e.l. konigsburg

"The View from Saturday" by e.l. konigsburg Atheneum: 1996

I have written before that I read young adult books and in Korea I read any books in English I can get my hands on. I honestly did not know this book was a young adult book. It had a picture of four cups of tea on it and thought it was a murder mystery. All of the books in the Home Plus Book Store are tightly sealed with plastic and thumbing through a book before buying is not possible.

What I did encounter was a warm and wonderful book about a teacher returning to teaching after being paralyzed in an automobile accident and four of her sixth-grade students who had banded together calling themselves "The Souls."

I love the way the book was written. It was a series of short stories that were inter-connected by the fact that each story was about each of the member of the Souls and of course the teacher. On the back cover, the writer stated she had written some of the stories earlier and just edited them so that they were about the same group of students in one classroom.

One of the threads was a academic bowl and how the Souls became the unlikely state championship winners. Everyone learns something important and there is enough of a plot to keep the reader going until the end. The book may be for the younger reader, but I learned a lot about life and had a good time reading it. I picked it up and never put it down.