Sahara Special - Hardcover

Codell, Esmé Raji

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786807938 ISBN 13: 9780786807932

Publisher: Hyperion Books for Children, 2003

Synopsis

There are two files on Sahara Jones. The one the school counselor keeps is evidence that she's a fifth-grader who needs special education. The other is the book Sahara is secretly writing, her Heart-Wrenching Life Story and Amazing Adventures. The latest chapter in her book unfolds when her mother insists that she be taken out of special Ed. So Sahara is facing fifth grade in the regular classroom, again. But why even try to do the work, Sahara wonders, if everything just winds up in the counselor's file? Enter Miss Pointy, the new fifth-grade teacher. With her eggplant-colored lipstick, and strange subjects such as "Puzzling" and "Time Travel," she's like no other teacher Sahara has ever known. Through Miss Pointy's unusual teaching, storytelling, and quiet support, Sahara finds the courage to overcome her fears and prove which file shows her true self.

About this title

Review

Esmé Raji Codell, author of the bestselling Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year, makes her children's book debut with the warm, funny novel Sahara Special. "Can't a woman get a divorce without her kid going special ed on her?" This is the question Sahara's mother asks her daughter after a huge stack of letters that she'd written to her dad (but never mailed) falls out of her locker and on to her teacher's feet. When those letters are confiscated and locked up in the school counselor's filing cabinet, Sahara decides she will stop supplying "evidence" to the school; she stops doing her assignments, and is subsequently paired up with a Special Needs teacher, a fate equivalent to being "the street person of a school." What no one knows is that the newly dubbed "Sahara Special" is really "Sahara Jones, Secret Writer," a girl who hides her Heart-Wrenching Life Story and Amazing Adventures behind a public library shelf. No one, that is, until her show-stealing, deliciously unorthodox fifth-grade teacher Madame Poitier (Miss Pointy) arrives on the scene to remind her, so simply, that "a writer writes." Any child with a secret self (every child) will revel in Sahara's clear-sighted observations and sense of humor about a world that doesn't see who she really is. As in Sharon Creech's Love That Dog, readers will meet a likeable, difficult-at-first student and an extraordinary teacher who transforms lives by sharing her love of story and words. Highly recommended. (Ages 9 to 11) --Karin Snelson

About the Author

Esme Raji Codell is an avid collector of sparkly stickers and a pretty good roller skater. Her first book for Hyperion in the USA was Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year, which won the U.S. Alex Award for the best adult book for young adults. She has worked as a children's bookseller, a teacher and a school librarian, and lives with her husband in Chicago.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hyperion Books for Children
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0786807938
• ISBN 13: 9780786807932
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192