Cogitation Motivation: Sarabella's Thinking Cap by Judy Schachner

Sarabella had no time for small talk.

In fact she never talked much at all.

Because she was too busy thinking... about ants and uncles and the doodles of poodles.

Her head is certainly full of a number of things...... maybe even cabbages and kings, and her teacher Mr. Fantozzi is filled with admiration for her constant cogitation. He's pretty sure Sarabella's cerebellum and cerebrum are full of intelligent thoughts and eloquent perorations. Still waters run deep, he knows.

BUT--he's her teacher, and he's got to have a concrete product--a hard copy of her thoughts, so to speak, in order to make an evaluation of what she actually knows and can do. And Sarabella is just not articulating, loquating, or expostulating.

Her teacher, Mr. Fantozzi, had a knack for knowing what Sarabella wasn't thinking about... SCHOOL WORK.

But Mr. Fantozzi comes up with a fabulous plan to get get Sara to put her thoughts down in black and white--or green and red, or blue and yellow, with a project assignment that she can't resist:

To share it,

You have to wear it.

Sarabella comes to school wearing her own design, a extravagant, gigantic, and fantastic thinking cap, one with words and drawings that speaks for her, with a tassel and a passel of illustrations of her imaginings and orations about each of them, in Judy Schachner's latest, Sarabella's Thinking Cap. Schachner's Sarabella is not rebellious, but winsome and sweet rather than moody or sulky, and Mr. Fantozzi is a fantastically empathetic teacher, just what young daydreamers need to start to get those ideas out. “Sarabella’s ideas, seen through Schachner’s dazzling illustrations, are presented as wonderfully imaginative,” says School Library Journal.

Judy Schachner gets her wonderful imaginings out as the noted author of the best-selling Skippyjon Jones books, including the 2014 hit, Skippyjon Jones Snow What and the rollicking and  ever-popular parody, I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie (Picture Puffins).