An Absolutely True Tale of Gooney Bird Greene

This is an absolutely true tale, I tell completely true stories. Always!

Kittens adore their humans. That’s the way it is in my house. They jump up on you and curl up with you when you sleep. They demand your attention. But what if I tell you that my brand new kitten only likes my dog. The only way I can touch my kitten is if she is in the shadow of a large Labrador. His smell, his shelter, his nurturing—these seem to be all the more that she wants. She spends her hours chasing him and if she catches him she nuzzles and purrs as if to weave a spell around him. Perhaps he’ll not run away if she purrs loudly. I’m not blessed with those purrs. If she escapes out into the back yard it must be to be around him. If we can’t find her, he will. To this day, after one and 1/3 years with us she prefers a 100-pound dog over me. However, she has begun to curl up on my lap, but only in his presence.

This rendition pales in comparison to the stories that Gooney Bird Greene and author Lois Lowry tell to Gooney's new second grade classmates.

Gooney Bird Greene, the rather eclectic, charming, and very precocious new second grader in Mrs. Pidgeon’s class has won the imaginations of her fellow classmates, and her teacher.

Gooney Bird Greene walks into the classroom and on her very first day proclaims, ”I just moved here from China. I want a desk right smack in the middle of the room, because I like to be right smack in the middle of everything.” Dressed in exotic clothing she can’t help but get attention, and somehow she ends up in the middle of everything.

Gooney Bird Greene by Lois Lowry
This is a tale of a story-telling girl, one with a rich imagination and knowledge of how to turn a few words to inspire creativity. The class discovers she has a talent for telling tales that are always, ”absolutely true tales” This is a story of a classroom that’s consumed by her story-telling skills. This is also about a teacher who is encouraging a lesson on how to tell a story. What luck!

Somehow I doubt that there is a second grader out there quite this capable with the language and story structure, but it’s a fiction book and Gooney Bird Greene is an admirable character (also unique character) for students to look up to. She’s unusually familiar with how a teacher should manage a classroom. But, hey, this is a fiction book intended for younger readers and audiences. It is also surprisingly well written.

Young, well-traveled, and imaginative Gooney Bird Greene proceeds to tell stories of meeting a prince, of her cat being consumed by a cow, directing a symphony orchestra, and most importantly, being named Gooney Bird. Along the way she drops a few hints about telling stories. The story about the cow and her cat, Catman, might sound familiar. It seems Catman became infatuated with the cow and, well, the story proceeds sort of like the one of my cat and dog.

Mrs. Pidgeon starts on Gooney Bird Greene’s first day initiating a lesson with her second grade class on, of all things, telling stories and identifying the parts of a good story. When the class is stuck in the I-don’t-know mode she prompts and they come up with the Beginning, Middle, and End. Before much longer Gooney Bird is encouraged to tell a story and she tells with the finesse of the best storytellers. She builds suspense. She creates cliff-hangers. She develops stories with a surprising high level of sophistication, but that appears to be the style of Miss Gooney Bird Greene.

After several weeks she’s done. She has no more stories to tell. What do you think the students have learned? Does the fun end here? I doubt it, and so must you.

About Gooney Bird Greene
Author Lois Lowry, a two-time Newberry Award Winner, turns her talents toward a younger audience. Lucky them. I’ve read some of her books, but they were actually designed for fifth and sixth grade students and I wasn’t certain how she was going to appeal to this younger audience. While the students in this book are in second grade, older students will enjoy certain aspects of this fun book. Of course fifth grade students don’t want to read about second grade events, however, Gooney Bird Greene has other values. This book came out after I left the classroom, but had it not, I would have used it. My students were struggling with story structure, how to develop characters and build suspense; they were not certain of the order or how to use their characters. If you learned nothing else from this book you learned how to create a story (and laugh at some). Little Gooney Bird Greene rocked on story telling.

As an Adult Reading this Book
This was recommended to me by someone who knew I enjoy spinning an occasional tale (not my dog’s tail and not the truth—-my tales are almost absolutely true). There was a time I spent many evenings with fifth grade students creating stories and weaving various tales together to see what might walk out. My friend said this book would make me laugh. She was right.

Have you ever worked with first or second grade students, not one or two, but 15 or 20 at time? What happens when you say my dog is a black poodle and he blah, blah, blah. The kids hear nothing beyond the black poodle and every hand pops up wanting to tell about their poodle, their grandmother’s poodle, their dog, their black cat, their grandmother and so on. This happened in the classroom several times demonstrating the possibility of so many potential stories.

My friend got this book for her second grade daughter, to read to her daughter’s class, and to share with her daughter’s teacher. But, she had to share it with me first. Thank you.

It’s a fast read for adults, 88 pages and relatively large font appropriate for young readers. Each chapter has an illustration of Gooney Bird’s most outrageous outfit for the day. She is as colorful as her stories. (She likes to dress for her stories.) I especially liked her cat and cow outfit. There is no doubt that this book is written for young readers. Some second grade students can read it, but I suspect it’s most appropriate for the average third grade reader but second grade listener. There will still be some dictionary time, but that’s part of the reading exercise.

By the end of the book, this classroom is full of second-graders under the influence of Gooney Bird Greene, but also under the story-creating spell.

My Recommendations
Find it, read it, share it, take it to a second grade classroom to read, find a first or second grade student to read it to. This is a charming, inspiring, creative book from an excellent pair of storytellers.

More on Gooney Bird Greene appears in Gooney Bird and the Room Mother