WEEKLY GEEKS: Back to School

The assignment from Weekly Geeks: (which I haven't done in ages!)

It's still the first week of August, but many of you, like me, may be already in the back to school mode. For us, it's only two weeks away! So I thought I'd do a back to school edition of Weekly Geeks and ask you these questions:

• What's your favorite bookish school memory? Scholastic book orders! Getting the new pamphlet and scouring it looking for a book that looked interesting, and that I could afford. A few that I remember, because they are still in the basement - Follow My Leader, My Mother Made Me, Ginnie's Baby-sitting Business, Patricia's Secret, The Trouble with Terry, and Amy Moves In.

• Did your teacher read aloud to you? Do you remember what book it was? I'm sure teachers always read aloud to us, but the one I remember most was in grade five when Mrs Adams was laughing so hard while reading This Can't Be Happening at MacDonald Hall! that she couldn't keep reading. Bruno and Boots are the best!

• Do you remember what books you checked out at the school library? There was a book I know I took out of the elementary library many times, called Why Me? It was about a girl who gets diabetes, and so does her dog. She shares her insulin with the dog. I couldn't remember the name of this book for a long time, and no one else I know remembered it either. Someone asked at Name that Book at Librarything, so I found out it is also called Sugar Mouse.

• What was one of the first book reports you did for school? I have some memory of a Helen Keller book report. As an aside, I had a grade eleven boy this year ask 'Helen Keller wasn't real, was she? She couldn't have been a real person?' Head bonk on desk.
• I also remember, in junior high, planning to do a book report on George Washington. I have no idea why a Canadian girl was planning that. In my library search, I accidentally found a book about George Washington Carver, and not really knowing the difference, learned all about peanuts instead!

• Do you have a favorite book or author that you first heard about from a teacher or school project? I was in school during the Reader stage of Canadian education. Anthology books with short excerpts and non-fiction essays were how we learned to read. Books where just read on your own time.Although, I guess the afore mentioned Bruno and Boots books by Gordon Korman were discovered in school.

• Do you have a not-so-pleasant bookish memory from your school days? Once I got to high school and the assigned reading started, I wasn't a happy camper. The Pearl, Lord of the Flies, Wuthering Heights - these classic literature books couldn't compare to the exciting Agatha Christie mysteries or horror books by Stephen King that I was immersed in. 

Check out the other Weekly Geeks entries at the blog.