Reading, Writing, Arithmetic–and Ramps
The Kids That Rip! Skateboarding School in Mesa, Ariz., is using Suzanne Selfors’s novel Smells Like Dog (Little, Brown, May) as the basis for its curriculum throughout the 2010-2011 school year. In addition to camps and skateboarding classes, the school is the first in the U.S. to offer a full-time academic and skateboard training program for a handful of students. The students’ lessons will tie in to chapters in the book (they have made their own compasses, studied Homer’s Odyssey, and visited a goat farm), and Selfors plans to visit the school at the end of the academic year. Here, a group of third-grade students visit with a basset hound from the Arizona Basset Hound Rescue.