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![Gooney Bird Greene by [Lois Lowry, Middy Thomas]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51vNdPqfYEL._SX260_.jpg)
Gooney Bird Greene Kindle Edition
Lois Lowry (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Through Gooney Bird and her tales, acclaimed author Lois Lowry introduces young readers to the concepts and elements of storytelling. By demonstrating some of the simple techniques that reveal the extraordinary in everyday events, this book will encourage the storyteller in everyone.
- LanguageEnglish
- Grade level1 - 4
- Lexile measure660L
- PublisherClarion Books
- Publication dateApril 1, 2010
- ISBN-13978-0544225275
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"A hybrid of Harriet, Blossom, and Anastasia, irrepressible Gooney Bird is that rare bird in children's fiction: one that instantly becomes an amusing and popular favorite."--"Kirkus Reviews"
" Lowry' s masterful writing style reaches directly into her audience, managing both to appeal to young listeners and to engage older readers." -- "The Bulletin"
" A hybrid of Harriet, Blossom, and Anastasia, irrepressible Gooney Bird is that rare bird in children' s fiction: one that instantly becomes an amusing and popular favorite." -- "Kirkus Reviews" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Inside Flap
There's never been anyone like Gooney Bird Greene at Watertower Elementary School. What other new kid comes to school wearing pajamas and cowboy boots one day and a polka-dot t-shirt and tutu on another? Gooney Bird has to sit right smack in the middle of the class because she likes to be in the middle of everything. She is the star of story time and keeps her teacher and classmates on the edge of their seats with her "absolutely true" stories. But what about her classmates? Do they have stories good enough to share? --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From School Library Journal
Janet M. Bair, Trumbull Library, CT
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Book Description
$15.00 CL/$17.95 CAN978-0-547-43562-6 Yearling edition:$5.99978-0440419600 --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
There was a new student in the Watertower Elementary School. She arrived in October, after the first month of school had already passed. She opened the second grade classroom door at ten o'clock on a Wednesday morning and appeared there all alone, without even a mother to introduce her. She was wearing pajamas and cowboy boots and was holding a dictionary and a lunch box.
"Hello," Mrs. Pidgeon, the second grade teacher, said. "We're in the middle of our spelling lesson."
"Good," said the girl in pajamas. "I brought my dictionary. Where's my desk?"
"Who are you?" Mrs. Pidgeon asked politely.
"I'm your new student. My name is Gooney Bird Greene -- that's Greene with a silent 'e' at the end -- and I just moved here from China. I want a desk right smack in the middle of the room, because I like to be right smack in the middle of everything."
The class stared at the new girl with admiration. They had never met anyone like Gooney Bird Greene.
She was a good student. She sat down at the desk Mrs. Pidgeon provided, right smack in the middle of everything, and began doing second grade spelling. She did all her work neatly and quickly, and she followed instructions.
But soon it was clear that Gooney Bird was mysterious and interesting. Her clothes were unusual. Her hairstyles were unusual. Even her lunches were very unusual.
At lunchtime on Wednesday, her first day in the school, she opened her lunch box and brought out sushi and a pair of bright green chopsticks. On Thursday, her second day at Watertower Elementary School, Gooney Bird Greene was wearing a pink ballet tutu over green stretch pants, and she had three small red grapes, an avocado, and an oatmeal cookie for lunch.
On Thursday afternoon, after lunch, Mrs. Pidgeon stood in front of the class with a piece of chalk in her hand. "Today," she said, "we are going to continue talking about stories."
"Yay!" the second-graders said in very loud voices, all but Felicia Ann, who never spoke, and Malcolm, who wasn't paying attention. He was under his desk, as usual.
"Gooney Bird, you weren't here for the first month of school. But our class has been learning about what makes good stories, haven't we?" Mrs. Pidgeon said. Everyone nodded. All but Malcolm, who was under his desk doing something with scissors.
"Class? What does a story need most of all? Who remembers?" Mrs. Pidgeon had her chalk hand in the air, ready to write something on the board.
The children were silent for a minute. They were thinking. Finally Chelsea raised her hand.
"Chelsea? What does a story need?"
"A book," Chelsea said.
Mrs. Pidgeon put her chalk hand down. "There are many stories that don't need a book," she said pleasantly, "aren't there, class? If your grandma tells you a story about when she was a little girl, she doesn't have that story in a book, does she?"
The class stared at her. All but Malcolm, who was still under his desk, and Felicia Ann, who always looked at the floor, never raised her hand, and never spoke.
Beanie said, "My grandma lives in Boston!"
Keiko said, "My grandma lives in Honolulu!"
Ben said loudly, "My grandma lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania!"
Tricia shouted, "My grandma is very rich!"
"Class!" said Mrs. Pidgeon. "Shhh!" Then, in a quieter voice, she explained, "Another time, we will talk about our families. But right now --" She stopped talking and looked at Barry Tuckerman. Barry was up on his knees in his seat, and his hand was waving in the air as hard as he could make it wave.
