Wow! Three posts in one day…

But this is the one that’s writing related…I got a review from School Library Journal on Tank Talbott’s Guide to Girls. It’s not a star, but it’s another good one! No zingers at all. Thank you Quinby Frank (or is it Frank Quinby?) formerly at Green Hedges School in Vienna, VA!!!

And I am just back from reading (well, *I* didn’t read them, the teacher read them so I could take notes and watch reactions) the final three chapters of I Am Anna Winkler to my favorite sixth graders. I really hated the last two paragraphs of the book when I wrote them a week ago…and I’ve tried to work on them this entire week, but just haven’t come up with anything better. I decided it probably didn’t matter, though, since this is a first draft…I may end on a different note in the next draft. But I still wanted a “good” ending for these kids who have invested six months into this project with me. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t hate those paragraphs when I HEARD them as much as I did when I READ them. But the teacher is a good reader, too.

I still have to go through and enter all the kids’ responses to this questionnaire in to my master copy, but I scanned through the question “I liked/didn’t like the ending BECAUSE…” to get an overall sense of what they thought. Most of them liked it…one didn’t like it because I didn’t give it enough “umph!” (he’s right!) and another didn’t like it because there were things not dealt with (also true). I should’ve asked them whether the ending was expected/unexpected…I’m going back tomorrow to talk about the book as a whole, revision, and just to have some closure. Maybe I’ll add that to the questionnaire they’re going to get tomorrow? This is NOT the ending they all said they wanted several weeks ago (and that is intentional!)…but it’s the right ending (it may not be WRITTEN right yet, but it’s the right ending).