The Candy Corn Contest

A snoozy tale about a second grader who's a little dim and a bit of a jerk. He gets himself in trouble with a friend and the teacher and spends a lot of the book feebly fretting about his problems, unable to come up with any workable solutions on his own.

Tedious and tiring.

I love these school series for newly independent readers. But this one just seems off. Also extra didactic. And it has dated & disrespectful references to Pilgrims and 'the first Thanksgiving.' I think there's a reason that I found it in a Little Free Library.

In "The Candy Corn Contest", it almost Thanksgiving, and one student named Richard Best can not stop thinking about his teacher, Ms. Ronney's, candy corn contest. The overall goal with the contest is for one student to guess how many of the yellow-and-orange candies are in the whole jar. There is one problem, they must read a page of a library book for each guess. After students read this book, they will understand the concepts of math with counting, as well as getting to have fun with reading.

This book takes place around Thanksgiving time and the teacher has placed a candy corn jar in the class where the students must guess the number of candy corns in the jar. The only catch is that students must read a page in a library book for each guess that they are allowed to make. Richard's problem is that he is not a very good reader. The winner will get to keep the candy corns in the jar. Richard can already taste those candy corns and before he knows it, he has eaten three fat juicy ones. What will he do and will Ms. Rooney find out? Students will need to read and find out the answers to these questions.

It's almost Thanksgiving, and Richard Best can't stop thinking about Ms. Rooney's Candy Corn Contest.

5 copies