I read Frindle some time ago and loved it. I considered using it for my online reading programme, but it’s so well known that I figured that many children would have read it, or at least heard of it, already. How about something by the same author, but less known? And that’s how I stumbled upon About Average by Andrew Clements.
Jordan is about average in every way, or so it seems to her. She isn’t short or tall. She isn’t pretty or ugly. Her grades are average too. Soon, she will graduate from elementary school, but she still hasn’t discovered what she is good at. It seems, somehow, that she isn’t good at anything! She’s average, and that’s all there is to that.
But then, with her orderliness, her niceness and her simple attention to detail, she discovers during a crisis that maybe, just maybe, she isn’t about average. In fact, simply because of her ordinary, melt-into-the-background-and-take-care-of-things nature, she might just be the most remarkable girl of all.
About Average is, in so many ways, the perfect book for a reading programme that introduces creative writing! Here’s what I will do with it next month!
Haikus
Jordan wins a tiny haiku competition in school, and for some time, she thinks in haikus. She counts syllables and plays with words. What better premise for an introduction to creative writing?
Many children write poetry, but few pay attention to rhythm. I think one of the joys of a haiku is that it is so short that it seems accessible. I’ve worked with haikus before; let’s see what the children come up with this time!
Average
Word choice is important. What does the word ‘average’ mean to you? How does it make you feel?
Through this word, we will explore how the same word means different things to different people. While we won’t get into the terminology of denotation and connotation, that’s what the discussion is going to be about.
Point of View
Like I said when I reflected on everything we did with The Hodgeheg, study notes in books make matters so easy for book club facilitators like me! The last few pages of About Average have detailed questions to use in reading groups, and that is what gave me the idea for this.
Popular Marlea Harkins mortifies Jordan; we know that through the book. How about looking at things from Marlea’s point of view? Why did she do what she did?
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