In The Classroom #1: Alaska

Author: Anna Woltz
Started reading: Start of the school year
Finished the book: March 10th 2020
Pages: 184
Genres: Middle School
Published: October 6th 2016
Source: School Library
Goodreads score: 4.19
My score:

Synopsis

On the first day of school Sven is sure about it; he needs to pull of a brilliant stunt. Otherwise he will be that pathetic boy from class 1B. Parker just wants to be invisible. She just had the worse summer of her life and doesn't trust anybody. She then finds out that Alaska, who was her dog first, now lives with Sven, as his assistance dog. During the day, Parker doesn't want any contact with Sven, so she only has one choice left. If she ever wants to see Alaska again, she has to do it during the night.

In The Classroom

Since I'm now teaching 5th and 6th Grade, I decided to write articles with the students in my classroom about the books we read in class.

Today we finished Alaska by Anna Woltz, which is a Dutch book.

We highly enjoyed this read, I actually asked the students to score the book and the majority gave it 5 stars.

We will now tell you what we thought about this book!

Pros

A. (11 y/o): This book makes you understand people who are in trouble or are facing difficult things in life.

E. (11 y/o) : The characters in this book don't have the normal, happy life. Sven actually has an ailment and Parker has endured something awful, that makes the book pretty interesting.

J. (12 y/o): I liked the fact that there were only two main characters. This made the story more interesting. You know the characters by heart and it's much easier to empathize with them.

V. (12 y/o): What I liked about this book is that at some point it's about a robbery. You don't see that everyday in a Children's book and it made the story full of action.

M. (11 y/o): I liked the genre in this book. It was realistic and could easily have happened in real life.

A. (11 y/o): The message behind this story was awesome! It teaches us that it's okay to be who you are and to just be yourself :)

R. (12 y/o): The font in this book was easy to read and it helped me understand the story, because I had no trouble reading it.

B. (12 y/o): There were a lot of emotions in this book and they were written very well. It made it easy to realize how the main characters were feeling.

Cons

I. (10 y/o): We would like to know what the characters look like, it was pretty hard to create an image in your head.

K. (11 y/o): Parker was pretty whiny at the start of this book, it changed throughout, but in the first half of the book it irked me a bit.

J. (11 y/o): I would've liked the POV of another character other than Sven and Parker.

Overall

This was a highly enjoyable book to read with the students in my classroom. It contained topics that are good to discuss with children in 5th/6th grade. The book had some nice cliffhangers, which made it easy for me to make the kids enthusiastic for the next reading lessons.

Thanks for reading!

I'd love to talk books; please let me know what you think about this book/review.

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