Customer Reviews

Extra Credit

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
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2 star:		(2)
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Andrew Clements has a very unique writing style and has quickly become one of my favorite children's authors. Clements delves deeply into showing, step-by-step, cause and effect in his stories' events and rationalizing among his characters. He is also apt to give pages and pages of back story to explain something happening in his books. He uses these techniques very effectively to give the reader a true understanding of what is happening on different levels in his stories.

In Clements's latest book, EXTRA CREDIT, Abby Carson is coasting in school - the only class she really puts her heart into is gym class, where she gives her all on a climbing wall she loves trying to scale. It's not that the classroom work is too difficult, but Abby just doesn't LIKE doing the work. Things have gone downhill from year to year, and now Abby learns that she is about to fail sixth grade!

Abby quickly looks for a way to avoid repeating sixth grade, and is told she MIGHT be able to pass if she does a few things - hands in every assignment, gets a B or better on every quiz and test, and does an extra credit project, corresponding with a pen pal in another country. From a short list of countries her teacher offers her, Abby chooses Afghanistan, because of its mountains and her love of climbing.

In a village near the Afghan capital of Kabul, teacher Mahmood has chosen his best student, Sadeed Bayat, to represent his country and correspond with Abby for her project. However, the village council has other ideas - they cling to the old traditions and believe it improper for a boy to be exchanging letters with a girl. Instead, Sadeed's little sister Amira will write the letters with Sadeed checking them over for quality.

Sadeed quickly grows impatient with Abby's attempts to compose a letter to Abby in English and offers to let her dictate in Dari (their language), and he will translate and write the letter in English, having her sign it when he is finished. When the first letter is "ready to go," Sadeed realizes that Amira has left questions unanswered and written a rather superficial letter. Sadeed rewrites the letter, adding his own thoughts to it. When he hands his teacher both letters, saying he knows that Amira's original should be the one to be sent, he does not see that his teacher sends Sadeed's letter instead.

What was, to Abby, just an unwanted, required extra credit assignment, quickly begins to grab her interest as she reads what life in Afghanistan is like - girls discouraged from attending school, rockets once bombing their village, and only one borrowed book in Amira's home. With Amira's second letter to Abby, Sadeed sends a separate one from himself, telling the truth of how he embellished Amira's first letter, and pouring his thoughts onto the page. Through the letters and a developing friendship, Sadeed and Abby learn not only about each other's countries and lives, but come to better understand and appreciate their own lives.

Eventually, some of those around both Sadeed and Abby take issue with the letter writing, and things grow increasingly complicated, even putting the safety of Sadeed and his village in jeopardy.

I also enjoyed Mark Elliott's 14 beautiful full-page pencil drawings.

AR gives this book a reading level of RL 5.3, which I would agree is accurate.

I would rate this book a 9 on a scale of 1-10.

Abby Carson, a likeable Illinois 6th grader, is in danger of being held back unless she brings her grades up and completes a...you guessed it....EXTRA CREDIT project. It involves exchanging letters with Amira Bayat and (less directly) her brother, Sadeed, who live in Afghanistan. There is a great deal of cultural information worked into the story, and readers who struggle may lose interest. (For those readers, Clement's NO TALKING might be a better choice for pleasure reading.) The illustrations and "handwritten" letters are well done and wisely included.

Those who already enjoy reading will find this another pleasurable Clements adventure, and those who don't take to reading so easily will still find a good story(while learning about another culture in the process.)This would be a strong choice for a social studies class to partner with a non-fiction book such as Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea: Young Readers Edition.

Andrew Clements' novels are always a success in my opinion. Written for a middle grade audience, they are entertaining, inspirational, and educational, and EXTRA CREDIT is no exception.

Just look closely at the cover and you will probably guess EXTRA CREDIT is a pen pal story, but it is not just any pen pal situation. Abby finds herself reluctantly writing a pen pal letter for extra credit. She is in danger of being held back in sixth grade again next year. Desperate to go on to junior high with her friends, she has promised to do all her homework and earn B's on all future tests this year so that she can leave the sixth grade behind.

That is not quite enough for her language arts teacher. An extra credit project will also be required. That's where the letter writing comes in.

Halfway around the globe from Illinois is Sadeed living in Afghanistan. His teacher has just asked him to assist his sister in writing a pen pal letter to a girl from America. That girl is Abby.

What follows is the development of an unusual friendship and a learning experience like no other. Both young people are introduced to a culture completely different from their own, and the reactions that arise leave them both confused about the intolerant beliefs that surround them.

