Season 5 Episode #26 Stacy's Extraordinary Words Book Review

Can a love for words transform your life? Join me as I highlight the incredible journey of Stacey Abrams through her autobiographical gem, "Stacey's Extraordinary Words," beautifully illustrated by Kit Thomas. From the enchantment of discovering new words like "ptarmigan" to the challenges of facing bullies, Stacey shares how her passion for vocabulary became her greatest ally. We'll traverse her childhood memories, celebrating the power of words to bring comfort, confidence, and resilience. Through her story, you'll gain valuable insights on how to make vocabulary learning both fun and impactful for young minds.

Discover how Stacey's experiences with words can be a resource for educators and parents aiming to inspire young readers. On this episode of the Cultural Curriculum Chat Podcast, I'll share practical tips on introducing new vocabulary in an engaging way, reminiscent of Stacey's own methods. Hear about how words can become close companions and tools for overcoming adversity, just as they did for a young Stacey in her school spelling bee. This episode promises a heartfelt and enriching conversation that underscores the magic of language and the importance of persistence. Tune in and let Stacey's extraordinary words inspire you and your students.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:20

P-E-R-S-E-V-E-R-A-N-C-E. What does that spell? An amazing book. I can't wait to show this book to you today. Friends, hello, if you are new here to the Cultural Curriculum Chat Podcast and Mrs Edmonds' Cultural Corner, I'm your host, jeba Edmonds, and I'm excited to share with you the plethora of vocabulary words your students don't want to miss on Stacey's Extraordinary Words. Written by three-time New York bestseller and former Georgia House of Representatives, stacey Abrams, and illustrated by Kit Thomas, this book is amazing. It talks about an autobiographical book, I might add, about Stacey Abrams.

Speaker 1: 1:11

When she was younger, she loved books and the neat thing that Stacey shares is her love of books, her love of reading. She loved how books and stories and words made her feel. She loved finding new words in the dictionary and, for example, she said when she would look up a word and I quote, the word came to her with like little secrets. She said words like this makes me always want to say the P in front, but the P is silent. Ptarmigan, which is a bird that lives in the cold northern regions or where the strong eye Stacey loved words. That's even the first sentence of this book, and you're going to learn about Stacey's love of words by reading all of these interesting words that she has to share. She talks about words that come alive. She says they're like finding a new friend and you're going to read words like persnickety. And how she describes how the words made her feel is also really sweet and you get to walk through how she would write new words that she found in a special notebook. This brings me back when I taught with my writer's workshop and we would do vocabulary words in my classroom in first and fifth grade. We would find new words and draw and illustrate what the word meant. We would also make poems from the words that we found and work on our spelling words and learning how it would fit into context of thought, and this book is a great example of that. I would definitely use this book as an intro to new words. I would use this book of how words.

Speaker 1: 3:08

You know this character in this book, stacy, would take words and put it into use and into play. She talked about how she felt different. She felt othered. So many of our students can resonate with that feeling and I loved how Stacy talked about how she would sit by herself during recess. She talked about how she would stay awake at night and the words would tuck her in. She talked about how she found a new class and her new teacher saw her love of words and wanted her to join in their school spelling bee. And the cutest thing about it. When she said spelling bee she thought Hmm, an intelligent insect. I thought that was cute. But she talked about what a spelling bee meant and how she felt confident with her love of words that Mrs Blakeslee put her in the contest.

Speaker 1: 4:09

But it also talks about in this book the conflict of a bully and how this particular bully also knew a lot of words but he didn't use his words in a positive way. He uses words to hurt and another way of showing how a person can affect the whole behavior and feelings of others. It talks about in this book Jake, who was her competitor in the spelling bee, and how he made students in their classroom cry and tease students by having even an accent and how she felt that a student that had an accent knew two different sets of languages and how wonderful and cool that was. She goes through words in each of the pages like monotonous and torturous and you know words that you, as a teacher, could have on your board and write those words down and have students be investigators and saying, okay, when we're done with this story, we're going to investigate what these words mean, and that also keeps your students engaged in trying to figure out. Okay, I found a new word, I'm a word detective. You know anything? We could keep our students in tuned by following along with the plot of the story, but also in tune by finding new words to investigate and learn from. The story goes on about how the love of her mother and encouragement got her on stage and also doing her best and trying her best, no matter what the outcome.

Speaker 1: 5:53

Now I don't want to give away too much, but I want you to get this book and share it with a student who has a love of words, share it with a teacher who wants to fulfill and beef up their ELA strategies. And I love that word P E R S, e V E R A N C? E perseverance. That is the overall theme of this story of not giving up and if you fail, it's okay. You can always succumb to greatness in other means and going back again and challenging yourself again, and that's how we, as educators, can be the facilitators of being a problem solver in our students that Stacey has shown of stepping out of her comfort zone in this story and persevering and doing things above and beyond.

Speaker 1: 6:58

I also want to challenge you educators to have your students read and understand who Stacey Abrams is. She has done a lot of things for the state of Georgia and I know she is going to go far, and it was really neat reading an autobiographical book from her perspective in elementary school that I know your students will love as well. Now, if you like this episode, be sure to follow this channel, mrs Edmonds Cultural Corner and the Culture Curriculum Chat Podcast, for more book reviews. And if you like more book reviews, follow along, binge back and repeat in here all of the episodes that I have of over 50 different titles that I've shown on my podcast and YouTube channel. Trust me, I've got some real gems as well, so don't forget to spell your way to more episodes on the Cultural Curriculum Chat podcast and Mrs Edmonds Cultural Corner. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.