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by Elly Sanders Hats off to Elly Sanders for her new digital book, The First Grader From Outer Space! Sanders tells the story of a very young, gifted child who really wants to pass for normal. That is the dilemma of many children who find themselves, usually later in the upper grades, wanting to just be normal. Most often, it is after a lot of ridicule from other children who tease them for being different. Gifted children can't help how their brains work any more than a child with a learning difficulty or a developmental delay. As a society, and particularly in groups of children, the child with a developmental delay often is accepted much more readily than the child like Samantha Easton in this book who comes to school reading chapter books and able to do math. These children often are ostracized by their classmates, teased and called names for being different. Here 5 year-old Samantha is placed in first grade instead of kindergarten. She has no inflated ego about this move, even though she is reading on a third grade level and is doing multiplication. She just wants to be with the children on her block that are in kindergarten. So, Sam decides to play "dumb." When the other kids find out she is much younger than they are, they begin to tease her. Sam, unlike many children who find themselves the object of ridicule, recognizes the cruelty of the other children but just wants to be with her kindergarten friends. Sam, however, finds that it really is boring to pretend not to know what she does and eventually she brings this out to her teacher and even to the bullies in her class. When she does, she finds a way to fit in and still be who she is. Elly Sanders does a fine job telling the story from Sam's point of view. We get into Sam's head and find out a lot of wonderful things there, especially her keen observations of people. The First Grader From Outer Space would be a great read for children who are early readers, too, as well as for other children so that they could understand what children like Sam feel. |
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The First Grader From Outer Space