Snag Your Copy A Drop Of Hope Created By Keith Calabrese Readily Available As Interactive EBook

amp HOPEful story perfect timing. I only read this book because my schools English department wanted to do a Zoomrecorded read aloud for our students during the stayathomeCOVIDpandemic, changing staff readers every few chapters.
I read aloudamp. Fell in love with the creative and original story, سه و هفتاد و پنج.
اگر به من باشه به عنوان فریتیل دستهبندیش میکنم.
خیلی داستان شیرینی بود به معنی واقعی کلمه. از این داستانایی که تقریبا همهچیز توش به خوبی و خوشی پیش میره. داستانای پشمک و آبنبات چوبی و اسبای تکشاخ البته نه به معنی واقعی کلمه چون ژانر کتاب رئاله تا جایی که میدونم و خبری از این چیزا نیست توش. ولی خب همچین حسی داره.
در کل چیز جالبی بود خوشمان آمد. اما خب بینظیر و محشر نبود. Many characters interwoven with hope, Grades. Like so many other small towns, Cliffs Donnelly, Ohio, has fallen on hard times, And the times look to be worsening as one of the industries that is providing jobs for many of the citizens seems to be in trouble too.
When the students in Mr, Earle's sixth grade class at Rod Serling Middle Schoollove that name!hear his story about Thompkins Well, at least one of them wonders if it's true that the well grants wishes.
That boy, Ernest Wilmette, is a believer, When he and Ryan Hardy, a classmate who tolerates him but isn't really a friend, happen to be at the bottom of the well when various individuals pass by and make their wishes, they have different reactions to those wishes.
Somehow, the contents of Ernest's grandfather's attic tie in with these wishes, Readers will love how the various characters and stories interlock and how Ernest's determination never flags, even when Ryan turns on.
There are all sorts of twists and turns and surprises in the book, and I finished it with a feeling of relief that there are still folks like Ernest out there.
Perhaps he has the makings of a teacher as does Ryan, who notes, "You can't fix the world.
But you do your best in your own little corner of it, And you hope" p Yes, that's what teachers do every day, Although the characters never find out all the dots are connected and various events happen, readers do, which makes reading the story even more enjoyable.
I also liked this passage from Mr, Earle: "'Our stories are a shared history, a way to relate to each other, Even if they are makebelieve'" p,. Despite the fact that sometimes time seemed conflated and I wasn't always sure how much time had passed from one event to the next, I thoroughly enjoyed this story, partly because of Lizzy MacComber, one of the sixth graders, who is struggling with her looks due to her aunt and cousin's constant remarks belittling her and her mother and unrelenting efforts to give her makeovers.
Our classrooms are filled with girls and boys like Lizzy, unsure about their identity and looks because of what others say about them and for whom being seen as smart suddenly isn't as important as being seen as pretty.
Don't worry, Readers, Lizzy learns the error of her ways and finally stands up for herself in one of my favorite parts of the book.
And oh, my, oh, my, Tommy Bricks, and his story! There are all sorts of little treats and characters like him and little nuances about characters that will leave readers hopeful that individuals can change and there is reason to hope for a bright future.
This is an upbeat, mostly fun as you might suspect from the title book that looks at a community through several middle schoolers' experiences.
The story is welltold and easy to follow, I kept wondering, as I read it, how the author slipped in scenes from peripheral characters that enhanced the plot without disrupting the flow of the narrative or the connection with the main characters, then I read the author description on the back cover and found out that he is a screenwriter so no wonder the strategy worked so welljust like in the movies.

I was reminded of the Newbery winner 'Hello, Universe' because the tropes of the characters were similar, especially the 'bully' character although this book goes into more backstory on him.
The home situation that the bully comes from is dismal and includes neglect and abuse such that one has to really stretch to see as a hopeful situation at the A Drop of Hope's close I do have a bias about this because I am a child psychiatrist and have seen so many of these circumstances without feeling that there was much hope there.
The abuse is quite graphic in a way that a middle grade book is usually not,
Still, I would recommend it to most kids with the caveat that there is content that a parent may need to help their child with, perhaps by talking about how some children/people endure difficult experiences and survive with the support of a caring community.
We are reading "A Drop of Hope" by Keith Calabrese this month for Chapter and Verse Book Club as a possible contender for the Newbery Medal.
This lovely book definitely has many of the qualities of a Newbery contender,

