About this item
When Sophie can't solve a math puzzle, she feels upset and inadequate. "I CAN'T DO IT!" she shouts, expressing the frustration all of us feel when we try and fail. Will she ever be "smart" like her sister? Maybe she isn't smart at all.Luckily Sophie's teacher steps in. What does it mean to be smart? Using current, popular "mindset" techniques, Sophie's class is taught that we get smarter when we exercise our brains, such as when we work harder at solving a puzzle. Struggling to solve a problem doesn't mean "I can't do it!" Sophie and her classmates just can't do it... yet! Readers will cheer when Sophie finally prevails, and at the end of the day, she's confident and optimistic. At home, Sophie uses her new technique to help her dad solve a carpentry puzzle.In this third book about Sophie, Molly Bang again helps children deal with a challenging everyday issue, providing an opening to ask: What do you do when you think, "I can't!"?
About the Author
Molly Bang is an award winning children's book illustrator and author. Her works include 3 Caldecott Honor Books: Ten, Nine, Eight, The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher, and When Sophie Gets Angry - Really, Really Angry, which also won a Jane Addams Honor Award and the Arbuthnot Award. The Paper Crane won the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award in 1987; Goose won the School of Library Journal Best Book of 1996 and another work, Common Ground: The Water, Earth, and Air We Share, won the prestigious Giverny Book Award in 1998 for the best children's science picture book. Her latest book, My Light, is an ALA Notable book. Her only work for adults is Picture This, which shows how an understanding of the most basic principles enable a person to build powerful pictures. It is used by art and graphic departments in colleges around the country. Bang received her bachelor degree from Wellesley in French, and Masters in Far Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona and at Harvard. She has also worked as a reporter; as an educator for public health projects in Bangladesh and in Mali, West Africa, incorporating information on maternal and child health into stories; and as a teacher in colleges.
