Trouble With Wishes

Trouble With Wishes

By Diane Stanley

HarperCollins, 2007

Trouble With Wishes is a story based on Greek mythology. The setting is clearly somewhere in Greece, and the clothing is representative of ancient Greece. Students may not know this though, depending on what age group you are working with. Some children might need scaffolding or a discussion or activity in order to activate any prior knowledge they may have.

This story is about Jane and Pyg. Jane wants to be a sculptor like her best friend, Pyg. So he takes her on as an apprentice. When he creates a statute so beautiful that he wishes for it to come alive, it does. The woman does not treat Pyg nicely, and ends up leaving him. In the end, he realizes that Jane is a true person, rather than the woman (statue) he thought he wanted; so one must be careful what they wish for.

I think that this would be a good book to incorporate in middle school, when students begin learning about Ancient Greek and Rome. It can be a great read aloud to engage the students and discuss prior knowledge. Then the students can move into learning about the original myth “Pygmalion”, where he carves a statue of a woman so beautiful, that he falls in love with it.