Meet Samantha

Title: Meet Samantha
Author: Susan Adler
54 pages

Summary: In the book Meet Samantha we meet Samantha Parkington, a nine-year-old girl living with her Grandmother (Grandmary) in 1904.  Grandmary wants Samantha to be a proper young lady, but Samantha has a bit of an adventurous spirit and is often finding herself in trouble. Lucky for Samantha, Jessie, Grandmary's seamstress watches out for her, reminding her of her manners and patching her up.

Samantha meets Nellie, a poor girl who moves in next door to work as a maid.  Samantha can't believe Nellie had move away from her family so that she could find a job outside a factory.  Samantha really wants to help Nellie, but what can she do to help her?

To make matters worse, Samantha leans that Jessie will be leaving and not coming back.  Nellie offers to help Samantha find Jessie. Is Samantha brave enough to follow through with the plan? Will Samantha find Jessie? Why did Jessie leave? What about poor Nellie's family? Find out by reading Meet Samantha.

 Here's a fun reading activity to correlate with Meet Samantha.

Character Comparison – A Venn diagram helps you compare and contrast two different things. It’s really easy to draw a Venn diagram. I did this one on Word. I use the chart section to create the diagram and type in information.

For this model I am comparing the characters of Samantha and Nellie. I have two circles, one with each girl’s name listed. On the parts of the circle that don’t overlap, you write in qualities that only one girl has. On the parts of the circles that overlap you write in qualities they both share. This allows the reader to easily look and see what qualities the characters have in common and what qualities are unique to each character.

If you don’t have a computer, you can set up a diagram on paper – just draw two overlapping circles. A circle Venn will allow you to compare lots of different areas. Besides comparing characters in the story, you might try comparing yourself to a character, or comparing qualities from different time periods. For instance, how does 1904 compare to 2012? You could compare clothes, homes, furniture, values, problems, lifestyle, etc.

Feel free to play around with the way you draw out the comparison, besides the Venn diagram you could create a chart or grid on your own. Here’s one I did using a chart:

Daily life in 1904	Common Areas in Daily Life	Daily life in 2012