Schema: waiting, obeying,  favorite foods, making healthy choices,  tantrums

Text-to-text connection: Where the Wild Things Are by Sendak

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

Thoughtful  language and detailed illustrations come together to create a book about patience and manners that does  not talk down to children. The feeling and lesson this story conveys will connect with young readers and listeners. The concept of patience is difficult to explain to young children, and the author and illustrator have done an excellent job. It’s wonderful to come across a children’s book that is as strong as this one.   Betty Bunny is determined to get her way, but she listens, tries, and learns, and  grows.   The mother in the story is a great role model and example of patience as she uses appropriate language and examples to explain patience to Betty.

Cause and Effect: Because of Betty’s behavior, the effect is that she is sent to her room without her cake.

Predicting: What do you predict will happen to the cake in Betty’s sock?

Synthesis: Ask students to share some examples of when they have had to be patient.  What is patience like?  What can we do to show that we are being patient?

Author’s purpose: to entertain and inform about the depression

Inference: The family was leaving Kansas, but then when the mysterious figure runs in front of the car, it seems that the family didn’t end up leaving Kansas. We may infer that the sudden stop caused the car to break down as we see the father working on the car after that.

Cause and Effect: Because of the drought, the effect is that the economy is depressed and people are out of work.

POV: The story is told from Jack’s POV.

Text-to-text connection: The Wizard of Oz

Text-to-self connection: wanting a parent’s attention

Characterization of Jack: Describe all of Jack’s traits such as his caring for his sisters, his desire to be loved by his father, his longing to help with the farm, his courage to confront the Storm Man and capture the thunder, his manner in dealing with the bullies, and the relationship he has with the Ernie.

Historical Fiction: Times were truly hard for the lack of rain during the 1930′s in Kansas, an area called the “Dust Bowl” because of the dry dusty soil that blew away because of the drought.  In order to survive and grow what feed they could for their cattle, the farmers would have jackrabbit drives, where they would round up the jack rabbits and club them to death.  Most of the rabbits would then be fed to other animals.  The people were afraid to eat them because of jackrabbit fever. The books provides a candid view of what life was like for people during this time period.

Drawing Conclusions: What do you conclude is the reason that Ernie tells Jack the stories he shares with him?

Synthesis: Can you think of another hard time in history where some type of superhero could have changed the harshness to happiness?  What would be the hero’s super powers?

This book is on the Texas Bluebonnet 2011 nominee list, written on a 2.3 AR level, and begins with the curse word “damn.”  Following on into the story the author injected two more “hell’s” and in my personal opinion the curse words were unnecessary.

Text-to-text connection: The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry

Author’s Purpose: persuade readers not to cut down the Mangrove tangles

Cause and Effect: Because the propagule falls off the mangrove tree, the effect is that a new mangrove tangle begins. 

Drawing Conclusions: The fisherman drew the conclusion that he should not cut down the mangrove tangle to make a shrimp farm because of what the other fisherman told him.  He was persuaded to leave the tangle alone.

Point of View: The story is told from the point of view of the animals that inhabit the tangle.

Synthesis: The reader will synthesize that there are certain things that keep the balance of nature.

Schema: Hansel and Gretel , step-mothers, fairy tales, science fairs

Big Idea: Good vs. evil

The publisher offers a detailed reading guide for teachers that includes vocabulary,  poetry,  and writing responses.

Text-to-Self Connections: sibling rivalry, bullying, moving to a new apartment, visiting the library

Author’s purpose: to entertain

Cause and Effect: Because an inheritance was at stake, the effect is that the children’s lives were in peril.

Because the dog, Swift, followed commands, the effect is he brought the children a knife to free themselves.

Because the children’s so called “parents” wanted to have them killed and eaten by the witch, the effect is that the children had to find a way to escape.

Because the children had access to the library and the Internet, the effect is that they were able to do some research to help themselves.

Because the pet shop owner rushed them out the back door of her shop, the effect was that they stayed one step ahead of the witch.

