From: Megan Schliesman <Schliesman>
Date: Thu, 06 May 1999 10:57:52 -0500

Thanks to Dean Schneider for the wonderful message about using The Road to Memphsi with his seventh grade students. Each one of Taylor's books about the Logan family stands so firmly on its own, but I'm curious whether students who come to The Road as their first introduction to the Logan family and want to find out what happens next (!) seek out the earlier books if they haven't read them already. Can Dean or anyone else who has experience using these books with children respond? Do kids want to read forward only, or are they interested in looking back as well to fill in details, even though Cassie is a teenager in Road and a child in Song of Trees and Roll of Thunder?

Dean also wrote: "I love this concept of a writer's mining family stories to create the story of a family over the generations. All students seem to find connections to this story of the Logans." Because the characters are growing up in the books, it seems Dean's comment can apply to students of so many ages, from upper elementary through middle school and beyond. Who has used other Taylor books in the classroom, or talked about them with young readers formally or informally in other ways?

Megan









Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education UW-Madison 608&2?03 schliesman at education.wisc.edu
Received on Thu 06 May 1999 10:57:52 AM CDT