Bear Feels Sick

Bear Feels Sick by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman

Pre K to 2^nd Grade

4 stars

            It is that time of year, and Bear is sick.  His friends help him out with tea and warm blankets.  Once Bear gets better, all of his friends are sick now.

            Wilson has written five books about Bear, and they all have the same rhyming theme and Bear’s friends are always there too.  My two-year old students at the daycare I work at love Bear Wants More.  The rhyming is catchy and they always shout “and Bear wants more!”  So of course I checked out this book and brought it to work.  It fit perfectly for this time of year as well.  We talked about the trees in the book and compared them to the trees outside now. 

            This was fun to read and if it is read aloud be sure to enhance “And Bear feels sick.” This would be a great lesson for students when teaching them the importance of covering your mouth when coughing or sneezing, and why we should wash our hands often.  Bear Feels Sick is a fun way to show students how to treat their friends who are sick. 

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig

2^nd to 4^th grade

Three stars

            Sylvester finds a magic pebble that can make wishes come true.  But when a lion frightens him on his way home, Sylvester scrambles and wishes he were a rock.  Now he is unable to wish himself back to normal.  His parents are worried and have no idea where Sylvester is.  In the end his parents go for a picnic at the rock that is Sylvester, not knowing it was him.  They find the pebble and set it on the rock, now Sylvester can wish himself back to normal.

            I chose this book because it was in the Caldecott section, and I kind of remember reading this when I was younger.  This book was written in 1969 and is still a very popular book.  For my first time reading this book, I didn’t really care for Sylvester turning into a rock.  It brings such a horrible turn in the book.  The parents are worried, they ask neighbors, and police for help and no one can find Sylvester.  A whole year passes before he is found and reunited with his parents.  I was very grateful this book had a happy ending. 

            This book would provide students to recognize their feelings during the reading of the book, and be a good book for readers who are getting ready to move from basic picture books.  Here is a decent website listing a wide range of activities to do with this book that are cross curricular.

Tuesday

Tuesday by David Wiesner

Ages 5 and up

4 stars

            It is dark and time for bed.  That is when the frogs from a nearby pond start to fly on their lily pads.  The frogs scare the birds, watch TV in your house, and even fly away from dogs.  When the sun comes up all the lily pads flop to the ground and the frogs hop on back to the pond.  Next Tuesday pigs fly. 

            I chose to read this book, because it has come up in class quite often and I enjoy David Wiesner’s work.  Once again, David amazes me with his detailed drawings.  I really enjoyed this book because the frogs on the pages looked so frumpy and happy I couldn’t help myself. 

            This book would be great for student’s to write a story too, or maybe continue the story with the flying pigs.  I love hearing students’ different versions of the story.  Wordless books are a great resource for young children how are possibly struggling to read or even students who are learning how to write a story.

Flotsam

Flotsam by David Wiesner

Ages 5 & up

5 stars

            A young boy discovers an underwater camera that floated onto the beach.  He develops the film and finds out that this camera has been to a lot of places over a long period of time. 

            I absolutely loved this book.  The pictures are so vivid, and you are left starring at them for a really long time.  One of my favorite pages is the page showing the second photograph.  It is of octopuses reading in armchairs, fish listening on the couch, and there is even a coffee table, a fishbowl, and lamps.  The best part of this page is in the background you see an upside down truck that is crumpled a little, and on the side of it, it says Bob’s Moving and Storage.  So one can infer that all this furniture got to the bottom of the sea by a moving truck crashing. After finishing the book, I notice on the cover of the book, in the glare of the fishes eye you can see the camera.  Little details like this can be found on every page of this book.

            I also enjoyed when he found the picture of the girl, and uses his microscope to see the picture within the picture.  I found myself flipping back to see the original, and how much I could see.  This book was so enjoyable for me, I wanted to spread the word by having a couple of my friends (who are not elementary teachers) look at the book.  And one of my friends said they could relate to the little boy in the book because when they were young they were very curious about nature and had a sort of nerdy attitude. 

            I feel that this book would be useful resource in the classroom.  Just this semester I have found a new awareness of wordless books and how powerful they can be.  For a post activity to reading the book, you could have the students brainstorm about what flotsam might be, and even what the cover of the book is.  To be honest, before I read the book I thought the cover, at a glance, looked like the robot light, HAL, from 2001 Space Odyssey.  Then after you read the book, discuss with students how they might change their meaning/definition of flotsam and share with them the true definition. 