"Barry?" Mrs. Pidgeon said. "Do you have something that you simply have to say? Something that cannot possibly wait?"
Barry nodded yes. His hand waved.
"And what is so important?"
Barry stood up beside his desk. Barry Tuckerman liked to make very important speeches, and they always required that he stand.
"My grandma," Barry Tuckerman said, "went to jail once. She was twenty years old and she went to jail for civil disobedience." Then Barry sat down.
"Thank you, Barry. Now look at what I'm writing on the board. Who can read this word?"
Everyone, all but Malcolm and Felicia Ann, watched as she wrote the long word. Then they shouted it out. "BEGINNING!"
"Good!" said Mrs. Pidgeon. "Now I'm sure you'll all know this one." She wrote again.
"MIDDLE!" the children shouted.
"Good. And can you guess what the last word will be?" She held up her chalk and waited.
"END!"
"Correct!" Mrs. Pidgeon said. "Good for you, second-graders! Those are the parts that a story needs: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Now I'm going to write another very long word on the board. Let's see what good readers you are." She wrote a C, then an H.
"Mrs. Pidgeon!" someone called.
She wrote an A, and then an R.
"MRS. PIDGEON!" Several children were calling now.
She turned to see what was so important. Malcolm was standing beside his desk. He was crying.
"Malcolm needs to go to the nurse, Mrs. Pidgeon!" Beanie said.
Mrs. Pidgeon went to Malcolm and knelt beside him. "What's the trouble, Malcolm?" she asked. But he couldn't stop crying.
"I know, I know!" Nicholas said. Nicholas always knew everything, and his desk was beside Malcolm's.
"Tell me, Nicholas."
"Remember Keiko showed us how to make origami stars?"
All of the second-graders reached into their desks and their pockets and their lunch boxes. There were tiny stars everywhere. Keiko had shown them how to make origami stars out of small strips of paper. The stars were very easy to make. The school janitor had complained just last Friday that he was sweeping up hundreds of origami stars.
"Malcolm put one in his nose," Nicholas said, "and now he can't get it out."
"Is that correct, Malcolm?" Mrs. Pidgeon asked. Malcolm nodded and wiped his eyes.
"Don't sniff, Malcolm. Do not sniff. That is an order." She took his hand and walked with him to the classroom door. She turned to the class. "Children," she said, "I am going to be gone for exactly one minute and thirty seconds while
I walk with Malcolm to the nurse's office down the hall.
Stay in your seats while I'm gone. Think about the word character.
"A character is what a story needs. When I come back from the nurse's office, we are going to create a story together. You must choose who the main character will be. Talk among yourselves quietly. Think about interesting characters like Abraham Lincoln, or perhaps Christopher Columbus, or --"
"Babe Ruth?" called Ben.
"Yes, Babe Ruth is a possibility. I'll be right back."
Mrs. Pidgeon left the classroom with Malcolm.
When she returned, one minute and thirty seconds later, without Malcolm, the class was waiting. They had been whispering, all but Felicia Ann, who never whispered.
"Have you chosen?" she asked. The class nodded. All of their heads went up and down, except Felicia Ann's, because she always looked at the ßoor.
"And your choice is --?"
All of the children, all but Felicia Ann, called out together. "Gooney Bird Greene!" they called.
Mrs. Pidgeon sighed. "Class," she said, "there are many different kinds of stories. There are stories about imaginary creatures, like --"
"Dumbo!" Tricia called out.
"Raise your hand if you want to speak, please," Mrs. Pidgeon said. "But yes, Tricia, you are correct. Dumbo is an imaginary character. There are also stories about real people from history, like Christopher Columbus, and --" She stopped. Barry Tuckerman was waving and waving his hand. "Yes, Barry? Do you have something very important to say?"
Barry Tuckerman stood up. He twisted the bottom of his shirt around and around in his fingers. "I forget," he said at last.
"Well, sit back down then, Barry. Now, I thought, class, that since Christopher Columbus's birthday is coming up soon --" She looked at Barry Tuckerman, whose hand was waving like a windmill once again. "Barry?" she said.
Barry Tuckerman stood up again. "We already know all the stories about Christopher Columbus," he said. "We want to hear a true story about Gooney Bird Greene."
"Yes! Gooney Bird Greene!" the class called.
Mrs. Pidgeon sighed again. "I'm afraid I don't know many facts abut Gooney Bird Greene," she said. "I know a lot of facts about Christopher Columbus, though. Christopher Columbus was born in --"
"We want Gooney Bird!" the class chanted.
"Gooney Bird?" Mrs. Pidgeon said, finally. "How do you feel about this?"
Gooney Bird Greene stood up beside her desk in the middle of the room. "Can I tell the story?" she asked. "Can I be right smack in the middle of everything? Can I be the hero?"
"Well, since you would be the main character," Mrs. Pidgeon said, "I guess that would put you in the middle of everything. I guess that would make you the hero."
