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?

Author’s Purpose: to share about the Rockefeller Christmas tree and Habitat for Humanity.

Cause and Effect: Because the father in the story gave from his heart to the men at the construction site, the effect is that the men wanted to help his family with their home.

Because the young boy was helped as a child with getting a home built, the effect is that he is willing to let his tree be used to help Habitat for Humanity to build a home with the wood from it.

Set in 1931, the out of work father of a family living in a shack has the idea of cutting some Christmas trees to sell in New York City. He and his son drive in one day and ask some construction workers who are building Rockefeller Center if he could park there and sell his trees. At the end of the day, the father leaves with money in his pocket and gives the extra trees to the construction workers that he visited with during the day who put the tree up there at the building site and decorate it with what they had. The next day, the construction workers surprise the family at their shack with extra wood and scrap wood to help them fix up their shack. They men end up building them a new home. The young boy in the story is given a claw hammer by one of the men to extract nails from boards they want to use on the windows. Years pass by, the young boy grows up, returns to live in the little house, and a man comes by from Rockefeller Center to buy a tree on his property that grew from a pine cone he had planted the day after his visit to the city to sell the trees. The tree meant a lot to him, but when he heard that the wood would be donated to the Habitat for Humanity to help build a house for a family in need, he knew it was time to give the tree to the Center. The story also includes historical information about how the men at the site in real life put a tree up in 1931 as a tribute to thank the Rockefeller’s for hiring them to work there. Since then, each year a tree was placed there for all to enjoy. An afterward about Habitat for Humanity is also included.

Text-to-Self Connections: Discussions about bullies and how to deal with them, telling someone

Cause and Effect: Because Brenda made fun of Jessica, the effect is that Jessica felt bad inside.

Synthesis: Do you synthesize that Brenda felt good or bad inside when she bullied Jessica? How could you deal with a bully?

Author’s Purpose: The author tells a fictional story with the purpose of teaching students a way to deal with a bully.

Text-to-Self Connections: getting new shoes messed up

Cause and Effect: Because Delly needed the shoes, the effect is that her dad found a way to buy them.

Because the girls scuffed her shoes, the effect is Delly found a way to paint them to be beautiful.

Because Delly’s shoes were the most beautiful and matched her box, the effect was that the bid kept going up on her box.

Drawing Conclusions: What conclusion to you come to about the kind of family that is Delly’s family?

Point of View: Delly tells the story from her point of view.

Delly, the oldest of five, does not have any shoes that are fit to wear so she goes to school barefoot. One of the more wealthy girls makes fun of her for not having shoes. The teacher assigns a project of decorating a shoe box with a box supper inside and auctioning it off to raise money for art supplies at the school’s fall festival.  After her father buys her some shoes, and the girls at school purposefully scuff them up, Delly makes them beautiful again by decorating them with paint her mother has made from the natural resources in nature. The story ends with pumpkin carving and a happy barefoot walk home to feel the sand squish in their toes for the last time until the next spring.  

Text-to-Text Connections: obeying parents

Text-to-Text Connection: Harold and the Purple Crayon

Large font and colorful, but simple drawings make this a super read aloud. The plot sequence lends itself to teaching predicting. A young boy is about to draw when his mother says that no one draws on this particular day, Doodleday. He disobeys and begins to draw a fly which flies off of the page and is huge! He then draws a spider to eat the fly, then a bird to eat the spider. The text-to-text connection with There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly will be noticed.  Young listeners will love the story and art.

Cause and Effect: Because he draws a fly, the effect is that he must draw a spider to eat the fly…

Because he disobeys his mother, the effect is the disasters that occur.

Predicting: What will he draw next? Do you think he will draw on Doodleday next year?

