Extra Credit
| Extra Credit <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Extra+Credit&rft.author=%5B%5BAndrew+Clements%5D%5D&rft.date=June+23%2C+2009[1]&rft.pub=%5B%5BSimon+and+Schuster%5D%5D[2]&rft.pages=183[2][1]"> | |
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| Author | Andrew Clements |
| Country |
 United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's literature |
| Publisher | Simon and Schuster[2] |
Publication date | June 23, 2009[1] |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 183[2][1] |
| ISBN | 1-4169-4929-1[1] |
Extra Credit is a 2009 children's novel written by Andrew Clements. It is about a girl named Abby Carson who struggles in school. Her teacher decides now is the time to act. It's time for Extra Credit. Abby is going to fail the sixth grade and be held back. She knew that she had problems in school, but nothing this serious! The only way to save her grade is to get high scores for the rest of the year, do all of her homework, and do an extra credit report. She has to exchange letters with someone from a different country, with a different culture. Then at the end of the school year, she must tell her class what she has learned. She corresponds with Sadeed Bayat, a boy from a small Afghanistan village. She learns a lot about a different way of life.
Plot
It isn’t that Abby Carson can’t do her schoolwork. She just doesn’t like doing it. And in February a warning letter arrives at her home. Abby will have to repeat sixth grade—unless she meets some specific conditions, including taking on an extra-credit project to find a pen pal in a distant country. Seems simple enough, but when Abby’s first letter arrives at a small school in Afghanistan, the village elders agree that any letters going back to America must be written well. In English. And the only qualified student is a boy, Sadeed Bayat. Except in this village, it is not proper for a boy to correspond with a girl. So Sadeed’s younger sister will write the letters. Except she knows hardly any English. So Sadeed must write the letters. For his sister to sign. But what about the villagers who believe that girls should not be anywhere near a school? And what about those who believe that any contact with Americans is . . . unhealthy? Not so simple. But as letters flow back and forth—between the prairies of Illinois and the mountains of central Asia, across cultural and religious divides, through the minefields of different lifestyles and traditions—a small group of children begin to speak and listen to one another. And in just a few short weeks, they make important discoveries about their communities, about their world, and most of all, about themselves.