SCHOOL'S FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL by Adam Rex and INSIGNIFICANT EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF A CACTUS by Dusti Bowling

We started with our picture book School's First Day of School by Adam Rex (2016). We all had generally positive feelings about this book. We all loved the voice of the newly built Frederick Douglass Elementary School, who was trying to figure out why he was even there. His morning and afternoon conversations with Janitor, helped him to figure out what a 'school' was and what he was supposed to be and do. We liked how his 'personality' evolved, as students arrived and went through their first day, where he also learned a few things, played a couple of tricks on the students -- a fire drill and a water squirt -- and felt empathy for a little freckled girl who didn't even want to be there -- but by the end of the day changed her mind. One reader felt that the beginning and ending were somewhat 'flat' but she liked the middle and main part of the story. A couple of other readers felt that the ending was quite abrupt and unsatisfying. We all liked the illustrations showing a multicultural group of children a lot, and one reader pointed out that reading the book and looking carefully at the illustrations several times made her notice new details in the pictures each time. All things considered, we all basically liked the book and felt it would be a great read-aloud for a new kindergarten class on the first day of school, and could help children to compare their own feelings with those of 'the school' as well as the students in the story.

We had mixed feelings about our novel, Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling (2019). We felt that it was an important story, since it dealt with the main character, Aven, who was born armless and had been adopted, and her two best friends, one of whom had Tourette's Syndrome and the other who was dealing with obesity. These are areas not frequently handled in most middle grade fiction, and we thought that the story could provide good information for young readers about differences, acceptance, self-reliance,and friendship. But we also felt that some of the text that described the kids' different situations was a bit too 'explanatory' and didn't add much to the emotional feeling of the story. We all agreed that this story's strength was in the characters -- not the plot. One reader was disappointed that it was not really about a cactus, but she kept reading it anyway. We felt that as a story, the plot lacked moments of real excitement or intrigue, even though there was a mystery that the main character, Aven, wanted to solve, and even when she solved it, there was minimal emotion, and it almost didn't really matter. We all agreed that the plot could have been developed better, and that it could have been a 'dynamite' book -- but, sadly, it wasn't.