Schema: Ghosts, New Orleans, beignets

 The story is set in New Orleans and is about a family who opens a restaurant that is haunted.  Fred, the ghost is a little timid and all of his attempts to scare people off only make the place more interesting to them.  The main character, Marie, a child of the new owner, figures out a way to make him stay and be happy. They make a messy room for him where he feels at home, and they make a dessert, Powdered Ghosts Puffs, in his honor. The illustrations support the text and will be enjoyed by children especially on Halloween.

Cause and Effect: Because Fred couldn’t have a messy place to stay, the effect was that he was planning to leave.

Because Fred made the food fly around, the effect was that the people in the restaurant liked the atmosphere even more.

Drawing Conclusions: How did Marie draw the conclusion that Fred would stay if they made him his own space?

Text-to-Text Connections: Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig has similar illustrations of the animals.  The Teeny Tiny Woman also has a talking bone in the story. 

Personification: The bone takes on human characteristics and feelings.

Compare and Contrast with Chris Van Allsburg’s The Widow’s Broom.  How are the bone and the broom alike?

How did the bone help Pearl and her family?

How did the broom help the widow?

Characterization: List the fox’s characteristics.  Hungry when he describes Pearl, cruel when he talks about eating the bone,

Text-to-Self  Connections: getting haircut, fall illustrations

Sequencing: order the events in this circle story of:

leaving home

getting to shop

changing the pictures on the wall

cutting the different monster’s hair

cleaning up

going back home

Point of View:  The fly pages show the humans and their POV toward hair care at the beginning, and at the end, the illustrations feature the monsters POV.

Text-to-Self Connection: mind runs free, letting our imaginations run wild

Text-to-Text Connection: Both books are about kids who are outside at night with a full moon.

Compare and Contrast:

Similarities:  In both books the kids are out after dark, and in both, they are a little afraid of the dark, the full moon, and the night sounds.   Both books feature the oooo sound of an owl or the wind.  Both books refer to the  moon as an eye.

Differences: Ghost Eye is about a boy and his big sister.  Night in the Barn is about brothers and a cousin, all  boys and a dog.  In Ghost Eye the mother sends the kids on the errand.  In Night in the Barn, the boys think up the challenge themselves.

Author’s purpose: to create a connection with a scared feeling when in the dark at night and showing how the imagination can run away with itself.

Mental Images: The image of the “mind running free” in Ghost Eye, imagining scary things in Night in the Barn when the dog comes in at the end,  imagining the bare tree, the full moon, the owl’s eyes, the cat’s eyes

Inference: What makes you infer that the big sister loves her little brother more than she lets on  in The Ghost-Eye Tree?

Sequencing: Both stories can be sequenced with the events leading up to feeling safe again at the end.

Schema: stranger danger

Sequencing: Days of the week are the names of the children. Sequence four events that move the story forward.

Cause and Effect: Because the children let a stranger in, they were turned into food.

Drawing Conclusions: The mother asks each child what they would like from the store.  When a witch turns the children into food, the mother must draw a conclusion as to which child is which food in order to get her children back.

Classifying: Make a classification chart placing each child in a separate section or column. Write what they wanted from the store under their name. Add underneath each child what each child was turned into by the witch.  Ask students if they can conclude how the mother knew which food was which child by looking at this information.  The clue is that each child wanted an item that went with serving the food they were turned into.

Text-to-text connection: The Three Billy Goats Gruff has a troll that is thrown into the river and never heard from again.

Text-to-Self Connection: Parents tell children to not let a stranger in and to not “touch” fire when they are home alone.

Point of View: The story is told from a monster family’s point of view.  From the parents’ point of view, Frankie is the scariest of all of the family.

Voice: The voice of the book is that of  the monster parents until the end.  Then we can hear the voice of Frankie when he decides to accept himself for what he is.

Compare and contrast: Compare what monsters think is good with what people think is good.  Frankie’s appearance is frightening to them and they try their best to change it.  Frankie’s hugging and kissing them could be compared to them jumping out and saying “gotcha!”  Compare the Stein family’s  home decor and toys to what regular people like.

Compare a real family tree (Tree Map) with the family tree that Frankie’s parents show him.

Inference: We can infer that it was a bad beginning when Frankie was born on a sunny day.

Characterization: Frankie was not scary, had golden hair, white teeth, clear skin, and he bounces when he walks like a zombie.  His groan is squeaky.

Synonyms: What is another word that means the same thing as: resemblance, inspiration, and indeed?

Predicting:  What do you predict Frankie’s own kind of scary will be?

Text-to-text connections: Franny K. Stein series, Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich

Parody: copying  someone’s style in a humorous way, making a spoof of something

Goodnight Goon is a parody of Goodnight Moon.

Compare and Contrast:

Similarities: same story pattern, same room design, same color of P.J.’s, both have snacks in their rooms, both have rocking chairs, both have red headboards, both have fireplaces, both tell everything goodnight, both rhyme.

Differences: In Moon the voice is peaceful and quiet,  the objects are plain, normal sorts of things like the furniture, fireplace, the mother is knitting, the main character is a little sweet bunny

in Goon the voice is loud with lots of action, the headboard has a devil on it, the mother figure is sticking pins in a voo-doo doll, the fireplace has bars on it to house a monster octopus, the main character is a werewolf

Text-to-self connections: choosing a pumpkin, playing dunking for apples, biting a donut on a string, not wanting to play with a girl if you are a boy

Predicting: Why to you predict Andy is hiding from Delores in the pumpkin patch?

Maybe he is afraid of her, maybe he wants to jump up and scare her?

What do you predict Andy’s great idea to catch the pumpkin smashers is going to be?

Use a Bubble Map graphic organizer to compare and contrast the ways to try to catch the tricksters when Andy and Delores are brainstorming.

Cause and Effect: Because Andy and Delores tripped up and got tangled with the sheets, the effect is that the tricksters laughed at them and ran away.

Personification: The pumpkins take on human traits when they seem to say, “pick me!”