Altogether, One at a Time

by E. L. Konigsburg, Mercer Mayer (Illustrator), Gary E. Parker (Illustrator), Laurel Schindelman (Illustrator), Gail E. Haley (Illustrator)

Overview

What do you do when your mother makes you invite the most obnoxious kid in your class to your birthday party?

- Or when you have to wait another thirty-three and a third years to see a shower of stars?

- Or your parents ship you off to fat camp?

- Or you have to share your private lunch hour with a girl who's mean to you just because of the color of your skin?

In E. L. Konigsburg's witty and perceptive short stories, four young people cope with difficult situations and, in doing so, learn something that changes their lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416955016
Publisher:	Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	03/04/2008
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	5.12(w) x 7.62(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	760L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

E.L. Konigsburg is the only author to have won the Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor in the same year. In 1968, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler won the Newbery Medal and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth was named a Newbery Honor Book. Almost thirty years later she won the Newbery Medal once again for The View from Saturday. Among her other acclaimed books are Silent to the Bone, The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place, and The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World.

Mercer Mayer is an American children’s author and illustrator. He has published over 300 books, using a wide range of illustrative styles.

Gary E. Parker is the best-selling author of ten novels and three novellas, including Secret Tides and Fateful Journeys. A Christy Award finalist, Parker has become CBA's source for sweeping sagas of faith and family. A PhD graduate of Baylor University, he serves as the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Decatur, Georgia.

Gail E. Haley is a prolific author and illustrator. Her time living in the Caribbean inspired her book A Story, a Story, and she traced the folklore she heard there to their African origins, which she studied extensively before capturing with woodcuts that she cut and printed herself. She lives and works in New York with her family, surrounded by a large collection of early children’s books, toys, games, and dolls going back to the seventeenth century.

Read an Excerpt

THE FIRST BIRTHDAY PARTY I ever had in my life was when I was ten years old. One whole decade old. And I had to invite Jason.

The big thing in birthday parties where we live is slumber parties, only it isn't called a slumber party because that's what girls call it. On the invitation where it says FROM..., I wrote "Supper at 7:00 P.M., May 15." May 15 being my birthday. Where it says UNTIL..., I wrote "After breakfast on May 16." That and the fact that I wrote at the bottom to please bring a sleeping bag lets everyone know that it is a slumber party. I had been to two slumber parties since we moved here; one of them had been Jason's.

My mother checked the invitations for spelling. When she noticed the FROM and UNTIL, she said that she had no idea that a slumber party meant a life sentence cooking and washing dishes. My mother gets sarcastic at the slightest thing. She knew that I wouldn't care if she used paper plates. Mother also noticed that Jason's name wasn't on any of the envelopes. That was besides disapproving of the way that I abbreviated Ohio. Cleveland, Oh. I had put. Mother said that if that was the way I abbreviated Ohio that I should use exclamation points instead of periods. Sarcastic.

"Well, where is Jason's invitation?" she asked.

"You limited me to six kids, and Jay was number seven on my list," I explained.

"Take someone off," she suggested, the way an umpire suggests to a batter that he's out.

I took off John Beecham; he was the only one I had invited who I didn't really like. I had added him even though he hadn't invited me to his party. Dick liked him. Dick was the fastest runner in the fourth grade and the second fastest in the whole school. As amatter of fact, if Dick couldn't make it on May 15, 1 would have to change the date. I thought about it again and decided that I ought to have John Beecham to give Dick something extra to come for.

"I don't think Jason can come," I told Mother. "He has dyslexia."

"It's not contagious," Mother said. "Invite him," she added.

I forgot that Mother would know what dyslexia was. She had explained it to me in the first place. Mother is big on education. Dyslexia has to do with education, or at least reading. If you have dyslexia it's like your brain is a faulty TV set; the picture comes through the wires all right, but some of the tubes are missing or are in the wrong places. So that when you tune in to one channel you may get the sound from another. Or spots of the picture may be missing or be backwards or upside down. Kids with dyslexia read funny.

Jason used to read funny in class until they discovered that he had it. Then they quit making him read out loud and sent him down to special reading during our regular reading. They also sent him down during our P.E., P.E. being physical education. And it was too bad about that; Jason could handle a ball like there was nothing wrong with him. But his reading was like the Comedy Hour; that's about how long it took. Except that Mrs. Carpenter wouldn't let us laugh. And when Jay was called to the board to write something, it was like he was writing sideways, and that took three hundred hours.

Jason's mother, Mrs. Rabner, told Mother that he had improved a lot since he had been tutored in dyslexia. The nicest thing about Jason was his mother. She did everything she could to make my mother and me feel welcome when we moved here in September. But we had moved around enough for me to know that your first friends aren't always your best friends.

Table of Contents

	Inviting Jason	1
	The Night of the Leonids	13
	Camp Fat	29
	Momma at the Pearly Gates	61

Editorial Reviews

"A marvelous collection, full of wry humor." — School Library Journal, starred review

"With E. L. Konigsburg doing the writing, you know the stories will be good." — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher