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Nancy Keane's | Booktalks -- Quick and Simple | |
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Konigsburg,
E. L.
THE VIEW FROM SATURDAY New York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1996 IL 3-6, RL 4.8 ISBN 068980993X |
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They
were the underdogs, the unexpected surprise in the academic bowl this year.
Never before had a team of sixth graders done so well. First they beat
all the other 6th graders and they moved on to the 7th grade. In no way
had a 6th grade team done so well that they might even beat the seventh
graders... They were the Souls, students from Mrs. Olinski's 6th grade
homeroom class, Ethan, Noah, Nadia, and Julian, each different but somehow
connected. But why did they do so well? How is it that they knew so much
about so many different subjects? How were they chosen for the team when
there were so many other sixth graders in their homeroom? Why had their
teacher Mrs. Olinski chosen them? This question is one asked many times
in the book and "Mrs. Eva Marie Olinski always gave a good answer. Whenever
she was asked how she had selected her team for the Academic Bowl, she
chose one of several good answers. Most often she said that the four members
of her team had skills that balanced one another. That was reasonable.
Sometimes she said that she knew her team would practice. That was accurate...The
fact was that Mrs. Olinski did not know how she had chosen her team, and
he further fact was that she didn't know that she didn't know until she
did know (Konigsburg 1)." The question then remains, did Mrs. Olinski ever
really know why the team had formed, and how they had formed? Was she the
one who picked students for the team or did the students from the team
pick her?...
The View From Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg. (Mary Beth, me-mansker@wiu.edu, college student) |
| SUBJECTS:
Teacher-student relationships -- Fiction.
Friendship -- Fiction. Schools -- Fiction. Contests -- Fiction. People with disabilities -- Fiction. |
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