Sparrow Girl by Sara Pennypacker
Schema: wild birds
Read the note at the back of the book so the students can understand the problem better before you begin the book.
Text-to-self connections: doing a project with a sibling, feeling sorry for the birds, seeing problems that wild birds cause
What city animals help keep the balance of nature in our area? Some insects and birds eat mosquitoes, coyotes eat rats, and ladybugs eat aphids that harm our roses
Text-to-Text Connection: Trout Are Made of Trees by April Pulley Sayre
Organizational Strategies: the cycle of the story begins and ends with Ming-Li as a wise one about farming.
Mental Images: “Scratching at her thoughts like a monkey.”
Cause and Effect: Because the sparrows were eating the grain from the fields, the effect is that the rulers want to scare the sparrows away.
Because Ming-Li felt so much empathy for the sparrows, the effect is that she rescued some of them.
Because the food chain is broken with the absence of the birds, the effect is that the locust, worms, weevil, and grasshopper population grew and devoured the crops even more than the sparrows did.
Voice: Ming-Li’s voice is the strongest one in the book.
POV: The story is told from Ming-Li’s POV.
Author’s purpose: Historical fiction is a way to teach history in a way that readers can relate in a personal way to the events of the period in history. The characters make the story more passionate.
Subscribe in a reader