Written by Avi
Published by Sandpiper, 2003
ISBN 9780152046996

So many children rejoice when summer comes or it is Saturday again because they don’t have to go to school. The children from the village of Elk Valley, Colorado are different.

When their teacher suddenly leaves in the middle of the year and the school board locks the doors on their one-room schoolhouse, they take matters into their own hands. If they don’t take their end of year exams they can’t move on to the next grade, and Ida Bidson is the smartest girl in their class. Couldn’t she be their teacher?

Avi has written many historical novels including Crispin: the Cross of Lead and Beyond the Western Sea, and The Secret School is a great addition to this collection. “I’ve long been fascinated by one-room schoolhouses,” he writes on his website. “One of the things that interests me … is how older students helped the younger ones learn, and how the schools often functioned as a large family, and were often the social center of a whole area.”

When an author writes about something he or she is passionate about that passion shines through creating an engaging story like The Secret School. This would make a good classroom read aloud.

—Heidi Håvan Grosch, educator and children’s literature enthusiast