Gooney Bird Books In Order

Publication Order of Gooney Bird Greene Books

“Gooney Bird” is a series of children’s novels by Lois Lowry the American author who has made a name for herself writing children’s fantasy such as the “Given Quartet”, The “Tate” series, the “Sam Krupnik” series, and the “Anastasia Krupnik” series. She was born to career military officer based in Hawaii and spent her childhood moving across different states of the US such as Pennsylvania, New York, and Rhode Island. When she was eleven she lived for a brief period in Tokyo, spent her high school years in New York and went to college at Brown in Rhode Island. She was born the second child of three siblings and could never connect with her elder family oriented sister Helen, or her little brother Jon that was always doing something with her father. As such, she pent much of her early life in a solitary existence which she filled with her vivid imagination and books that perhaps informed her choice of career. She got married to a Naval officer while she was a sophomore, and her odyssey continued taking her to Massachusetts, South Carolina, Florida, Connecticut before she settled down in Maine. She went back to college while living in Maine, got her post graduate degree and decided to become a professional author, which had always been a childhood dream that she first expressed through scribble poems and stories in notebooks. Her marriage ended in 1977 and she went back to Cambridge where she lives to this day writing her children’s fantasy novels.

Lois Lowry debuted her writing career with “A Summer to Die” a standalone novel that came out in 1977, soon after her divorce was finalized. Having been a person that moved around quite a lot during her childhood and adult life, she loves to write about various themes that involve multicultural aspects such as the Holocaust, murder, terminal illness and racism. In her Gooney Bird series, she writes of a girl who goes to a new school and tries to fit in yet not lose her identity, individuality, and personality through it all. While her novels take a variety of styles and content forms, they all deal with the same important aspect of human connections. “Summer to Die” her first novel was a fictional reenactment of the death of her sister Helen and what the experience was like to the young girl and the family. Another novel “Number the Stars” takes place in a different era and culture but tells a similar narrative and focuses on the theme of the role that each person plays in the lives of the people they interact with. Her other series also deal with similar themes and are set in different times and cultures, and while they are broader in scope, tend to speak to the importance of interdependence between people and with the environment in which they live in.

The “Gooney Bird Greene” series of novels follow the tales of the lead protagonist Gooney Bird Greene, who just transferred to anew school and is attending the second grade class tutored by Mrs. Pigeon. Unlike her classmates, Green e is supremely confident, has a magical and exciting past, an eccentric flair for style, and likes to draw attention to herself. When the class teacher suggests the children tell stories, all the children want to hear Gooney Bird Greene’s enchanted tales rather than Christopher Columbus. Thus begins the narratives of Gooney Bird Green that tell not only of Gooney Bird, but also teaches the class the best way to tell a story and that everyone has a story in them. Gooney is a friendly yet feisty character and one of Lois Lowry’s best ever characters. She comes to class with a different and eccentric outfit every day of the school week, and always has a new story to tell that she swears is true no matter how outlandish or magical it seems. Lowry stretches facts and uses creative and witty wordplay to tell the interesting stories of Gooney Bird Greene. The Gooney Bird Green novels are excellent and fun novels that would make for quite a nice fireside read to remind oneself of the importance of being yourself.

In “Gooney Bird Greene” the first novel of the series, Gooney Bird an over imaginative and eccentrically dressed girl reports to her new school to surprise her classmates and new teacher with her absolutely true yet surprising stories. She speaks in a deliberate manner and strange accent and always tells her stories with prosaic and humorous explanations. For instance, when she says that she was in jail, she actually does mean that she was playing Monopoly and landed on the jail square. The same applies when she asserts that she came in on a flying carpet or she drove from China. Gooney Bird Greene is a brief but humorous novel that teaches children how to come up or put an intriguing twist into their stories, as well as telling them that everyone has a good story to tell if only they knew how. Lois Lowry injects clever twists of language into the stories even as she portrays Gooney Green as a self-satisfied and smug child. However, her confidence often stems from her attitude of confidence in what she is talking about, which gives her the authority to tell the stories just as they should be told.

“Gooney Bird and the Room Mother” the second novel in the series is an exciting follow up to the first novel of the series. The Thanksgiving pageant for Mrs. Pigeon’s class is coming up and the class is devoid of a room mother. Each learner seems to have a very good reason as to why their mother cannot be the room mother. Meanwhile, the principal’s impatience is growing until Gooney Bird Greene steps in to arrest the situation. Who the room mother will be is still a mystery though Gooney Bird has an idea and is searching for the room mother. The big question though is will she manage to find one with the Thanksgiving Day pageant only a few hours away. She finds one and to everyone’s surprise it is none other than Mrs. Pigeon’s mother. Gooney has once again done something to make the class thankful to have her. It is a great novel full of witty humor and a lot of lessons to be learnt about interdependence and how helping each other makes for a happier society.