Ann Whitehead Nagda

I absolutely hated this book, I'm sorry to say. To be completely honest, I couldn't even bring myself to finish this book. It was not engaging at all, the structure of the book is not will done, the style it was written in is extremely boring, and I immediately wanted a new book after reading only the first two pages. It is split in two, with all of the math on the left side and the narrative on the right, making it very easy for the child to disregard the math altogether and defies the point of a math book. The math provided isn't engaging, it would have worked better if it was written into the actual narrative of the story. The math was relevant but presented in an unending way that easily turned me away from the book.… (mehr)

I decided to read this book because the cover and the title seemed interesting enough. I also didn't bother reading the summary because I felt the book would be "good enough" for the assignment. The book immediately begins with the main character, Jenny, expressing how she feels it is hard to write a letter pretending to be a mouse named Whiskers. I immediately felt I was going to love this books because I also tend to have problems with writing. In the book, the 4th grade students were required to be an anonymous pen pal to a second grader at their school, but disguised as a mouse. Chapter 2 begins with the 4th grade class getting replies back from their second graders. All of the students letters from their 2nd grade pen pal seemed to be enough to write a decent reply, except for Jenny. After the next round of letters, Jenny doesn't receive a letter back like the rest of her class. She then learns that her pen pal, Sameera, is a new student from Saudi Arabia and doesn't speak English very well. After trying and failing to get another pen pal, Jenny finally meets Sameera and gets her to understand English through telling a story through mice shaped cookies. Instead of writing a letter to Sameera, she translates the body parts of mice and gets Sameera to play along with he story of her mouse Whiskers. Throughout Jenny and Sameeras meetings, Jenny learns that people from Saudi Arabia speak a different language, have different calendars, and have separate schools for boys and girls. At the end of the novel, Sameera finally learns enough English to write a letter for Jenny. This novel touched on topics that children may actually encounter in school. It deals with people making fun of a foreigners name, trying to cross a language barrier, and not giving up on someone. Even as teaching in training, I learned that ill probably have to deal with kids that wont be able to learn the same as the majority of the students in a class. You need to take a step back and try to put yourself in someone else's shoes.… (mehr)