"Good," Gooney Bird said. "I will tell you an absolutely true story about me." --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B003KK5E3K
- Publisher : Clarion Books; Illustrated edition (April 1, 2010)
- Publication date : April 1, 2010
- Language : English
- File size : 16747 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 130 pages
- Lending : Not Enabled
- Best Sellers Rank: #323,671 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Lois Lowry is known for her versatility and invention as a writer. She was born in Hawaii and grew up in New York, Pennsylvania, and Japan. After studying at Brown University, she married, started a family, and turned her attention to writing. She is the author of more than forty books for young adults, including the popular Anastasia Krupnik series. She has received countless honors, among them the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award, the California Young Reader's Medal, and the Mark Twain Award. She received Newbery Medals for two of her novels, NUMBER THE STARS and THE GIVER. Her first novel, A SUMMER TO DIE, was awarded the International Reading Association's Children's Book Award. Several books have been adapted to film and stage, and THE GIVER has become an opera. Her newest book, ON THE HORIZON, is a collection of memories and images from Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, and post-war Japan. A mother and grandmother, Ms. Lowry divides her time between Maine and Florida. To learn more about Lois Lowry, see her website at www.loislowry.com
author interview
A CONVERSATION WITH LOIS LOWRY ABOUT THE GIVER
Q. When did you know you wanted to become a writer?
A. I cannot remember ever not wanting to be a writer.
Q. What inspired you to write The Giver?
A. Kids always ask what inspired me to write a particular book or how did I get an idea for a particular book, and often it’s very easy to answer that because books like the Anastasia books come from a specific thing; some little event triggers an idea. And some, like Number the Stars, rely on real history. But a book like The Giver is a much more complicated book, and therefore it comes from much more complicated places—and many of them are probably things that I don’t even recognize myself anymore, if I ever did. So it’s not an easy question to answer.
I will say that the whole concept of memory is one that interests me a great deal. I’m not sure why that is, but I’ve always been fascinated by the thought of what memory is and what it does and how it works and what we learn from it. And so I think probably that interest of my own and that particular subject was the origin, one of many, of The Giver.
Q. How did you decide what Jonas should take on his journey?
A. Why does Jonas take what he does on his journey? He doesn’t have much time when he sets out. He originally plans to make the trip farther along in time, and he plans to prepare for it better. But then, because of circumstances, he has to set out in a very hasty fashion. So what he chooses is out of necessity. He takes food because he needs to survive. He takes the bicycle because he needs to hurry and the bike is faster than legs. And he takes the baby because he is going out to create a future. Babies—and children—always represent the future. Jonas takes the baby, Gabriel, because he loves him and wants to save him, but he takes the baby also in order to begin again with a new life.
Q. When you wrote the ending, were you afraid some readers would want more details or did you want to leave the ending open to individual interpretation?
A. Many kids want a more specific ending to The Giver. Some write, or ask me when they see me, to spell it out exactly. And I don’t do that. And the reason is because The Giver is many things to many different people. People bring to it their own complicated beliefs and hopes and dreams and fears and all of that. So I don’t want to put my own feelings into it, my own beliefs, and ruin that for people who create their own endings in their minds.
Q. Is it an optimistic ending? Does Jonas survive?
A. I will say that I find it an optimistic ending. How could it not be an optimistic ending, a happy ending, when that house is there with its lights on and music is playing? So I’m always kind of surprised and disappointed when some people tell me that they think the boy and the baby just die. I don’t think they die. What form their new life takes is something I like people to figure out for themselves. And each person will give it a different ending. I think they’re out there somewhere and I think that their life has changed and their life is happy, and I would like to think that’s true for the people they left behind as well.
Q. In what way is your book Gathering Blue a companion to The Giver?
A. Gathering Blue postulates a world of the future, as The Giver does. I simply created a different kind of world, one that had regressed instead of leaping forward technologically as the world of The Giver has. It was fascinating to explore the savagery of such a world. I began to feel that maybe it coexisted with Jonas’s world . . . and that therefore Jonas could be a part of it in a tangential way. So there is a reference to a boy with light eyes at the end of Gathering Blue. Originally I thought he could be either Jonas or not, as the reader chose. But since then I have published two more books—Messenger, and Son—which complete The Giver Quartet and make clear that the light-eyed boy is, indeed. Jonas. In the book Son readers will find out what became of all their favorite characters: Jonas, Gabe, and Kira as well, from Gathering Blue. And there are some new characters—most especially Claire, who is fourteen at the beginning of Son— whom I hope they will grow to love.
Customer reviews
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Her daddy read it to her, but he said that it was a bit beyond the experiences of a 5 year old and though she loved the character, Lily had trouble identifying with some of what is going on in the classroom of a second grader when she is only in Kindergarten.
I loved reading the story and found myself frequently laughing; however, I quickly began to understand what Lily's dad was saying. Much of the humor is reliant upon "puns" and having taught Kindergarten for years I should have realized that it would be a bit sophisticated for a 5 year old whose humor isn't quite there yet.
For ages 7+ I think this would be a wonderful book to give for the coming holiday season.
This book feels good in the hands and has an appealing look to it. If you have younger children to read to, this book will hold their attention and allows nice breaks for short attention spans.
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