"Twelve-year-old Cindy has just dipped a toe into seventh-grade drama -- with its complicated friendships, bullies, and cute boys -- when she earns an internship as a cub reporter at a local newspaper in the early 1970s. A (rare) young female reporter takes Cindy under her wing, and Cindy soon learns not only how to write a lede, but also how to respectfully question authority, how to assert herself in a world run by men, and -- as the Watergate scandal...

Told in multiple voices, four summer school classmates band together to save their teacher and their academic futures after Ms J.'s unorthodox teaching methods are questioned.