Teacher extraordinaire, Mr, Earle, discusses folklore "the collected myths or stories of a particular area" p,with his sixth grade students, In the course of this wonderful discussion, he tells them about the local the story takes place in the small town of Cliffs Donnelly legend of Thompkins Well.
He says, "'the legend dates back to the early's, A local merchant named Ezekiel Thompkins went to the well and threw in a coin, His infant grandson was very sick and wasn't expected to live through the night, The old man wished for death to take him instead and spare the child, He then went home and died that night in his sleep, The baby recovered and the legend of Thomskins Well was born, '" p.This sparks his students' interest and gets them talking and thinking, Soon after, two of his students Ernest and Ryan accidentally stumble upon a cave that ends up leading them to the bottom of Thompkins Well.
While exploring the cave, the two intercept the wishes of several classmates, and eventually members of the community.
With the help of items Ernest finds in the attic that his grandfather asked him, before he died, to clean out, he is determined to grant the wishes he has intercepted.
We learn from these beautiful children about ", . . the enduring power not to mention cumulative effect of small kindnesses, " from the Acknowledgements

Things that stood out for me:

, Calabrese does not dumb down anything for his intended readers, The language is very sophisticated and will challenge some readers, The book reminiscent of the writing of Kate DiCamillo in this regard, And, like DiCamillo, Calabrese uses stunning, just right language and imagery,

an example of the sophisticated language found in the novel p,, "Lizzy certainly didn't want to be anyone's project, and she realized that the whole idea was really just a thinly veiled way for her aunt and cousin to openly pick her apart in the guise of constructive criticism.
"
readers will find terms like "xenophobia," "itinerant," "pulverized," "conviction," "irony," "metaphor," "deluge," "liberated," "surly," "switchbacking," "gauge," "pummeling," "unison," "subjugated," "doppelganger," "mortgage," "riveted,""deflated," "precarious," "repulsive," "shrewd,""resolved," "conspiratorial," "debunk," "scapegoat," "converged," and "notoriously"many of these terms are explicitly defined within the text and can easily be figured out through context

.
The reader needs to pay close attention to all of the threads and connections here, However,

Calabrese handles this masterfully in the book, Every single loose end is tied up by the A Drop of Hope's end, The book is a wonderful mix of realistic fiction, mystery, and for you to decide magic!

.
The author develops MANY nuanced, interesting, diverse characters, The three protagonists, in particular, have interesting story arcs, Each of them has his or her OWN secrets and worries, yet they work to help others.
The reader sees that there is so much more to an individual than what we see on the surface.


. There are so many wonderful and unique themes here, most importantly, the idea of our interconnectedness, Even the smallest of actions can have farreaching consequences, I like to believe that if our actions are coupled with good intent, those consequences will be positive, even life changing.
They certainly were in "A Drop of Hope, " Other themes of note:

loss
openness and honesty
dreams
regret the town is nicknamed "If Only" symbolized by a decaying road sign
the decay of industry and related jobs in the United Stated
fear
classism
bullying "Adults always say to stand up to bullies.
The implication being that if you stand up to a bully, the bully will back down, Ernest thought about this morning's Council and realized now that this, too was a fairy tale of a kind.
You don't stand up to a bully to mane him back down, You stand up to him because, maybe, if you're lucky, he'll decide that beating you up is too much hassle and move on to someone else.
You stand up to him because it's worse not to, Which is a different truth entirely, " p.
fitting in
anger
child abuse
the feeling of being looked down upon
feeling sorry for others
expectations "When everyone expects the worst from you, sooner or later you're going to give it to them.
" p.
abandonment
escape
wishes "When a person considers what they would wish for, it can teach them a little something about themselves.
Something a person may not want to learn, " p.
being unkind to others ", . . when you hear people say something unkind about you enough times, even though you know it's not true, you still have a hard time not believing it.
" p."'It's not what they call you it's what you answer to, '" p.
helping others " when you save a person's life, you then become responsible for that life, . . " p.
physical beauty versus internal beauty
mistakes "There's a special moment that everyone experiences from time to time.
A brief instant when you realize, too late to stop it, that you're in the process of making a really stupid mistake.
" p.
"Magic! Magic, magic, magic!" p,
PTSD
"'When in doubt, the harder choice is usually the right one, '" p.
resilience
the importance of adult role models
yellow journalism versus the truth so timely "'Truth.
. . There is no truth. There's just the story: The story that people hear first, the story they hear most, and the story they like best.
If you can get two out of those three to be your story, that becomes the truth.
'" p.
" the strongest friendships are often based on the little things, " p.
activism
miracles
"Stories bind us together they connect us, Out stories are a shared history, a way to relate to each other, Even if they are makebelieve, " p.
"You can't fix the world, But you do your best in your own little corner of it, And you hope. " p.

Highly recommended, especially for smart, precocious readers! Gradesup through adults!,