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.
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