Little Tree by Loren Long

I was able to see an advanced copy of this book over the summer and fell in love with it. And when the real book arrived last week, I fell in love with it all over again.  Loren Long is a favorite author of mine. He is an author who is able to write about complex issues and ideas that are accessible for young children. His Otis books have started some of the best conversations in our classroom over the years.

I love Little Tree as much as I love the Otis books.  Loren Long's words and illustrations are brilliant and I can't wait to share this book with my students.  The book tells the story of a little tree who decides he does not want to let his leaves go when all of the other trees do.  He holds onto them year after year. The story is a simple one with a big message about changing and letting go. It is told in a soft, non-threatening way as we see the difficult decision Little Tree has to eventually make.

This story is one that is good for all ages. Just like the Otis books, children of all ages will have an entry point, come to love Little Tree and understand the author's message.  This would also make a fabulous gift book as it is one that I am sure will be one of those books that children beg to have  read  to them over and over!

You can hear Loren Long talk more about his new book here:

Tales of Bunjitsu Bunny by John Himmmelman

I get so happy when I find new early chapter books that are perfect for our transitional readers.   I learned about Tales of Bunjitsu Bunny from Donalyn Miller and it's been on my stack for a while.  I wanted to get it to the classroom but wanted to read it first. It was a very quick and fun read.

Isabel is best known as Bunjitsu Bunny.  She was the best Bunjitsu artist in her school. After we meet Isabel, always in her red Bunjitsu uniform, we read lots of stories about her.  Each short chapter is a stand alone chapter starring Isabel and some of her friends.  Each chapter is 5-8 pages long and each tells a story with a lesson.

The stories are perfect for transitional readers because the lessons in each story and the humor are all accessible to kids 6-8 years old.  It's a great book for first graders who are strong readers and need something they can relate too. It is also great for 3rd graders who will catch some of the subtle humor.

I may use this book later this winter when we start working on theme. Each story has a pretty obvious theme of its own and it would be a great book to start the conversation with when we really dig into theme.  

A fun new book that I am glad I made time to read!

The Artist and the King by Julie Fortenberry

The Artist and the King
by Julie Fortenberry
Alazar Press, due out April 7, 2014
review copy provided by the author

Daphne is an artist, but her art -- an honest portrait of His Crabbiness -- does not please the king. Daphne's punishment is to wear the picture, rolled up, as a dunce cap, instead of her beloved red artist's beret.

Almost immediately upon donning the dunce cap, Daphne's Art kicks in. She begins to add decorations to customize the cap. "Soon she was getting compliments." And she began to sell the hats. They became all the rage.

Which enraged the king.

He banished all dunce cap wearers to the wilderness. Even his own daughter, who threw the extra cap she was carrying at his feet and walked with the others into the woods.

Daphne goes back to rescue the flung cap and discovers the king crying. They share a moment of apology and self-realization, then discover that the cap was intended as a gift to the king from his daughter. Together they bring all the villagers back from the woods, and Daphne is given back her beret.

In the current (March/April 2014) issue of The HornBook, the final essay (Cadenza) is "Reading Picture Books 101" by Robin L. Smith. I'll walk you though her seven steps with The Artist and the King.

1. Look at the cover. The cover illustration of The Artist and the King lets us know it's a windy day. This is absolutely necessary for the plot development.

2. Take the paper jacket off and see whether the board cover is different. Nope.

3. Now examine the endpapers. Plain blue.

4. Peruse the title page. The story actually starts here (I love books that do this)! Daphne is painting a picture of His Crabbiness, and the villagers who are her audience are appreciating her art.

5. Read the book all the way through without reading the words. Pay attention to page turns, white space, and pacing. This is a fascinating way to read a picture book -- thinking about the design process, movement in the illustrations, artistic decisions made by the illustrator. The story absolutely is told coherently through the pictures in this book!

6. Read the book with the words. Think about how the words and pictures work together. There are two places where the words in the illustrations interact with the words in the story. I might not have noticed that if not for this list of steps! When read on its own, the text has a nice flow, with long and short sentences and accessible vocabulary peppered with words perfectly chosen for the story: regal, mockery, banished.

