Gooney Bird Greene by: Lois Lowry - Non-fiction Informational

Gooney Greene arrives at her new school, Watertower Elementary, and all the second graders are interested to getting to know her. When it is story time in class, all of the students want to hear about Gooney Bird; this is great because Gooney loves being in the middle of things. I thought this book was really entertaining and it teaches the reader what a story needs; a beginning, a middle, an end, and a main character. Mrs. Pidgeon, the teacher, is trying to demonstrate a lesson about a character in a story, but the class wants to hear about Gooney instead; so the teacher allows Gooney to tell stories for 15 minutes every day. As Gooney tells her stories, the teacher points out when Gooney uses characters, dialogue, or suspense during each of her stories. This is a very funny book with hidden instruction about how to create and design a good story. I think this book would be a great aid to assist a teacher when teaching the basics of writing a story.