Mary Cuffe-Perez

Pure and simple. A story about geese. Well, a story about more than geese… A story about what we know and what we remember. A story about rescue and capture, the home pond and the places beyond the pond. About imprint and instinct. About fear. And overcoming fear. About listening and loss. This story is a fine example of how direct a story can be yet with depth and breadth. From the geese-counting elderly woman who begins and ends the story to the memorable characters — 5 stars from me. A contender.… (más)

Skylar is a very imigianitive and cute children's novel with 5 pond geese as the main charcters. Because of animal protaganists, it is easy to make the comparison to Charlotte's Web, and it is actually kind of hard to review this book in isolation from CW. I didn't initially want to like this story, because CW is such an original. But this is a slightly different story, and very appropriate for early elementary grades. For those teachers who have been banned from using Charlotte's Web in the classroom (it happens!) because the grade before you or after you teaches it, I highly recommend this book. I believe it could make an excellent read-aloud, or guided reading story. It is even possible to do a unit on this book similar to Charlotte's Web. What I also like about it, is that it gives an opportunity to teach science content around birds, geese, and herons, which can become fascinating to students.

Whether or not children end up liking Skylar as much as children over many generations have loved Charolotte's Web remains to be seen, but perhaps it is possible.… (más)