Review of What Did They Say?

[Sarah Deming]

[Following is a volunteer review of "What Did They Say?" by Todd Sherman.]

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5 out of 5 stars

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What Did They Say?: Observations from Eighth-Grade Students by Todd Sherman was entertaining and endearing. A compilation of quotes from his eighth-grade students and from Mr. Sherman himself, this book is more than just a list. In the introduction, the reader learns the genesis of the ‘quote-of-the-day’ tradition and gets a glimpse into Mr. Sherman’s language arts classroom and his teaching style. Most of the quotes come complete with the context, anecdotes from the classroom and the updates on his students' successes that make this book so charming. Some quotes stand alone. It is obvious from the commentary over the course of the book that the author loved his 23 years of teaching and the thousands of students that came through his classroom, but the afterword contained so much love that I had to blink away a few tears.
The quotes and their accompanying anecdotes also gave me a good many belly laughs. I felt, after a few chapters, that I knew some of the oft-quoted students and was transported back to my own middle school experience. Mr. Sherman gives such an accurate description of the unique chaos of a happy classroom that I felt an impossible nostalgia for eighth grade. (Impossible because while I also had a gem of an eighth-grade language arts teacher, no one feels nostalgia for middle school, let alone eighth-grade; it was the worst!)
The book is organized with themed chapters that lend coherence to the best quotes from across the years, including food-related and sports-centered chapters, which make it even easier to zip through this delightful book. Every student should be so lucky as to have a teacher like Mr. Sherman. His devotion to teaching and his affection for his students made this book a true pleasure to read. His devotion to grammar and punctuation made this book well-written and well-edited. I’m pleased to give it a five out of five stars and would gladly devour a book of the next-best quotes.

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What Did They Say?
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