Amelia's Notebook - Book 1

Amelia's Notebook by Marissa Moss
ISBN: 978-1-4169-0905-7
Lexile score:  680

Before a wimpy kid headed to middle school, before a dork began her diary, Amelia had a notebook. Marissa Moss published Amelia's Notebook in 1995, but I didn't hear about it until I attended the Innovative Learning Conference hosted by Nueva School in the autumn of 2013.  Marissa Moss was there, and I attended her session called Visual Thinking, Writing, and Storytelling, and she discussed the use of "life books" in the classroom to enhance student learning.  The concept of the life book is that, using Amelia's Notebook as a model, students are encouraged to make the life book a journal of observations, thoughts, memories, drawings, and ideas.  My colleagues and I were intrigued enough that one of them volunteered to pilot a life book program for the remainder of the year.  We've decided to move forward with the program for all of our students in the fifth grade, so I realized I had better get familiar with this novel.

Our heroine Amelia is moving in the middle of the school year, and she is understandably quite upset. Her mother has given her a notebook to make her feel better.  Moss has replicated a classic black and white composition notebook, and the story is told in hand-drawn pictures and handwritten text.  Unlike the Wimpy Kid series, Amelia's notebooks are published in full color, a sort of blend of picture book and novel.  It's a perfect transitional blend for a reader who is moving toward longer and more complicated texts.  The story itself is simple:  Amelia is adjusting to life in a new place while missing her best friend she left behind.  We watch her adjustments unfold in the pages of her notebook.

Several parts of the story are dated.  Amelia collects matchbooks from different restaurants the family visits on the trek to their new location.  Amelia is allowed to talk to her long-distance friend once a week for 10 minutes, an anachronism in a wireless, unlimited talk-time world.  There are references to songs that are not part of a fifth grader's vernacular.

There is definitely a girl vibe to this book.  It's difficult to imagine any of the boys in my class appreciating Amelia's desire to have a rainbow-themed birthday party.

However the good far outweighs the bad.  Moss clearly loves language, exemplified when she describes a food fight:  "Mario flung the cling peaches at Philip (one flung cling peach clung to his head)!"  The reader is also reminded that the things they notice are valid and worthy of note.  Amelia's study of the shapes of the human nose is beautiful, and a tacit invitation to the reader to pay attention to the things that others might take for granted.  And this will make my students not only better readers, but also better writers.

This book along with others in the series will definitely have a place in my classroom.

The Why

It's a cliche.  I know it, but I embrace it proudly:  I believe in the power of reading.  Those much more articulate than I have extolled the joy of literature and the miracle of both losing and finding yourself in a great book. Reading has comforted me, buoyed me, amused me, provoked, delighted, and enlightened me.  Reading is how I like to begin and end my day.  I imagine it is how I began and will end my life.  It is one of my few long-term commitments.

I teach students who do not believe in the power of reading.  My amazing students, who are bright and enthusiastic and funny and complicated and hurting and healing and thoughtful and impulsive, have either lost or never found the joy of recognizing themselves in the pages of a book.  Often their literary encounters are awkward or forced, more about what adults think they should be reading than about what they would choose for themselves.  Too often the books they encounter in my curriculum are the literary equivalent of a series of terrible first dates.

If I'm going to be a better matchmaker, lead my students to their own literary bashert, I realized I needed a lot more books in my network.  And like any good matchmaker, I needed a large variety of types to recommend to my students -- including books that I might not choose for myself. So I decided to make a commitment to some serious reading this summer.

In a moment of reckless optimism, I declared to my husband that I was going to read a book a day during summer break.  He laughed aloud; I always appreciate his honesty.  So I have scaled back my goal to 42 books, about one every other day.  (The fact that it echoed the title of a movie about a boy discovering who he is by falling in love is just a bonus.) I'll be writing about the novels, as I have decided that I'll be reading fiction this year, on this blog.  The books will be focused on reading levels from about third grade to about seventh, as those are the ranges in my classroom.  Some students may be able to read at a higher level than that, but I also want to recommend books that are appropriate to their emotional developmental as well.

I have a very loose list, but I'll be looking for suggestions.  Please let me know what your thoughts are on what I should read next, or let me know if I've missed something in my discussion of the novels. Thanks for checking in.