Babymouse

I'm really not a fan of graphic novels. Call me lazy, but it annoys me to have to think about pictures in order to get the jist of the story. I'd rather just read. And when I read I like to be able to get into the flow of the words. But Babymouse was so choppy. It just was not a great reading experience for me.

That said, I have to give Babymouse props for content. In particular, I love how she says that real heroes don't give up on pg. 59. Her imagination was funny, and I think that some kids might reall get into it. I think it's interesting that the last 2 books we've read were both about characters with huge imaginations, but they were presented in really different ways.

Craft Lesson 6

Resource Materials:

Fleischman, Paul and Kevin Hawkes. Sidewalk Circus. Massachusetts: Candlewick, 2004.

Target Audience:

Second Grade

Discussion:

Sidewalk Circus is a great reminder that reading the pictures is just as important as reading the words. Once the kids get the hang of "reading" the shadows, I think their imaginations will take off. I especially like the way it seems that the story ends with a new beginning. This book begs for a sequel.

How to Teach It:

I would read the book in guided reading groups of about four students each. After discussing the story to ensure that all of the kids understood the concept, I would let them write the sequel cooperatively and illustrated it if time allows.

Craft Lesson 5

Resource Materials:

Mora, Pat. Yum! MmMm! Que Rico!. Illus. Rafael Lopez. New York: Lee & Low, 2007.

Target Audience:

Fourth Grade

Discussion/ How to Teach It:

According to the TEKS, fourth graders should be able to use a variety of sources and materials to research a topic and present it to the class.

We will read Yum! MmMm! Que Rico! to create a schema for an essay on the origin of one's favorite food might look like. Then the kids will each choose a food that they really enjoy to study. They will use a variety of resources to research their foods such as the internet, the dictionary, the encyclopedia, and other selections from the library. This will be a major project that we will work on once or twice a week for several weeks. In the end, we will bind each students' contribution together to create a class book, complete with illustrations.

Read Aloud Plan #2

For my second read aloud, I plan to use a book by my current favorite children’s book authors, Don and Audrey Wood, called The Little Mouse, the Red, Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear. It is about a little mouse, who finds a red, ripe strawberry and must eat it before the big, hungry bear gets it. The solution? Cut it in two and share half with the narrator. The story and illustrations are really cute, but the story takes on a humorous quality when the reader infers that the narrator (who is “helping” the little mouse) is actually the bear himself.

Making inferences is an important skill for young readers to acquire to aid in comprehension, and this book is the best I’ve read to introduce the concept. My daughter’s teacher has agreed to let me use her kindergarten class for the read aloud. The skill is technically a 1st grade TEK, but Honey Elementary is an early literacy campus, and I think the students are sophisticated enough in their listening and thinking skills to get it. And even if they don’t understand the concept yet, I think the book will still be enjoyable for them.

So here’s how it went…

First I talked to my daughter’s teacher, Mrs. Scoggin, about the rumor I heard from Mikea that they have already read my book. Apparently, Mrs. Scoggin did read it to the class a few months ago, but none of them understood who the bear was. She was interested in seeing if any of the kids had matured enough in their comprehension to “get” it.

The kids were so funny. Most of them remembered the book, and several said they had it at home. I told them that I wanted them to look and listen very carefully because I had some questions to ask about the bear. They did a terrific job paying attention. When we were finished, I asked them questions like “Does anybody think the bear got to eat any of that strawberry?” and “Did anybody see the bear in the book?” This is where things got funny, because even though there are absolutely no pictures of the bear in the book, several of the boys were absolutely sure that they could see him on one of the pages, lurking in the background underbrush. Mrs. Scoggin and I worked hard to suppress giggles as they took turns showing me how this shadow and that tree branch had to be the bear hiding.

Now there was one little guy who was right on the verge of understanding. He said that there was just something about that bear; that he was there, but he wasn’t. And he would look at me and vaguely point his finger, like the answer was just on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t quite get it out. He was so close. A few other kids decided that the bear was a faker. I’m not sure what they meant by it, but they were emphatic.

