Journalistic Integrity: Nancy Clancy--Late-Breaking News! by Jane O'Connor

"The Gazette! It's here!" Nancy and Bree shouted. They were both waving the latest issue of the Third Grade Gazette. A gazette was the same thing as a newspaper but sounded much more elegant and French.

"Nothing in here is big news," said Bree. "See what's on the front page. 'Fun at the Planetarium' was a story about a class trip. "This doesn't even count as news."

"True," said Nancy. "I want to uncover big news."

Nancy is determined to uncover some BIG news for the next issue of the Gazette. But the news she stumbles upon at home is disturbing news. Dad is considering doing accounting from home instead of going to the office. That's news, but that's not all. Nancy's parents are thinking about moving to a bigger house, one with room for an office for Dad! That's awful news. Nancy just can't leave her school and her best friend Bree!

And then there's more bad news. When Nancy gets sick at recess the next day, she goes to her classroom for her backpack so she can leave early. Outside the door she hears her teacher Mr. Dudenay talking to someone on his phone.

"You know, it's something I've been thinking about for...at least a year." Mr. Dudeny said. "Yeah, of course it'll be hard after being here so long."

Nancy didn't mean to eavesdrop. but it was impossible not to hear.

Mr. Dudeny said, "Of course, I'm sure going to miss them. But I keep telling myself--time for a change. Listen, gotta go. The kids will be back any minute. Later, dude!"

Mr. Dudenay is leaving? That's the kind of big story Nancy wanted, but one she doesn't want to have to write. But she just has to tell her best friend Bree. She calls Bree from her bedroom so she won't give her any germs. The sensible Bree listens carefully and cautions Nancy.

"You may be jumping to conclusions. You have to make sure of what the facts mean." Verifying facts was something every reporter did, Mr. Dudeny has explained, to make sure their story was accurate.

Bree promises not to share the story, but lets it slip when the empathetic Clara asks her why she looks so worried. And when Nancy goes back to school she discovers that her news has somehow leaked throughout both third grades. Not only has she lost control of her big story, but it's not even news anymore. In fact, when Nancy goes to apologize to her teacher for eavesdropping, she learns that her big story is not accurate, either. Mr. Dudeny is not changing schools; he just changing apartment mates for a new place.

But there is a bombshell news story for the Clancy clan, in Jane O'Connor's Fancy Nancy: Nancy Clancy, Late-Breaking News! (Harper, 2017). In this eighth and last in the Nancy Clancy chapter book series, Nancy does comes up with a lead on why her her parents are thinking of a new house and why Dad is going to work from home. But this big news is good news, when she learns that little sister JoJo is going to be a big sister, too--in about six months. The family is growing and so is their house, with a new addition for Dad's office and for a new bedroom with--Ooh-La-La! a private bath--for Nancy. Now Nancy understands the reasons for not leaking unproven "facts" before getting the whole story, that "journalistic integrity" that Mr. Dudeny has been teaching them about.

For young Nancy fans and readers moving on to chapter books, this series offers a transitional step toward middle reader novels, with longer chapters and more a more complex plot line. Other books in the series include Nancy Clancy, Super Sleuth, Fancy Nancy: Nancy Clancy, Secret of the Silver Key, Fancy Nancy: Nancy Clancy, Secret Admirer and Fancy Nancy: Nancy Clancy Sees the Future.

Read All About It! Isabel Feeney, Star Reporter by Beth Fantaskey

"Isabel," Miss Giddings said--still sounding worried. "You just be careful out here. Then she glanced down the street. "I've got to run now. Izzy. Take care, okay?"

"Yeah, you, too," I said. That was when I realized a man was waiting for her down the street in the shadows, his hat pulled low. They were obviously arguing, and the man was rough with her as they walked into the darkness. I bent to pick up my newspapers. The winter wind, as strong as it was, couldn't drown out the sound of a gunshot. A single, sharp report that echoed from the alley into which Miss Giddings and that man had just disappeared.

I probably shouldn't have run toward a gunshot, but Miss Giddings always looked after me, if only by buying a paper she probably didn't even want, and I couldn't seem to stop my feet, flying toward the alley.

Chicago Tribune newspaper girl Isabel Feeney is the sort of girl who runs toward adventure, and when she rounds the corner into the alley, she finds her favorite customer Miss Giddings bent over a bleeding man, a gun beside her on the concrete alleyway, looking dazed and speechless. A police car screeches to a halt in front of the alley, and two cops rushed toward them.

"I'm Detective James Culhane," he barked. He looked at me and and Miss Giddings, pointed to the weapon lying in the snow and asked point-blank, "So, which of you fired the gun?"

