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Book Reviews & Giveaways: Educating Esme

Author: Esme Raji Codell

“Educating Esme” is a sheer delight! As Madame Esme, a 24 year old teacher starts her first year as a fifth grade inner-city teacher in Chicago, she keeps a detailed and personal diary. The diary is the book. Esme’s honesty and acerbic wit, as well as her wildly imaginative teaching methods make her a great teacher, and an outcast with her principal, Mr. Turner, and her co-staff. Each entry Esme makes draws us deeper into the difficulties that she encounters having to be parent, teacher and counselor to children who have to learn boundaries, social skills, conflict resolution, and how to deal with their hard lives – as well as how to learn. She makes up titles for subjects: math is Puzzlers, science is Mad Scientist Time, social studies is T.T.W.E., which stands for Time Travel and World Exploring and language arts is Art of Language, while reading is Free Reading Time.

As Esme pours her soul into teaching the children learn respect and how to think, and she also earns their respect by always keeping her word. She deals with issues immediately. Called into Mr. Turner’s office, she fights back when he demands she call herself Mrs. Codell instead of Madame Esme. Fraught with hilarity, pathos and just plain Esme and her humanness, we fall in love with this confident and wacky soul. Her entries include poems about the janitor and life in the classroom, and are wonderful. When she creates a Time Travel machine out of an old refrigerator with a cop squad car siren on top (that works) the kids believe her. She puts them in one at a time, with a box of books and when they come out, they have to tell their travel adventures from the book they read in “real time.” As in, “when I was an alien on Garthos, I…” What an adventure they have and learning is fun.

This book is short and sweet – and a wonderful example of what we could have – and should have – for all of our children. Esme really teaches that learning is fun, conflict can be resolved respectfully and she teaches the reader that life is not the drama we make it.

I loved every page and so will you! Not only for educators, and teachers – although this is a MUST read for the profession, “Educating Esme” is about life. My only objection was that the book was too short. I am going to read it again! Delightful, delightful, delightful. And a true depiction of how difficult it is for our best and brightest teachers to remain teachers in the face of a standardized test-minded set of bureaucrats and directors of the board of public (and private) schools. Wish I had had Madame Esme as a teacher! Fantastic.
Rating is based on a 5-star scale.

Plot: 5
Presentation: 5
Characters: 5 Overall: 5

Review by Broad “A” – Ava

To learn more about the Blog Tour and read other reviews as well as visits with the author you can visit Educating Esme Blog Tour.

Look for an upcoming interview with Esme Codell on Champagne Living.

Thank you to Julie Bonn Health and Esme Raji Codell for supplying this wonderful book for our review.

We’re giving away our review copy here on The Review Broads.

GIVEAWAY
Rules:

Simply leave a comment regarding the book (questions, remarks, anything – as long as it’s related to this book) along with your e-mail address in the comment section below.

Please make sure you leave your email address when adding a comment or I will not be able to contact you if you win.

* This giveaway is open to US residents, 18 and over and ends on September 15, 2009 11:59 EST.
* The winner will be randomly chosen and contacted via email.
* The winner has 48 hours to respond to my email or an alternate winner will be chosen.
* Please make sure you check your junk mail folder
* Good Luck

Comments

  2. This would be so interesting to read! I live in the Chicago area and am thinking of becoming a teacher myself.
    Thank you for the giveaway 🙂
    hurdler4eva(at)gmail(dot)com

    Reply

  4. sueshannon@pacbell.net
    My Daughter, Amanda, has just about to finish up her teaching credentials. She will be teaching high school English. She is a bit nervous about having the respect of the students, which are close to being her peers. This book will be a interesting read for both of us.

    Reply

  7. This looks like a great read! I am a former teacher and am interested in finding out what her strategies were in an inner-city school.

    donnyandshelly (at) (yahoo) (dot) (com)

    Reply

  13. I have always admired teachers for their patience and desire to shape our children's minds. I have a hard time just helping my children with their homework! Book looks good and would love to read it! Thanks!
    dcf_beth at verizon dot net

    Reply

  18. I am a teacher and my 20 year old daughter is thinking about getting her Master's Degree in Education so she can teach. I would like my daughter to read this to get a view of the first year of teaching. For most people, it is their hardest year and the reason why many people quit within the first 5 years of teaching.

    Nancy
    allibrary (at) aol (dot) com

    Reply

  26. This book looks great! I always love when my children have a “new” teacher…they have so many great ideas & you can see that they really WANT to be teaching!

    Reply

  30. This book sounds wonderful. I can only imagine what she has done for those children. I remember being in 5th grade and loving it… my teacher was wonderful and made our days with her special. She changed the way I thought and made my school experiences better. This would most definitely be a great read!

    Reply

  42. This book sounds like it would be a really interesting and inspirational read! We hear so much about the negative aspects of teaching, so it would be great to hear from an enthusiastic young teacher!

    lahlstedt (at) gmail (dot) com

    Reply

  48. We have had a few excellent teachers for our daughters over the years. I would like to give this to my youngest who just started college with music education as her goal. She is already a remarkable young woman, strong leader, loving camp counselor. Plus, she is a little wacky-this book would be excellent for her.

    Ann Freier
    msanta101@gmail.com

    Reply

  53. My daughter is a music education major and has wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember. I know she would love to read about Esme's experiences as a young teacher. Sounds like Esme teaches like they did when I was in school. The focus was on learning and not cramming.

    anne[at]anneonlife[dot]com

    Reply

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