FernFolio » school

Not Fair, Clare by Yvonne Prinz

fernfolio — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 23:18:24 +0000

For the first time ever, thirteen-year old Clare Ferron is looking forward to going back to school. The breasts she had despaired of getting have finally put in an appearance, she’s got a new dog, and, most importantly, she has made a best friend. With her quirky personality, her disinterest in clothes and makeup, and her willingness to try anything, Allison is the kindred spirit Clare has always longed for.
But Allison becomes the new favourite of the reigning queen of Clare’s year, the pretty and manipulative Ginny Germain, who decides who among her classmates will be popular, and who won’t. From her position well outside the circle of cool, Clare watches as Allison is swept up into Ginny’s group, invited to hang out with the in crowd, sit at Ginny’s table in the cafeteria and attend the parties that Clare has only heard about at second hand. Though Allison continues to be friendly toward Clare, and often embarrassing her by inviting her along when Clare knows she won’t be made welcome by Ginny and her gang, Clare finds herself starting to avoid her best friend. Though she hopes Allison will wake up and see Ginny for the spoilt and unpleasant adolescent she knows her to be, Clare’s attempts to set Allison straight have only succeeded in creating dissension between them.
Fortunately for Clare, her old friend Elsa shows up unexpectedly after an extended absence. Elsa, who might just be the most unusual, and amusing, imaginary friend in Canadian children’s literature, has some sage advice for Clare: she suggests that the girl trust Allison to figure things out and come back to their friendship, and that, in the meantime, she keep her mind off her troubles by auditioning for the part of Lady Macbeth in the school production of Macbeth. Soon she is completely absorbed in memorizing her lines, in preparation for her audition, using Ginny’s behaviour to better understand Shakespeare’s flawed and tragic character.
Clare makes friends with a very exuberant and rather unusual little kid, named Patience, who has moved in across the street, and with her acting partner, the kind and insightful Simon, whose only fault is that he has a long-term, and very nice, girlfriend.
By turns sad and humourous, Not Fair, Clare is a charming story about a girl making her way through the hills and valleys of adolescence, one that girls in grades 6 to 8 will enjoy!
FernFolio Editor

Addison Addley and the Things That Aren’t There by Melody DeFields McMillan

fernfolio — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:55:29 +0000

Addison Addley has to come up with a 3-minute speech for his Grade 5 public speaking contest. He’s thought of a really great idea for his speech, Things That Aren’t Really There, and both his mom and his best friend Sam, who’s brilliant, have been busy coming up with lots of good example for him, like gravity, atoms, worm holes, and microwaves, but Addison can’t seem to get the speech written. He’s a procrastinator, always ready to put things off to the last minute. While Sam’s busy memorizing his words, Addison is playing video games, going fishing, watching baseball on TV, and contemplating the pointlessness of fractions.
He’s also trying to think of ways to help his mother get elected as treasurer of the Astronomy Club. Ever since his parents got divorced and his father took off to Australia to try his hand at sheep farming, Addison’s mother has been trying one activity after another to meet people. For some reason, she’s now set her heart on the Astronomy Club, and has started spending her evenings outside on the back deck looking at the stars. The trouble is that the president of the Astronomy Club is Mrs. Wilson, mother to the objectionable Tiffany Wilson, who is in Addison’s class. If Mrs. Wilson is anything like her daughter, then charming Mrs. Wilson to help his mother’s cause is going to be tough.
The story culminates in a surprising afternoon of speech making, accusation and revelation, that leads Addison to conclude that maybe it’s time to adjust some of his long-held attitudes.
Part of the wonderful Orca Young Readers series, Addison Addley and the Things That Aren’t There will appeal to late primary and early junior readers, especially boys!
FernFolio Editor

The Fruit Bowl Project: 50 Ways to Tell a Story by Sarah Durkee

fernfolio — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:52:49 +0000

Ms. Vallis’ Grade 8 students are in for a special treat. It just so happens that her cousin is married to Nick Thompson, rock music icon, and that Nick Thompson is going to visit the class, share with them everything that 30 years in the music business has taught him about writing, and then give the students an assignment that will change the way they see themselves, their classmates, and the written word.
Writing, says Nick, is long hours all alone with a pen and an spiral bound notebook, trying to “think of the right word and feeling like a total champ when [he] find[s] it.” His theory is that writing is like an artist trying to capture a single bowl of fruit. There is one bowl, but “an infinite number of ways to paint it, depending on who’s painting and how they want it to look.” With the students’ help, Nick comes up with the bowl of fruit, the elements of a story, and challenges them to find a point of view, choose a genre, and tell the story.
SCHOOL, 6TH GRADE, READING TEST, DROPPED PENCIL, GIRL MAD, LUNCH, MILK OUT THE NOSE. With these facts, Ms. Vallis’ Grade 8s create poems, raps, limericks, reports, fairytales… and discover within each of them the power of writing.
The Fruit Bowl Project is a quirky and inspiring novel that will set you to thinking about your own story!
FernFolio Editor