7. Go back and check every gutter. Now that's something I'm SURE I've never done, but how smart to make sure that the art matches up across the gutter and that nothing important gets lost there where the left page turns into the right. In The Artist and the King, when the gutter is not used to divide the pages into separate scenes, there is very intentional movement from one page to the other across the gutter. Fascinating!



These seven simple steps make me want to dive into a study of picture books with my students! One savvy reader noted recently that hardly anyone reads from the picture book shelf in my classroom. This may be a way to get some buy-in from fifth graders who are "too cool" for picture books!

The Artist and the King will definitely have a place in my classroom library, as well as in a study of picture books, and in our discussions about theme. Three cheers for a character who stays true to her passion, her art, and who helps the unfair and crabby king to soften up and be more accepting!

Two Picture Books from France

Brief Thief
by Michael Escoffier
illustrated by Kris Di Giacomo
Enchanted Lion Books (April 12, 2013)
Review copy provided by the publisher

A pair of underwear left on a branch are swiped for a wipe and then discarded. A conscience engages and berates. The item is cleaned and re-treed. The owner returns, retrieves...and shocks the reader with a surprise ending!

Click here for two Dispatch Reader Kid reviews.

Me First!

by Michael Escoffier
illustrated by Kris Di Giacomo
Enchanted Lion Books (August 27, 2013)
Review copy provided by the publisher

By the same pair who wrote BRIEF THIEF, we have another fun character who is self-centered and impetuous. There is no conscience in this story, except maybe in the form of the Mother Duck, who seems to realize that a "business as usual" attitude on her part will allow circumstances to moderate her fourth duckling's bossy "Me first!" behavior. As with BRIEF THIEF, there is a very fun surprise ending.


Both of these books were originally published in France, and are brought to readers in the United States by Enchanted Lion Books.

Think for Yourself (Part 3)

Odd Duck
by Cecil Castellucci
illustrated by Sara Varon
:01 First Second, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

Theodora believes that she will never be friends with her new neighbor, Chad. They are too different in too many ways. When winter comes and neither flies south, they discover that they both love star gazing and also that "...even though they were very different, they felt the same way about most things."

Then one day, they are walking in the town, and they hear someone say, "Look at that odd duck!" They each try to console the other for being called odd, then, realizing that the other thinks they are odd, have a complete falling out...which ends when they admit to themselves, and then to each other, that perhaps they are each a bit odd.

But, "It's not so bad to be odd," Theodora thought, "not when you have an odd friend."

If you dial back balance-a-tea-cup-on-your-head-while-you-swim "odd" and hang-upside-down-from-a-tree-to-grill-out "odd," you can find all the ways we each are different, and you can celebrate both differences and oddnesses! But most of all, THINK FOR YOURSELF -- don't listen to what others say!

Think For Yourself (Part 2)

The Chickens Build a Wall
by Jean-François Dumont
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

Life in the barnyard was business-as-usual until the hedgehog showed up. No one had ever seen a hedgehog before. Rooster capitalized on the fear and suspicion of the stranger and rallied his hens to begin building a wall to protect them from the hedgehog. They worked and worked, built higher and higher.

Finally, when winter came and the wall was so high that they could just about not see the sky, Rooster declared the wall to be high enough to protect them.

Then, rustling out from under a pile of hay in the corner of the walled-in barnyard where he had been sleeping through the wall-building, came the hedgehog. And the hens discovered they had forgotten to build a door in the wall.

