Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Miss Nelson Has a Field Day by Harry ALlard and James Marshall


Miss Nelson Has a Field Day by Harry Allard and James Marshall is a book that is a part of the Miss Nelson series. I was familiar with other Miss Nelson books (Miss Nelson Goes Missing), so I was interested to see how this book would compare. I found it was pretty similar to the books I had previously read. In both books, something goes wrong in the class and "Miss Viola Swamp" comes in and whips everything into shape. In this specific book, the school football team is doing very poorly. They do not want to practice, they are rude to their coach, and they are very disrespectful. Well, when the Coach has to take some time off, Miss Viola Swamp comes in and changes everything. The team is forced to practice, listen, and they get a lot better as a team. Coach Swamp completely changed the team. When it was time for the Coach to return, he was so happy to see what had happened. If you are familiar with these books, Miss Nelson (classroom teacher), is Miss Swamp. She has a twin sister who takes her spot in this book so the students and faculty do not know it is her. In the other book, she simply disguised herself. The lesson learned: sometimes tough love is necessary to get the desired results.
The language used in this book is appropriate for beginning readers and readers who may be struggling that are in upper grades. The number of sentences found on the pages range from one to about half a page. This adds variety. I really think this is helpful because it is not all uniform. I also really liked how some of the words were more difficult, but the authors still included words that many students are already familiar with.
The pictures in this book are like cartoons. The colors are bright. The people, however, are fairly simply drawn. In fact, the illustrations are all fairly simple, but they are appropriate for the text. Frequently, there are multiple illustrations on one page, one covering to pages, or one per page. I liked how this added some variety.
I like the Miss Nelson series, and it was a series I grew up reading. I think that children today would also appreciate the books. Therefore, I recommend this book to others.

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