Peter writes this narrative story for his teacher, sharing how he went to war with his grandfather when he came to live with them. So the tone and sentence structure exhibits a fifth grader.
Peter's parents give his room to grandfather and Peter now must stay in the guest room on the third floor. He hates it there. So he declares war on his grandfather to convince him to give back his room.
We all thought the book was funny, but we did not like how Peter treated his grandfather and thought about his grandfather some of the time. It was apparent that he loved his grandfather but sometimes his behavior and thoughts were disrespectful. We really did not like his friends and their negative influence.
This book provided a lot of opportunity for discussion which I enjoyed.
Points to discuss/warnings: negative influence of friends; disrespect; swearing-no swear words are written(he is writing this for his teacher so he could not include them!). But, he inserted nonsense words to represent them. One entire chapter is devoted to how his friends were swearing in reaction to his situation. He also mentions in one chapter how he said "a couple of words he should not use". Frequent use of "stupid" and "dumb".
Since a fifth grade boy is writing this, I would not read this book aloud to model superb writing. The author, however, did an excellent job writing in a manner of a fifth grader!
This book is what I call a "hi-lo" book. The reading level is low, but will appeal to older elementary students. Perfect for older struggling readers.
Mentor text: voice
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