Stella by Starlight By Sharon M Draper-pdfread.net

To the older children she said, “Four times four?”
“Sixteen!”
“Twelve times twelve?”
“One hundred and forty four! Too easy,” Tony said.
“Excellent!” The teacher looked pleased. “Now, children,” she
continued cheerfully, “let’s begin our writing projects. I will collect them
at the end of the day.”
Stella slumped in her seat. Writing. The perfect way to ruin a perfect
morning.
Mrs. Grayson divided everyone into groups by grades. She tasked the
oldest students with looking up each reference from the song in the Bible
and figuring out who were the “eight who stood at the gate,” then writing
about one of them. The little ones were told to write short word stories or
poems about Christmas.
When Mrs. Grayson got to Stella’s group of nine- to twelve-year-olds,
she told them, “I want each of you to write an essay—an opinion piece. It
should be one to two pages in length. Your best penmanship.”
Two pages? Stella’s stomach curled into knots.
Mrs. Grayson caught Stella’s eye. “Just write down what you think
about what happened last night,” she suggested. “Bumblebee belongs to
all of us, and what happens here is important.”
Outside the classroom window stood an ancient apple tree, its
branches gnarled and entwined. They’d all feasted on the fruit since the
start of school, but the last of the apples had fallen in the past week. Stella
gazed out at the few remaining leaves stirring in the sharp breeze. When
she opened her notebook, her thoughts snarled like those tangled
branches. Stella didn’t like to write.
When she was in first grade, she had been the worst reader in the
whole class. It had taken her longer than anyone else to figure out the
connection between words in her head and the charts of both printed and
cursive versions of the ABCs on the wall. Reading and writing had come
slowly to Stella, in spite of her mother’s wallpaper. Mrs. Grayson, so
patient, had let Stella work at her own pace, but still she’d struggled with
putting it all together. Even now, for sure, she’d never be the class spelling
bee champion like Carolyn.
So instead of beginning her essay, Stella busied herself with getting