Big Nate Fever

You know a book is getting some good press within a school when the hold queue is 32 students! Big Nate Fever has definitely hit ISB, and the word is spreading fast. It's similar in format to Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which is why it's making kids just nuts with excitement.

When I went online to find out more about Big Nate, I discovered that the website has the first 42 pages of the first book online for free. I was showing the site to a group of 4th graders the other day, and I read them the first few pages aloud from the computer. We were all laughing and having such a good time that I realized I didn't want to continue with my planned Destiny Quest lesson. Instead, we postponed that lesson until next week and spent our time reading the first few chapters at computers and then taking a few minutes at the end to play the games.

My biggest Big Nate lesson: taking the time to honor where kids are at the moment. There was such genuine excitement about the book that it felt very liberating for me as a teacher to honor that excitement and postpone my planned lesson.

Then I knew I had to get to the bookstore to pick up some extra copies of the book. 32 holds means that some kids won't ever get the book!