Rules

I am reading yet another young adult fiction. I 'say" I read these for my 5th graders to see if I would want to use it for a read aloud, but I REALLY love them too! I especially love this one. "Rules" by Cynthia Lord. I already have a great plan for how I will use this with my students:) I haven't finished it yet, but I love this paragraph in the book:

The little girl, Catharine, has a younger brother who is autistic. All throughout the book she has rules for him because she gets embarressed by the way he acts in public. Every Tues. and Thurs. they go for his Occupational Therapy appointment. As Catharine waits with her mom she meets Jason. He is a severely handicapped young man who can only communicate with word cards. He points to the word to answer the question. The problem is that his mom won't make him anymore word cards b/c she doesn't think he needs them. Catharine offers one day to take some of the blank word cards home and make him some new words that he can use. Here is her battle as she tries to pick the words!

"There's a gazillion words and phrases I could choose, and none of them seem worth one of my two last cards. So I push the blank cards aside and draw pictures for the others. Drawing a guinea pig is easy. I sketch an oval, fat and compact add black eyes, tiny rounded ears, tucked-under feet, and a mess of every-which-way hair. A furry baked potato.

The other words are harder. What does "awesome" look like? A smiley face? A sunrise? A double hot-fudge sundae?"

I love this! Catharine only has 7 blank cards so she has to choose 7 words. Her battle to pick these words or phrases is so fun to read! I don't know about having 7 but here are just a few words/phrases I think I would choose: 1. I love you. 2. Hey y'all! 3. How fun! 4. Beautiful.

What words/phrases would you choose?