Southwest Children's  Literature

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Stargirl

Letter to Listening Library:

June 5, 2006

Listening Library
c/o Random House Audio Publishing Group
1745 Broadway
New York, NY 10019

Dear Sir or Madame:

My name is Aimee Rogers. I teach special education English at Cienega High School in Vail, Arizona. My students have a wide range of abilities, both academic and non-academic. The majority of my students are classified as having a specific learning disability and struggle with reading and writing. As a result of these struggles, in reading and writing, I have chosen to read aloud young adult novels to my students. I have found that listening to recorded books is more effective than me reading aloud to my students because the professional reader/actor is more dramatic than myself.

My Freshmen Adaptive English class thoroughly enjoyed listening to Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. The novel is fantastic and highlights many of the difficult social issues prevalent during the high school years. The Listening Library recorded book, read by John Ritter, grabbed my students' attention and held it to the last sentence. As the book is set in a fictional Arizona town my students could vividly picture the scenery described in the book as the same scenery could be seen outside our classroom window.

However, as we listened we noticed that two examples of Arizona flora were mispronounced. These were saguaro, the famous Southern Arizona cactus, and ocotillo, a striking desert plant that shoots up in skinny tendrils towards the sky. My students were shocked and thrilled to discover this mispronunciation. As a class we decided to write business letters to you, the producers of this recorded book, to inform you of this mistake. The assignment was a great, real-world opportunity to practice our business letter writing skills. I hope that you enjoy reading my students' letters. Perhaps our letters can be the catalyst for correcting the mispronunciations in Stargirl.

Sincerely,

Aimee Rogers
c/o Cienega High School
12775 E. Mary Ann Cleveland Way
Vail, AZ 85641

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