Please Write in this Book - Hardcover

Amato, Mary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0823419320 ISBN 13: 9780823419326

Publisher: Holiday House, 2006

Synopsis

When a teacher leaves a blank book in the Writer’s Corner for her students to find, with the instructions “Please Write in this Book,” she hopes it will encourage her students to talk to one another in its pages. They do, and the result is an epic classroom battle.

About this title

About the Author:

Mary Amato is now known for her comic middle-grade novels. "The Word Eater" was Ms. Amato's first novel. She is also the author of "Snarf Attack", "Underfoodle, and the Secret of Life: The Riot Brothers Tell All", as well as "The Naked Mole-Rat Letters". Ms. Amato is a storyteller, poet, puppeteer, mask-maker, and quilt-maker, too. She makes her home just outside Washington, D.C.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 2–4—Ms. Wurtz decides to encourage creative dialogue by leaving a blank notebook in her classroom's Writer's Corner so that students will "talk to each other." The only stipulations are to "have fun" and "sign your name," and she promises not to read it until the end of the month. As the children begin to express themselves, alliances and rivalries develop. Personalities are revealed: rule-maker Lizzy; her peacemaker sidekick, Yoshiko; class clown Luke; and organizer/self-proclaimed editor Milton contribute to the journal and illustrate their handwritten entries. As the boys' bathroom humor escalates against the girls' pleas to write only "nice things," a rebellion in words develops. After the journal is "kidnapped," the classmates realize that their writing has become hurtful, and Luke suggests that they all contribute to a story to end the month's entries without any hard feelings. This seemingly disingenuous tale is carefully planned. It is no surprise that Ms. Wurtz's idea to plant the journal in the Writer's Corner on August 31st will perhaps determine and improve her class's dynamics for the coming school year, in addition to giving her a sense of her budding writers' potential interrelationships. Although the children's adversarial issues and appropriately lame rhyming verse take up their focus at first, the classmates come together with their fictional rescue story in a well-meaning, satisfactory end to the story. Fans of Geronimo Stilton and Marissa Moss's "Amelia" notebooks (S & S) will enjoy this offering.—Lynne Mattern, Robert Seaman School, Jericho, NY
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About this edition

• Publisher: Holiday House
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0823419320
• ISBN 13: 9780823419326
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 112
• Illustrator: Brace Eric