Free EllRay Jakes is a Rock Star! by Sally Warner

VIKING
    Published by Penguin Group
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    Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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    First published in 2011 by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group
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Text copyright © Sally Warner, 2011
    Illustrations copyright © Jamie Harper, 2011
    All rights reserved
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    LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE
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    ISBN : 978-1-101-54775-5
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    Set in ITC Century

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For Ben Haworth—S.W.
    For Henry—J.H.

1
    TALLER
    â€œI grew an inch last weekend,” my friend Kevin McKinley announces at lunch on Friday, smiling like it’s no big deal. But it is.
    Kevin is brown like me, but already he is TALLER than I am, so him growing another inch does not seem fair.
    Why can’t nature make things come out even? I don’t get it.
    It is Valentine’s Day in exactly one week, which means this is almost the middle of February. Just about every kid in Ms. Sanchez’s third grade class is outside, including me, because it is the first sunny day we have had in a long time. Even the birds are having fun. Crows are turning circles in the air.
    â€œNo, you did not grow an inch in one weekend,” Cynthia Harbison says, basically calling Kevin a liar. “ THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE.”
    Everyone holds their breath when Cynthia says something like this. She’s usually right, and she likes to boss people around. But mostly, she bosses the girls—especially Emma McGraw and Annie Pat Masterson.
    Cynthia’s dad has a really cool car, though. It’s an Audi. And she’s very neat, if you like that kind of thing, which I do not.
    â€œIt is not impossible to grow that fast,” Corey Robinson says, defending Kevin. He is usually pretty quiet, and he has freckles on his face. Corey smells like chlorine all the time.
    Corey is a champion swimmer, but he’s not that tall. He’s a pretty cool guy. In fact, he’s very cool. He doesn’t threaten to beat me up the way Jared Matthews and his best friend and faithful robot Stanley Washington used to do.
    Jared is widely known as the meanest kid in our class. He is absent today.
    â€œYeah,” I chime in, because Kevin’s also my friend. “Maybe he hung upside-down all day long both days, and his legs stretched.”

    As I say the words, I wonder why I didn’t think of this first,