My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother By Patricia Polacco

My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother By Patricia Polacco is a fiction book that focuses on the subject of sibling rivalry/brother and sister relationships.  The story focuses on the relationship between Tricia and her brother Richie.  He is always boasting about how he can beat Tricia in everything and anything. He tricks Tricia into all sorts of compitetions that she ends up losing such as rhubarb and berry eating contests.  Tricia goes on through out the entire story trying to beat her brother.  She keeps failing and getting so frustrated until one night when her grandmother, Babushka is putting her to bed.  Tricia wishes that she could beat her brother at something.  Sure enough, the next day a carnival arrives and Tricia ends up beating her brother in a merry-go-round contest.  At the end of the contest Trisha boasts about her victory and passed out from dizziness.  When she awakes she finds that her brother carried her all the way home and ran to get a doctor for her.  It changes their relationship forever and gives them the love and respect for each other that a brother and sister should have.  I think that any child would enjoy this story.  Students that have siblings can relate to that sibling competition and students that do not have siblings can see what it can be like to have have them.  This story could go under a life lesson fiction book or I could also start a bin of Patricia Polacco books.  Patricia Polacco is an amazing author that the third graders I am currently interning with enjoy.

Note: This is a free choice