Arthur Writes A Story by Marc Brown

Author: Marc Brown

Title: Arthur Writes A Story

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Date: 1998

Reading Level: 4-8

Number of Pages: 32

Genre: Fiction Picture book

Summary of Plot: The story begins in Mr. Ratburns classroom where he is teaching his students how to write a story. Mr. Ratburn gives the classroom an assignment to write a story for their homework. The minute Arthur got home he started writing. He wrote about how he got his puppy Pal. When he read the story to D.W. she thought it was boring. Arthur didn't want to write a boring story so took D.W.'s suggestion and wrote a story about an Elephant puppy. the next day when he read it to his best friend Buster, Buster said it was ok but that his story was about outer space. So Author decided to write his story about elephants on the moon. When he read it to his friend the Brian. But because The Brian is so smart he just rebuked him about how scientific part of it doesn't really make sense. So Arthur hurried to the library so he could do more research on it. While he was there his friend Francine was confused at what Arthur was doing so he explained it all to her and she explained that she was putting jokes in her story so... he decides to make it a little more funny. Arthur then goes through several more friends and in the end he comes up with a story about a striped elephant that is on a planet named shmellafint and it dances along to western music. When he tells it to his family they are all really confused. the next day he went and told his story anyways when he was done the class was really confused so Mr. Ratburn told him to tell the original story and everyone loved it. Arthur ended up getting an A+ on the original story.

Reader Reaction: I loved Arthur when I was little I would come home afters school get me an after school snack and then head right to the TV and turn on Arthur until it was done and then it was homework

Potential Problems: Listening to everyone else and not to what he originally wanted to do.
Recommendation: When you have your own elementary age class write a book have them read this one so they can see someone who they know write their own story.