One Book, One Community: Wishtree

We are so excited about the launch of Lincoln-Eliot’s One Book, One Community initiative, and we want to especially thank Jeanne Conley, L-E’s Literacy Specialist, for her amazing work putting this together!  Over the next month, everyone in our school will be reading Wishtree, by Newbery Medal-winning author Katherine Applegate.

We hope you’ll take a moment to check out the L-E Wishtree website the literacy team has put together, which is also where you can find the daily read-alouds.  (If you have trouble accessing them, please try logging in as your student!)

Thanks to support from the PTO and Frugal Bookstore, each family in the school has received a copy of the book.  Over the next few weeks, students will be listening to a few chapters a day, read aloud by members of our teaching community.   As a reminder, please only read or listen to the chapters for that day — don’t read ahead, so we can all experience the book together!

Highlights of the initiative:

L-E wishtree website

* Listening to chapters read by members of our teaching community each day

* Watching the bulletin board change each day (pictures are linked on the google site daily)

* Creating our own Lincoln-Eliot Wishtree right outside of our school in May

We hope you all enjoy the book!  Happy reading!

Trees can’t tell jokes, but they can certainly tell stories. . . .

Red is an oak tree who is many rings old.  Red is the neighborhood “wishtree“—people write their wishes on pieces of cloth and tie them to Red’s branches.  Along with her crow friend Bongo and other animals who seek refuge in Red’s hollows, this “wishtree” watches over the neighborhood.

You might say Red has seen it all.  Until a new family moves in.  Not everyone is welcoming, and Red’s experiences as a wishtree are more important than ever.

Funny, deep, warm, and nuanced, this is Katherine Applegate at her very best—writing from the heart, and from a completely unexpected point of view.