Mia was a red-headed, freckle-faced second-grade girl who loved almost everything about school. She loved the squeak of sneakers in the hallway, the colorful posters on the classroom walls, and the way the day felt full of surprises before the first bell even rang. "I hope we do reading, art, and science today, and maybe even a spelling game because school is the best when it feels like a treasure hunt,"

Mia sat up straight in her chair, her eyes shining as the lesson began. She raised her hand for math, grinned during reading, and laughed when the class clapped out syllables together. To her, school felt like a place where every question opened a door and every answer lit a little lamp.

Then the homework came out. Mia stared at the paper as if it had suddenly grown claws, and the happy sparkle in her face dimmed into a worried frown. "Why does school have to send work home with me when I already did so much learning here, and why does homework always feel bigger than it really is?"

Mia[/@ch_1] walks home along a leaf-strewn sidewalk lined with small houses and tidy gardens. Her backpack looks heavier now, tugging at her shoulders like it is filled with stones instead of notebooks and crayons.] All the way home, she thought about the worksheet waiting inside the bag. The birds in the trees sounded cheerful, but Mia did not feel cheerful at all. "It isn't fair that I love school so much in the daytime, but the minute homework comes home it turns into a grumpy little rain cloud that follows me everywhere,"

Mia dropped into a chair and looked at the homework sheet as though it were a mountain with no path to the top. She tapped her pencil, wiggled in the seat, and wished the paper would somehow complete itself. For a long moment, she felt stuck between two true things: she loved learning, and she hated homework.

At last, Mia took a deep breath and decided to do just one problem instead of worrying about all of them at once. One problem became two, and two became a whole row, and soon the mountain looked more like a hill. "Maybe homework is meanest when I stare at all of it together, but if I take it one little step at a time, it stops acting so huge and bossy,"

When Mia finished, she leaned back and smiled at the paper that had frightened her before. She still did not like homework, and maybe she never would, but she liked the feeling of being brave enough to begin. Tomorrow, Mia would run into school with the same bright excitement as always, carrying both her love of learning and the quiet knowledge that even homework mountains could be climbed.