Drawing Conclusions: What conclusion did the children come to after seeing Swift with the bone and then reading the witch’s journal?

Inference: What do you infer happened to the children’s real father?

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

Predicting: At the end of the book as the children walk away all alone, where to you think they will go first when they get to their new town?  Based on what they did in the story, they might visit their public library.  I predict they just might be very quiet in the library and stay away from the librarians too!

Synthesis: The readers will synthesize that the author has created a modern day version of Hansel and Gretel.  Ask them to further synthesize by creating a modern day version of a different fairy tale.

Satire, making fun of certain causes or situations is also seen in the book when the author says the children’s real mother was drowned while investigating global warming when the ice she was standing on melted.

Although the topic of this book is controversial, the author uses no foul language, and good does win over evil.  Although many children that have been eaten previously, they are mentioned in the witch’s journal to set the premise.  Even in the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel, the reader infers that other children have been enticed to enter the witch’s candy house and have been eaten.

Book Talk: Bring a copy of a cookbook with the similar red and white plaid cover to compare with this one and ask,

What would you do if you thought your parents were planning to give you to a witch who wanted to eat you?  Would you be suspicious if you saw a neighborhood dog holding a very large bone in its mouth?  Have you ever wondered what you would do if you were kidnapped? Do you want to read a book that will give you nightmares?  Well, here’s that scary book you been asking for!

You know the old fairy tale Hansel and Gretel…that mean old step-mother that sends her step-children off into the woods, hungry, just looking for something to eat.  What if instead of sending you off to find fire wood, they just dropped you off at the mall and disappeared leaving you in a new neighborhood lost and confused?  The kids in this book are too smart to fall for that.  They know how to use their public library and the Internet.

Author’s Purpose: make readers aware of the importance of wolves in the ecosystem. Create a chart of the temperate forest food chain.

Cause and Effect: This book is filled with great examples of cause and effect.  A graphic organizer such as the Cluster/Word Web Chart or the Multi-Flow from Thinking Maps works perfectly with this read aloud.  Park directors had encouraged anyone who saw a wolf to shoot it so that the animals left would all be peaceful ones. After 1926, there were no wolves in the U.S. The ecosystem in Yellowstone National Park was broken. In 1995 ten wolves were brought to Yellowstone from Canada.  After some time the ecosystem was restored.

Because the wolves were back the effect is mountain goats were forced to go back into the  mountains, the coyote population thinned leaving more squirrels for the badgers to eat,  bears thrived on the left overs the wolves provided, bison were driven away from the river areas allowing grass and the aspen trees to return, erosion around the river stopped as grasses returned, beavers returned creating  ponds which attracted dragonflies.  These are just a few of the cause/effect relationships mentioned in the book.  The paintings are also quite beautiful making for a great read aloud.

Compare and Contrast the before and after the wolves.

Synthesis: Have students reflect on what would happen if the wolves multiplied and nature became unbalanced with two many wolves.

Schema: selling what you make, seasons

Circle story: The story begins in the fall and follows the man and his family through a year as they make what they can on their farm to sell and use the money from what they sell to buy the things that they can not make.

Predicting: What do you think the Ox-Cart man will be doing the next fall?

Drawing Conclusions: What do you think the Ox-Cart man might buy with his money the next year?

Sequencing: Sequence  the farm chores and activities that the family does  throughout the year.

Synthesizing: What do you think the things that the man sold will be used for after he sells them?

Questions to activate background knowledge:

Can you think of another time in history where a group of people have been treated unfairly because of the color of their skin?

Can you imagine being taken away from your family because of your ethnicity?

Why is the title so far from the sea when it looks like the sea behind them?

Why does the woman have spring flowers in the winter time?

Have you ever heard of World War II?

Who was locked up and killed during that war?

What is a spy?

Point of View: Who is telling the story?

Text-to-Self Connections: going somewhere that makes you feel nervous, making emotional connections

Inference: I am inferring that it is winter because they are putting on their jackets.  The wind is cold from the Sierra.

