This class has been such a gift to me this semester.
Okay I am very sorry, but I did not like this book at all and I do not know why! Or maybe that's not even it. I liked the book, I just don't know what to say about it. It was a likable, silly story, but that was it. There was not a lot of substance to it really- which is funny because it is about a skeleton haha! I really think that students would like this book as a read aloud because on every page it says "hic hic hic" and I could see students wanting to read along with that. This book would be very good to use in a series around the Halloween season. The ending would also be very amusing to students. "Then ghost got smart. Hic, hic, hic. Found a mirror. Hic, hic, hic. Held it up. Hic, hic, hic. Skeleton screamed! The hiccups left. They jumped away. Hurray!"
I really do not know where to start with this book. It is probably important to point out that I read So Far From the Bamboo Grove first so I am partial to it. That does not mean that I did not like this book. For sure it was just as heart wrenching at times as the other book in this paired text set, but it had just as much hope mixed in. One thing about this book that was not as strong for me was that it was not a true story, though it could have easily been the story of any child in Korea at the time. One thing that I really did like about this book though, was that it did not end when Japan surrendered. It goes on to talk about how the Russians came into Korea next. It is almost as if the nightmare just kept going for this family. What I liked about that though is, I had no idea that that happened. I am a little ashamed to admit that I learned about a major world history event in a fictional children's novel, but it is true none the less. This is why these kind of text sets are such a good idea in the classroom! You learn about history in a way that you never really thought you could. Plus, this would be far more interesting for students than simply reading about all this in a textbook. Even the best textbooks cant rival the novel for the human spirit and the connection the reader needs to feel something for the topic in question. This is why these kinds of text sets are such a good idea. I would absolutely use this kind of thing in my classroom.
This book made me realize that I would really like to know more about Marie Antoinette. She is such a famous historical character, but I feel like everything that I know about her is hearsay. Like that whole, "let them eat cake" thing, totally false, but that is what people know about her. Perhaps I will have to look into some more literature on her. At any rate, I liked this book for several reasons. The first being that it is told from the point of view of her puppy- and I love puppies ( a shocking revelation I know.) The other reason is because of the historical content. It is about history and a famous historical character, but it is told in a way that is easy to relate to. As I have said before, animals are such a good way to relate things to children. In this case, we see the life of Marie Antoinette through the eyes of her beloved pet Pug, who the author named Sebastian. Interestingly, Marie was only aloud to bring a few personal possessions with her into her new life in France, and her Pug was one of them. I feel like this fact would make this figure relatable to students because many students will have dogs and many more will have some kind of pet. The other thing that is kind of nice here is that because it is from the puppy's point of view, it is pretty simple even though very complicated things were going on in actuality. One thing that I did not like about this book was that it was actually pretty sad. Fitting I guess because her life wasn't exactly happy, but I was sad for Sebastian. In the story as Marie became more of a queen she quit having time for her puppy so he became lonely. Silly? Maybe. My boyfriend laughed at me when he looked over at me reading this book and found me very distraught. Still though, to me, every dog anywhere could by my Louie so I relate to them maybe a little more than I should. Anyway, the ending is happy, because Marie's daughter finds Sebastian and adopts him as her own and he is happy and loved again. At the very end of the book, the author has an actual short biography of Marie Antoinette, who was actually called Antonia or Antoinette by her family. I liked this because some of the facts from the book were not quite true. For example, her marriage was not happy at all, and in the story it seems like it was pretty okay.
First of all, I just want to say that these tiny little images make me sad :-( This one however makes me particularly sad because now you cant see the detail that I can on the cover art. The first thing that I noticed while reading this book were the illustrations and I don't necessarily mean that in a good way. They were awesome as far as details go, but at the same time, the kids look downright creepy! What it is I think is that they look like little adults with these big, round, shiny faces. I dunno. They were a little bit distracting for me while I was reading actually. That having been said though, I do appreciate Matt Novak's obvious attention for details in the illustrations. Some of the scenes he probably could have gotten away with not quite as much, but he went for it anyway. I really like that in the illustrations of all the children everywhere having one giant pillow fight, no two children look the same and they all have different pajamas on.
