Herbie Jones and the Class Gift - Hardcover

Suzy Kline, the author of nineteen previous Horrible Harry books and four books about Song Lee, lives in Willington Connecticut with her husband, Rufus. Suzy and Rufus have been married for thirty-eight years. They met in the state where they both grew up: California. Suzy grew up in Berkeley and Rufus in Sacramento. Suzy graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in European history. She met Rufus at the Davis campus while attending that campus for a year. They got married and lived in different places, including Canada, before settling into Connecticut, the state they now call home.

Suzy taught in 5th and 6th grades at Shannon Elementary School in Richmond, California for 3 years, and 2nd and 3rd grades at Southwest Elementary School in Torrington, Connecticut for 24 years before retiring this past June. She now enjoys writing full-time and visiting schools and libraries. The couple share their home with two cats, Teeter and Hoag. They have two daughters, Jennifer and Emily, and four grandchildren: Jake, Kenna, Gabby and Saylor. A fifth grandchild is due in September, 2006. Suzy's mother just turned 96. She dedicated her most recent book, Horrible Harry Takes the Cake to her.

Suzy and Rufus enjoy attending UConn football and basketball games, and Suzy uses the UConn library as a reference for her writing facts.

 

Grade 2-5 Herbie's third-grade classmate Annabelle suggests that her classmates chip in a dollar each toward one large gift for their teacher. This presents a problem for Herbie's friend Ray, whose father has lost his job, and for Herbie, whose parents are suddenly money- conscious. But the real problem devel ops as Ray and Herbie are charged with picking up the ceramic owl Annabelle has purchased and delivering it to class for the party, a simple chore that pre sents a series of unexpected perils. As in her two earlier books about Herbie, Kline's characters are ordinary third graders facing real dilemmas in their own world. (Annabelle is too bossy, and Ray's stomach is much stronger than his will power, successfully tempting him to spend hard-earned money on food in stead of on the class gift.) Their parents' problems are timtimely, offering a re freshing change from the familiar two- car, four-bedroom family of much con temporary fiction. For too long, Cleary's Henry Higgins and Ramona Quimby stood alone in fiction for early readers as real people whose lives in cluded ups and downs made memorable by the author's voice and insight. It is good to find their company increasing, joined in recent years by Johanna Hur witz' Aldo and Russell (Morrow); Ann Cameron's Julian (Knopf); and Chris tine McDonnell's Leo, Ivy, and Emily (Viking). Welcome to the crowd, Herbie Jones. Dudley B. Carlson, Princeton Public Library, N.J.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.