It’s been a while since I posted, so it’s time for another opening of the blogging season at The Starborn Revue! Cue Cole Porter’s “Another Op’nin’, Another Show!” That song is about opening night.
Opening night in the theatre is a very important — and sometimes scary — night. It’s the first time the cast and crew are performing the play for an audience, and there’s always the thought, “Will they like it? Will everything go okay?”
Renee LaTulippe, an author and poet who has a wonderful blog called No Water River, wrote a poem about Opening Night. You can see her perform it here.
The book character, Hank Zipzer, knows that not only opening night is a little scary, but the whole process of getting to opening night can be complicated.
Title: The Curtain Went Up, My Pants Fell Down
Series: Hank Zipzer: The World’s Greatest Underachiever
Authors: Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver
Publisher: New York: Penguin/Grosset & Dunlap, 2007
Hank Zipzer has a problem. Or two. Or seven. Numbers are tricky. Hank has trouble with math, and with reading, and with just about everything in school, although he’s not sure why his brain works differently than everyone else’s. In fact, he has so much trouble with math that his school counselor has arranged for him to have a peer tutor – the girl who is the smartest in his class, and the least likely to understand anyone like Hank – Heather Payne.
He is sunk.
But there’s good news, too. The school play is coming up, and Hank is sure he has what it takes to star as the King of Siam in their adaptation of The King and I.
Except – and it’s a big except – his dad says if he doesn’t get a B-plus on his math test, he’ll have to drop out of the play. And then his understudy, the disgusting (and smelly) Nick McKelty will get to be King in his place.
He’s definitely sunk. He gets Ds, not Bs, in math. Definitely not B-pluses.
He works hard. Heather works hard. Finally things start to make sense. Maybe he can do this long division stuff after all. Surely he’ll get a B-plus now. And he’ll be fabulous as the King of Siam.
Because nothing else could possibly go wrong … except maybe it could.
To find out how Heather helps him figure out long division, what else might go wrong (or right), and if Hank will ever make it through – or even to – opening night, get to your local library or bookstore, and check it out!
To learn more about the authors, click this link to the Penguin Publishing page about the Hank Zipzer books.
To participate in the upcoming season at The Starborn Revue, just keep coming back week by week. There’s a performance — make that a blog post — every Wednesday. The first and third Wednesdays of the month, there’ll be book recommendations. The second Wednesday will feature something cool that I’ve discovered. The fourth Wednesday? Well, that’s up for grabs. I call it Improv Day, when anything might happen. Wait and see!
And see you back on stage next Wednesday in The Starborn Revue!