Patricia Reilly Giff writes novels which have been Newbery Honor books and she is responsible for the Polk Street School series of readers, but I first met her when I started teaching because of her character, Ronald Morgan, a second-grader who everything goes wrong for in Today Was a Terrible Day. That year I had a child who always seemed to be having 'bad days' and I introduced him to Ronald and Alexander from Judith Viorst's Alexander's Terrible, Horrible, No-good, Very Bad Day and we used to joke about how Ronald nearly always rescued the situation, like he does in The Almost Awful School Play. Now when I get the Ronald Morgan books off the shelf, I think that they are dated and not the sort of picture book that a child would choose to take without some prompting, but nevertheless, Patricia's books, especially her newer ones still have a place in children's lives. As she says " "I want to see children curled up with books, finding an awareness of themselves as they discover other people's thoughts. I want them to make the connection that books are people's stories, that writing is talking on paper, and I want them to write their own stories. I'd like my books to provide that connection for them."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment