The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary

by Laura Shovan

Overview

An award-winning, big-hearted time capsule of one class’s poems during a transformative school year. A great pick for fans of Margarita Engle and Eileen Spinelli.
 
Eighteen kids,
one year of poems,
one school set to close.
Two yellow bulldozers crouched outside,
ready to eat the building in one greedy gulp.
 
But look out, bulldozers.
Ms. Hill’s fifth-grade class has plans for you.
They’re going to speak up and work together to save their school.
 
Families change and new friendships form as these terrific kids grow up and move on in this whimsical novel-in-verse about finding your voice and making sure others hear it.

Honors and Praise:

Winner of a Cybils Award in Poetry

Winner of an Arnold Adoff Poetry Honor Award for New Voices

An NCTE Notable Verse Novel

A Bank Street College of Education Best Children’s Book of the Year

An ILA-CBC Children’s Choice

Nominated for the Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Award, the Wisconsin State Reading Association Children’s Book Award, the Rhode Island Children’s Book Award, and the Great Stone Face Award (New Hampshire), Lectio Book Award Master List 

“This gently evocative study of change in all its glory and terror would make a terrific read-aloud or introduction to a poetry unit. A most impressive debut.” —School Library Journal

“Sure to inspire the poet in all of us, young and old.” —Mark Goldblatt, author of Twerp

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780553521405
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	04/10/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	134,795
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.80(d)
Lexile:	NP (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Laura Shovan has been a writer since the second grade. After graduating from NYU's Dramatic Writing Program, she taught high school and worked as a freelance journalist. She is now an educational consultant for teens with learning difficulties. She edited two poetry anthologies and is the author of the Harriss Poetry prize-winning chapbook Moutain, Log, Salt, and Stone. Laura and her family live in Maryland, where she is a longtime poet-in-the-schools for the Maryland State Arts Council. This is her first novel. Visit her online at laurashovan.com and on Twitter at @LauraShovan.

Editorial Reviews

The poems are easy to read, in authentic-sounding language that captures the poets' personalities; avatar-like illustrations accompany each piece to remind readers of who's who. A helpful guide to poetic forms appears at the end of the book.” —The Horn Book

“Entertaining . . . Shovan skillfully employs different poetic forms and styles...Characters... will inspire readers as they find the courage to save their school and make their voices heard, both as a united front and as capable, valuable individuals.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“Eighteen kids. Eighteen Stories. An original idea, artfully and heartfully rendered.  What a treat.” —Eileen Spinelli, author of Another Day as Emily and other books

“A delightful book, with an endearing cast of characters who can help teach the craft of poetry while sharing their own diverse personal stories.” —Margarita Engle, Newbery Honor-winning author of The Surrender Tree

From the Publisher

01/25/2016
This entertaining debut novel in verse follows the fifth graders at Emerson Elementary as they attempt to save their “run-down” school, which is danger of closing. In an ethnically diverse class featuring familiar rivalries and crushes, each student has an opportunity to be his or herself in journal entries destined for a time capsule, which are seen only by their teacher, Ms. Hill. In page-long entries, Shovan skillfully employ different poetic forms and styles—haikus, rhymes, acrostics, free verse, limericks, and more (all discussed in an endnote)—to express the students’ personalities, though 18 distinct voices are a lot to track. Characters like Norah from Jerusalem; George, whose father recently left home; Shoshanna, dealing with a demanding friend (“When Hannah wins/ class president/ I’ll finally be free./ If she is boss/ of our whole grade/ she won’t be bossing me”); and Brianna, whose mother struggles to make ends meet, will inspire readers as they find the courage to save their school and make their voices heard, both as a united front and as capable, valuable individuals. Ages 8–12. Agent: Stephen Barbara, Inkwell Management. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

03/01/2016
Gr 4–6—At the end of the term, Emerson Elementary School will be bulldozed to make way for a shopping center and students will be reassigned to other schools in the district. This change is particularly hard for the 18 fifth graders in Ms. Hill's class. She tasks them with keeping a poetry journal throughout the year; their poems will be placed in a time capsule at the end of the year. The students write about their feelings, the project, the imminent changes to their community, and their worries about middle school through alternating poems divided into four quarters. One girl's mother is being deployed, a boy's father recently left the family, and another boy's beloved grandfather is ailing. With the gentle guidance of their teacher, who may have been arrested in the 1960s protesting the Vietnam War, they become socially aware and organize a movement to protest the school closure. The distinct personalities of the students shine through in a variety of poetic forms. Sadness, humor, anger, and hope are expressed in authentically young voices. The poetic forms are discussed in further detail in the back matter, making for a great teaching resource. VERDICT This gently evocative study of change in all its glory and terror would make a terrific read-aloud or introduction to a poetry unit. A most impressive debut.—Brenda Kahn, Tenakill Middle School, Closter, NJ

School Library Journal

2016-01-20
This novel in verse is a remarkable feat of mimicry. The poems sound exactly like they were written by real fifth-graders. Ms. Hill's students, a diverse bunch judging by their names and their pictures, are required to write a poem every morning. (They listen to folk music while they're writing, which says a lot about Ms. Hill.) One Seuss-inspired poem includes the stanza "Some kids are glad and some are sad. / You sit by Teacher. Were you bad?" That level of authenticity is hard to take unless it reveals something about the characters' personalities. Happily, many of the students are worth getting to know, like Newt Mathews, a boy with Asperger's who rescues the frogs hiding in the school's back brick wall. Their story is compelling enough: as the title hints, the students are trying to prevent their school from being torn down. But too much of the plot feels conventional. When a student gets a crush on a girl who claims to hate him, some readers will pray that they don't fall in love. The last section of the book is full of lovely, inventive moments. A set of instructions for making a flipbook somehow becomes a metaphor for loss. But too many poems—especially a bad parody of "Big Yellow Taxi"—simply don't work. Readers may wonder if they really needed a poem for every day of the school year. (glossary, guide to poetic forms) (Verse novel. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews