Sahara Jones has a True Ambition: she is going to be a writer. In the meantime, she's repeating fifth grade, having kept her abilities a secret from all her teachers since her father moved out two years ago. Her new teacher calls herself Madame Poitier. The kids call her Miss Pointy, and she is not like any teacher Sahara has ever met. Miss Pointy smiles on the first day of school, asks her students to keep personal journals, and tells them that "boring" is a swear word. For the first time, Sahara confides in a teacher. "I am a writer," she pens in her journal. And Miss Pointy writes back, "I believe you." But a writer writes, and Sahara is doing nothing in class. Wise Miss Pointy gradually helps Sahara get over her fear of participating.

If you've read Esmé Codell's stunning book for adults, Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year (Algonquin, 1999), you'll recognize the students and the autobiographical portrayal of the quirky, fierce, and loyal teacher who flaunts the rules but gets her kids passionate about learning. Miss Pointy and her kids return in the companion novel, Vive la Paris, about Sahara's African American classmate and pal, Paris McCray, president of the Extreme Readers Club.

Miss Pointy and her alter ego, Esmé, are such compelling live-in-the-moment role models for us all. Teachers, borrow their writing and teaching ideas at will. Have your students write down everything they think you need to know about them, as Miss Pointy does and as Esmé did for her own students in Chicago. Use a Trouble Basket for children to load their troubles in before they come in the classroom. Tell Aesop's Fables. Show pictures of famous architecture. Pass out poems. Change kids' lives in school, and at home, too, of course.

Don't miss Esmé's spectacular website at www.planetesme.com, which includes her complete teacher's guide for Sahara Special, and a link to her indispensable daily blog where she reviews new children's books: The PlanetEsme Plan: The Best New Children's Books from Esme's Shelf. You can go there directly at http://planetesme.blogspot.com. Esmé says, "Welcome to the Wonderful World of PlanetEsme! I hope this book-a-day plan will be a boon to anyone who would like to play a supporting character in a child's reading life story. This blog is a supporting page to sister site PlanetEsme.com, where you will find a silly amount of additional reviews, thematic lists, links, and much more . . . everything you need to become an expert in children's literature." She's not kidding.

Finally, there's her fabulous book, a dazzling compendium of sensible strategies, How to Get Your Child to Love Reading (Algonquin, 2003), with the ambitious but well-realized subtitle: "For Ravenous and Reluctant Readers Alike; Activities, Ideas and Inspiration for Exploring Everything in the World through Books."

THEMES: BEHAVIOR. CHICAGO. DIARIES. SCHOOLS. TEACHERS. WRITING.