Friday, May 4, 2007

Gooney Bird and the Room Mother By: Lois Lowry


Lowry, L. (2005). Gooney Bird and the Room Mother. Yearling.

My girl Gooney! Where do I begin? Okay, well, anyone who knows anything about me as a teacher knows that we work hard in my classroom, but we also love a good laugh and enjoy each other’s humor on a daily basis. Humor has always been one of my best medicines. I was introduced to Gooney Bird in the first offering entitled Gooney Bird Greene after our school reading specialist recommended it to my team at a meeting not long after it had come out. One standout about the book is that the writing process is discussed in it with the children by the teacher and Gooney Bird, which is great for the purpose of setting the stage for writing workshop in my classroom each year. At the entertainment level, the main character, Gooney Bird Greene, exhibits numerous distinctive character traits, such as being creative and confident, which serves as a great platform for discussion character traits with the class as well.

Gooney moves to a new town and begins going to Watertower Elementary School. She is feisty and has her own certain brand of quirky insight and maturity. In the first chapter book, she boldly speaks as if she is an equal to the teacher, although not in a defiant or misbehaving way, and gets up in front of the class to tell her “Gooney Bird” style stories. Every one of her stories has a title, which she often gives as a tease to make the class think, and the meaning of the title never quite comes out how to mean what you would first think that it means by hearing it. After a few of her stories, which are told by Gooney in various chapters in the book, my students catch on to her “style of crafting” and start thinking outside of the box, because Gooney only tells “absolutely true stories.” I then begin to tell Gooney Bird style stories throughout the year about little events that are appropriate to share with my students and with titles that make them think. I give the title ahead of time, and they relish in trying to figure out what I really mean and love the tease of their thinking. It’s one of our favorite things to do in class for a little fun and higher level thinking!

I wanted to find out if the second installment in the series was close to being as good as the first. I observed some of the same favorite elements in this book, such as Gooney with her confident spirit and leadership in the classroom, but I did honestly miss her stories, and I knew my class would miss that favored element as well. However, the book is still enjoyable and also still serves as a good discussion point and teaching tool with its own particular language arts focus, which is on vocabulary. The way that the teacher, Mrs. Pigeon, has the class use inference as well as dictionary skills to figure out the meaning of possibly new and unfamiliar terms Gooney uses, such as ennui, cajole, fiasco, and underestimate, is rather similar to what I do in my classroom. My kids thought the “coincidence” of the way we are just like Mrs. Pigeon’s class was a great connection to make to the text! Students and readers interacting with this book also use their own skills with inference to think about meanings of vocabulary as well. The story line involves Gooney finding a “mystery person” to be the room mom to help with their play production, and without giving away the ending, let’s just say Gooney pulls some strings and pulls on Mrs. Pigeon’s heartstrings to get the job done. I enjoyed sharing the sequel with my class, who was eager to “visit” with our buddy Gooney again, but we did miss her uncanny storytelling!

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