dontyoudare

Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey, by Margaret Peterson Haddix ISBN: 0-689-80097-5 ©1996 125 pages R.L. 4.9 Points- 4

Good sections to read aloud: -pp. 5-6 (top of p. 7) where Tish writes her first journal entry

Summary: Tish had a new high school LA teacher, and she wasn’t really sure what to think of her. Her name was Mrs. Dunphrey and the first assignment this teacher gave was to keep a journal. The minute Tish heard this, she was tuned out...she’d done so many journals that she was sick of them. Until something her teacher said caught her attention.

“If you write ‘Don’t read this,’ I won’t read it”--she was sure that was what her teacher just said. But, there was no way a teacher would let them get by with writing what they wanted. So, for her first journal entry, Tish wrote “Don’t read this” at the top and filled the page with things about knitting and other stuff that was nothing she’d ever really do. Then she turned it in. The next day, she dropped a few hints to her teacher about knitting, but Mrs. Dunphrey looked confused, so Tish knew she hadn’t really read it.

After this, Tish’s entries started to become more and more personal, so she had to make sure she included the “Don’t read this” on those entries. Every once in awhile she had to have an entry Mrs. Dunphrey could read, though.

YA Fiction--teen issues; child abuse; fathers and daughters; diaries

©Jennifer Lang - WDMS - 2004