My One Hundred Adventures

Horvath, Polly. My one hundred adventures. 

New York: Schwartz & Wade Books, 2008.

By Polly Horvath

Copyright:  2008

Publisher:  Schwartz & Wade Books

Reading Level:

• Lexile:  810L

• Grade level:  5

Genre:  Fiction

Description:  Adventure, Growing up, Family, New experiences, Social situations

Suggested Delivery:  Independent reading

Summary:  Jane is a 12-year-old girl who is ready to grow up and be daring, rather than staying a kid and being forced to make jam with her grandmother or build sandcastles on the beach during the summer.  She is no longer content with these predictable summer days.  Jane is determined to make this summer an interesting one, ready for any adventures that may come her way.  These very out of the ordinary adventures that Jane experiences end up teaching her many important things about herself, while she makes this summer one she will never forget.

Electronic Resources:

• Author's Website:  gives in-depth descriptions and reviews on each of Polly Horvath's books, the awards she has won over the years, specific information about the author, and even photos representing her life.

Key Vocabulary: mystical, dilating, antiquing, conscious, heron, lagoon, disdainfully, eulogies

Teaching suggestions:

• Use this book to get students excited about reading.
• Use this book to encourage children to take risks (within reason) and discover all that life has to offer.

Comprehension Strategies:

• Before Reading:  
• Ask the students if they have ever felt that they are ready to grow up and become independent adolescents with more opportunities for adventures and self-discovery.
• Have the students brainstorm a list of activities or adventures they have always wanted to experience, but have not yet gotten the chance to.

• During Reading:
• Provide students with a graphic organizer to make note of any sensory detail they come across as they read.
• Students will write brief summaries of at least 4 adventures they read about.

• After Reading:  
• Have students share what adventure(s) seemed the most exciting or memorable for Jane.
• Discuss some significant quotes from the text; ask for students' feedback:
•  "The library in summer is the most wonderful thing because there you get books on any subject and read them each for only as long as they hold your interest, abandoning any that don't, halfway or a quarter of the way through if you like, and store up all that knowledge in the happy corners of your mind for your own self and not to show off how much you know or spit it back at your teacher on a test paper."
• “She had another sort of day and will never know ours. Suddenly I realized that everyone in the whole world is, at the end of the day, staring at a dusky horizon, owner of a day that no one else will ever know.”

Writing Activity:

Students will think of an adventure they hope to take as they grow older; for example, traveling to different places in the world, going skydiving, hiking up a large mountain, etc.  They will imagine that they are in the midst of this exciting adventure, writing first-person accounts of what is happening, using sensory details and vivid imagery.  They will share these adventure pieces with the rest of the class upon completion.