't had a turn all week.
     
        But I discovered that you can't just zip out copies on an old mimeograph machine. For one thing, the machine uses a special kind of ink. And after half an hour my hands were full of it but the machine didn't have enough because every page came out blank. So I poured in a ton of ink and then when I cranked out the first few copies big blobs of purple were all over the paper and you couldn't read anything I'd written.
     
        That's when Mrs. Bindel said she would get the machine going for me. I told her, "What this camp needs is a good photocopier."
     
        "You'll be more experienced next week, Sheila. It probably won't take so long then."
     
        I didn't want to think about next week or the week after that, or spending the rest of the summer putting out the camp newspaper.
     
        Two hours later I was still cranking out copies. They looked better than the first batch, which I had to throw away. This time you could read practically everything-But the pictures in the margins weren't too clear. Still, if you looked hard you could see that they were pictures. I couldn't understand why the crossword puzzle came out with such wavy lines though. But at least I had my seventy-five copies of NEWS-DATE ready. I didn't much care how they looked anymore. I was so glad to be done!
     
        I took my seventy-five copies, yelled Good-bye to Mrs. Bindel, and ran out of the office. I personally handed a copy of my newspaper to every kid in camp.
     
        When Mouse saw it she said, "What kind of newspaper is this?"
     
        And I said, "What do you mean by that?"
     
        She said, "I never heard of a newspaper that's handwritten. It doesn't even look like a newspaper to me."
     
        "Well, that's how much you know!" I told her. "Anybody can type out a newspaper. It takes special talent and a lot more work to handwrite one!"
     
        "What are these funny smudges up and down the sides of the paper?"
     
        "Funny smudges! You must need glasses. Anyone with eyes can see they're pictures of our camp activities!"
     
        "No kidding!" Mouse said, looking closer. "All I see are ink blots."
     
        "You better have your eyes examined," I told her. "Everyone else in camp knows that they are pictures."
     
        That's when Russ came up to me and said, "Hey, Sheila. . . why didn't you get my mother to help you with the mimeograph? Then you wouldn't have gotten your papers all smudged up."
     
        Before I had a chance to say anything two big boys walked over to us and handed me the finished crossword puzzle.
     
        "Okay, Sheila the Great," one of them said. "What's the big prize?"
     
        That's when I realized I didn't have a prize to give. I was so sure nobody would be able to figure out my puzzle!
     
        "Well. . ." the other boy said.
     
        I had to think fast. How would it look if SHEILA THE GREAT didn't have a super prize to give? "Congratulations!" I said. "You are both very lucky. Very lucky. Very, very lucky!"
     
        "So what do we win?" they asked.
     
        "You win the camp newspaper! That's what you win! Next week you get to run it all by yourself! Unless, of course, you feel you need a committee. Most people aren't able to run newspapers by themselves."
     
        "Some prize!"
     
        "I knew you'd think so," I told