Book Review: One Word From Sophia

One Word From Sophia

By Jim Averbeck and Yasmeen Ismail

Summary: Sophia is a passionate young person who really wants her One True Desire for her birthday. She spends the book trying out different tactics (graphs, word choice, surveys etc.) to persuade her family members to get her, her wish. We love that she is multi-ethnic (!!!) and that this is represented in the different family members she goes to speak to throughout the book. Sophia is also hilarious and always makes us laugh (teachers and students). Be warned, there is a line about poop, this is pretty much a guaranteed giggle. We also love the sophisticated vocabulary that this book employs-- many of our students feel inspired to elevate their language after this read aloud!

Questions/conversations with students:

• We go over vocabulary in this text

• We go over her strategies, explicitly noting her thoughtful use of graphs, charts (whenever we can celebrate and point to a girl loving and using STEAM, we do)

• We talk about audience and crafting arguments for a specific audience

• This text can be used for a conversation about families, too, but we actually like that we don't need to with this one, and that her family isn't something we are 'confused' about

• We remind students that good manners can never hurt!

How we use it: We use this book as a second mini-lesson supporting the introduction of our Persuasive Essays unit. It works beautifully as a source for noting what is and is not successful in the craft of persuasion. It also gets our students excited to think about audience. We all come out of the lesson (and adventure for a One True Desire) feeling much more strategic in our quest to be persuasive!

Sophia trying to persuade her uncle with a "compelling pie chart!"

We hope you enjoy this book, if you haven't checked it out already--  it really is a fun one!

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