This book by Patti Stren is amazing and I only wish that I could find a picture (to see a picture) of it to put on here so that you could all know what I am talking about. Every page is filled with a collage of different posters and ideas that Molly, a little girl has. Her first poster is an attempt to show us who she is not. She does not enjoy ballet or the things that she has to wear for it because it is "not her". Next, she makes a poster to sell her little brother because she thinks that only childs smile much more. She hangs it up in the laundry room of her apartment building because she had once seen a sign there for someone who was selling two lamps and a chest of drawers. She thought that this would be a great way to get rid of David and his pet worm, Spike.
When Molly's mom sees what she has done she is furious and makes Molly spend every free minute that she has with David for the next week. Obviously, David gets on her nerves during the whole next week and by the last day she finally cracks, telling him that she doesn't want him as a brother. She doesn't realize until the next morning when he is not there bugging her that something may be wrong. So she makes a "Lost Brother" sign and was just about to go put it up when she found David, who had slept in the closet. He was crying because he didn't think that Molly wanted him as a brother anymore. The last page is of Molly tucking David in to bed with all of his favorite toys and saying, "Night , little buddy. You still drive me bonkers. But you're definitely NOT for sale anymore!"
This was one of the best books that I have ever read. Not only was the plot fantastic and really had good meaning to them that every kid with a sibling can relate to and many other topics that can bring up text to self connections. The pictures were amazing also. Having a whole other story just in the pictures was tremendous. You could choose to read as much or as little on the posters as you wanted but it was all very interesting! This is one book that I definitely want to have in my classroom when I teach. It is a great story about relationships and how to build them and it also shows kids how you can write stories in different ways (even with pictures). I think that this book would be excellent for First to Third graders and maybe even older.
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I remember you reading this in another class & really enjoying this book. I can totally relate to the text to self connections in this book. I have a little brother who when we were younger (and maybe a little still now) drove me crazy! All of my friends had little sisters and I thought wouldn't that be so much better? So for a short few hours one day, I dressed my brother up like a girl... the sister I always wanted. Needless to say my father wasn't too pleased with me, but for a few hours, I had fun!
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