Isabel Feeney, a ten-year-old truant and newspaper girl, supplementing her mother's scant earnings as a night janitress, finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation, with the pretty and stylish clerk Miss Giddings the chief suspect. Under questioning at the police station, Isabel has to admit that the man and her friend seemed to be quarreling, and Miss Giddings is held, pending an arraignment.

Isabel just knows her friend is not a murderess, even though she becomes a prisoner on Chicago's famous "murderesses' row," and when she read the Tribune's headliner written by star female report Maude Collier, Izzy sets out to set the reporter straight on Miss Giddings' innocence. Miss Collier is sympathetic to her story, but explains that she writes her crime stories based on the existing evidence. Isabel realizes that it's up to her to set the story straight and write it as it happened--when she has all the evidence--that is.

And Isabel Feeney is on her way, sniffing out the evidence behind the shooting of Charles Bessemer, a known gangster, with a prissy, bossy diva of a daughter, Flora, the star of the Bakery Pride Bread commercials and billboards and wannabe movie star. Izzy investigates the crime scene, proving herself a real gumshoe, discovering two bits of evidence the police ignored, snowy footprints outside a door in the alley that go nowhere, and a smelly piece of chewed Pepsin gum in the snow, and a memorable investigative crime reporter is born.

And investigate Isabel does, with the help of Maude Collier, Miss Giddings' crippled son Robert, and even the snooty Flora, who knows more about her father's gangster world than anyone. Izzy finds herself attending the gangster's funeral, crawling through a broken window at midnight to check out what's behind that alley door and even chased down that same alley and knocked out by someone bent on foiling her sleuthing, and at last turning star witness at Miss Giddings' trial.

Isabel is part Nancy Drew, part the orphaned Annie, and an altogether delightful character, in Beth Fantaskey's newest novel, Isabel Feeney, Star Reporter (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016).

Fantaskey is a writer who can spin a fascinating yarn with the best of them, and in her newest, she takes two of the cliches of pop lit, the girl sleuth with plenty of smarts and the plucky girl reporter going for a above-the-fold lead story, and runs with it. As you would expect, Isabel Feeney takes to both roles tenaciously, with a deliciously written first-person account of 1920s-era cops and robbers and strong female figures making their way among them.

Set in a cold and windy Chicago in the days when Al Capone was its de facto mayor, Isabel's voice is likewise breezy, savvy, and brassy in a way that fits her time and place, right at home in the merrily melodramatic cast of jazz age characters that Fantaskey digs up. Short chapters and shifting action keep the story moving to the beat of the city, swirling like the snow around Isabel as she hustles between leads in her case. Middle readers will willingly follow Isabel Feeney down any dark alley to get the story, and no doubt will be rooting for more Izzy stories from this talented storyteller.

"Isabel's innocence and intelligence combine to form a complex character full of moxie," says Booklist in its starred review.

Scoop: Payback Time by Carl Deuker

I'm going to be a famous reporter. My name--Daniel True--will be on the front page of the New York Times. A huge story is waiting for me, and I'll find it--no doubt about it.

Ah, who am I kidding?

There's a lot of doubt about it. Nothing but doubt.

But a guy can dream, can't he?

Daniel, nicknamed Mitch, short for "Michelin Man" in honor of his rotund physique, has reasons to doubt his dreams. Lead reporter for most of the past three years, as a senior Mitch believes he's in line to become editor of his school newspaper, the Lincoln Light. Holding down the editor's job, Mitch hopes, will get him a second look from Columbia's journalism school. But the pretty and popular Alyssa gets the votes of the Lincoln Light's staff and re-assigns him to the job of sports writer. "Mitch, you're the best writer on the staff. Sports is the only thing anybody actually reads," Alyssa explains, as she goes on to outline the big changes she has in mind to get the newspaper actually noticed by students.

Mitch grudgingly admits to himself that he has no choice and shows up, notebook in hand, for the first pre-season football practice, with his assigned photographer, the beautiful and bright Kimi Yon in tow. Lincoln High has a flashy senior quarterback, Horst Diamond, Mitch's elementary school best friend who dropped him when the he couldn't make the middle school team. Coach McNulty is clearly planning to ride Horst's skills into a state championship and a college coaching job for himself. Might as well be along for the ride, Mitch reasons. At least a winning team will get his stuff printed in the local Seattle papers and maybe those by-lines will do something for his college resume.

Kimi is no fan of the arrogant Horst herself, and looking around for someone else to feature in her photos, spots two guys throwing the ball around at the side of the field. One is new to the team, big and buff, older looking than the other boys on the field, and can really rifle the ball. Kimi hustles Mitch over to McNulty to get permission to interview the newcomer:

McNulty stopped and turned around. "What?"

"Mitch wants to interview the guy wearing the number five jersey," Kimi says.

"He was throwing off at the side," I panted. "And he's got an NFL arm. He throws harder than Horst."

