Richie's Picks: GOONEY BIRD GREENE by Lois Lowry, Houghton Mifflin, September
2002

"...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.'"

I was right smack in the middle of BookExpo. When I walked away from the
Houghton Mifflin booth, I smiled a cheery goodbye to the woman there, who had
just provided me with a few things to take back home. But inside, I was
crestfallen--the advance copy of the new Lois Lowry book that she had handed
me was an eighty-eight page story with large type that sported a little girl
in a pink tutu on the cover. A cover--I grumbled to myself--that only a
first or second grade girl could love. It was clearly not what I had been
hoping for from the author of such powerful tales as THE GIVER and GATHERING
BLUE.

But, since I had promised to read the book, I shut my eyes and gritted my
teeth as I grabbed it from the stack. And guess what? GOONEY BIRD GREENE is,
in fact, an absolutely clever and extremely funny story. Second
and third grade teachers will find it the perfect book with which to lead off
the new school year. It's a rollicking tale, set in Mrs. Pidgeon's
second-grade classroom, that's got both a touch of brashness and a whole lot
of charm.

In GOONEY BIRD GREENE, Lois Lowry introduces young children to the art of
creating stories. Throughout the book, Gooney Bird Greene and Mrs. Pidgeon
unobtrusively slip in valuable concepts such as beginning/middle/end,
characters and secondary characters, description, pacing, and cliffhangers.
Lowry's skillful use of puns and other forms of word play throughout the book
will have students tripping over each other to emulate Gooney Bird's style of
telling "absolute true stories" that, despite their veracity, always contain
more twists than the winding road to Dead Man's curve. The author's
portrayals of the students in Gooney Bird's second grade class are so dead-on
that teachers will be as anxious to share the book with their friends as they
will be with their students.

Since it won't be available until late August, I strongly recommend that
teachers order a copy of GOONEY BIRD GREENE now, or risk missing the boat
come the fall. (If you don't order it, you also risk failing to hear the
story of how she got that name, or the story of her cat being consumed by a
cow, or the story of...)

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy at aol.com ( )

The power of story telling is amazing! Gooney Bird Greene is new to Watertower Elementary school and she loves to be the center of attention. She tells the class 'absolutely true stories' and has them sitting on the edge of their seats wanting to know what is going to have next. The suspense is terrific. She is quite a character dressing to fit the stories she tells. One day she wears a tutu and another she wears her pajamas and cowboy boots.

*spoilers*

I guess this was an okay story, and maybe the unrealistic writing was the author's way of expressing how unusual Gooney Bird was. But to me it came off as more annoying/stupid then anything else. What kind of teacher always addresses her class by their grade? "Okay second-graders!" It sounds so strange! And the way Gooney Bird acts, how she says "I like to be absolutely the center of attention" all the time, and even talks down to the teacher! She basically runs the classroom, and it's just so unrealistic that it gets annoying.
However, I did like the basic plot. The idea of turning ordinary happenings, like giving driving directions, into a big awesome story just by knowing how to tell it a certain way (and still remain truthful), it's a pretty good storyline. ( )

Gooney Bird Greene is about a new girl in school who knows how to 'tell stories.' She's always dressed unique and has her own style about herself. She tells stories very well with props and almost as an adult voice that she portrays. ( )

A most unusual new student who loves to be the center of attention entertains her teacher and fellow second graders by telling absolutely true stories about herself, including how she got her name.