Ten year old Rachel has many decisions to make. She first has to recognize that her writing is indeed, a talent. It takes her best friend to convince her of this. Her next decision is even tougher. She must decide whether or not to enter the fourth grade talent show and compete against the meanest girl in her grade, who not only won the talent show last year, but who has made her life miserable for the last two years. The Talent Show is a book that many children in elementary school can relate to, presenting problems that most of them will face. It teaches lessons in self-confidence, courage and forgiveness.

THE TALENT SHOW

By Barbara Berkowitz

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Barbara Berkowitz
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4389-9825-1

Contents

Chapter 1 The Kids.............................................1Chapter 2 Reading and Writing..................................9Chapter 3 The Announcement.....................................13Chapter 4 Decisions, Decisions.................................19Chapter 5 Things Are Harder Than They Seem.....................29Chapter 6 Rachel's Story.......................................37Chapter 7 Things Get Easier....................................43Chapter 8 Nancy and Rachel's Mom...............................53Chapter 9 Back To School.......................................61Chapter 10 The Big Day.........................................69Chapter 11 Rachel On Stage.....................................81Chapter 12 Losing And Winning..................................93

Chapter One

The Kids

It was a cold, winter morning and Rachel Ahrens got dressed in a hurry to get ready for school. She still needed to put some things in her back pack and her mother was busy filling her lunch box. The school bus was due in ten minutes and Rachel hadn't even combed her long blonde hair yet. She did not like being late because if she missed the bus, she would have to be driven to school and that was not the best way to put her mother in a good mood.

Rachel ran back upstairs to take one last look in the mirror that was attached to the back of her bedroom door.

"That'll do" she thought. She was wearing blue jeans and her favorite long-sleeved blue T shirt that said "AWESOME" in great big red letters. She raced down the stairs, two at a time, put on her jacket and scarf, grabbed her back pack and lunch, and started out the door.

"Bye mom, see you later."

"Bye Rache," her mother called back. There was no time for kisses this morning.

Rachel was lucky the school bus stopped in front of her house. If it didn't, she would surely have missed it today. As she opened the door, with her jacket not yet zippered, she saw the bus coming.

"Wow, that was close," she thought. Carmen Aguirre, Kim Polanis, Andrea Molinsky and Nancy Hansen were already waiting to cross the street.

Rachel waved to her friends as she left the house. Well, almost all her friends. She really couldn't count Nancy as one of her friends. Thank goodness Nancy was in one of the other fourth grade classes.

Last year Nancy was in the same third grade class as Rachel and she annoyed Rachel for the entire school year. Rachel thought Nancy was the meanest and rudest girl in the fourth grade. She was also very snooty. When it was freezing outside and all the kids were wearing jeans and sweaters to school, Nancy always wore a skirt with either socks or tights. It was as if she always wanted to look better than everyone else, even if her legs froze.

Although Rachel did not like to talk about people behind their backs, sometimes she just couldn't help whispering things into her friend Carmen's ear about how Nancy had always teased the younger kids and how she was so conceited. She also was rude and gossiped about everyone. In fact, just yesterday, Nancy started to spread untrue rumors about other people in the fourth grade.

Two weeks ago Rachel slept over at Carmen's house. It was a school night and usually her mother did not like her sleeping at the house of a friend when she had to go to school the next day. However, Carmen just lived across the street and both mothers knew each other so well that Rachel's mother said it would be okay. Rachel packed up all of her school things she would need the next day. She remembered to bring her pajamas and a change of underwear, but she forgot to pack clothes to wear to school. Clothes were never that important to Rachel.

"Well," she said to Carmen the next morning, "I guess I will just have to rough it and wear the same clothes today that I wore yesterday."

When they got off the bus and were walking through the schoolyard to go into the building, Nancy came up to Rachel and said "It must be very hard when you are so poor that you have to wear the same outfit two days in a row." Then Nancy turned and walked away laughing with her friends. Rachel was so angry. She wished she could have thought of a good answer for Nancy's teasing, but she just stood there both surprised and sad. Rachel found it difficult to imagine that someone could be so mean.

Nancy was so good at doing these things, too. She did them when the teacher was not around or could not hear her, so she never got caught. She just made people miserable.

"We should buy Mrs. Glover a pair of huge glasses," Rachel whispered to Carmen as they rode on the bus together. "Maybe then she will be able to see what Nancy does!"

Mrs. Glover was Rachel's fourth grade teacher. Rachel and Carmen tried to imagine Mrs. Glover in huge glasses and thought this was so funny that they giggled the rest of the way to school. However, they usually talked about new clothes and boyfriends and who was in love with Matthew or Michael, the two cutest boys in their class. That was much more fun. Rachel and Carmen nicknamed them "M and M" so that they could talk about them and nobody who overheard their conversation would know who they were talking about.

