Also Known As Harper

141 Pages·2016·0.68 MB·English

by  Leal Ann Haywood

Also Known As Harper
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
Publishers since 1866
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10010
www.HenryHoltKids.com

Henry Holt is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Text copyright © 2009 by Ann Haywood Leal All rights reserved.
Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Leal, Ann Haywood.
Also known as Harper / Ann Haywood Leal.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Writing poetry helps fifth-grader Harper Lee Morgan cope with her
father’s absence, being evicted, and having to skip school to care for her brother
while their mother works, and things look even brighter after she befriends a
mute girl and a kindly disabled woman.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-8881-6
ISBN-10: 0-8050-8881-4
[1. Single-parent families—Fiction. 2. Family problems—Fiction. 3. Brothers
and sisters—Fiction. 4. Poets—Fiction. 5. Selective mutism—Fiction. 6.
People with disabilities—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.L46327Als 2009
[Fic]—dc22
2008036940

First Edition—2009
First Edition—2009
Book designed by April Ward
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. ∞
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
For my dad, Lionel Haywood,
and in loving memory of
my mom, Peggy Haywood—
my first readers
Also Known As Harper
Chapter One

WINNIE RAE EARLY followed ten steps behind me the entire way home from
school. It was hard not to fall into rhythm with the noisy sniff she took every
third step. I knew without turning around that she was doing what she’d done all
day long at school, lifting her arm up and wiping at the chapped underside of her
nose with the inside of her wrist.
When my toes had just about reached my driveway, she ran ahead of me and
across to her yard next door and threw her backpack to the side of her daddy’s
brown metal toolshed. That old shed sat a good foot over the line on our
property, and I swear I’d seen her watching me before from the square cutout
window in the side.
The little doors in the front were made to look like barn doors, and I saw her
pull on the long handle in the middle of the X and let herself in.
I was tempted to wait at the bottom of my porch and spy on her for once, until
I noticed another one of those nasty signs slapped in the middle of my front
door.
“It won’t do you no good to take it off of there, Harper.” Winnie Rae stepped
around and hollered at me from beside the shed. “My mama will just come on
back and put up another one.”
I scrunched up a corner of the sign and threw it in her direction. “You get your
tired old sneakers off my property, Winnie Rae, and worry about your own sorry
self.”
She pointed one chewed-up fingernail in my direction. “It ain’t your property
anymore, Harper Lee Morgan, according to that sign there.”
Winnie Rae was right and I knew it. That sign meant the landlord, who
happened to be her mama, was getting ready to kick us out and rent to someone
new. Someone who could pay.