I ended by asking them if any of them had any questions about the book for me. My foolish assumption was that they all had a grasp on what exactly a question is. One girl asked me how the bear was able to “smell a red, ripe strawberry from a mile away,” but the rest of the kids offered up an assortment of statements and observations, some pertaining to the book and some not.

All in all, it was a fun experience. The students were not able to infer who the bear was, but one was really close and a few more of them were on the right track. The illustrations did a great job activating their imaginations; I loved listening to their bear sightings. And I learned that most kindergarteners don’t understand the difference between asking a question and making a statement, at least not in the context of a read aloud.

Wood, Don and Audrey. The Little Mouse, the Red, Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear. Illus. Don Wood. Child’s Play Unlimited: Singapore, 1984.

Read Aloud Plan #1

My selection is My Many Colored Days By Dr. Seuss. I will read it to the 4 year olds in my PDO class primarily to teach colors, but also to teach feeling words. I think it is good choice for this age group because they are currently learning both their colors and also how to respond appropriately to their emotions in the context of cooperative play and learning. I will read it in groups of 2 or 3 and assess comprehension by following up with a coloring activity.

The kids liked the book. Since I used very small groups, it was easy for them to get close enough to see the pictures clearly. I scrapped the coloring activity because it didn't fit into my schedule. Instead I asked them to show me where the beginning, middle, and end of the book was. Every one of them got it right, which I think is awesome! Then I let each kiddo flip through the pages and show me what kind of day they were having. Their answers surprised me. They often answer with a "herd" mentality. One of the extroverts answers, then everyone else in the group picks the same thing. But this time they each did their own thing. One little girl showed me the black howling wolf picture. I asked her how that feels for her and she said "Good." And I said "Really? Because some kids might think that this picture looks scary or angry." And she said, "No, it looks happy." Alrighty, then. To each his or her own.

Children's Literature Autobiography

I love to read! Sometimes, when I can't choose what book to dig into next, I just read two or three at the same time. My recent favorites have been The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, The Time Travelers's Wife by Audrey Niffeneger, and Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and the entire Harry Potter series. Unfortunately, my life is so incredibly busy right now with school, work, and family commitments, that it is a struggle just to keep up with my book club's choice of the month. And my heart grieves just a little bit when I see the three unread books on my nightstand, and I know that it will probably be May before I can start them. How did I get this way?

I'm sure it was my parents' fault. They took me to the library on a regular basis and read to me every night before bed. The library was always one of my favorite places to be. We didn't just go to find books, but also for puppet shows and story hour. I loved sitting on the floor listening to the "library lady" tell stories. Then we would look for books. Many times I hauled so many books home from the library that I had a hard time carrying them into the house. But my mom didn't mind. She was also an avid reader, and I think it made her happy to see me get so excited about books. Bedtime stories were also a big deal in my family. Every night my sister and I would climb into bed with our dad and he would read us a story. I still remember some of the picture books, like There's a Monster at the End of this Book, The Little Rabbit, and Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. We did this well into elementary school. When I started bringing home reading homework, I would read the selection to my dad and my sister, Ashley, and then Dad would read us a chapter book. We read Judy Blume's Fudge books and Beverly Cleary's Ramona books and classics like Heidi. Reading for 30 minutes or so each night before bed was just what we did. It was a part of our family culture. By the 3^rd grade I preferred to read exclusively to myself. The habit had taken hold.

I knew from the beginning that I was a good reader. And it was important to me to be the best. We didn't have AR back then, but I'm confident that if we had, I would have out-read everyone in my grade and probably most of the rest of the school. By 2^nd grade, I had all but left picture books behind in the dust. I felt like they were for kids who couldn't read well enough to get into chapter books. What an elitist idiot I was! I realize now that I have a huge gap in my children's literature experience because I focused on reading what the older kids were reading instead of enjoying the literature that was intended for my age and experience. And I totally missed the illustration boat. Even when I did read picture books, I only paid attention to the words in the story. It never occurred to me that the pictures also tell a story.