Rachel had just turned ten. She had met Carmen at the bus stop two years ago, right after Carmen's family bought the house across the street. Carmen had the most beautiful brown eyes and the shiniest, long brown hair. They quickly became best friends. They sat next to each other on the school bus and in class as well, but had to be careful not to talk to each other during a lesson. They did not want Mrs. Glover to call them "chatterboxes" and change their seats. That would be much too embarrassing.

It was nice having a best friend. You always had someone to talk to and with whom you could share secrets. You could always trust your best friend to keep your secrets, too. You got together on weekends and if you were upset, you could tell your friend and she would listen. And if something terrific happened, like if your parents decided to take you to a fair, your friend would be excited for you. Carmen was the best "best friend" Rachel ever had.

Angelina was Nancy's best friend last year and was just as mean as Nancy. They made a good team. Once when Angelina really liked Douglas, the boy who sat directly in front of her in school, Nancy tried to pass a note to Douglas to tell him that Angelina was madly in love with him. Their teacher saw Nancy passing the note and took it away before it reached Douglas and then the most awful thing you can imagine happened. The teacher opened the note and read it out loud in front of the whole class! Douglas was very embarrassed, Nancy was scolded for passing the note and Angelina never spoke to Nancy again.

Rachel knew that she and Carmen would never do anything like that to each other and wondered if anybody else had such a good best friend.

Chapter Two

Reading and Writing

Yesterday was Sunday and Carmen invited Rachel to her house. However, Rachel had taken a book out of the school library that she started reading. Everyone in the class was required to read at least twenty minutes each day from a library book. This particular book was so exciting that Rachel did not want to go over to Carmen's house. She wanted to stay home and finish the book and that is exactly what she did. She stayed in her room all afternoon, sat in her cozy chair and kept reading.

Rachel loved to read. She liked all kinds of books and her favorites were books about people her own age. She was often surprised that when something funny happened in a story, she found that she herself was smiling, and when something sad happened, she would sometimes find a little tear in the corner of her own eye. She wondered how it was possible for someone to just write words and then have those words make you feel as happy or as sad as the characters in the book. She thought you had to have a very special talent to be able to write those kinds of words.

"Words can be amazing," she thought to herself.

Rachel also loved to write. She loved to keep records of everything she did by writing journals. When she went to visit her grandparents in Florida, she always kept a daily journal so she would not forget all the wonderful things she did with them. She read her journals every so often because it made her feel like she was still at all the places she wrote about. She smiled while she was reading them because they brought back such happy memories.

Rachel kept a diary and she wrote in it every night before she went to sleep. Sometimes the entries she made were very short because her days were just ordinary. However, if something unusual happened, her entries were a little longer. The day that Nancy pushed her down in the schoolyard, in third grade, and made her knees start to bleed, she wrote two whole pages. She even included the words she yelled at Nancy because she was so angry and she had to try very hard not to cry in front of everyone.

"Nancy Hansen," she said, "you are the worst girl in this whole school and I wish the principal would throw you out!" She knew what she said was not very nice, but what Nancy had done was not very nice either and the words just flew out of her mouth. She couldn't help it.

Rachel did not know why she kept her diary, but it always made her feel better when she wrote things down. It made her feel like her heart went into the words on the page and the page listened to all of her happy and sad thoughts. It was like having another best friend. "I love my diary," Rachel thought that night, as she pressed her diary against her chest and hugged it tightly.

Chapter Three

The Announcement

The bus arrived at school at 8:50 A.M. and the girls started to get off one by one. They always got off first because they sat in the front of the bus. The boys were a different story. They pushed to get off and got off squeezed together, either two by two, three by three (which was a very tight squeeze), or just ended up flopping down the steps. "Ugh! Boys," thought Rachel, "except of course for M and M."

As the children entered the building, they went to their classrooms and the school bell rang at exactly 9:00 A.M. Everyone was seated in Mrs. Glover's class.

Today was December 22nd. There was only one more day of school before the winter recess began and today was the day that Mrs. Glover was going to make an announcement about the annual talent show.

"Good morning class."

"Good morning Mrs. Glover," the class responded in unison.

Mrs. Glover continued. "As everyone knows, our school holds a talent show every year. Last year only two people signed up from my class. I would like to see a few more volunteers this year," said Mrs. Glover. Mrs. Glover looked around the room to see if anyone seemed to be interested. She then continued.

"The talent show will be held in the auditorium, on January 5th at 10:00 A.M. Anyone who wishes to sign up may place their name on the sign-up sheet which is on my desk. Please make sure you mark down, next to your name, exactly what you wish to do in the talent show. Then you have the entire winter break to practice before the show. Anyone who signs up will get four tickets so that you may invite some of your relatives and friends. I will keep the list on my desk today and tomorrow so you have some time to think about this overnight."

