Fall in Love With Emma-Jean Lazaurs!

For the first time in a good while, I fell in love with a book and its heroine. Lauren Tarshis’ Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell in Love is the best middle school book that I’ve read in a couple of years.
Tarshis has middle schoolers “down pat” from their friendships, to their crushes, to their self-centeredness. The author’s insightfulness on adolescents is evident as she has Emma-Jean “studying the relationships of seventh graders.” (47)
Even though we do not meet Emma-Jean’s father we realize that she is so like him in many ways, logical and intelligent. As I read the book, I thought this must have been how Kathy Reich’s Temperance Brennan would have been as a child.
This will go into my list of favorites for seventh graders. A minor problem for me was with the first paragraph on page 108 (and I realize that it is fiction). I cannot imagine teachers in a middle school accepting a note from a student explaining why she was going to be missing classes for several days – legalities, accountabilities, etc.

Fractured Fairy Tales for Middle School

If you know any middle schoolers who love(d) fairy tales, Vivian Vande Velde’s Cloaked in Red is a must read. She has fractured the story of Little Red Riding Hood eight times. Three of my favorites are “Little Red Riding Hood’s Family”, “Deems the Wood Gatherer”, and “Why Willy and His Brother Want Ever Amount to Anything”.  Her clever twists and turns include werewolves, vampires, and hints of other fairytale characters. This book is a great writing jump start. After reading a few aloud to your class and talking about the changes in the story, have your students choose one of their favorite fairy tales to rewrite, I mean fracture.

Hello, Harvest Moon by Ralph Fletcher

Hello, Harvest Moon is the first picture book of Ralph Fletcher’s that I remember reading. One fall day when shelving books, I picked it up to read thinking the title sounded like a good seasonal read. And it is. I did not realize he was the author until I read the book, fell in love with his lyrical prose, turned to the cover to see who the author was and was delighted to find that it was Ralph Fletcher. Already a fan of his “how to write” books, I was delighted to find an example of his “creative” writing. Kate Kiesler’s oil paintings in autumn colors complement Fletcher’s prose and make Hello, Harvest Moon a perfect read aloud to introduce the fall season and its descriptive attributes to kindergarteners and first graders.