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Poppy’s Best Paper

This is a delightful book with delightful illustrations. Poppy is your typical little kid who is learning the hard way how to earn recognition for her effort. She thinks that because she wants to be a writer, she already is a great writer without any effort. Wrong! When her best friend, Lavender, gets recognized by the teacher twice, Poppy gets angry and immediately reacts with “it’s not fair!” The third time her assignment is to write how to do something and after struggling with reality Poppy realizes that ‘how to get in trouble’ is the perfect title for her paper. She writes how she misbehaved and hurt people. Her honesty and hard work finally pays off when her teacher chooses her paper as the best. Kids could see that Poppy’s first work wasn’t good by anyone’s standards and that after having her meltdown, she was able to focus on her work and her words. This story really resonated with students and I hope they took it to heart in their own writing.