I honestly can't believe that it has taken me this long to talk about his book! It was one of my absolute favorites when I was younger. Did I see the movie though, you say? Absolutely not. Why? Because they totally ruined it! i could tell just from the trailer that only a few things were kept the same from the original telling, which is highly disappointing because it was fine just on its own. When I was little I always thought about how cool it would be to live in a place where food rained from the sky. Then when I got a little bit older, but not quite old enough to outgrow the book, I realized that if it truly rained food it would not be suitable to eat because of all the nasty things in the atmosphere. Another fanciful idea struck down by knowledge and science for that matter. I still enjoyed the book though. I think that the illustrations were one of the best parts. It is funny because what I enjoyed so much about those illustrations is still what I hold as the gold standard for a good illustration today, and that is attention to detail. Each illustration in this book was done with a careful eye, and nothing was left out. Not to be too general here, but my other favorite part of this book was the story. Not only is it amusing, but there are lessons to be learned. This is the story of a town where the weather does not consist of rain and snow, but of hot dogs and hamburgers and other foods. Life was good in the obviously fictional town of Chewandswallow until there is the hurricane equivalent of food dumped on the city. The residents are forced to flee for their lives, lest they be squished by a giant pancake or run over by an enormous rolling doughnut. What lesson can be learned from this silly story? There are two actually. The first is this: too much of a good thing is a bad thing. The townspeople had been glad to get their food for free from the sky, but when the weather spins out of control they are forced to leave, ergo too much=bad. The other lesson comes from a part of the book that I did not mention. The story begins by a grandfather telling his grandchildren this story of the town Chewandswallow. This celebrates not only the entertainment value of books and the importance of reading and sharing them together, but it also highlights the tradition of the oral story.
I chose this book because I thought that it was going to be cute and I was right. This was a very cute book! It was another that after I read it once I thought it was just for entertainment's sake, but after thinking about it I discovered that there was more value to it than that. The story starts with a large mouse family who likes to watch TV. The problem is that they can never agree on what it is that they should watch. The dad mouse wants to watch action, mama wants to watch a comedy and so on. It goes through all the different genres of TV show that you could possibly want to watch. Than one day, the TV is broken and the mouse family is a little lost at first. Then they start to entertain themselves in other ways. I liked this because, even though I do enjoy turning on the tube at the end of a long day, I feel like there is too much emphasis on it these day, especially with our youth. This book could be used for a bunch of different things. It could be a topic starter to get to know students. You could have them talk about what kind of TV they like to watch and then maybe they could get into groups and put together a skit that would show what their genre was. This would be good for planning and writing skills, as well as using imaginations to come up with props and everything. this book could also be used as the jumping off point to talk about what we could do with our time besides watch TV. Two of my favorite things about this book though? One, the mouse family was all together when they were deciding how to spend their time and two, they decide to read a book. One thing though about the book that was interesting to me. We know from the beginning of the book that the dad mouse likes action/adventure, and what kind of story finally gets read at the end of the book? An action/adventure story is read by the dad. I don't know what this means really but it felt significant to me that the dad is the only one whose genre was addressed.
