Do We HAVE to Write to Santa?!

Annette Black is a teacher at All Saints Catholic School in Norman, Oklahoma.

"My first grade class this year has not been extremely interested in listening to books that take longer than ten minutes to read. I read them quite a few of your picture books throughout the year. Last week, I pulled out 26 FAIRMOUNT AVENUE and began reading it to the class. I got a reaction that I never expected from this group of children. They were totally captivated from the first page. The book provided a springboard for lots of discussions, all spontaneous, about history, families, movies and moving to name a few. Thanks to YouTube we even got to see Shirley Temple (a never-heard-of-name for many of the children) sing and dance.

"On Friday afternoon, during an inside recess, some of my students decided to write you a letter. I was again very surprised because of the opposition I received when asking them to write a letter to Santa in December.

"This morning I was reminded at least 25 times that I promised I would start the next Tomie dePaola book today! We started HERE WE ALL ARE right after morning prayers at the insistence of the mob..."

Tomie: The power of the ASCS First Grade Mob!