For all hoopla I heard about this book as a kid but never read it because I thought it was about a boy and that did not interest me much as a young girl, ha ha - this story turned out to be a disappointment, and a snooze of a read.

According to this book:
1. The point of life isn't merely mundane daily survival.
2. It's actually the pursuit of absolute freedom.
3. Sufficient freedom will give you magic powers.
4. This is because reality is just a projection of thought.

According to me:
1. OK - you can impose whatever purpose you want on your life.
2. Absolute freedom isn't possible. All societies are a trade-off between mutual benefits from working collectively and giving up freedoms that are harmful to others. Becoming an outcast isn't a solution; you still have to complete basic survival tasks and you're excluded from any social activity - you're not completely free to do what you want at all times.
3. No, it won't.
4. Because actually, reality is reality and no amount of practice will allow you to break the rules of reality.

Even taken (as probably intended) as a fable that exagerates in order to make it's message clear, it's still an unrealistic repetition of the survivor bias fallacy that if you persevere hard enough you can acheive your dreams, whatever they may be. The psychology goes like this: You've succeeded at something. You attribute this solely to your own efforts, ignoring all other possible contributing factors (e.g. privileged background, educational opportunity, patronage, physical appearance, etc, etc). You assume that the only reason others don't succeed is because they give up. So you tell everyone to pursue their dreams and persevere, like you did, because that's guaranteed to work.

This is of course, not possible; it's not anyone's dream to be a refuse collector, but all modern societies need them far more than some guy who flies small planes for a living, as you will know if your refuse collectors have ever gone on strike. We cannot all be artists or scientists or actors or astronauts and none of us could if all of us tried to be...society would collapse and we'd all starve, instead.

Enemy Pie is a great book on friendship. It begins as the perfect summer until Jeremy Ross moves into the house down the street and becomes neighborhood enemy number one. His dad has a guaranteed way to get rid of enemies. That is enemy pie, but part of the secret recipe is spending an entire day playing with the enemy! It turns out that they are not enemies after all. This would be a good book to read at the beginning of the school year. Students can create their own pie and fill it with ingredients (ways) to keep a friend or to be a good friend. 

Lexile: AD 550L

A boy decided to make an enemy pie with the new boy in town. In order to make enemy pie, you must "pretend" to be friends. After pretending to be friends, the two boys became true friends. This book teaches students about acceptance and that bullying is not acceptable behavior. The activity I would be the opposite of an enemy pie. My students will create a friendship pie. The students will choose what qualities make a good friend and how much of that quality does the friend need. I can also integrate measurement conversions into the lesson. 

Reading Level: Lexile AD550L

Grades: PreK-2nd