Not everybody wanted to be in the talent show. Nancy Hansen had taken piano lessons since she was five. She was pretty good. Good enough to win the third grade blue ribbon last year. She also made sure to wear that blue ribbon every single day for a whole week, just to show off.

Rachel's friend Kim was a wonderful artist and her pictures were hanging up all over the school hallways. Both of these girls were sure to sign up. Carmen played the tuba so she never signed up. She could hardly hold the instrument because it was almost as big as she was. Rachel wanted to sign up last year but she could not think of one single thing she could do. She had absolutely no artistic talent. If she tried to draw something as simple as an airplane, it came out looking like a cartoon of a little man! No matter how hard she tried, her pencil always did the opposite of what she wanted it to do. It just had a mind of its own. She also sang off-key, could not dance and could not play any musical instrument. So why even bother signing up?

Just at that moment a small white spit ball, the size of a grape, went flying across the room and hit Rachel in the head. Thank goodness it was only made of paper so it didn't really hurt.

"Stop!" yelled Rachel and quickly turned around to see who threw it. She knew it had to be one of the boys. Girls never did things like that. When she looked at the boys, they were all sitting in their seats, with their hands clasped, like angels who never did anything wrong. Rachel knew who threw the spit ball and so did Mrs. Glover because for once, she caught John Brocksten in the act!

"John Brocksten, you will not do that again," said Mrs. Glover. "If you continue to misbehave, as you have been doing all week, you will be taken to the principal's office and your parents will be called." John immediately took out his books and paid attention to Mrs. Glover. He certainly did not want one of his parents to have to make an appearance at school. Then everyone would surely laugh if they knew his parents had to come to speak to the principal, but they wouldn't be laughing at his spit balls. They would be laughing at him.

John made it very difficult for Mrs. Glover and the rest of the children to concentrate on their lessons. Once, when he was sitting behind Kim Polanis, he took his black permanent marker pen, (even though permanent marker pens were not allowed in the classroom), and took the end of one of Kim's long red braids.

He colored in the bottom of the braid under the rubber band. Poor Kim had no idea until recess when Rachel and the rest of her friends told her that she had one braid that was red and one that was red up to the rubber band, and then black on the bottom. Her mother had to cut two inches off her hair because it was permanent marker and it would not wash out. Everyone knew who did it too, but nobody wanted to tell. After all, if you told on someone, then everyone else in the class would pass you and silently whisper in your ear "tattle tale, tattle tale" and nobody wanted to hear that. So nobody told on John Brocksten.

Rachel kept thinking about the talent show. Should she or shouldn't she sign up? It was difficult for her to concentrate on anything else the rest of that day because she was only thinking about one thing.

"What should I do?" she thought to herself.

Chapter Four

Decisions, Decisions

Rachel kept thinking about the talent show. She liked competition but wasn't sure she could think of something she was good at. She would think about it tonight because now she had to pay attention. Mrs. Glover was teaching math. She tried listening to the lesson on long division but her mind kept wandering to last year's talent show.

Andrea Molinsky had looked beautiful in her long purple lace skirt and pink satin ballet shoes. Her shiny black hair was tied back into a tight bun and her mother had even let her put on lipstick. She looked like a real ballerina, but on her last spin at the end of her dance, she tripped and fell flat onto the stage. Nancy Hansen and some of the other kids in the audience started to laugh and Andrea, hearing them, started to cry. Rachel felt sorry for Andrea.

Rachel thought that being in a talent show was taking a big chance. What if you failed? You could look so foolish. Thinking about Andrea Molinsky made her very nervous, especially when she knew that so many people in the audience would be watching. All the kids from the other grades would be there too, not to mention the parents and the teachers. The auditorium would be packed. She really had a lot of thinking to do. Maybe she would talk to her mother tonight during dinner. Her mother always came up with good suggestions.

Rachel put the talent show out of her mind because she knew that if she did not pay attention to the math lesson she would never be able to do her homework. The class was going to have a short quiz tomorrow on the long division they were learning today, and Rachel knew very well that her mother expected Rachel to get at least an A on that test. Her mother always expected A's on every test Rachel took. That's because Rachel always got an A or A+.

"Gee," thought Rachel, "I really spoiled my mother!"

When school was over for the day, Rachel and Carmen got on the school bus.

"I really want to sign up for the talent show," Rachel said to Carmen. Rachel was about to tell Carmen that she didn't know what to enter as her special talent, but Carmen interrupted her.

"That's great!" replied Carmen. "You have so much talent."

"I do?" Rachel asked, with a puzzled look on her face. She was totally surprised because she could not think of anything she could do for the show.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE TALENT SHOWby Barbara Berkowitz Copyright © 2009 by Barbara Berkowitz. Excerpted by permission.
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