By Jeanne Gilliam Fain & Christina Davidson

Following the discussion of Julia Alvarez’ s Return to Sender (2009), the fourth grade students jointly decided that the novel would be powerful as a movie. Vasquez, Tate, and Harste (2013) argue that social action includes a strategic move of school curriculum to the community in order to create relevance for students. For whatever reason, students created relevance in trying to advocate for Julia Alvarez to create a movie version of the book that they came to deeply care about. Fourth graders wrote a letter to Julia Alvarez regarding their request for a movie along with some questions that they were thinking about.

Christina posted the following comment on Julia Alvarez’s Facebook page:

Mrs. Alvarez,

We read your book, Return to Sender, and we LOVED it!
We hope you will read our letter and respond to our request!

Sincerely,
Miss Davidson’s Fourth Grade Reading Class

P.S. My kids wrote this themselves! You have some BIG fans!

Christina was hoping that Julia Alvarez would like the page on Facebook so that her students could see the power of print and receive feedback from the author that helped them to see their world in new ways.

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• Themes: Jeanne Gilliam Fain, T. Gail Pritchard
• Descriptors: Student Connections, WOW Currents