Posts filed under ‘Picture Books’
113. They Came from the Bronx: How the Buffalo Were Saved from Extinction by Neil Waldman
Retell: Told from two perspectives, this book describes how the American Bison Society reintroduced a small herd of bison.
Topics: buffalo, Bronx Zoo, conservation, Native Americans, Comanche Indians, westward expansion, wildlife introduction
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area
Tribes: mutual respect
Habits of Mind: thinking flexibly
Reading Skills: envisionment, monitoring for sense
My Thoughts: This book combines narrative and non-narrative text. The book begins with a Comanche woman telling her grandson about the days when buffalo roamed the land. On the next page the author describes how 2,000 miles a way trains with mysterious creatures leave the gates of the Bronx Zoo. While reading this book it would be great to have a map of the United States displayed so students could see the route the buffalo traveled.
112. Allie’s Basketball Dream by Barbara E. Barber
Retell: Allie wants to be a star basketball player like her cousin Gwen. After receiving a brand-new basketball from her father, she gives it a test run at the neighborhood playground. She soon finds out that not everyone is willing to accept a girl on the court.
Topics: basketball, gender issues, friendship
Units of Study: Character, Social Issues, Talking and Writing About Texts, Realistic Fiction
Tribes: mutual respect, personal best, right to pass
Habits of Mind: persisting
Reading Skills: inference, interpretation, making connections
Writing Skills: planning a story across 2-3 scenes
My Thoughts: This book is a great read aloud for so many different units. It’s a particularly good text to read during the Social Issues unit. It’s nice to read this book before or after reading other books that deal with gender issues such as, William’s Doll, or Oliver Button is a Sissy. It’s a good mentor text for the Realistic Fiction unit because the story takes place across two scenes.
111. Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates by Jonah Winter
Retell: This is the rags-to-riches story of Roberto Clemente. Not only was he an all-star player for the Pittsburgh Pirates, he was also a humanitarian who donated a great deal of his earnings to charity.
Topics: baseball, Puerto Rico, racism, poetry
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Social Issues, Content-Area
Tribes: personal best, mutual respect
Habits of Mind: persisting, thinking flexibly, striving for accuracy
Reading Skills: inference, interpretation, envisionment
Writing Skills: including similes, using commas in lists
My Thoughts: I like sports stories that emphasize the athlete’s character rather than just his/her athletic ability. This is a good book for showing persistence even in the face of adversity. The book describes how Clemente grew up playing baseball with a glove made out of a coffee-bean sack and baseballs made from old soup cans. Written in free verse but organized into two line stanzas, this is a great book to read as a model for students writing nonfiction poetry during the Content-Area unit.
110. Peppe the Lamplighter by Elisa Bartone
Retell: Peppe and his family live in a tenement on Mulberry Street. Though he is just a boy, he must find work to help support his family. After several attempts, he finally finds a job as a lamplighter. His Papa imagines a better world for him in America. He becomes upset with Peppe for taking such a menial job. Though he loves his job, Peppe decides to take a break from it one evening in an effort to please his father. Later that evening both Peppe and his father discover that being the lamplighter isn’t such a bad deal after all
Topics: tenements, New York, child labor, lamplighters, family, perspectives, work
Units of Study: Historical Fiction, Social Issues, Talking and Writing about Texts
Tribes: appreciations/no put-downs
Reading Skills: inference, envisionment, interpretation
Writing Skills: using the ‘rule of three’, angling a story
My Thoughts: What I love about this text, is that it’s short, but inspires the reader to do a lot of good thinking. It’s a fabulous text for Reading and Writing Workshop as well as Social Studies. Using the illustrations, students can envision what New York tenement life was like during the 1800s. Though my students are currently writing Realistic Fiction, I’m planning on reading a section of this book tomorrow to a small group of students. I’m going to teach them how authors often incorporate the ‘rule of three’ when crafting stories (“The Three Little Pigs”, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”). In the beginning of the story, Peppe attempts to find a job. The author could have chosen to describe the effort in a figurative way. Instead, she decided to give three examples of where he looked for work: the butcher, the bar, and the candy maker.
109. Encounter by Jane Yolen
Retell: An account of Columbus’ ‘discovery’ of the Americas told from the point of view of a Taino boy.
Topics: Christopher Columbus, explorers, gold, Taino, trade, slaves
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Historical Fiction, Content-Area
Tribes: mutual respect
Reading Skills: interpretation, envisionment, inference
Writing Skills: using figurative language
My Thoughts: Yesterday was Columbus Day and to celebrate, here is one of my favorite Columbus Day read alouds. Since the story is told from the perspective of a child, students will be able to relate to how powerless the boy feels. He warns his people not to trust the “strange creatures” that were “spat out of the canoes”, but no one listens to him. This is a fantastic text for teaching inference. Yolen takes great care not to use terms that would have been foreign to the Taino people. Readers must constantly infer what the boy is describing. For example, Yolen describes beards as “hair growing like bushes on their chins”. When Columbus claims the island for Spain she describes how people “knelt before their chief and pushed sticks into the sand”. It’s important to model how readers constantly consult the illustration while reading the text in order to construct meaning.
