All the Answers by Kate Messner

All the Answers by Kate Messner

What if your pencil had all the answers? Would you ace every test? Would you know what your teachers were thinking? When Ava Anderson finds a scratched up pencil she doodles like she would with any other pencil. But when she writes a question in the margin of her math quiz, she hears a clear answer in a voice no one else seems to hear.
With the help of her friend Sophie, Ava figures out that the pencil will answer factual questions only - those with definite right or wrong answers - but won't predict the future. Ava and Sophie discover all kinds of uses for the pencil, and Ava's confidence grows with each answer. But it's getting shorter with every sharpening, and when the pencil reveals a scary truth about Ava's family, she realizes that sometimes the bravest people are the ones who live without all the answers.

Kate Messner is the author of Stenhouse professional titles Real Revision (2010) and 59 Reasons to Write (2015) as well as more than two dozen award-winning children's books. These include picture book favorites Over and Under the Snow, Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt, Over and Under the Pond, How to Read a Story, and Tree of Wonder from Chronicle, the popular Ranger in Time series and Silver Jaguar Society Mysteries from Scholastic, and middle-grade novels like The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z, Eye of the Storm, Wake Up Missing, All The Answers, and The Seventh Wish from Bloomsbury.

Kate taught middle school English for fifteen years and earned National Board Certification in Early Adolescent English Language Arts. She left the classroom in 2012 to be a full-time writer, speaker, and educational consultant. Kate was a featured presenter at the 2012 TED Conference and is a frequent keynote speaker for state and national library and teaching conferences. She offers full-day staff development sessions in schools as well as author visits and writing workshops for young readers and writers.

When she's not writing or teaching, Kate enjoys spending time outdoors, hiking the Adirondack High Peaks and swimming in Lake Champlain, where she lives with her family.