BULLYING IS NEVER OKAY! This story is about a 5th grade boy with a facial deformity who is going to a new school. It is heart breaking and beautiful. It teaches children to think before they speak. In my observations last semester, ALLLLL the 5th grade students were obsessed with this book because they had read it the year before. According to Fountas & Pinnell's leveling system I believe it would fall under R because it does require background knowledge and the ability to decode figurative language. It includes mature themes such as bullying and family problems. 

As a classroom activity, I would use this to build community. I think each student would need to write a nice note to a classmate (draw names from a hat). Or each student could write a positive compliment for every other student in the class. Our classroom will be a family and we will build eachother up , never put eachother down.

Everyone involved in education in the U.S., but especially those making education policy, must read this book.

Great info. Very inspirational and calming.

-- Originally reviewed at Here There Be Books. --I picked this up last week when I was hankering for a travel book and only have historical fiction with me. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for (I thought it meant "tourism" like "adult tourists"), but it was interesting and somewhat informative. It was also convoluted and just basically read like it didn't know what it wanted to be.It's supposed to be about educational tourism, specifically about how it relates to students and their teachers. Just that by itself would have been fine (if kinda boring), but Mr Cushner adds in personal anecdotes and a few bits of statistical info. Okay, now, that sounds alright on the surface, but it never actually tied everything together as neatly as I've made it sound. It would have been immensely better if it had been either an academic study on education tourism, etc etc, or a personal story about one teacher who used educational tourism in his curriculum.Because Mr Cushner tries to mesh the two, it makes the book both boring and interesting by turns. I was way more interested in his life as a teacher using e.t. in his classroom than I was by the statistics, but if I was trying to read it as an academic study I would have been disappointed there, too. The academic part was just as as lacking as the personal part. It just didn't flow well, and the disparity between the stats/personal stuff was jarring.Admittedly I skimmed through most of the statistic stuff, but I did manage to glean what I think the book is actually supposed to be about: how visiting other countries, living with its people, and integrating that into one's worldview is a wonderful, necessarily thing for today's kids. Broadening horizons, and all that.

From the last line that Hornby blogged, I gather I can give this a miss.