Mrs. Plato's Summer Reading Series: Gossamer and Penny from Heaven

I finished Gossamer over the weekend. What a great book! For students interested in reading it, the Lexile is 660 and it has an eight-point Reading Counts! quiz. Throughout the book, you find yourself rooting for Littlest and pulling together various story lines to make one, great plot.

I began Penny from Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm after ending Gossamer. So far, I like it very much. It has a Lexile of 730 and a 13 point Reading Counts! quiz.

The setting of the book takes place in the 1950's. Penny is a girl whose father died when she was a baby. So far, she is recounting events that have happened as she interacts with both sides of her family: her mother's side with whom she lives and her father's side whom she visits frequently.

Penny has some underlying social problems that the book has not yet fully addressed. Sounds like she's being bullied by a girl who used to like Penny. She also struggles to get information about her father from her relatives who are not forthcoming and often try to avoid the conversation.

Mrs. Plato's Summer Reading Series: Gossamer

I just started reading Gossamer by Lois Lowry. I have to say, the first Lois Lowry book I read, Number the Stars, remains one of my favorites. Since Number the Stars is historical fiction, I didn't realize that she was more of a fantasy author. Last summer, I read The Giver and that was strange and slightly futuristic (actually a little scary based on what's happening in the world today). Gossamer is starting very similarly.

My twelve year old read it in less than 2 days, so I imagine it will be a quick read. So far I have picked up that there is a character, Littlest One, who is just learning how to gather information about people so as to eventually bestow their dreams on them. Littlest, for short, is very inquisitive about everything, and is thus driving some of the others crazy. It seems like, of this "being," Littlest is somewhat transparent. As they age, the "beings" become more opaque. I am inferring that they are very small, but I am not 100% sure of that. Can't get the image of Tinkerbell out of my mind. :)

I also read Stone Fox in anticipation of reading it with my fourth graders this coming year. Great, quick read, and so many good themes! I won't write too much about that here. I don't want to spoil the ending.