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The heart of Heartbeat (if you will) is its thematic complexity.
Sharon Creech’s story is the story of a girl with many different
things on her mind: her family, especially her mother’s
pregnancy and her aging grandfather; her schoolwork,
specifically her drawing class and her introduction to footnotes
and the thesaurus in English class; her friend, Max; and her own
interests, running and drawing. The skill of the story – aside
from its poetic method – is the way Creech manages to mix and
connect these themes. Max likes running, too; but her
grandfather was a runner, also – to take just one example. For
our assembly, we highlighted these themes. To do more with
Heartbeat, I’d suggest also finding ways of exploring or
expanding on these themes. 1) Max – 2) Drawing - 3) Running – I
wouldn’t assume that many elementary school students enjoy
running the way Annie (and Max) do. But one ought t