108. Who Eats What? Food Chains and Food Webs by Patricia Lauber
Retell: This book explains how energy flows within food chains and food webs. It also describes the importance of plant life.
Topics: food chains, food webs, interconnectedness, plants, animals, endangered species, ecology
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area
Reading Skills: envisionment, determining importance, interpretation, reading text features
Writing Skills: including diagrams to illustrate an idea
My Thoughts: Though our food chain unit is a few months away, I’m on the search for future read alouds. This is a great, straight-forward text for introducing food chains and food webs. I like the diagrams throughout the text. This would be a great text to read to introduce the idea of a diagram. After reading the text aloud, students could make food webs of their breakfast or lunch that day.
107. Volcanoes by Franklyn M. Branley
Retell: Branley describes how volcanoes form and how geologists constantly pay attention to their activity.
Topics: volcanoes, eruptions, earthquakes, geologists, earth movements
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area
Reading Skills: envisionment, monitoring for sense
My Thoughts: While reading this book I was reminded of work I did last year. Some colleagues and I examined level K and L books in order to investigate why readers struggle at those levels. We noticed that books at this level usually have illustrations that convey information about part of the text. Proficient readers understand that the illustration supports what the text says. Struggling readers will form their mental picture of what’s going on from the illustration and not from the text. We discovered that it was important to teach readers to not rely completely on the illustration, but to envision what’s not in the illustration. Volcanoes is a great read aloud for modeling this strategy. For example, when Branley describes the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, the illustration shows the volcano erupting in the background of a lively city; the readers must envision the city being buried. If we don’t model this thinking during the read aloud, students may miss vital pieces of information. Prompts I like to use during read aloud to push this thinking are:
- “What’s missing from the illustration?”
- “What would you add to the illustration?”
- “Where would you put that idea in the illustration?”
- “Paint the illustration in the air. Think about what you would include.”
106. H is for Home Run: A Baseball Alphabet by Brad Herzog
Retell: Brad Herzog celebrates the A to Zs of baseball.
Topics: baseball, Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area
Reading Skills: envisionment, determining importance
Writing Skills: using alliteration, using dashes, crafting rhyme
My Thoughts: I normally don’t use alphabet books very much throughout the course of the year. This book inspires me to change my mind. This book is more sophisticated than your average alphabet book. Each page has both a rhyming description of an aspect of baseball and a more detailed description in the sidebar. I’m considering proposing alphabet books as a way to publish Content-Area pieces. During Social Studies students could make alphabet books as a way to assess their understanding of the content of a unit.
Often I’m scrambling to find read alouds that fit within one of our units of study. However, sometimes it’s nice to read something that will connect with a current event or a current class interest. For those who want to celebrate the upcoming World Series, H is for Home Run is a good choice.
105. Twenty-Odd Ducks: Why, Every Punctuation Mark Counts! by Lynne Truss
Retell: Lynne Truss presents illustrated examples of how the meaning of a sentence changes when a writer makes poor choices about punctuation.
Topics: punctuation
Units of Study: Any Writing unit
Tribes: personal best
Habits of Mind: thinking and communicating with clarity and precision
My Thoughts: This is the companion to her book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves. This book, however doesn’t just focus on commas. When students started to edit their personal narratives during our last Writing unit, I taught a lesson about how writers make important choices about end punctuation (for more fabulous lessons about teaching grammar and punctuation consult The Power of Grammar). I plan on reading this book in a few weeks when I review this concept with students. I hope this inspires students to experiment with punctuation.
103. Steam, Smoke, and Steel: Back in Time with Trains by Patrick O’Brien
Retell: This is a history of trains told from the perspective of a boy who comes from a long line of engineers.
Topics: trains, generations, generators, steam engines, family
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area
Reading Skills: envisionment, monitoring for sense, determining importance, reading diagrams
My Thoughts: Though I probably won’t have time to teach a unit on industrialization this year, I think I will just have to insert this book into my read aloud plans anyway. Though my class isn’t studying trains at the moment, we are doing a unit in Math called, “Ages and Timelines”. During the introduction to the unit, students had a difficult time understanding the concept of a ‘great-great grandparent’. Steam, Smoke and Steel could be a book to help them understand this concept. The main character comes from a family of train engineers. As he looks back on his family’s history, the reader learns about trains from the past. His father drives a modern locomotive. His grandfather drove a diesel-electric locomotive. His great-grandmother drove a steam locomotive…you get the point.
Yesterday I attended a Social Studies workshop at Teacher’s College, and I’ve become very excited about time lines (I should probably get out more). In their workshop, Shana Frazin and Kathleen Tolan suggested that teachers should have moveable time lines in their classrooms. Students and teachers can add important events and visuals to the time line. After reading Steam, Smoke and Steel I think I may post pictures of the trains and the characters (the boy, the father, the grandfather, the great-grandmother, the great-great grandfather, etc.) in the book on the timeline. Doing this I think will help enrich students’ understanding of generations and time periods.
Now I just have to find space in my classroom…
Teachable Texts 