Day 25 of Summer 2019 #Bookaday Challenge: Mostly the Honest Truth

Vlog Transcript Below

Slide 1: Hi, Everybody! Welcome back to the #bookaday challenge. I’m Kate Narita, author of 100 Bugs! A Counting Book and fourth grade teacher. Today I will be talking about Mostly the Honest Truth by Jody Little.

Slide 2: Mostly the Honest Truth is an excellent book to have in your classroom because the heroine is brave and generous, it features an alternative learning environment and alternative learning styles and at the end of the book, the main character, Jane, redefines what the word family truly means.

Slide 3: Mostly the Honest Truth really reminded me of Lindsey Stoddard’s Just Like Jackie. In Just Like Jackie, the main character, Robbie, lives with her grandfather and it’s always been the two of them. That’s very similar to the main character, Jane, in Mostly the Honest Truth. She’s always lived with her dad, and it’s been the two of them. Robbie’s grandpa is suffering from dementia, and it’s really becoming a struggle for the two of them to live together. This is similar to Jane’s struggle in Mostly the Honest Truth. The difference is Jane’s father suffers from alcoholism, not dementia. At the end of Just Like Jackie, Robbie redefines what family means and realizes that the two of them is no longer enough. This is very similar to Jane’s emotional arc in Mostly the Honest Truth.

Slide 4: Another novel that Mostly the Honest Truth reminds me of is Cecelia Galante’s Stealing Our Way Home. This is a dual narrative. It alternates back and forth between the brother and sister’s point of view. Jack and Pippa are also trying to save their family. Their dad is in a lot of trouble. They’re not exactly sure what the truth is, but they know they have to uncover it. In Mostly the Honest Truth, Jane knows what the truth is, but she’s afraid to uncover it. So, there’s a really nice parallel between these two books. 

Slide 5: I absolutely love the book Far From Fair by Elana K. Arnold. I use the first page every year in my writers’ workshop to teach students the magic rule of three. It’s just a phenomenal line. The main character is talking about the camper on the cover and she says that it is, “obnoxiously ugly, hideously ugly, epically ugly.” The students absolutely love that line, it sticks in their brains and then they’re able to use the magic rule of three in their writing. But the reason why this novel pairs so well with Mostly the Honest Truth is because it also features an alternative learning environment and an alternative learner.

Slide 6: In day seven, I featured Far Away by Lisa Graff and in that text set I also mentioned Gertie’s Leap to Greatness by Kate Beasley. These two novels also pair well with Mostly the Honest Truth. In Mostly the Honest Truth and Just like Jackie, those two main characters come to embrace the community around them as family. The emotional arc in Far Away and Gertie’s Leap to Greatness is different. Here, these two main characters also have a single caretaker. But instead of embracing the community around them, by the end of the novel they learn just how lucky they are to have that single caretaker. 

​Slide 7: Finally, I always like to include a picture book in my text set. So, I wanted to mention the classic, A Chair for my Mother by Vera B. Williams. In this book, the little girl and the community work together to buy the mother a chair that she can sit in after work. This is another example of the child and the community coming together to support the parent.