Leaving Orange Street

The third graders and I are leaving the comforts, trials, and challenges of Orange Street this week (One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street by Joanne Rocklin). Though I have commented previously on how enamored the children are with the book, one boy's reaction exemplified how deep their concern for the story goes. He complained at the beginning of the hour of a headache but decided to wait a bit to see if he felt better. After our computer work, he really thought he wanted to go to the nurse. I completed the pass to her office, handed it to him, and started to open the book. "Wait," he said. "Are you reading right now?" Yes, I told him. We would finish it in 20 minutes. "Well..." I asked if he wanted to listen for a while and see if the headache was bearable. Eagerly, he handed the pass back to me and joined his classmates in the reading alcove. Later, as we got to one of the parts that makes me teary, he was the only one who knew exactly why the character Larry Tilley did not correct Ms. Snoops when she called him Ralph (his father) and asked about Larry. His classmates nodded - and later shared moments when they, too, had preserved an older person's dignity.