Starting School - Softcover

Hurwitz, Johanna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0439172152 ISBN 13: 9780439172158

Publisher: Little Apple, 2001

Synopsis

Although placed in separate classes, twins Marius and Marcus prove to be double trouble for their kindergarten teachers, and when they decide to trade places to see whose teacher is better, they make a startling discovery. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author:

Johanna Hurwitz is the author of over five dozen books for young readers. She is the recipient of many state awards, including the Texas Bluebonnet Award, the Kentucky Bluegrass Award, and the Garden State Children's Choice Award. She lives in Great Neck, NY, and Wilmington, VT.

Johanna Hurwitz always knew she wanted to be a writer. She started by telling stories to her brother, who is six years her junior, and she's been making up stories ever since. Born and raised in New York City, she earned her B.A. degree from Queens College and went on to receive a master's in library science from Columbia University. She embarked on a career as a children's librarian, but she never forgot that one day she wanted to write books, too.

She worked at the New York Public Library and in a variety of other public and school library positions. She also taught graduate courses in children's literature and storytelling at Queens College. When she and her husband, Uri--a college teacher and writer-and their children, Nomi and Beni, moved to Long Island, she continued her library work.

Although she had told original stories to her children, it was not until they were well along in school that Mrs. Hurwitz actually began to write down her stories. That's why, when children ask her how long it takes to write a book, she replies that her first, Busybody Nora, took her whole life.

But since then she has been writing with regularity, portraying with humor and sympathy the everyday incidents that are so important to children. She is particularly fond of seven- to nine-year-olds, because they are " so very open and get excited about small things," and she enjoys writing realistic fiction for and about them.

That these youngsters are equally fond of Mrs. Hurwitz's books is obvious. She has received many child-chosen state awards, including the Texas Bluebonnet Award, the Wyoming Indian Paintbrush Award, the Kentucky Bluegrass Award, the Garden State Children's Choice Award, the West Virginia Children's Book Award, and others.

In recent years, Johanna Hurwitz has crisscrossed the United States from Juneau, Alaska, to Jackson, Mississippi, and from San Diego, California, to St. Albans, Vermont. She has even spoken abroad, from Morocco to Mozambique and from Portugal to Nicaragua. On these trips she has met and spoken to schoolchildren, teachers, librarians, and parents. She has made many new friends and has often brought home new ideas for her next book.

From Publishers Weekly:

Hurwitz (Class Clown; School Spirit) didn't stray far afield to find the heroes of this effervescent caper. Familiar to her many fans, Lucas Cott?now a sixth grader?appears in these pages, but the leading roles go to his five-year-old twin brothers, Marius and Marcus. On the first day of kindergarten, the precocious boys disrupt their respective classes: Marius leads a mouse hunt in his classroom for the critter Lucas has told him resides there, and Marcus hurls a deck of cards in the air to initiate a game of 52 Pick Up in his. Adding an unusual slant, Hurwitz periodically eavesdrops on the teachers' room, making readers privy to the exasperation of the duo's teachers. While Marius and Marcus play an ongoing game of one-upmanship to convince the other that his teacher is better, the two educators attempt to prove to the other that her student is worse. Just when this dual bickering begins to grate, Hurwitz comes up with a clever concluding twist: the teachers switch classes to experience the other's tribulations on the very day that the identical twins do the same. Hurwitz's focus on younger characters may extend her readership into lower grades, but there's a curious discrepancy here between the age of the protagonists and that of the targeted audience, who likely would rather read about peers or slightly older kids. Still, the author's fresh scenarios and sassy dialogue are as diverting as ever. Ages 7-up.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little Apple
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0439172152
• ISBN 13: 9780439172158
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 102
• Illustrator: Dugan Karen