Share this… Hank Zipzer isn’t your average fourth-grader. He’s intelligent, creative, and incredibly likeable. Yet he does terribly at school because he’s dyslexic. Although the “d-word” doesn’t appear anywhere in this book, Hank mentions his brain and his “learning differences” enough for it to become annoying. I’m starting to feel as if I should get …read more…
Posts contained in the “Contemporary Fiction” category:
Fiction which takes place in current times or the very recent past.
What Would Joey Do? by Jack Gantos
Share this… If you’ve already read what I’ve written about the first two books in this series (Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key and Joey Pigza Loses Control) you can guess pretty easily that I love this book as well and heartily recommend it to you. And you would be right. There really is no such …read more…
Joey Pigza Loses Control by Jack Gantos
Share this… At the end of Joey Pigza swallowed the Key, Joey finally had it together. He was living with his working mom in a more stable home, he was on the right meds, and he had gained enough self-control to get a dog, a dachshund/Chihuahua cross he christens Pablo. Alas, nothing good can ever …read more…
Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key by Jack Gantos
Share this… You don’t have to spend much time in a school—say a month or so—before you run into a kid (or kids) who is (or are) at once your biggest delight and your biggest terror. They’re charming, they’re delightful, they’re friendly and helpful, and yet, like that semi-wild housecat who keeps dropping dead mice …read more…
Matisse on the Loose by Georgia Bragg
Share this… It took me forever to write about this book, and it’s only now that I realize it’s because I wanted to say a lot more nice things about than I actually can. Which is sad in a way, because looking back, I wish that this book had been around when I was in fifth …read more…
Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo
Share this… One of the worst things about being an adult is that when you read a really good kids’ book, you’re still focusing on all those “English teacher” things: theme, symbolism, characterization, etc. It is all too easy to forget that when a young person reads a book, they’re not looking at the trees, but …read more…
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
Share this… This is a problematic book in many ways. It has been (seemingly forever) on lists of banned or challenged books almost as long as it has been on many high school reading lists. It’s almost as if the teachers who long ago laminated their lesson plans and teach this book just because they have …read more…
