I haven’t talked about Z in a while because he has purposefully avoided talking to me about the books he’s reading. All I know is he finished
Black & White by
Paul Volponi and asked me for something else. I was in the middle of *
Jumped by
Rita Williams-Garcia and would read passages (like the one when the girl talks about her cell phone as if it is a person) I thought were funny to him, but he didn’t seem amused. One night I made him get out of bed (he was reading at the time) and come in my room and listen to me read the passage about the teacher on his cell phone and the student who tries to challenge him because students aren’t allowed to have phones. He had to laugh with me about that scene, but then he went back to bed, back to
Black & White.
So when he asked for a new book, I gave him
Jumped even though I wasn’t finished with it and I took
Black & White.
He’s finished with
Jumped, but he never said anything to me about it. Well, there was that one night when he yelled out, “**Trina thinks way too much of herself”. I laughed and yelled back, “I know. So she has a high self-esteem?” We laughed. Conversation over.
I know he liked
Jumped and the all-girl narration did not ***bother him.
*
Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist.
**Read more about Trina at
http://www.harperteen.com/books/9780060760915/Jumped/index.aspx
*** Sometimes we teachers (and librarians) worry about giving boys books with female main characters.
