I Am a Pencil: A Teacher, His Kids, and Their World of Stories » (Reprint)

Sam Swope is the author of several very well-received children's books, including The Araboolies of Liberty Street, The Krazees, and Gotta Go! Gotta Go!, and of the soon-to-be-published Jack and the Seven Deadly Giants. He lives in New York City.

A teacher discovers how reading, writing, and imagining can help children grow, change, and even sometimes survive

A few years back, children's-book writer Sam Swope gave a workshop to a third-grade class in Queens. So enchanted was he with his twenty-eight students that he "adopted" the class for three years, teaching them to write stories and poems. Almost all were new Americans (his class included students fom twenty-one countries) and Swope was drawn deep into their real and imaginary lives, their problems, hopes, and fears. I Am a Pencil is the story of his years with this very special group of students. It is as funny, warm, heartbreaking, and hopeful as the children themselves.

Swope follows his colorful troop of resilient writers from grades three to five, coaxing out their stories, watching talents blossom, explode, and sometimes fizzle, holding his breath as the kids' families brave new lives in a strange big city. We meet Susie (whose mom was a Taoist priestess), Alex (who cannot seem to tell the truth), and Noelia (a wacky Dominican chatterbox). All of the children have big dreams. Some have big problems: Salvador, an Ecuadorian boy, must cope with a strict Pentecostal father; Soo Jung mystifies Swope with sudden silences-until he discovers that her mother has left the family. Preparing his students for a world of adult dangers, Swope is astonished by their courage, humanity, but most of all by their strength.

Publishers Weekly

Children's book writer Swope (The Araboolies of Liberty Street, etc.) was in a slump. And what better way to liven things up than by accepting an offer to teach a 10-day writing workshop to a class of third-graders in Queens, New York City, a prime destination for immigrants to the U.S. and one of the world's most ethnically diverse areas? Swope became so intrigued by the children, he devoted himself for the next three years to teaching them, unpaid. This delightful, sometimes heartbreaking work relates how, as Swope taught, his writing lessons extended into story-writing collaborations with his students, lessons in how to draw a tree and assignments to play in the snow and write about it. Swope's affection for the kids involved him deeply in their lives, which were often ridden with familial stress. His teaching (and writing) approach is seriously playful; he bestows on his students the power of words (as when Miguel, infuriated by his home life, uses the word "stalwart" to keep himself from giving up during troubled times). Swope shows how children flourish when their imaginations are nurtured and they are challenged to find inner discipline and write what they see as truth. He also reveals the painful seesaw of hope and limitations in their lives. Agent, Gail Hochman. (Aug. 3) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.