A Fine, Fine School

Story – Sharon Creech

Pictures – Harry Bliss

Scholastic

OK, so you love your school, you love your teachers, you love all that you get to learn there – but do you love it enough, that you want to be there all days of the week, and all holidays, AND all summers too? Scary thought, isn’t it? And if it does not sound as scary, Sharon Creech does tell you in a very simple and lucid manner, in the book ‘A Fine, Fine School‘ (published by Scholastic), why it should scare you!

Mr Keene is a fine, fine principal of a fine, fine school, where the fine, fine teachers teach the fine, fine children. Mr Keene loves his job, and the school and of course everybody there. So, five days of school is just not enough for him and he tells everybody to come to school on Saturdays too. And then Sundays, and then all the holidays like Christmas, and before you know it – the summers too! No one really wants to come, neither the teachers, nor the children – but they don’t know how to tell this to Mr Keene. And then comes Tillie, who tells him about the learning that they are missing out because they have to come to school everyday. And the fine, fine principal that Mr Keene is, he immediately takes an action to correct it – does he do it by calling the kids to school for the night too? Read the book to know!

The author has done complete justice to the subject, to the words, and her style of writing with a subtle wit makes the book all the more endearing – no wonder she has won prestigious awards like Newbery and Carnegie Medal.It’s a wonderful story, and the theme is relevant universally, irrespective of the times too. More so, when you see the urban kids around, or may be their parents – the competitions and the pressure of academics being ingrained from the pre-primary levels. Why do we forget that in our own lives, the most important and useful lessons that we learnt were not in the classroom, but in the playground, in those ‘in-between’ times, simply being observant of the surroundings? While the story is simple enough for a budding reader to understand, you should not miss the opportunity to talk about it post-reading – the discussion could be an eye-opener for you!

A word for the illustrations – they are AWESOME, and the attention to detail is magnificent.Watch out for the expressions of the dog, the pranks going on in the bus, or the banner in the cafeteria – simply brilliant!

Read it up – it’s a fine, fine book!

This review first appeared on Indian Moms Connect.

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