McNulty rolls his eyes in impatient disgust, but calls the new guy over, assigns him a receiver, and tells him to throw a few passes.

I waited for the ball to sizzle through the summer air, waited for McNulty's eyebrows to go up, waited for him to look at Kimi and me with respect.

Only the ball didn't sizzle. It looped high in the air and wobbled off to the right.

"That's enough," McNulty said. "Go on, get back with the other guys."

Eliot and Marichal trotted off. McNulty wheeled on me. "Like an NFL pro?"

"He threw a hundred times better before," I mumbled, feeling ridiculous. "A thousand times."

McNulty scowled. "The next time you discover the second coming of Joe Montana, call ESPN. Don't bother me again. Understand?"

Mitch's journalism teacher has told him to look for "the missing piece" in a story, and he and Kimi both sense that something is missing in this player's story. Angel Marichal says he's from Houston, cut from his old team. But despite his obvious speed and size, McNulty plays him sparingly, always at the crucial moment when a strong defensive player can make the difference between a loss and a potential big win. Marichal is clearly the best defensive man on the team, but McNulty never starts him. Mitch is sure that there's a story there, perhaps an illegal ineligibility behind Marichal's shadowy presence on the team.

Kimi and Mitch begin to investigate and uncover some leads: Marichal keeps to himself, even warming the bench at some distance from the other subs; his cumulative record shows his past transcripts and personal data have been removed from his file under McNulty's signature, and he lives in a rundown area with a twenty-something guy in a shabby house with curiously expensive burglar bars all around. And when Mitch's write-ups as a stringer for the Seattle Times recounting Angel's game-saving feats come out, all references by name to the mystery man are deleted. Mitch even calls the newspaper's top sports guy, Chet the Jet, to complain and Chet insists that the gameplay stats he gets don't even show Marichal in the game. There is definitely a missing piece here somewhere, and Mitch and Kimi soon find themselves deeply involved in what may be a life-threatening but career-making story, a story in which a murder and killers-for-hire turn their reporting into much more than a routine high-school assignment.

Carl Deuker's latest, Payback Time (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, to be published September 6), is not your average teen sports fiction. There is plenty of gameplay excitement as Lincoln High works its way through the season to the state playoff game, but as told by a believable outsider, a short, overweight kid who just wants to get the big story, the play-by-play becomes part of a mystery and ultimately a real thriller, as Mitch realizes that what he knows and what he does with what he knows can make a life-or-death difference. Unlike some teen sports fiction writers, Deuker doesn't opt to end this one on an ESPN moment or with the predictable happy ending for Mitch, who rather learns that under his Michelin Man image, he has his own solid strengths as well.

Payback Time is a football story that does not disappoint and should not be missed.

News Hounds! News for Dogs by Lois Duncan

"Get away from the window," Bruce said. "I'm going to try to get a picture of the dognapping."

He barely had time to step into place before it happened. One moment Lola was lolling on a beach towel in the shade of a striped umbrella, and an instant later she was gone.

"I got it!" Bruce cried. "I caught the dognappers in the act."

Bruce and younger sister Andi have a good thing going. Andi's idea to publish a local newspaper, The Bow Wow News, for dogs and dog owners is a hit. Andi's writing, Debbie's newshound reporting, Tim's desktop publishing skills, and Bruce's photographs are a winning combination, and with the fifty cents per copy they are earning, Bruce feels sure that his share will soon cover what he stills owes his abusive neighbor Jerry for his dog Red Rover.

But then the dogs featured in their first issues mysteriously begin to disappear from their own well-fenced backyards. Ransom notes soon follow, all asking that the grieving dog owners leave hundreds of dollars inside library novels such as Old Yeller and The Incredible Journey if they want to see their pets again.

Luckily, the kids are temporarily staying with their Aunt Alice, a retired private detective, who is more than eager to freshen her sleuthing skills on this case. Assuming that the kidnappers are selecting their victims from the pampered pets featured in The Dog News, she persuades the reluctant Andi to shave her shaggy pet Friday into a close imitation of an exotic hairless crested Chinese dog, whom Andi rechristens Lola. Aunt Alice, well known to be allergic to dogs, exults in a planted Bow Wow News interview that she is ecstatic to have realized her lifelong dream of dog ownership with a non-allergenic dog bought on e-Bay. Then, with decoy dog Lola complete with tracking collar as bait, the trap is set for the suspected Jerry and his con man cousin Connor, and the sleuth team sits back and waits for the perps to pick up little Lola. And the chase is on!

Published almost simultaneously with the hit movie based on Lois Duncan's earlier Hotel For Dogs, her sequel News For Dogs (Scholastic, 2009) brings the familiar characters together again in a humorous and fast-paced mystery which elementary readers will find just doggone good fun.