Teachable Texts

127. The War Between the Vowels and the Consonants by Priscilla Turner

November 8, 2009 at 12:03 pm Leave a comment

Retell: The snooty vowels and the rough and tumble consonants have never gotten along with each other.  After a few letters begin to fight with each other, war breaks out between the vowels and the consonants.  When chaos, in the form of squiggly lines, rolls into town the vowels and consonants must work together to defeat it.

Topics: letters, vowels, consonants, war, cooperation, fighting, cliques, power

Units of Study: Talking and Writing About Texts

Tribes: appreciations/no put-downs

Habits of Mind: thinking interdependently

Reading Skills: interpretation

My Thoughts: When I previewed this text I assumed I was going to learn about how vowel sounds are really strong and influence other vowel sounds.  In reality this book is not really about letters at all–it’s about class and cooperation between the classes.  The vowels represent the upper class–there are few of them and they are snooty.  The consonants represent the lower-middle class– the undignified commoners.  They distrust each other, go to war and then eventually must learn how to work together.  I can see reading this in my class in order to have a discussion about cliques within the class and within the grade.  It could be read again when we study industrialization and analyze the struggles between the rich and the poor.

Entry filed under: Female Authors, Picture Books. Tags: appreciations/no put-downs, cliques, consonants, cooperation, fighting, letters, power, talking and writing about texts, thinking interdependently, vowels, war.