![]() ![]() Mack, the man who Sam thinks is his grandfather, has taught him how to make things from wood and Sam seems to have developed a natural affinity for woodworking. Sam knows he is going to need help reading the rest of the article, and when a book-loving new girl, Caroline, teams up with him to build a castle for a class project, Sam enlists her help. Is Mack really his grandfather, or has Sam been kidnapped? His reading difficulty becomes urgent when he discovers a box in the attic with a picture of himself at the age of three with a different last name, and the only word in the caption he is able to read is “missing.” Suddenly Sam’s identity is in question. He feels embarrassed that the other kids in the class are aware of where he is going and why. He hates the stigma of going to the Resource Room every day and often gets in trouble for dawdling in the hall until he is late. ![]() Sam has strong emotions about his struggle with reading. ![]() Giff, a two-time Newbery Honor-winning author, deftly portrays in Sam both the heartaches and the triumphs that children with learning differences might typically encounter. As he puts it, “words look like spiders flexing their thin legs as they move across the page.” Sam is just turning eleven and can barely read. In my continuing effort to discern how learning differences have been featured in literature, I enjoyed reading Patricia Reilly Giff’s book, Eleven. ![]()
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