The Pinballs fell into my lap in the fifth grade. A friend passed the book along to me when she finished, saying it was now her favorite book. What makes a great book? After spending the first three years of my educational career in the lowest reading groups, how was I to know. I hated reading!
I graciously accepted the book, hiding the fact that I never intended to read it. I never read any books I checked out from our weekly visit to the school library. This book was different. I picked it up and finished it in two days! How could this happen-a chapter book in two days? I spent three years in the lowest reading group. I couldn't read. Unbenouced to me, I was a reader. For the first time, I understood why people loved to read: interest and emotional connections.
The Pinballs changed my life when I was in the fifth grade. Twenty years later, I checked the book out again. This time I read it in a couple of hours. The story was just as brilliant the second time around! That night I wrote the author a letter. I wanted to share with Betsy Byars how her story impacted my life. The story created a reader out of me. Furthermore, it explained a desire in myself to mother the motherless.
The Pinballs is about the love and sense of family three kids learn from each other living in a foster home. If only Mr. and Mrs. Mason parented every foster home in America today! This story shaped who I was as a teacher and who I am as a school counselor. The most important role effected is who I am as a mother to my step son, my only son, who lives with his father and me.
I graciously accepted the book, hiding the fact that I never intended to read it. I never read any books I checked out from our weekly visit to the school library. This book was different. I picked it up and finished it in two days! How could this happen-a chapter book in two days? I spent three years in the lowest reading group. I couldn't read. Unbenouced to me, I was a reader. For the first time, I understood why people loved to read: interest and emotional connections.
The Pinballs changed my life when I was in the fifth grade. Twenty years later, I checked the book out again. This time I read it in a couple of hours. The story was just as brilliant the second time around! That night I wrote the author a letter. I wanted to share with Betsy Byars how her story impacted my life. The story created a reader out of me. Furthermore, it explained a desire in myself to mother the motherless.
The Pinballs is about the love and sense of family three kids learn from each other living in a foster home. If only Mr. and Mrs. Mason parented every foster home in America today! This story shaped who I was as a teacher and who I am as a school counselor. The most important role effected is who I am as a mother to my step son, my only son, who lives with his father and me.
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