Growth Mindset – Are We Pears Yet?

I was honored to receive an advanced copy edition of Miranda Paul’s book Are We Pears Yet? earlier this summer. The official release date is September 19th, 2017. I am planning to use this book with my second graders during our first days of school. This is a story of two young pear seeds who just can’t wait to grow up and become pears. The clever illustrations show the seeds performing on stage with speech bubbles to show the dialogue.

Why is this a perfect book to start the school year? I am planning to incorporate research from Carol S. Dweck into our daily discussions this year. Her research describes how children who think with a “growth mindset” reach their goals and improve in school.

Students who have a “fixed mindset” may be afraid of failure, avoid challenge, ignore feedback and think that he/she is just not good at something without seeing strategies for how to improve. Students who have a “growth mindset” see failure as an opportunity for learning, welcome challenges, keep trying and believe he/she can always improve with feedback from others. Instead of thinking “I can’t” students can be encouraged to think “I can’t yet” As a class, we will be figuring out what students need to grow.

Miranda Paul’s book describes what the two pear seeds need in order to grow – soil, rain, sun. . . and wait time. One seed continually asks, “Are we pears yet????” until they discover they will need to first be pear trees in order to be seeds.Miranda includes some “encore” information about pears at the end. A science lesson, an example of growth mindset, and really funny/talking in speech bubble pear seeds make Are We Pears Yet? a great book to start the school year.

(One of my favorite Wisconsin Authors – Miranda Paul has also written One Plastic Bag:Isatou Ceesay and the Story of the Recycling Women of the Gambia, Whose Hands are These?: A Community Guessing Game, Water is Water: A Book about the Water Cycle.) Other more recent releases are:The Great Pasta Escape, Trainbots and Blobfish Throws a Party.