Setting: 1942, popular song: Don’t Fence Me In

Drawing Conclusions: Look at the location of Manzanar and draw a conclusion about why the author made the title “So Far from the Sea”

Mental Images: the field bigger than a football field, seeing it empty like erasing a blackboard, imagining he could climb on the mountain’s back and it would become a big eagle to fly him away, boat( a real American scout sail)  moving on as a way to say his grandfather had moved on, and so were they

Cause and Effect: Because Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the United States, the effect is “the U.S. was suddenly at war”

Metaphor: What could the author mean when he says the grandfather began dying the moment he was put on the bus and taken to Manzanar?  The author is comparing dying to being taken so far from the sea and losing his boat and freedom.

Metaphor: What is “moving on” a metaphor for as the family leaves the cemetery? a boat moving on, the family moving on to Boston, the family moving on and letting the hurt of the grandfather’s mistreatment go

Organizational Strategies: What did you notice about the way the illustrator organized the illustrations with the color pages and the sepia no color ones?  What is he trying to show? Can you think of any other text-to-text connections that show a shift in time?

Compare and Contrast: The way the camp looks before and after the war.

Text-to-Text Connection: Tree of Cranes by Alan Say is set in Japan and a mother is telling her son what Christmas was like in America when she was a child.

Synthesis: Can you think of other groups of people who are thought of as suspicious because of their heritage in our present day time or in the past?–Jewish people during WWII, slavery in the U.S., today’s airport security with certain names, appearances, the Muslim religion, the controversy in NYC about the Mosque being built near the 9/11 site?

Synthesis: Can you think of a time when you had to “move on” and let something go that has hurt you?

Schema: cows, feeling sorrow for someone’s pain

Text-to-self connection: remembering or hearing about September 11, 2001;  being kind to others; feeling the emotion of something being “sweet and sad” because it can not be lasting for long

Background information: The Maasai people believe that ownership of cattle represents well-being and wealth.  To own a large heard is something to strive towards.

Author’s purpose: to share the Maasai values and compassion toward America and to encourage others to be practice ‘Ubuntu.”

Cause and Effect: Because the U.S. was attacked on 9-11-01, the effect is that Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah wanted to do something to help with the sorrow and ended up making the cow donation as a symbol of  Ubuntu.

POV:  The people of Maasai;  Think of the African people listening to the story of how the city was attacked.  They are trying to make mental images of buildings that touch the sky and fires melting iron.

Voice: We hear the voice of Kimeli in the story.

Symbolism: cows symbolizes life

Synthesis: The Maasai leaders synthesize that to make the U. S. feel better, they must be humane and give something from their hearts to the U. S.  The U. S. diplomat synthesizes the great sacrifice of the Maasai to give this many cows and it moves him to tears.

Anne of Green Gable

She runs away from  her latest foster home to stay with a distant relative that she has never met, but while there bonds with  childless Augusta, an older widow woman, whose husband was taken by the sea thirty years earlier. The Prince Edward Island  story begins just after a big storm at sea.   Tango, a small Yorkshire terrier is found tangled in a lobster trap almost frozen.   Tango’s story begins in New England, where is is taken from his mother and sold to a pet shop in Manhattan.  He is bought  by a rich woman, who lives in Manhattan.  He lives a life of luxury and feels very loved.  His owner takes him on a sailboat  which was caught in a storm and Tango is washed overboard and later found frozen and wet in a lobster trap on Prince Edward Island.

Jack, a veterinarian, and Augusta feel a kinship with the lonely McKenna, who has been allowed to live temporarily in a small room  behind her uncle’s house until the end of the summer.  McKenna is allowed to paint the shed-like building and use it as a place to sell candles during the summer tourist season.  Augusta and Jack provide McKenna with the tools and supplies she needs to make candles to sell to the summer tourists.  McKenna had found a recipe for  “enchanted candles” in an old Bible and had wanted to make them to earn enough money to go to Toronto to find the only foster mother that she had loved, but who had moved away saying she was unable to take McKenna with her.

