Don't You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey - Hardcover

Haddix, Margaret Peterson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0689800975 ISBN 13: 9780689800979

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, 1996

Synopsis

Mrs. Dunphrey agrees not to read the private entries written in her students' English journals, thus Tish Bonner finds herself pouring her emotions into her book in an effort to relieve the pressures in her life that she feels she cannot discuss with anyone.

About this title

Reviews

Grade 7 Up?Sixteen-year-old Tish Bonner is a nonachieving, back-row student in Mrs. Dunphrey's English class as well as in all of her other classes. Her personal life reveals the same bleakness. Her parents' relationship is combative and unstable. Her father splits every time things get difficult. Her mother can't get her act together and takes off to look for her husband, leaving her two children alone with no money. Tish describes her plight in a journal that Mrs. Dunphrey has all of the class do as a writing assignment, with the promise that she will not read the entries if the students ask her not to. Most of what Tish writes is off-limits to her teacher until her situation becomes so desperate that her journal entries become a cry for help. This contemporary story realistically depicts the sad home life of a dysfunctional family and the burden put on young people to cope with adult problems. Tish's journal entries have an authentic ring in phrasing and tone and will keep readers involved. Although the teacher's solution of having Tish and her younger brother to stay with her temporarily may be a stretch, the resolution provides this teen with a well-deserved break since she has struggled so hard to help herself and her brother. A brief, serious look at a young person who is isolated and faced with some seemingly overwhelming problems.?Carol Schene, Taunton Public Schools, MA
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Haddix (Running Out of Time) offers a tough-edged if familiar story of a beleaguered high school girl who confides the difficulties of her life to a journal in an assignment for English class; the title refers to the label the heroine gives every entry so that her teacher, the true-to-her-word Mrs. Dunphrey, will only look at the completed writing and not actually read the sensitive contents. With an abusive and mostly absentee father, a depressed mother, and only a part-time job at Burger Boy to pay for her food and clothes?as well as for her little brother Matthew's?Tish Bonner seems headed for a crisis. At her lowest point, penniless and starving after her mother's abandonment and after she is fired by a manager whose sexual advances she has refused, Tish shoplifts from a grocery store to feed herself and Matthew?and then faces being evicted from her home. Because the journal is the sole outlet for Tish's inner turmoil, the tone here shifts only in terms of varying shades of anger. Meanwhile, Mrs. Dunphrey, a model of teacherly concern, writes brief comments to express her appreciation of Tish's lengthy entries and to ask Tish to let her read some of them. YA readers will be not in the least surprised that Tish finally turns over her entire journal for Mrs. Dunphrey's perusal as a way of getting help, and that Mrs. Dunphrey comes through in the best sensitive-English-teacher tradition. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 7^-10. Tish Bonner is required to keep a journal for sophomore English class but is allowed to mark those entries she wants unread. Once satisfied that her teacher is sincere about not snooping, Tish begins a private narrative of her difficult life. Her writing is intelligent, independent, slangy, sarcastic--and troubled. Tish is an underachieving "big hair girl," who cracks gum in class and works after school because her mother, severely depressed, is barely able to pay the bills. When her abusive father returns after a two-year absence, Tish records many family crises, ending with an account of the abandonment of herself and her little brother by both parents. At first determined not to ask for outside help, Tish finally makes the difficult decision to ask her teacher to read the entire journal. A brief, gritty documentary novel, this will be a natural for reluctant readers and could also be used for readers' theater. Jean Franklin

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0689800975
• ISBN 13: 9780689800979
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112