The Year of Miss Agnes

A year they'll never forgetTen-year-old Frederika (Fred for short) doesn't have much faith that the new teacher in town will last very long. After all, they never do. Most teachers who come to their one-room schoolhouse in remote, Alaska leave at the first smell of fish, claiming that life there is just too hard.But Miss Agnes is different -- she doesn't get frustrated with her students, and she throws away old textbooks and reads Robin Hood instead! For the first time, Fred and her classmates begin to enjoy their lessons and learn to read and write -- but will Miss Agnes be like all the rest and leave as quickly as she came?

Kirkpatrick Hill was raised in Fairbanks, Alaska, and received degrees in English and education from Syracuse University in New York. She has been an elementary school teacher for more than thirty years, spending most of her time in multigrade classrooms or one-room schoolhouses in the Alaskan "bush." She is the author of two other books set in Alaska, Toughboy and Sister and Winter Camp, the mother of six children, and the grandmother of three. Ms. Hill lives in the village of Ruby in the summer and in Fairbanks, Alaska in the winter.