Team Info:

• McDougle Elementary School
• Lisa Myles
• Elly, Paige, Adam, Allison, Sam, Siena

Becoming Naomi Leon, by Pam Munoz Ryan, is about a girl named Naomi Soledad Leon Outlaw.  She lives with her little brother Owen and Gram at Avocado Acres Trailer Rancho. She doesn’t have a lot of friends (except for Blanca) and boys tease her about her last name.  Naomi is good at soap carving, worrying and making lists. Throughout the story, Naomi keeps lists of a lot of things in her journal. One day Naomi’s mom (Skyla) shows up to visit Naomi and Owen after leaving them for 7 years. At first Naomi is happy to see her mom and thinks about the things they can do together but she soon finds out that Skyla is not reliable and hurtful.  Her mom wants to take Naomi from her family and live in Las Vegas with Clive (Skyla’s boyfriend) and his daughter. Naomi, her brother and Gram go to Mexico with friends for Christmas and to get away from Skyla. Naomi gets to meet her dad and they both carve things together. When Naomi returns home she has to go to court with Owen and Gram so they can stay together as a family.  In the end, Naomi feels that something let loose within her and she speaks up for herself and Owen which results in the judge saying they can stay with Gram.

 Your Content

For Challenge 1 we invented the Never-Ending Journal for Naomi.   Naomi uses her journal as her resource for life.  In this challenge, Tendai (from The Ear, The Eye and The Arm) builds a futuristic journal for Naomi. The journal can speak to Naomi, translate from English to Spanish, print pages and refill its own pages when it detects the journal is running low.  The speaking feature helps Naomi add words to her ongoing lists and the translation feature helps Naomi stay connected to her Hispanic culture.  At the end of our movie, Naomi realizes that her journal is like a friend to her.

https://youtu.be/WyN7cH0aCqk

Naomi and the Never-Ending Journal