Muggie+Maggie

Stephanie Farrell = Muggie Maggie = Author: Beverly Cleary Illustrator: Alan Tiegreen Publisher: Scholastic, Inc: First Scholastic printing New York, NY Best for ages: Third grade and up  ISBN: 0-439-14805-7 ** Summary: ** This book is about a girl named Maggie Schultz in the third grade whose teacher, Mrs. Leeper, is teaching the class how to write cursive. Maggie never felt the need to learn cursive and she always believed that it was pointless to learn because she never thought she would use it in her life. When she found out she was learning cursive she expressed to her parents that she was upset but they just laughed at her and told her the reason she has to learn it is because everyone has to learn it. When Mrs. Leeper teaches the class cursive, she explains to them that writing cursive is similar to riding a roller coaster; there are many ups and downs in the letters. When Mrs. Leeper sees Maggie’s work, she suggests Maggie stays after school to get help with her cursive but Maggie does everything she can to avoid learning cursive. The principal and the school psychologist even have a talk with her, and all says to him was that she doesn’t want to learn it. One day Maggie tries to practice her name in cursive but it looks like ‘Muggie’ instead of ‘Maggie’ so her classmates begin to call her ‘Muggie Maggie.’ Mrs. Leeper then assigns Maggie the class messenger and teased by her classmates because they believe the only reason Mrs. Leeper chose her to be the messenger was because she writes messages in cursive, and Maggie can’t read cursive so she won’t be able to peek at the messages. Maggie tried hard to read the messages that Mrs. Leeper and the principal are passing back and forth, and one day she looked long and hard enough to see that they had wrote her name in one of the messages. She was so determined to learn cursive that she studied all the cursive at home she can possibly find on grocery lists and notes that her parents wrote. Soon enough, Mrs. Leeper saw Maggie reading cursive on the board and her next letter to the principal was how she discovered that Maggie could finally read cursive. Maggie finally learned that Mrs. Leeper chose her to be the messenger because that was her way of teaching Maggie to read and write cursive. So all along, Mrs. Leeper was helping Maggie and she was able to finally learn cursive after all, and the final page of the story shows Maggie’s letter, written in cursive, telling the class bully to leave her alone and stop bullying her. Maggie was able to learn to read and write cursive after all, thanks to Mrs. Leeper for assigning her to be the class messenger.

**Author Biography:**  Beverly Cleary is a popular American author and is still alive today at the age of 96 years old. She was born in Oregon & lived on a small farm until the age of six. After that she moved to Portland. Just after third grade, her teacher recommended that she became a librarian and she did follow this idea and become a librarian after college. She has written many popular books including The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Dear Mr. Henshaw, and Ralph S. Mouse. She has earned many prestigious awards over many generations including ‘The American Library Association’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Award,’ ‘The John Newberry Medal’ and many of her books have been certified as ‘Newberry Honor Books.’

**Review of the book:**  I enjoyed reading this book and I think it is an excellent book to read in the classroom because it is a good way to teach students that learning certain concepts and ideas in school are important because they will be beneficial in the future. For example, Maggie discovered that her parents still wrote in cursive even as adults, her father wrote letters for work in cursive and her mother wrote grocery lists in cursive. Students should learn from this book that learning things at a young age can be beneficial to them in the future, even if it is something as simple as learning cursive. I would definitely recommend this book to any teacher or parent who is working with a child who is struggling to master tasks in an important subject academically. Maggie was determined to accomplish the goal of learning to write cursive when s he saw that’s all her teacher was writing. It is important that a child reads this to learn that you can do anything you put your mind to and if you take the time to master skills in that area you will eventually succeed. Maggie didn’t accomplish cursive right away but with much practice and many times of writing letters over and over, she eventually wrote a note in cursive all by herself.

**Analysis of Literary Element:**  The character development in this story is an important element to analyze. Throughout the story, we see Maggie grow as both a reader and writer and half the time she doesn’t even realize that she developing her skills academically. Although at first she turned away from learning cursive and she even told her mom “I’m not going to write cursive, and nobody can make me. So there.” (Cleary p 9.) But when Maggie is assigned to be the class messenger, she realizes that all teachers do is write cursive and she has to find some way to learn it. She finds any way she can to learn it even though her stubbornness and reluctance to write gets the best of her at many times in the story. She eventually finds herself reading her mother’s grocery lists in cursive and critiquing her father’s signature in cursive. She grows as a student because she learned to master a skill that she always dreading doing in the past and found pointless to do. She shows that it may take more than one time to master a specific skill or certain task, but if you put your mind to something that you truly believe you can do then you will succeed. She even grows as a character because one of her biggest accomplishments was when she was able to write her own letter in cursive to the boy in class who bullied her saying “You stop pushing the table into my stomick. Sincerely, Maggie” (Cleary p. 70) This element is very good to portray in the story and is significant to students who read this story at an early age will learn an important lesson about mastering goals and skills that are useful throughout both not only their school careers, but throughout life as well. Students should learn that if they put their mind to something and try to accomplish specific goals they definitely will do it but it takes both time and practice. Maggie learned this with reading and writing cursive because for the longest time she was never going to do it. However she eventually realized she had to because that’s what her teacher had done so she found ways both in school and at home to successfully read and write cursive. Just as Maggie did, every student who reads this book can learn an important lesson and if you put your mind to something you will eventually succeed and can master any task you’re willing to learn.

** Other Links to Explore: ** [|To find out more about Beverly Cleary, Click Here!] [|To find some excellent lesson plans on this book, Click Here!]