Cam brought in a Gargoyle Gecko this morning and discussed its habits, locale/habitat, feeding, and behaviors before getting started with classwork. Cam named it Estelle, after his great grandma who recently passed away; he acquired the gecko on the day she passed last week and honored it with her name. Cam will be showing it to the PreK students either later today or tomorrow. I showed Cam the assignment on 'The Outsiders' novel and he stated he understood expectations. We then read the photos, letters, and testimonials of the actors in the movie which was included in the anniversary edition of the book we read. We reviewed the material from the publisher's archives, photos from the author's personal collection, and messages from the cast of the film. Cam was not too surprised to learn S.E. Hinton was a female and 16 when she wrote the book - a fact which has surprised many first-time readers, but Cam was surprised at her tiny, youthful appearance - as she was 16 when she wrote the novel. The reason she wrote under the initials, S.E. Hinton was that she didn't want to lose male readers not wanting to read a book by a female. We read an article from the Tulsa Daily World newspaper that was written about Susan Hinton and we were both fascinated to learn that she flunked a course in creative writing in school and that she couldn't spell her middle name (Eloise). Cam made a connection to this fact noting that Michael Jordan didn't make his varsity basketball team in high school and is now considered one of the greatest basketball players of all time. We will try to get a copy of the movie version to watch in class tomorrow.