An Analytic Fact Check on My Third Grade Chapter Books
Where 8-year-old Rachel took creative liberties vs. what really happened
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Valintine Dance
BY RACHEL MARSH
P. 1: It was time to go to the Valentine Dance and I was so excited!
P. 2: When I got there, I saw Alice (she’s my friend) I decided to say hi.
P. 3: When Alice saw me she said that she wanted to get some refreshments, so we did.
P. 4: After that, we danced and danced and danced.
P. 5: Then I was really tired so I sat down for a while.
P. 6: But I didn’t sit long because I really wanted to dance!
P. 7: Soon it was time to go. I was really disappointed but I was tired too.
What really happened at the Valintine Dance
Alice is the protagonist of this story, but what’s interesting is that Alice and I were never very good friends.
She was a lot cooler than me — at one point during the year, everyone in our grade had to do a presentation as a historical figure and her Patrick Henry presentation was so good, the teachers asked her to do it in front of all the third grade classes.
Which was, by the way, the definition of “cool” in elementary school.
This book actually seems more like a desperate attempt at making Alice like me. At one point, she even tried to ditch me when she [P. 3] “said she wanted to get some refreshments,” which must have been what her cooler friends were doing. (And by cooler friends, I mean friends who also had really good historical figure presentations.)
I do remember dancing a lot, but I don’t remember Alice being there, which must have meant she managed to pry herself from my grip.
Especially since she stopped appearing in the story around halfway through.
