Sunday, January 3, 2010

Operation Yes by Sara Lewis Holmes


Happy New Year and Happy Cybils reading! The Cybils Shortlists are posted and two of my favorites made the lists (from categories I didn’t judge). The Curious Garden by Peter Brown made the fiction picture book shortlist and The Day-Glo Brothers by Chris Barton made the non-fiction picture book shortlist. I love both of these books.

I contributed to the shortlist of Middle-grade fiction. It was hard to narrow down to JUST seven books. Good luck judges. One book that made the list is Operation Yes by Sara Lewis Holmes. (The teacher in the story Miss Loupe is on A Year of Reading’s 100 Cool Teachers of Children’s Literature. She is a great first year teacher. One we would all loved to have had.) I truly enjoyed this book. It even made me cry. Here is my little blurb about the story that is, also, posted on the Cybils site:

Operation Yes is a story that revolves around cousins, Bo and Gari. Bo’s father is in charge of a military base in the south and Gari’s mother is deployed to Afghanistan; so Gari must relocate from Seattle to live with her cousin. They are both in the same sixth grade class and their teacher teaches in a box about the importance of life outside the box. What makes this story standout is how kids can overcome tough times and show adults what kids are capable of doing when they work together.
Book provided by the publisher.

4 comments:

Jaymie said...

Sounds like a great book. I love stories where the kids really connect with classroom material, but in a way that no one expects and is far better than what the teacher had hoped for or planned. Thanks for the recommendation.

Kelly Polark said...

I loved that book so much that I also bought one for my son's teacher's classroom!

Carol H Rasco said...

I am about to finish my third reading of this book as I am learning more and more about military families with each reading. At RIF we have many programs either on military bases or serving large numbers of military based families....not many books come along for them to utilize...they love this one! And Sara Lewis Holmes is a super human being as well!

Brimful Curiosities said...

We also love The Curious Garden. Unique book with a vintage feel.