“See the deer eat meat.” Such was the quality of a district-mandated series of beginning readers for first graders in Ann Martin Bowler’s classroom. Bowler remembers throwing down the book, saying “I could do better than this.” Even her students picked up on the inaccuracy. “It wasn’t about writing anything [that made sense],” she says. “[The series] was looking for long E words.” In the face of those awful books, Bowler felt rebellious enough to quit teaching after 19 years and start writing.
Although her decision sounds drastic, Bowler had written many poems for her students and set them to music. She had read hundreds of children’s books to her students and to her five children. Her mother, brother, and cousin were writers. It was now or never. More…
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