The possibilities for EXTRA CREDIT are endless. It could be used as a discussion starter in classrooms involving current events, different cultures, letter writing, and so much more.

Reviewed by: Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky"

Okay, first of all I am a huge Andrew Clements fan. His writing is amazing, always 4 or 5 star worthy. This one wasn't his best work. I found it boring. It hardly ever held my intrest. In one of the chapters all it talked about was a girl named Abby rock climbing, it wasn't interesting, because it was a 30 foot wall at school. It was just whining on she couldn't make it to the top. The pictures were bad too. Parents, don't buy this for your kids, get it at the library. Luckily I didn't buy it I won it as a prize, it wouldn't be worth $5.00 maybe $.50.

I was expecting a cheesy book, but boy was I wrong.
Unlike some of Clements' other books, there's no splashy, children-lead rebellions. Instead a boy from Afghanistan secretly strays from tradition as he writes letters to a girl in America. The book takes us inside their lives, and we feel their joys and sorrows.
A small, quiet point in the book is that excluding religious references from education results in an inferior education.
I don't know if the author has been to Afghanistan, but he seemed to know the culture intimately.
I listened to the audio book, and Gabra Zackman did an excellent narration.

This book is great. My son loved this book so much that he was inspired to ask if he could get a pen pal and do a bulletin board project on it. So he is now writing his pen pal and do a project, but he doesn't get extra credit the they extra fun and experience of writing to someone new and a far away land.

my 11 daughter read this book in preparations for the next Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl.
She did not like it one bit- she said it felt choppy unfinished and the character development was poor.
After she told me this I had to read the book to find out myself.And I agree, the description of Abby Amira and Sadeed leave much to be desired, as an adult I can fill in the blanks, maybe enough for an 8 year old who does not know much about the world but an 11 year old leaves this book with too many unanswered questions. Sure they give an opportunity to explain but my daughter was so disappointed she did not want to discuss it at all.
I do not understand why this book was chosen for this years Helen Rufffin Reading Bowl list, it is bland and boring.

Allow me a bold statement: Andrew Clements is, quite simply, an excellent writer--among the very best for children! His earlier novel for older children (9-12 and above), Frindle, WAS his best creation, but now, I'm thinking that "Extra Credit" belongs right there on the shelf next to "Frindle" as Clements' tour de force novel.

"Frindle" is about the creative impulse and the impetus behind an idea to make it FLOW. Yet--when Clements made me get down on the floor in this novel and "see" those mountains-- wow, there are no words to express that moment of discovery that makes Abby see those mountains with Sadeed.

Abby Carson is a sixth grader in the middle of the year, who is advised that she will probably need to repeat sixth grade. Her scores are just too low and she has shown no signs of improving or even wanting to improve. Such a fear becomes her wake-up call. Please, what can I do? An extra credit project--write to a pen pal and create a display of your letters on the bulletin board.

So Abby gets a pen pal in Afghanistan--a pen pal chosen by the village elders. They pick Sadeed because his English and his writing skills are the best of all pupils in the village--however, Afghan culture prevents boys and girls from communicating, so his younger sister becomes the front as the letter writer.

Cultural differences await and will spill over into each other's neighborhood, becoming the focus of a situational divide. That is absolutely all I can reveal about this deeply impacting short novel. If I were in the classroom, I would make "Extra Crdit" required reading.

Reasons why this novel should be read by middle school students:
1. It's an excellent story.
2. The implications cause the reader to consider his/her own life in comparison
3. It's a great cultural introduction to a totally different way of life
4. It teaches geography and a bit of history
5. By happenstance, it raises the issue of compassion and encourages the reader to stretch one's sense of unique place in the universe

Bottom line: This novel is most highly recommended!

Abby is failing the 6th grade, and her teacher offers her a way to improve her grade so she can move on to 7th. The assignment--a pen pal in another country.

This assignment leads Abby to self-discovery; this assignment almost harms the village of the participant(s) in the host country; two worlds colliding for the better in this coming of age tale - America and Afghanistan.

For all of you out there in Illinois...this Andrew Clements book is a 2012 Caudill nominee and that's why I picked it up. So far I've read a number of the new nominees and this book is appropriate for the 4th-5th grade reading level and content wise I think the 6th-7th graders will like it too. I agree with all of the previous reviewers, but just want to add that from a humanity standpoint this book is so dear. Clements does a fine job showing the compassion and understanding of the main characters in the book (11-12 years of age); a fine example for us as adults! Sadeed, the main character in Afghanistan, turns out to be an admirable and kind young man.