Ralph Fletcher

"What happens when a sixth-grade class is left unsupervised for a whole day?...A story that is by turns sad, poignant, and funny . . . absorbing." —Booklist (starred review)
Mr. Fabiano—aka "Mr. Fab"—is popular with his sixth-grade students, but today a substitute is covering his class. Except the substitute never shows up. Instead of reporting the situation, they decide to prove they can run the class by themselves. With...

Humorous story about a boy's adjustment to new surroundings and kids in a new school. Packed with fascinating facts about spiders, the story is told through journal entries and scenes of events. Contains a spider bibliography.

Unlock the secret to being a writer! Turn to this practical and enjoyable guide by the bestselling author of A Writer's Notebook and the ALA Notable Book Fig Pudding. Surprise! There is no secret to being a writer. But there is a process. Good writing isn't forged by magic or hatched out of thin air. Good writing happens when you follow certain steps to take control of your sentences-to make your words do what you want them to do. This book lifts...

A practical guide to demystify the process of writing poetry, by the bestselling author of A Writer's Notebook and the ALA Notable Book Fig Pudding. Poetry matters. At the most important moments, when everyone else is silent, poetry rises to speak. This book is full of practical wisdom to help young writers craft beautiful poetry that shines, sings, and soars. It features writing tips and tricks, interviews with published poets for children, and...

Will the real Rowan Pohi please stand? To dispel boredom while waiting for tenth grade to begin, Bobby and his friends create an imaginary kid named Rowan Pohi (that's IHOP backwards) and apply to the prestigious Whitestone Prep in Rowan's name. When, surprisingly, Rowan's application is accepted, Bobby impulsively reinvents himself as Rowan and embarks on an edgy life of deception in the rarefied world of Whitestone. Told with Ralph Fletcher's trademark...

A practical guide for how to make your writing come alive, by the bestselling author of A Writer's Notebook and the ALA Notable Book Fig Pudding. What is "live writing"? It's the kind of writing that has a current running through it-energy, electricity, juice. This book is a young writer's toolbox for bringing writing to life. But instead of awls and hammers, this toolbox contains words, imagination, a love of books, a sense of story, and ideas for...

Ralph is content in his simple life in Marshfield, Massachusetts, but when his father tells him that the family must move to Chicago for his new job, Ralph worries about what it will feel like to leave so many of his favorite people, places, and things behind. The colorful boyhood of a popular author comes to life in this personal account.

In his groundbreaking book, Boy Writers: Reclaiming Their Voices, Ralph Fletcher took an expedition into the murky and sometimes dangerous world of boys and writing. Ralph's new video, Dude, listen to this! explores the issue face-to-face as he meets with a group of boys who voluntarily give up recess time each week to meet and talk about their writing. Dude, listen to this! thoughtfully examines the exuberance, sly humour, and surprising sensitivity...

You can read books or attend workshops about how to teach writing, but there's no substitute for seeing master teachers put ideas into practice with real kids. When students write takes us into the classrooms at Bailey's Elementary School in the outskirts of Washington, DC, where teachers wrestle with the questions of what it means to become an effective writer and what is a teacher's role in developing students' competence as writers. The four videos...

While literacy development begins long before children are of school age, the kindergarten classroom marks an important moment as students embark on their lifelong journey as writers. This enlightening video program offers a close up view of a master teacher's writing workshop as she focuses on critical topics associated with young children. She addresses conferring with young writers, teaching skills in context, tools for record-keeping, publishing...