EllRay Jakes and the Beanstalk by Sally Warner Read Free Book Online Page A

and the Beanstalk” for his story! It would be perfect for him, right? Jared does everything mean, just like Jack, and he never gets punished for it.
    He will just go on and on until “The End.”
    â€œFriday,” Jared shouts across the wind as we head for class. “After school. At the park. Skating contest. It’s a challenge.”
    â€œWhy don’t we have a helicopter flying contest, while we’re at it?” I yell back. “None of us can fly a helicopter, either!”
    â€œChicken,” Stanley jeers, although I already showed Jared and him a long time ago that I’m
not
a chicken. And that’s a story nobody can change. “Be there,” Stanley shouts.
    â€œOkay,” I say, trying to picture it: Jared, Kevin, Stanley, and me, because Corey will be at swim practice, naturally. So I’ll be on my own. One against three.
    But—four guys at the park, pretending they can skate? Scooting down the park’s bumpy paths like a bunch of babies?
    What if some real skaters see us?
    â€œPosers!”
I can hear it now.
    Okay. I have two days to learn at least ONE TRICK
from Fly Reilly, the bad choice kid, I tell myself, shrugging out of my jacket when we get inside Ms. Sanchez’s class. And I’m going to try, even if going over to Henry’s house when Fly’s there means lying to my dad.
    But I’ll be at that park whether I learn anything or not.
    I can be at least a little gutsy, can’t I? Even though I’m just EllRay Jakes, and not Jack, the gangster star of “Jack and the Beanstalk”?

12
    Making It Your Own
    â€œI need different blues,” Annie Pat says, hunching over a drawing of herself starring as the Little Mermaid. I guess she doesn’t mind the part about ending up as sea foam, or maybe she didn’t read that far.
    Our class moved the chairs so we are facing each other across long tables. That way, we can share the colored pencils, markers, and crayons better as we do our illustrations.
    We can
supposedly
share.
    â€œI need blue, too, for part of the Pied Piper’s Hawaiian shirt,” Jared argues, grabbing one of the markers. “See, I thought my guy had a lot of
pie
, and that’s why all the kids followed him, but it turns out that ‘pied’ means ‘different colors,’ so—”
    â€œCinderella wears a blue dress under a perfectly clean white apron,” Cynthia interrupts as she corrals a few blue-colored pencils and crayons for future use. “But you guys can use these when I’m done,” she adds, like she’s being so generous.
    â€œI need a light brown crayon,” Emma tells Annie Pat. “Because Thumbelina slept in a walnut shell when she was a baby. That’s how teensy she was.” She smiles—at the thought, I guess.
    â€œUse burnt sienna for your walnut shell, Emma,” Fiona advises, reaching for a dark blue crayon to help fill in her own scary-looking night sky. She is drawing “The Little Match Girl,” like she said she was going to do. Her Little Match Girl definitely looks like she has weak ankles. Fiona’s illustration is fancier than anyone else’s, of course.
    Heather is having her conference with Ms. Sanchez right now, but before she left the table, she taped on an extra piece of paper to the bottom of her drawing so she could make Rapunzel’s beautiful hair as long as she wants.
    Stanley is drawing a grasshopper with a party hat on, for “The Grasshopper and the Ant.” I’m not sure he read to the end of that one, either. And Corey is spending most of his time working on a cool, zigzag pattern for his tortoise’s shell, because he’s doing “The Tortoise and the Hare.” I guess the hare has already raced past—or is busy taking the nap that makes him lose the race.
    â€œWhat are you drawing, Kevin?” Corey asks, as if nothing is wrong. Like everything has been the same