<BLOCKQUOTE><B>From the Editor's Desk<P> A Question of Fairness</B> <P> There has been no teaching so far this year in Mr. Larson's classroom. There has been learning, but there has been no teaching. There is a teacher in the classroom, but he does not teach.</BLOCKQUOTE> <P> Cara Landry is a budding journalist. When she posts a scathing editorial about her burned-out teacher on the bulletin board one afternoon, everything changes. Prodded into action for the first time in years, Mr. Larson challenges his fifth-grade students to create a real newspaper. Soon <I>The Landry News</I> gets more attention than either Cara or her teacher bargained for, as the principal uses the paper to try to get Mr. Larson fired. While the whole town is swept up in a dramatic debate over <I>The Landry News</I> and the First Amendment, Mr. Larson uses the controversy as raw material for some of the finest teaching of his career. And Cara and her classmates learn the importance of tempering a newspaper's truth with mercy. But will their lessons cost Mr. Larson his job? <P> Written by the author of the immensely popular <I>Frindle,</I> this is a compelling new novel about the collision of a student in need of a teacher with a teacher in need of inspiration.