Came home from school visits in Colorado and Tennessee to the most colorful stack of thank you notes. I especially liked the 4th and 5th grade suggestions for my sequel’s title and the 8th grade KIPP Academy, coming up with what can only be described as a movie treatment. Thanks for the love Avon Elementary, Ensworth School and to the KIPPers.
“Ellen Mager of Booktenders’ Secret Garden Children’s Bookstore & Gallery in Doylestown, Pa had read WALLS WITHIN WALLS by Maureen Sherry as a member of the ABC New Voices review committee last summer, loved it, and thought that this book would make an awesome project for connecting with the 5th grade curriculum in her local schools. She shared it with some librarians and then invited fifth grades from 6 local elementary schools to be part of this project. She asked the fifth grades to pair with a fifth grade from another school and communicate back and forth as they read the book: predicting, commenting, and sharing ideas. She suggested that the students do some research, made a map of Manhattan, did a power point of some of the ceilings, or other similar responses to literature. She introduced them to an article in the NY Times about the apartment that inspired the story.
All winter the librarians and/or teachers read WWW out loud with the students and the projects began. The response was terrific and the project culminated with Ellen bringing the author to 3 schools (the other 3 schools “bussed” to their matching schools) where she did a presentation and a Q & A with the students.
It was a terrific day for all and as one of the librarians wrote: Thank you so much for arranging this. The kids and teachers alike were enchanted by Maureen Sherry. She was so articulate, well prepared and appealing. Some of our kids are writing thank you’s to her in skip code! Thank you as well!”
