Sahara Special

Codell, Esme Raji

ISBN 10: 0786807938 / ISBN 13: 9780786807932

Published by Hyperion Books for Children, New York, 2003

About this Item

1st/5th signed by author DJ is protected by Brodart mylar. Seller Inventory # 5978

Bibliographic Details

Title: Sahara Special

Publisher: Hyperion Books for Children, New York

Publication Date: 2003

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: New

Dust Jacket Condition: New

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

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.

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