Ellerbee wants to give girls more role models through book series

Just when you think Linda Ellerbee's going to zig, she zags. <br><br>The Houston native-gone-New-Yorker, who moved from television news for adults to author to television news for kids to cancer survivor

Wednesday, March 22nd 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Just when you think Linda Ellerbee's going to zig, she zags.

The Houston native-gone-New-Yorker, who moved from television news for adults to author to television news for kids to cancer survivor to cable television for grown-ups and kids, has reversed field again.

This time the award-winning reporter has written a series of children's books called "Get Real." The series was created to help young girls develop a positive self-image. Reached at the start of a book tour that will bring her to Dallas next week, Ms. Ellerbee discussed her protagonists.

"The series is about two little girls, one of whom is perky and another whose mouth always gets her in trouble," Ms. Ellerbee says. They are co-editors of the school paper.

"One wants to cover school dances, and the other wants to cover city council. Because no one has told them what they can't do, they start to solve mysteries."

Along the way, the pair cultivate allies drawn from a diverse population. It includes Ringo, who speaks in riddles but draws cool cartoons (which were drawn by Ms. Ellerbee); Gary, an African-American who's a jock and is smart and writes about sports; and Toni, the Mexican-American who becomes the school paper's staff photographer.

The stories spring from the fertile imagination of one familiar with the way news gathering works.

Ms. Ellerbee began her career at CBS. She then moved to NBC News where, after covering politics, she cultivated a diverse following in the 1980s with the pioneering late-night news program NBC News Overnight, which she wrote and anchored. It won a Columbia duPont Award for being "the best written and most intelligent news program ever."

Ms. Ellerbee's work at ABC's Our World won her an Emmy for best writing. Despite her best efforts, Ms. Ellerbee's sharp wit and sometimes unpredictable commentary made executives and advertisers nervous. They wanted someone less unpredictable or, preferably, more predictable.

In 1987, Ms. Ellerbee and her partner, Rolfe Tessem, launched Lucky Duck Productions. After doing programs for PBS, they went on to produce Nick News, which airs on the Nickelodeon cable channel. Nick News has won a Columbia duPont Award, two Emmys and three Peabody awards - including a personal Peabody for Ms. Ellerbee for her coverage of the investigations of President Clinton.

"Over the course of producing Nick News for the last eight years, I've learned a great deal by listening to kids," she says. "They're so smart, and so honest and so eager to learn. But I've also been concerned about how few role models little girls have. There's very little out there that teaches them to be daring and courageous."

She hopes those 12 volumes will help. The first two are in bookstores now.

Published by Avon Books and reasonably priced at $4.50 each, the series is directed to youngsters in the 8-12 age group. The first two books, Girl Reporter Blows Lid Off Town! and Girl Reporter Sinks School, tracks the exploits of two sixth-graders.

Casey Smith, suspiciously reminiscent of Ms. Ellerbee, is an in-your-face go-getter who frequently speaks first and thinks later. She wants desperately to resurrect her school's newspaper. But so does chirpy Megan O'Connor, perpetually pretty in pink. Megan's deceptively goody-two-shoes persona would qualify her as a steel magnolia if she lived in Georgia instead of Massachusetts.

Each with its own story line, both books deal with issues that force the two girls to resolve their mutual misperceptions about one another. In the former, Casey uncovers a paper mill that's polluting the town river. In the latter, Casey exposes a student selling answers to a math exam.

To solve these mysteries, the two girls eventually forge an uneasy alliance that yields interesting, if not always completely plausible results. No matter. Both books speak to a range of concerns, values and attitudes that will be instantly recognizable to members of the designated age group and, it is hoped, their parents. Each also has an epilogue from Ms. Ellerbee describing an aspect of her life that influenced the book.

A third volume is due out in May and a fourth in August. Volumes five and six are scheduled for fall and winter. They will cover such topics as school safety and cliques. The remaining six are slated for 2001.

"I wanted to give 8-, 9-, 10- and 11-year-old girls something to look to," Ms. Ellerbee says. "When I was a kid, no one said 'Go out and have an adventure.' I found this message in [the character of] Jo March in [Louisa May Alcott's novel] Little Women. Otherwise, you only caught glimpses of strong women here and there. I remember seeing Rosalind Russell in a movie once as this kick-ass reporter, and I thought 'Yeah, that's what I want to be like.' But, mostly, I looked to books to find girls who were like me.

"There was Nancy Drew, who had adventures as a detective, and I liked that. That's what I wanted to write about - how can we give girls power; how can we give them a voice."

For a bit of insight into Ms. Ellerbee's voice, pay close attention to Casey Smith. When we meet her, she is in the care of her grandmother while her parents, both volunteer physicians with Doctors Without Borders, are in Southeast Asia.

"In the books, I get to be both Casey and her grandmother, who is a former reporter and author," Ms. Ellerbee says. "As a child, I was shy, but not quiet. I used my mouth to hide my shyness, and it backfired on me from time to time. No, actually, it backfired on me a lot.

"Originally, my premise in the ["Get Real"] books was to ask what would it be like if [the fictional TV journalists] Murphy Brown and Mary Richards got together as 11-year-olds to work on a school newspaper?"

Having answered that question, she's moving on again. Between producing and writing the children's books, she is working on a third autobiographical volume. Last year, HBO signed Ms. Ellerbee, Whoopi Goldberg and Diane Keaton to develop a 12-part miniseries about the women's movement of the '60s and '70s.

"To me, it was a time of great possibilities, not a time of angry hostile women hating men," she says. "That wasn't it. Little girls today don't understand how recent women's achievements are. We want young girls to know this history before it's lost or entirely misinterpreted. They don't know that it wasn't all that long ago that in Texas a woman couldn't buy property unless a man cosigned for it.

"To me the HBO series and the 'Get Real' books are related. I've read the studies that show us that girls are strong until society comes along and tells them they're supposed to be quiet. I wanted to tell stories about kids who weren't perfect and not always likable, but always passionate. They're concerned about what to wear to school one minute and how to change the world in another.

"And we've got a heroine whose big mouth gets her in trouble constantly. Hey, what's not to like? Get real."

MORE INFORMATION

Linda Ellerbee will make an appearance Tuesday in Dallas. She will be at the Enchanted Forest bookstore at Mockingbird and Abrams at 10 a.m. For more information about the books, visit www.harperchildrens.com/getreal/