Text-toText: The Sea, the Storm and the Mangrove Tangle by Lynne Cherry

Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai by Claire Nivola

So Far From the Sea by Eve Bunting

The author uses the pattern of “This is the house that Jack built” to build the story page by page. In smaller print, more detailed information is provided and supported by a double page collage illustration. The subject of the book, planting mangrove trees near oceans that border dry, foliage free soil, is a project that Dr. Gordon H. Sato conceived after his studies as a biologist.  This book shows how the mangrove tree can help people as well as fish.   The Manzanar Project

Author’s purpose: Are you informed or persuaded after reading this one? I feel like I was both, but definitely persuaded to share this Manzanar Project.

The goose man is Konrad Lorenz, an Austrian born doctor who devoted his life to the study of ethology, an animal behavior involving instinct. This focus of this book is on the his work about geese and how they communicate with different types of honks and how they imprint on the first living creature they see.  Konrad learned how to imitate the goose honks to communicate with them. He had several pets throughout his life, and he won the Nobel Peace Price in 1973. The lively illustrations and amount of text on the page makes this book a very interesting read aloud that students will enjoy.

Author’s purpose: to share information about a famous scientist

Cause and Effect: Because Konrad was the first creature the baby goose saw, the effect is that the goose imprinted on him.

Drawing Conclusions: What conclusions does Konrad draw from observing the geese?

Mental Image: Several remarks are made in the book about the mess the animals made in the house.  Can you make a mental image of what a mess a monkey or a goose inside the house would make?

In this story Buddy notices a strange lizard with a blue tongue under some shelves in the library, and since he doesn’t know what it is, he calls it the “library monster.”  The key to the furnace room at the school is missing, and a light fixture in the school office is on the blink. Buddy is a reading therapy dog, and one of the kids he knows, Maya,  seems upset and  Buddy can tell this  by her smell. With lots of watching, running to see, and talking with a dog who lives near the school, Buddy figures out by listening to Maya read to him that the lizard, a skink,  is what he found in the library, and later learns Maya has been hiding it at school because her mother won’t let her keep it at home. She also took the reptile man’s box of mice, and at one point in the story they were loose in the school. Buddy wishes his people would listen to him, but they never do. If they did, they would know why he was running around and who left the note explaining about the lizard, mice, furnace room mystery.

Cause and Effect: Because Buddy could smell something strange, the effect is that he sought out the skink that was loose in the school.

Drawing Conclusions: Buddy draws some conclusions based on what he knows and makes lists of them during the story.

Inference: A key is missing, and then later we see Maya with a key. We can infer that she has the furnace room key that has been missing.  We can also infer that she is hiding something in this room.

Point of View: The story is told from Buddy’s POV.

Text to text connection: 10 Things I  Can Do to Help My World by Melanie Walsh

D.W., a preschooler, is concerned because she infers that the project Arthur is working on at school is making his hands, and those of her father, and Arthur’s  friend, Buster, turn green. The reader will conclude that it is the paint they are using by carefully looking at the pictures in the book. This is a great story to teach inference to young readers. Once again, with an eagle eye, the reader will find the names, Tolan, Tucker, Isabella, and Skye, Brown’s sons and grandchildren, scattered through the illustrations. This book would be great to pair with a nonfiction book for Earth Day in April.

Inference: D.W. infers the reason that Arthur’s hands are green.

Cause and Effect: Because Arthur is using green paint, the effect is his hands are stained green.

Text-to-text connections: Roald Dahl’s books and humor

Ms. Wiz, a witch, or as she likes to be called a “paranormal operative,” appears to Lizzie in a park and helps her find her lost cat. The story is similar to 101 Dalmatians except the evil woman wants cat fur to make her things. Large font and ink sketches make the book of five short chapters a perfect middle level read. At the end, Ms. Wiz turns all of the evil woman’s fur clothes back into the animals they were made from making her end up naked in her car when the police arrive to arrest her. Just a brief couple of sentences telling this add a bit of juvenile humor that intermediate level readers will enjoy. The author has been compared to Roald Dahl, and I would have to agree. The illustrator has illustrated some of Dahl’s books as well.

Cause and effect: Because Lizzie is so upset, the effect is that she can not concentrate at school.

Characterization: List all of Ms. Wiz’s traits: caring, kind, magical, loyal