Book: Sharon Creech. Heartbeat. New York: Scholastic Inc., 2004. Awards: · Amazon.com Customers’ Favorite ·#1 Book Sense Children’s Pick ·Publishers WeeklyBest Book ·School Library JournalBest Book ·ChildMagazine Best Book ·PeopleMagazine Best Kids’ Book ·iParenting Media Award ·New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age ·New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing Genre: Verse novel/poetry, realistic fiction. Summary: In this book, Annie is a twelve-year old who loves to run. She runs, runs and runs some more. The loves the rhythm of running; but things soon begin to change. It seems like nothing is staying the same. Her grandpa is losing his memory, her mom is pregnant with an alien-baby and Max, her best friend, is always moody. Her life is changing as much as the apple that she is assigned to draw every day is changing. Although it takes her awhile to understand and cope with the many changes, everything works okay for Annie, her family and Annie's friendship with Max. Audience: I would use this book with grades 3 through 6 depending on the students' reading levels. Themes: Change is a major theme in this book. This is an important one to discuss with students because everyone experiences change at some point in life and children should learn how to deal with it. Annie has a lot of changes happening at once and she copes with it by running. She also kind of gets in a fight with her best friend as well because she is stressed and trying to understand everything. This would be great to talk about with students. Another theme in this book is friendship. Throughout the book, her friendship with Max is somewhat of a roller coaster. She gets upset with him because he didn't appreciate her but then he something for Annie in return. The ups and downs of friendships would be another great topic for discussion. Students can talk about working through arguments with friends and how it takes work to have friends and to be a good friend. You could go many way with this theme. Evidence: “And what did I think when I was small and why did I forget? And what else will I forget when I grow older? And if you forget is it as if it never happened? Will none of the things you saw or thought or dreamed matter?” This quote is interesting because it really shows how mature Annie is. She has many thoughts that many kids her age don't. She enjoys and dislikes things much different than her peers. Knowing this helps us understand her character better. “Am I supposed to do something important? It doesn't seem enough to merely take up space on this planet in this country in this state in this town in this family.” I really like this quote because I think everyone asks themselves questions like this at some point in their lives. This would be a good one to have a discussion about. It really brings out a "coming of age" theme. Connections: You could do many things with this book. There are social skills, creative writing and art that you could easily incorporate. An art project would be great to do with students like the apple project that Annie did. There are TONS of opportunities to do with poetry since this book is written as a poem. Students could write their own poems about their life. Students could also do numerous writing activities with this book. You could also incorporate other books written as poems. Reactions: Personally, I really enjoyed this book. I have never read a book in poetry but I really liked the style. It was much easier and lighter to read and I think that is appealing to students. I thought the themes were great and very age-appropriate. I would love to read some other books by Sharon Creech. I would definitely use this in my own classroom. My practicum teacher used it in literature circles and the girls loved it. Reception: "I was really touched by this short novel written in verse. I find it amazing that I could know the characters so well with such sparse language." So true! "This book was okay but not my favorite. I liked the way it was written because it's different and interesting. However, I thought that it was a little boring at some parts and could've had more to the story line." Hyperlinks: Scholastic Author Page