By the 3^th grade, I'm pretty sure my mom thought she had created a little reading monster. That was the year I read my first adult fiction book, V adapted by A.C. Crispin. I had seen bits and pieces of the TV miniseries, but since it was on past my bedtime, I had missed big chunks of the story. One day I saw the book at the grocery store and begged my mom to let me buy it with my allowance money. She was reluctant, but eventually gave in. So at 9 years old, I read my first 400+ page grown up book complete with cussing, violence and, eh-hem, adult relationships. I was hooked. By 6^th grade I was plowing through VC Andrews and Dean R. Koontz. I grew up in the Bible belt going to church every Sunday like all the other good little girls did, but boy did I rebel in the books I chose to read. I sought out the occult and psychological thrillers, all the while being careful to conceal from my parents the nature of what I was reading.

I look back on that time now with the eyes of a parent, and it makes me cringe. No wonder I was such a bitter, depressed, self-loathing teenager. I put garbage in my mind and got garbage right back out again. Thankfully, the monumental required reading load placed on the honors and advanced placement students at my high school severely limited the spare time I had for reading books of my own choosing. I hated required reading. The only books I can remember actually enjoying were To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men. In fact I rarely even finished the books we were assigned. I was a master at figuring out what the teacher was looking for and reading (skimming) just enough to be able to regurgitate A- material. So while works like The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles made it into my backpack, I can't really claim to have read them thoroughly. It was a seriously dry time in my literary history. The college years weren't much better. Occasionally, I'd pick up reading outside of my class assignments, but almost never fiction. I read a lot of self-help and inspirational Christian literature. I had forgotten that reading could be just for fun…for about 15 years. During that time I graduated from high school and college, got married, and had a couple of kids.

The dry spell lifted when one of the mommies in my kids' playgroup suggested that we should all read Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik and get together one Saturday morning without the kids to discuss it. Three years later, we have read at least 30 books together. We keep a journal of all our meetings and a brief synopsis of each book. Some of my favorite selections have been ones that I probably wouldn't have picked up on my own, like The Time Traveler's Wife and The Five People you Meet in Heaven. I have been challenged by my friends' thoughts and feelings about what we have read and by my revelations of my own assumptions and prejudices. Book Club has been one of the most enriching experiences of my life and I hope that 20 years from now our kids (we have 14 collectively) will carry on the tradition. And I hope to plant little book loving seeds into the hearts and minds of the kids I teach, because if those kids grow to love books, they will be able to navigate the desert of standardized tests and required reading to find a paradise of literature waiting for them.

Yum! MmMm! Que Rico!

Mora, Pat. Yum! MmMm! Que Rico!: America's Sproutings. Illus. Rafael Lopez. New York: Lee & Low Books, Inc., 2007.

The first time I read this book it was to my kids. They are 5 and 3 years old, so I just read the haikus to them because I thought the informational part would be over their heads (especially for my 3 year old). We all LOVED IT!!! I hadn't read haikus in years. And they never did much for me when I was a kid. I think I tried to read them literally. It never occurred to me that maybe they are intended to paint a picture rather than make linear sense. And the pictures in this book are amazing! It's like an adult crib mobile in book form. I just love looking at them.

I enjoyed the informational part in each section too. I never knew that cacao seeds were originally used to make a spicy drink or that cranberries pop. Have any of y'all actually simmered cranberries before? I've only eaten them dried or jellied.

I think I will go back and read the whole book with my 5 year old, just to see what she thinks. She might ignore the information she doesn’t understand, choosing to focus on the pictures and poetry. Or I might end up spending an hour trying to explain things like why Central America is not the same as the America we live in, who the Aztecs were and why they aren't around anymore, and what "tax" and "imported" mean. On second thought, maybe I'll just stick with the haikus for now.