Gooney Bird Green by Lois Lowry illustrated by Middy Thomas

Blurb: There’s never been anyone like Gooney Bird Greene at Watertower Elementary School. What other new kid comes to school wearing pajamas and cowboy boots one day and a polka-dot T-shirt and tutu on another From the moment Gooney Bird Greene arrives at Watertower Elementary School, her fellow second graders are intrigued by her unique sense of style and her unusual lunches. So when story time arrives, the choice is unanimous: they want to hear about Gooney Bird Greene. And that suits Gooney Bird just fine, because, as it turns out, she has quite a few interesting and "absolutely true" stories to tell. Through Gooney Bird and her tales, the acclaimed author Lois Lowry introduces young readers to the elements of storytelling. This book encourages the storyteller in everyone.

The library I visit each week is going through a lot of change. The Teacher-Librarian is on leave for a short break and her replacement has decided to very heavily "weed" the collection. Putting aside the unprofessional and inappropriateness of this task by some one who is just "filling in" I am curious about her criteria. From what I have observed it all seems to be about age and condition of a book and not borrowing frequency or use by staff or value to readers or usefulness in a curriculum sense. And the process is not following the library collection development policy. It is all quite distressing, sad and haphazard.

With this in mind I decided to borrow a few of the older junior fiction books - titles I previously read and enjoyed - hopefully I can save them or at least see for myself if they should be saved. One of these books is Gooney Bird Greene - a book from 2002 - that I first talked about here in 2013. In the past Gooney Bird Greene was a book I often recommended to Grade 3 teachers as a terrific class serial or read aloud book.

I reread Gooney Bird Greene this week and I loved it all over again. What struck me this time, apart from the interspersed "tall tales" Gooney tells her class, were all the wonderful clothing descriptions. Teachers could use these as a writing stimulus for a class.  Here are some examples:

"She was wearing pajamas and cowboy boots and was holding a dictionary and a lunch box."

"Gooney Bird Greene was wearing a pink ballet tutu over green stretch pants, and she had three small red grapes, an avocado, and an oatmeal cookie for lunch."

"On Friday, Gooney Bird was wearing Capri pants, a satin tank top, and a long string of pearls. Her hair was twisted into one long braid, which was decorated with plastic flowers. There were flip flops on her feet."

"She was wearing a ruffled pinafore, dark blue knee socks, and high top basketball sneakers ... (and her) earrings dangled and glittered and were very large."

"Gooney Bird was wearing gray sweatpants, a sleeveless white blouse with lace on the collar, and amazing black gloves that came up above her elbows."

I also loved all the individual class characters - shy and silent Felicia Ann; Malcolm who is often found under his desk; Barry Tuckerman who likes to make important speeches; and sensitive little Keiko.

There are six books in the Gooney Bird Green series:

Book 1: Gooney Bird Greene

Book 2: Gooney Bird and the Room Mother

Book 3: Gooney the Fabulous

Book 4: Gooney Bird Is So Absurd

Book 5: Gooney Bird on the Map

Book 6: Gooney Bird and All Her Charms

Here is the web site for Lois Lowry. Her most famous books are Number the Stars (a book that still haunts me) and The Giver. Here is the Kirkus review of Gooney Bird Greene. Listen to the first few pages here - the audio book sounds terrific. 

The front of my copy of Gooney Bird Greene book mentions other feisty girl characters such as Anastasia (Lois Lowry) and the Blossom books (Betsy Byars). I would also add this long out of print book Freckle Juice and Clementine (Sara Pennypacker). Gooney Bird is also a little like the famous Pippi Longstocking.