Oh Edward. He starts out as such an unlikeable character:  a three-foot-tall, white china rabbit with a full wardrobe, complete with footwear and hats. He’s also unrelatable since the kids don’t really play with those types of toys anymore. That’s where my own read aloud and storytelling comes in, and I sell it to them a little. They eventually get into it. 

Edward is lost at sea, buried in garbage, thrown from a train, and saved from the brink of death. Like Frindle, there is another wonderful twist at the end that has big payoffs for the kids — and they really react when it comes. There’s also a lovely one-page Coda at the end that recaps the entire story plus a little fast-forwarding, which helps to remind the students of Edward’s full journey, inside and out. 

“I am done with being loved,” Edward told her. “I’m done with loving. It’s too painful.”

“Pish,” said the old doll. “Where is your courage?”

This is a story that slowly and gently unfolds. It’s about love and regret and finding our way home. 

The Read Aloud Series is a review of the series of books I used to read aloud to my third grade students every year after lunch. The exact order and titles changed somewhat over the years, but these are the ones that were most beloved, both for the kids as listeners and for me as the read aloud reader. Many afternoons our 15-minute read aloud time would stretch into 20, 30, sometimes as long as 45 minutes, as the kids begged to hear more of a story, or we discussed what a character did, or I reread difficult passages, or diagrammed family trees and plot lines for them. I can say that my gift as a teacher was, and still is, my enthusiasm for a good story, and these are the books that have brought me a great deal of joy in sharing with young readers over the years.