When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Sturgeon And Other Wrong Things That Kids Write

Art Linkletter famously said that "kids say the darndest things.” This book shows that they are now committing their fractured insights to paper and handing them in. Berkeley psychologist Gini Graham Scott canvassed teachers from elementary school through high school for these entertaining, revealing, sometimes touching, and just plain funny examples. They include the third-grader who insisted, "Our father who art in heaven; Howard be thy name”; the junior high schooler who opined, "Necessity is the mother of a lot of kids”; and the high school student who warned, "You have to be careful of a wolf in cheap clothing.” This colorful package challenges conventional laments over the sorry state of students’ spelling and grammar, offering instead an amusing, warmhearted collection of bloopers that reminds readers that to err is . . . one of the privileges of youth.