In a parallel fantasy storyline, Tango, Beau fox, and a gang of evil cats are communicating in their own language about turf wars, and general meanness.  Beau, a fox, saw McKenna abandoned as a baby and left alone wrapped in a fishing net  in the marshy brush.   Beau pulls the baby out of the water and closer to the road where she is found by a young woman who cares for her until she is killed in a car accident when McKenna was two.  The uncle that McKenna goes to stay with on Prince Edward Island is not her blood relative but related to her adoptive mother. Uncle Cody is  good man, but does not have the resources or a wife who will allow him to give McKenna a home.   McKenna knows the truth about her true background by looking at her folder during a visit with her social worker, but does not tell her uncle because she needs a place to stay.    Beau  follows McKenna from one home to the next always keeping watch over her.  Beau is all alone in the world too since his mate, Tawny, was run over and killed by the man that was married to the woman who found McKenna wrapped in the fishing net.

Once on the island, Tango does everything he can to find a silver heart that had his I.D. information on it so Augusta will see it and call his owner in Manhattan to come for him.  This involves fighting a rat and battling an evil gang of cats who all have names and talk to each other and the other animals too.  Tango agrees to fight a big white rat to the death of one of them in order to win the prize of his name tag which was found by one of the cats, Nigel called Stumpy, a cat with only three legs.  Nigel is one of the cats in the gang, but he doesn’t fit in with the rest of them.  He goes along to get along.  At the end, the mean cats turn on him and try to make him fight Tango.  Suddenly a huge storm overtakes the cat’s hideout called The Pitiful Place and washes it out to sea.  Just before they are washed away, McKenna  finds Tango and Nigel and rescues them.

Augusta is healing from a fall, and during this time McKenna has taken care of her.  Augusta  realizes that she can risk loving again after all her years of hurt over the loss of her husband.  She has come to love Tango and McKenna.

McKenna tells Augusta about the charm that Tango had in his mouth after fighting the rat just before the storm.  When Beau realizes that Tango, who he was also protecting along with McKenna, is going to be ok, and that McKenna has found someone to love her, he passes on to join his mate, Tawny, who has been calling to him in his old age.  When he dies, it is not sad because he has lived a long and good life.

When Tango is reunited with Augusta after fighting for his i.d. charm, he comes to the realization that he loves Augusta and Mckenna, and he feels he would not like living in an apartment in Manhattan anymore.  He loves his leash-less freedom.   Augusta  goes to sleep with the charm under her pillow to “sleep on it” and will decide whether to call his owner the next day.

This is a wonderful book for all ages, but so special because it is a great story without any curse words making it a solid addition to any young child’s library.  It is assigned a level of 4.8 in the A.R. system.

Point of View:  The story goes back and forth between the voice and POV of  Tango, McKenna, Augusta, and Beau.

Cause and Effect: Because Tango was washed overboard, the effect is he begins a new life on Prince Edward Island.

Synthesis: We can synthesize that introducing love and the feeling of being wanted into a person or animal’s life, makes them both feel contented and settled.

Author,  Eileen Beha, has a teacher’s guide for Tango on her website.

Persuasion: This book is a fine example of a persuasive writing.  Use a graphic organizer to graph the persuasion terms.

Al has references; how do the references help him?  They give him credibility.

Text-to-text Connections: Sleeping Beauty is mentioned in the story.

Cause and Effect: Because the fox compliments his audiences outfit and says he likes you, he hopes the effect will be that you____.

Text-to-Self Connections:

Commercials that are the infomercial where they throw in some bonus items if you call right now and order their product.

Building a fort, using duct tape

Seeing the sign in a store that says, “you break it, you buy it”

Reader’s Theater: This book would lend itself well to a reader’s theater performance;
Students could  could write similar skits about some other product too.

Sequence the different types of tactics the fox uses to sell the book such as introducing it, complimenting the buyer, sharing the uses, offering bonus items.

Synthesis: The big idea the author is sharing is trying to persuade someone to buy something.     Students could  could write similar skits about some other product too.