This was an odd book and I cant really decide if I liked it or not. On one hand I am certain that students would like it given the nonsensical rhymes. On the other though is that the rhymes are just that, nonsense. I think I would have liked it better if the words were all real. For example, "N was once a little needle, Needly, Tweedly, Threedly, Needly Wisky wheedly little needle." Now to be fair, tweed is a word, but tweedly is not. I guess what I am trying to say is that this book would have been more successful for me personally if he had used it to teach students about the alphabet and rhyming words. It would have been more meaningful. The other thing that bothered me a little about this book were some of the letter examples. Some of them students would not know, though they could figure it out from the illustration- one possible upside to this book could be that it would help teach students to look at illustrations for text clues. One letter though that they probably wouldn't know or couldn't get unless they already knew it, would be U. "U was once a little urn, urny, burny, turny, urny, bubbly burny little urn." Okay so not only would you have to explain to students that an urn holds the remains of a person who was cremated after they died, you would have to explain cremation. No thank you. The idea of cremation is a little disturbing to me know as an adult, I really don't know how I would have felt about it elementary school, but it would have been similar. Also, could we look at the rhyming words here? "Bubbly burny?" Gross! So as far as alphabet books go, you could do better for sure.
The first thing I want to talk about with this book are the illustrations. Each one appears to have been hand painted on canvas before it was made into an illustration for the book. One word. Wow. I can't even imagine how long it would have taken to do all of these paintings. They really add something to the book as well, they set a mood. The fact that they are done in such a realistic fashion helps to make the reader feel that this story could have actually happened. In addition the quality of the illustrations make it easy to envision yourself in the book. The illustrations also set a more serious tone to the book, which is fitting considering the topic is the Titanic. Really though, I just cant say enough good things about them, they are beautiful and very realistic. It just occurred to me too that they were a very good choice on the author's part. Just think of how ridiculous this book would have been and how different the tone if the illustrations had been cartoons instead.
I loved this book! It was so cute, and it even had a moral in it. Okay, so it took me a little thinking to get to it, but I did and here it is: do unto others as you would have them do unto you! This is the lesson that Goldie's brother must learn as he torments his older sister while she is sick and in doing so ends up with the chicken pox himself. One of my favorite things about this book was how it incorporated different fairytales and different fairytale characters into this story. For example, the three bears from Goldie Locks and the Three Bears are mentioned and little red riding hood. More than that though, there are characters from rhymes. "Jack be nimble! Jack be quick! Come and see! My sister's sick!" It reminded me of the Shrek movies and how they managed to squeeze nearly every fairytale and folktale in to it, and they did it in such a clever way! One of the other things that I liked about this book was that the illustrations look vintage. They look like they belong in a book with cardboard covers and a shiny gold binding. Even the furniture and the dress looks like this book was written in the forties. Last thing that I really liked about this book is that it flowed so nicely. This is due in part to the fact that the words all rhyme, but still it was nice to read, like the verbal equivalent of looking at an aesthetically pleasing painting.
I picked this book off the shelf first because for whatever reason I thought it was going to be about politics- donkeys on the cover and its about a big elephant, I dunno. Anyway, I thought that it would be interesting to see politics from a children's book point of view. This was however, not about politics. In the end though I was okay with this because it ended up being something just as interesting. We have all heard this phrase "the big elephant in the room". It refers to something that is very obvious that nobody mentions, but everybody knows. For example, an elephant in the room would be a bad smell. It is obvious, everyone smells it, but nobody wants to mention it. Or it could be a topic of discussion that everyone knows about, but nobody brings up to talk about like a divorce or something like that. At any rate, it is a common phrase. What this book has done though is make the phrase into something that children can understand, and it does it in a funny way. It starts off with one of the friends asking, "Can we talk about the big elephant in the room?" And the other friend says "The big elephant? As in the BIG problem? I was expecting this! Because I ate all the crunchy-nut ice cream?!" He goes on asking if other things are the proverbial "elephant in the room" and finally the other friend says "No! No! No! I don't care about any of those things...I was just asking about the big elephant in the room!" Then they both look into the living room and an actual elephant is sitting on the sofa, "Oh, that big elephant! That's Stanley." 
Love That Dog? How about Love That Book? That was corny but it had to be done. Yes, I did love this book. It was charming and simple, yet deep in its own right. It introduces the idea that children of all ages, or anyone, for that matter can write poetry. Which is important for children to realize. This book would be so perfect to help introduce that to students because it shows an average little boy writing poetry that his teacher loves. I think that praise from the teacher is a good example for students to see, because even though Jack thinks his poetry is silly, his teacher wants to put it up on the board. It is also a good way to approach teaching poetry to students. Putting everybody's poetry up on the board for everyone to see, leaving off names if the student so desires. I thought that it was interesting that Jack didn't want his name on his poetry just because it is not uncommon for people to write poetry anonymously. It can be such a personal thing for people, as it clearly ended up being for Jack once he became more comfortable with the emotions that were coming up about his dog and the blue car. All in all I guess my favorite part about this book was that it brought poetry down from its seemingly lofty position and bestowed it upon us mere mortals and made it seem reachable. 
Okay so here is a smidge more bias showing, I picked this book out because theme was dogs, and I love dogs! The first thing that came to mind when I saw this book, aside from being excited about the subject, was what a great book for a student that didn't think they would like poetry but loves dogs. This would be one of those books that you could use as a platform for students who weren't sure about reading where you use the subject to entice your students. I know that when I was little I would have been all over this. Anyway, as the title would suggest, all of the poems are about dogs. They are not uniform though and I liked that about it. For example, some of the poems are only two lines and others go on for several stanzas. They are also about all different kinds of dogs in different situations. One of my favorites was this:
This would be such a fun book to do with younger students, it would be particularly nice in a big book setting so that all of the students could see it to participate. The really neat thing about this book of poetry is that it incorporates sounds. There are lots of action words that you would find in comic books, for example lots of EEEK! and WHACK! SMACK! THUD! I just think that little ones would have a blast making the sounds along with you while you read out loud. The other really neat thing about this book is that there seems to be a poem for every season and occasion. There is a Halloween poem, a winter poem, one about the Fourth of July and one about going to the barber. This book could also potentially be a way to incorporate instruments into your book time. For example, you could use drums or tambourines and other different types of noise makers to stand in for the different noises. I really think that so far this is my favorite of all the poetry books I have looked at. Couldn't be cuter and there are so many things to do with it!
The other part of this book's title is "And Other Surprising Sequels to Mother Goose Rhymes". That was important to share because it really explains the book, as does the front cover, I feel. These are almost re-imaginings of these classic rhymes because they include the original and then go on to say more about them. Or they include a short passage from the original rhyme and build on it. One interesting thing for me was that I did not know some of the Mother Goose rhymes in here, or at least not all of them. I was surprised to find some of them a little gruesome actually. My favorite rhyme in this book was both funny and a little grotesque. It is a re-imagining of Three Blind Mice. 
This book was unique in a way because it used some language native to the area of Zanzibar. This was neat because, not only could you use it to help teach students about different cultures, but you could use it to teach about languages. Anyway, this whole book is poems about Zanzibar and, I assume, a family that lives there. Some of the poems rhyme and some of them do not, it is nice how they switched that up. One of my favorites was called Rainy Season, it goes like this:
This is the first book of poetry that I have looked at that is aimed at the little ones out there, and I must say that I enjoyed it. One thing that I am going to have to get used to as far as children's poetry is concerned is that it seems to have a different purpose from adult poetry. Children's poetry, from what I have so far gleaned is much more lighthearted and more story based. Whereas most adult poetry I have come into contact with is about emotions and matters of the heart and generally heavier topics. I have also noticed that adult poetry tends to be a little bit abstract in that you have to think about the meaning that the author is wanting to convey. And in my opinion, I can only take rhyming poems seriously if they are for the little ones. Of course this just could be because I have a general dislike for a certain someone that I knew who's poetry always rhymed- hey bias is bound to come out somewhere! At any rate, this particular book of poetry was centered around that idea of etiquette for children, only it isn't real etiquette. Instead, it is silly backward etiquette written by a woman named Miss Information (very clever).