The House You Pass on the Way

The House You Pass on the Way by Jacqueline Woodson

Ages 12 & up

3 stars

            This is a story about a fourteen-year-old girl named Staggerlee who comes from an interracial family.  She is a quiet girl who loves to play the harmonica and is dealing with her emerging and confusing feelings for her uncle’s adopted daughter Trout. 

            The House You Pass on the Way is short but sweet story.  It brings up some potential controversial topics through a wonderful story.  I thought this book was ok.  I really enjoyed the beginning of the book.  Woodson does a wonderful job setting up the story and introducing us to Staggerlee.  I really connected with Staggerlee when she wonders why can’t everyone just get along and be friends.  She doesn’t really have a lot of friends at school, and her classmates make fun of her and call her stuck up.  When I was younger, I had always wondered why are some of my classmates so mean to others?  I never understood why everyone wasn’t a friend with everyone else. 

            The part I disliked about this book is how Woodson brought the story to an end.  Staggerlee’s new friend Trout leaves at the end of summer, Woodson doesn’t even include the scene where they say goodbye to each other.  Then all of a sudden its October, two months after Trout leaves and she tells of the girls talking on the phone with each other.  In the next chapter it is winter, and Staggerlee hasn’t heard from Trout in a long time.  I felt, that compared to the rest of the book the timeline just sped up in the last twenty pages.  And that major scenes, like saying goodbye to each other, could have made this story a lot better.  

            Using this book in the classroom might cause some controversy with the parents/guardians.  But if you are able to defend yourself effectively you shouldn’t have a problem.  I’m not sure if I would use it.  If I chose not to use it, it would be because I am not particularly fond of Woodson’s writing style.  It would be a good book for a student to independently read, especially for a student who could possibly relate to Staggerlee. 

The Giver

The Giver by Lois Lowry

A novel for middle school kids

5 stars

            A twelve-year old boy, Jonas gets assigned the most important job in the community, the Receiver of Memory.  He finds out what the past was like and why they community is the way it is now. 

            I read this book when I was in middle school on my own, and I wish we had read it in school.  Reading this book with my college classmates brought forth an amazing discussion that I never got to experience until now.  When reading it for the second time, I could not remember what happened when members of the community were to be released.  Part of me wanted to believe that they went to a different community to live the rest of their days.  I didn’t want it to be a bad thing.  Another interesting part of the book was the baby boy; Gabriel that Jonas’ family took in at nighttime.  I felt that Gabe was an important part of the story and possibly a metaphor for something.  Maybe he represents what the future of the community will look like after Jonas runs away.  I wish we had more time to discuss this in the class. Lois Lowry is a fantastic writer, and I would suggest this book to anyone.

            The ending of the book was confusing to me.  I wasn’t sure how to take or what really happened in the end.  It was a happy ending, but I am still unsure whether Jonas dies or not.  This is where the sci-fi part of the book confuses me.  I think that I wanted to know more how the community was changed, and what would happen to Gabriel. 

            The Giver, at first appears to be a utopia but we find out through Jonas’ story that it is really a dystopia.  There are so many connections and literary elements throughout this book.  The possible activities you can perform in the classroom are endless.  You could have a small group book talk; have a debate over Sameness versus today’s society, a no-color activity, and memory treasure box. 

Black and White

Black and White by David Macaulay

Picture book for Grades

5 stars

                Black and White, at first appears to be four separate stories, but you soon come to the realization that they are all connected.  There is a story about a boy on a train, commuters waiting impatiently, some strange parents, and Holstein cows, that when they get out of the field they are almost impossible to find.

                When I first selected this book after reading the title, I thought it was going to be a book about discrimination of races.  Boy was I wrong.  This book is absolutely incredible.  So much is going on in this book that you have to reread it to catch all the things you missed.  Each page has the four stories, split up into quadrants.  The first page of the book even has titles for each story.  Even though we normally read left to right and top to bottom, I caught myself reading the story that was in the bottom right corner before the top left one.  And one of the stories has words every few pages, so I would look back and compare the pictures. It was also a lot of fun to see the connection between all the stories.  With the Holstein cows escaping and causing the train the little boy is on to stop and the commuters having to wait longer because the train was delayed.  But the part that I loved the most about the connections was how some characters were in more than one story.

                There are endless teaching opportunities to derive from this book, and I think that might be why I love it so much.  So many discussions about different perspectives when writing, why is the title Black and White, finding details, connecting text to illustrations, etc.  There are a lot of literary elements being covered in each individual story, but also the book as a whole too.