Martin Bridge In High Gear- Science Fiction Written by: Jessica Scott Kerrin Illustrated by: Joseph Kelly (Chapter Book)

Martin Bridge In High Gear- Science Fiction Written by: Jessica Scott Kerrin Illustrated by: Joseph Kelly (Chapter Book)

When I read this book I thought it would be a good book to incorporate into the classroom. This was a chapter book but the two chapters that were in the book were topics that pertained to students in elementary school.
The first chapter was about a yearly science fair that is held at Martin’s (main character) school. The teacher put the students into groups and the students had to decide on a theme for their project. All of the students in the group except one was helping out with the project and doing their fair share. The student that did not help the other student’s name was Gibson, he would come late to every meeting and he didn’t help the students clean the beach; which was what their whole project was about. So the other students were really mad, and they decided they would let the teacher know what was going on in the group. The teachers told the students they should talk to Gibson about the situation and see if he starts to carry his own weight. So the students did but that did not seem to help. At the end of the project the students had 20 tickets to share among all of the group members. The students decided on who they thought did the most work and that student got the most tickets. The students put their names on the tickets and the teacher gathered the tickets and placed them in a hat. The group gave Gibson one ticket because he did not work as hard as the other students. When the teacher pulled the name for the prize for the most hard work Gibson received the prize. Gibson’s group was really upset because they knew he did not deserve to win the prize, however they gave him a ticket so he had just as much of a chance at winning as the other students did. This chapter could be used to teach students responsibility. I never liked working in groups because I always felt like I did all the work.
The second chapter was about how Martin got a new bike and he rode it once and someone stole it from him. After his bike was stolen he was upset, however, he found a place where they take old recycle bicycles and rebuild them. So Martin decided he would help out in the shop every Saturday so he could rebuild his own bicycle. He helped make his own bike so it was more special to him. While working in the shop Martin learned some new things about bikes and he felt his bike was important to him because he helped make it. So a lesson that could be learned from this is sometimes it is good to work for things you want instead of your parents buying you things all the time; you never know the things you can learn from working to buy something you want really bad.