Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving

I had never heard of Sarah Hale until I read this book, which is actually kind of sad. She is an important figure in American history. She was the women that pushed for the validation of Thanksgiving as an American holiday. This book has a light hearted feel and tone while still offering historical context for students. The illustrations are also highly detailed and intriguing. They are highly stylized. Even though much of the book has a fairly brown color palate, it is still very eye catching. I would use this book for elementary age students near thanksgiving.

How to Care for Your Monster

How to Care for Your Monster by Norman Bridwell is an older book.  It was written in 1970, and I believe my copy is just about that old.  The book is structured as a "how to" book for children describing all they need to know when caring for their monster.  It is similar to if it was describing how to care for a dog or other pet.  The first page of the book tells it all.

"So you want to own a monster? Many people do these days.

You can bring a monster into your home.  It's just a matter

of finding one you like.

This book will tell you how to get your monster, and how to

keep him healthy and happy."

This book would be good for 3rd grade readers or lower level 4th grade level readers.  It is broken up into small chapters describing each monster.  The language, as a whole, is not terribly difficult to grasp.  However, there is some touch vocabulary included.  For example, in the vampire section, it reads "Vampires are very dignified and polite.  But they have rather peculiar habits of eating and sleeping."

I would have this book in my classroom library for students to pick up and read for pleasure.  I would also encourage the students to read it during the Halloween season.  You could also make a project where students imagine their own monster and write a "how to" story about caring for their monster.  I would have the students type their story and then draw a picture of their monster by hand.

The Berenstain Bears' Nature Guide

The Berenstain Bears' Nature Guide by Stan and Jan Berenstain is a wonderful book. The cover of the book says "Everything small bears and kids need to know about the wonderful world of Nature." This is exactly what this book has to offer! It goes over ideas senses, how to identify is something is an animal, animal reproduction, birds, the life cycle of a frog, different kinds of plants, and caves! I would use this book in my class to introduce biology lessons to my class as an introduction. I would use certain sections here and there when they went with my lesson.

The Snowy Day

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats is a Caldecott winner.  The book has beautiful artwork.  It is quite simplistic, but very effective for the clean simplicity for the book.

The story recounts a boy Peter's day of adventure in the snow.  I enjoyed this story because it is an incredibly happy and pleasant realistic fiction book.  The book does not really have an antagonist, which could lead you to assume that it is without substance, but this is not the case.  This book shows, realistically, that some days there are no antagonists and they are just good.  I think this is an important idea to share with students.

Here is a lesson plan for very young students just starting to learn about different types of weather that uses The Snowy Day.
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/lesson-plan/snowy-day-lesson-plan

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

I think most people are aware of Eric Carl's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This book is classically used in younger classrooms to teach subjects such as days of the week, types of fruit, numbers, or the life cycle of a butterfly.

During my book talk, I posed the question "how could this book be used with students in older grades?" to my group. The idea of using this book as an art project was brought up. Students could do a project that involved paper tearing artwork. But the most interesting idea was to use the book for teaching other languages to your students. The basic vocabulary such as food and days of the week is perfect to use when working on beginning level foreign language learning. While reading the book to your class you could have your students translate these words in Spanish for instance. We also spoke about using this book to help teach sign language vocabulary to your students.

The Gardener Book Talk!

The Gardener, by Sarah Stewart and illustrated by David Small, is a Caldecott honor book. I was immediately drawn to it at the bookstore because of its beautiful illustrations. Small depicts a garden as a fantasy like oasis, but keeps its small imperfections. For example he takes the time to draw small scattered weeds into the pages and refrains from putting all the plants in sterile uniform rows. This gives the book a more honest and organic feel.

The story itself is told in the form of letters from the main character, Lydia Grace, to her Uncle Jim or to her parents, in the 1930's. Lydia moves away from her parents care to live with her uncle until her father finds work. At home Lydia Grace is an amazing gardener and uses gardening as a way to express herself. When she moves to the city, and begins working at her summer bakery, she devises a plan to share her beloved plants with the city and Uncle Jim.

The Gardener is a great story, exemplifying the idea that even the smallest gesture can mean the world. It also shows that when you come into a new space, it is important to learn from the locals but also share what you know and love from previous experiences.

I would recommend The Gardener for any classroom K-12. It can be used to teach genre, story telling, reading comprehension, vocabulary, history, and more to your students.

take me out of the bathtub and other silly dilly songs

Take me out of the bathtub and other silly dilly songs is an interesting book.  It is a book of songs written to the tunes of familiar songs put to different lyrics.  The main song, also the title, is take me out of the bathtub. Its sung to the tune of Take Me Out to the Ballgame.  Below is a video two girls singing the song from the book.

The illustrations in this book are, in my opinion, quite off putting.  The best way I can describe them is "icky."  These illustrations may be appealing to young children who like more crude, dirty things, however I do not like that subject matter.

Even though the book alone is not incredibly entertaining, some of the individual songs are quite clever.  For instance, I enjoyed the "take me out of the bathtub" song above.  If you choose to use this book in your classroom, I would suggest using it in segments, rather than as an entire work.  In a classroom, students could learn the songs themselves to sing together.  You could even have your students create their own lyrics to songs of your or their choice.  This can either be tailored to a specific subject matter, or the choice in subject matter can be up to the students to choose.