As he ran down the winding tar path that led through the woods to the street, he took a quick inventory: his knapsack, straining at its straps, held a blank blue composition book and three unsharpened yellow pencils (for a summer journal; everyone had gotten these), a battered hardback copy of a book called
The Little Prince (no one else had received this; the librarian had slipped it in secret to "my best little reader"), a mimeographed copy of the school handbook complete with all kinds of forms to be brought in on the first day of second grade in September (everyone, of course), six certificates stamped with foil medallions (one for completing the dumb first-grade reader with its "See Spot jump!" stories, one for being able to print the alphabet in upper and lower case, one for being able to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "You're a Grand Old Flag," all of which everyone got, even Gordon Firestone, who never got the words right to the latter song and still couldn't tell the difference between small "d" and "b," "g" and "q"; the other three were from gym class, for being able to run and jump and roll (some boys had gotten more than the three, but they were show-offs); a big, glossy bland-and-white photograph of the whole class (for everyone, even the two kids who had missed school on the day the picture was taken; Asa had been sick with a bad cold himself, but his parents had made him come for the picture, in which he was the only one wearing a jacket and tie); and, finally, a report card.