Please Write in This Book by Mary Amato

fernfolio — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:59:19 +0000

At the start of a new school year, Ms. Wurtz hides an empty notebook in the class’ writing centre. On the first page of that notebook, she writes an invitation to her students to write and draw whatever they like, and adds that she will read their work at the end of every month. She adds a couple of rules: sign your name to your writing, and don’t tell others about the notebook but, rather, let them discover it on their own.
Over the next few weeks, eight students, four boys and four girls, find the notebook and write about their first days of school and their new class pet, a hermit crab named Crazy. They write about their friendships and share their personal hobbies and interests. They also take one another to task about small transgressions, but this exchange eventually leads to two classmates taking the notebook and hiding it in a school washroom. There are tears and apologies before the class agrees to work together to write a story worthy of their teacher’s confidence in them.
Please Write in This Book is a nice story about the struggles of eight children to find and express their own identity while respecting the needs and opinions of the larger group. I particularly liked that it is Jimmy, the boy who doesn’t like to read or write, who contributes the best part of the group’s story for Ms. Wurtz. Entertainingly illustrated by Eric Brace, it is humourous read for both children and teachers!
FernFolio Editor

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

fernfolio — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:44:59 +0000

When Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert request an orphan boy to help around the farm, they are sent, instead, a little girl named Anne Shirley. The child has red hair and freckles and big green eyes, and possesses plenty of spirit and imagination. Shy, gentle Matthew Cuthbert, who is sent to fetch the orphan from the train station and knows he ought to tell her that there has been a mix-up, promptly falls under Anne’s spell, but his sister Marilla, who is far more pragmatic, insists that she will have to go back to the orphanage. But the story of Anne’s lonely childhood and her grief at learning her dream of a real home is not going to become reality, touch Marilla and eventually she, too, concludes that Anne must stay.
Anne’s first months at Green Gables are difficult, at times, for, while she know how to work and tries hard to do her best, Anne is sensitive about her red hair and unable to always control her fiery temper. She becomes very angry when Mrs. Rachel Lynde, a friend and neighbour of Marilla’s, makes disparaging remarks about her hair and looks and character, and, cracks her slate over the head of Gilbert Blythe, a fellow classmate, who calls her “carrots.” Yet she makes good friends among the other students in Avonlea School, and becomes best friends with Diana Barry, whom she adores with all the pent-up affection of her lonely early childhood, and finds in Matthew Cuthbert a kindred spirit, someone with whom she can share her thoughts and dreams.
Though Anne settles into life at Green Gables and Avonlea, she finds herself in plenty of scrapes and misadventures. She accidentally gets her friend Diana drunk on home-made wine, breaks her ankle trying to walk the ridge pole of the Barrys’ kitchen roof, and dyes her hair green trying to rid herself of the hated red colour. But she also studied hard at school and soon shows herself to be an able student, writes deliciously tragical stories which she shares with fellow members of the Story Club, and wins a place at Queen’s to study to become a teacher.
One hundred years old this year, Anne of Green Gables is a Canadian children’s classic, that has been read and enjoyed by countless millions of children all over the world. I recently reread my copy of Anne, given to me on my 8th birthday by my parents, and laughed and thrilled and cried with Anne, just as I did when my mother first read it to me so long ago. Montgomery’s words celebrate the sights and smells of the Prince Edward Island countryside; I defy anyone to read this story and not be transported to the fields and meadows and woods around Green Gables. They also bring to life one small, extraordinary girl, so full of life and exuberance and imagination and spirit, Anne Shirley.
FernFolio Editor

The Strictest School in the World by Howard Whitehouse

fernfolio — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:53:36 +0000

Thirteen year-old Emmaline Cayley calls herself an aviatrix. She dreams of flying and is determined to build a flying machine! Since the year is 1894 and airplanes have not yet been invented, this is an extraordinary and, some might say, even foolhardy ambition.
Fortunately for Emmaline, she has recently come from India, where her parents live, to stay with her eccentric Aunt Lucy, who delights in madcap schemes, and Aunt Lucy’s Sikh butler, Lal Singh, who seems capable of handling any emergency, even ones involving winged flying apparatuses. When Emmaline meets Robert, also known as Rubberbones because of his extraordinary ability to survive falls off roofs and out of trees without a bruise or broken bone, she realizes that she has found her pilot and so, with the help of her new friends, Emmaline begins to build flying machines!
Just as Emmaline’s flying experiments start to take off, she receives a letter from St. Grimelda’s School for Young Ladies informing her that she is to report for the beginning of the new school term. It seems that her mother, concerned that Emmaline’s behaviour is less than ladylike, has enrolled her in the strictest school in the world.
St Grimelda’s proves to be a dismal, frightening prison of a school. The students are locked behind high stone walls to prevent escape, their letters home are opened and read, and they are encouraged to spy upon their classmates and inform the headmistress, Mrs. Wackett, of any misdeeds. Emmaline is desperate to escape from the school and return to Aunt Lucy’s, but her attempt to sneak past Mrs. Wackett and Mr. Pinchbeak, the gatekeeper, fails spectacularly.
Aunt Lucy begins to suspect that all is not well with her niece when she receives a very stilted letter from Emmaline that says nothing. She and Lal Singh and Rubberbones decide to investigate things at St Grimelda’s, and, when the headmistress refuses to let them see Emmaline, begin to make plans to help her escape.
But St Grimelda’s has a secret, one the school uses to keep its students terrified and obedient. If Emmaline and her friends are going to be successful in freeing her, they will have to confront this ancient and deadly mystery!
Howard Whitehouse’s book is a wonderful adventure about courage, friendship and persistence! Readers from Grade 5 who enjoy fantasy will love this book!
FernFolio Editor