Can you guess what happened when the hens and the hedgehog had to spend time together and get to know each other? Can you guess what happened to the wall?

~~~   ***   ~~~          ~~~   ***   ~~~          ~~~   ***   ~~~

Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris are the amazing duo behind Burkins & Yaris (check out the Common Core (blog) and Early Literacy (Think Books) resources on their website) who have created LiteracyHead and WordEyes -- sites that teach, well, Literacy and Words (Vocabulary) through the arts. They have created a shiny new group of vocabulary words from The Chickens Build A Wall on WordEyes.

Click here to check out this freshly minted batch of vocabulary words-taught-through-art.

You'll see the word, with the definition hidden, but just a click away. Then below the word are four works of art in order from the most concrete representation of the word to the most abstract, with the fourth picture being a non-example. Click on the first work of art and it will come up in a hover-window that allows you to navigate directly to the next work of art.

Life has gotten complicated and busy in 5th grade this week, so I haven't shared either The Chickens Build a Wall OR the WordEyes words with my students. Stop by next week for a follow-up post about how my students reacted to/interacted with WordEyes and The Chickens Build a Wall.

Think For Yourself (Part 1)

This review is the first in a three-part series. All three books tackle the theme of "Think For Yourself" in very different ways. This first book is about a traditional character in Middle Eastern stories named Nasreddine. The historical note in the back of the book reads, "Stories about Nasreddine are told throughout the Middle East and beyond. They are often said to be based on a real man who lived in Turkey during he Middle Ages. The stories have been changed and added to over the years, but Nasreddine has never lost his ability to offer both wisdom and delight."

Nasreddine
by Odile Weulersse (translated from the original French by Kathleen Merz)
illustrated by Rébecca Dautremer
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

This story starts simply enough -- Nasreddine and his father load the donkey with dates to take to the market. Nasreddine's father rides the donkey and Nasreddine walks behind with his slippers off because the road is muddy from the last rain. In the city, someone comments that the father is lazy and irresponsible to let his son walk shoeless in the mud behind the donkey. Nasreddine's father, Mustafa, is unperturbed by the comment, but Nasreddine is embarrassed and wants to go home. The next week, when they take the wool to the weaver, Nasreddine convinces his father that his ankle is twisted so he can ride the donkey while his father walks behind. Some women they pass comment on the lack of authority of a father who lets his child ride while he walks.

Nasreddine continues to listen to what others say about the way he and his father and the donkey are traveling to market until finally he proposes to his father that they carry the donkey to market. At this point, Mustafa intervenes and guides Nasreddine to the understanding that he shouldn't listen to what others say. "It's up to you to decide if what you're hearing is wise, or if it's only a silly and hurtful remark." When Nesreddine declares, "I understand! You can't be afraid that other people will judge you or make fun of you," Mustafa (wryly? ironically?) expresses his pride in a son who can reason so well.

This may be an old story, but the message is timeless.

10 for 10 -- Picture Books for the First Weeks of School

I've used the same set of picture books (including these books about names) to start the school year for several years now. It's not a bad set, in fact, it's a GREAT set, but I challenged myself to pick 10 different picture books to start this new year in a new position, and to think about what I'll be saying to my students (through these books) about my hopes for them, and for our year together.

1. Choose kind.
Little Bird by Germano Zullo

2. Make friends, not enemies.
Enemy Pie (Reading Rainbow book) by Derek Munson

3. Be faithful to your friends.
Otis by Loren Long

4. Work hard to solve your problems...but don't forget to think about what your solution might do to others.
Stuck by Oliver Jeffers

5. Live in this moment. Be present.
You're Finally Here! by Mélanie Watt

6. Be yourself. No matter what.
Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed by Mo Willems

7. Be persistent. Believe in yourself. Follow your dreams.
Learning to Fly by Sebastian Meschenmoser

8. Know yourself. Be yourself. Follow your dreams. (And a special note to myself: make sure your "dance academy" has room for everyone.)
Brontorina by James Howe

9. Make memories, because memories make stories.
Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran

10. The world around us is amazing, awe-inspiring, and diverse. It is there for us to notice, learn about, and appreciate.
The Beetle Book by Steve Jenkins

Thank you to Cathy, at Reflect & Refine: Building a Learning Community, and Mandy, at Enjoy and Embrace Learning for sponsoring this 10 for 10 Picture Book event for the third year. Be sure you hide your credit cards and then go look at all the fabulous lists!

Stuck

Stuck
by Oliver Jeffers
Philomel Books, on shelves Nov. 10, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

The blurb for this book on Oliver Jeffers' website reads:

"A tale of trying to solve a problem by throwing things at it."

Floyd's kite is stuck in a tree, so he throws his shoe at it to get it down. His shoe gets stuck. Then he throws his other shoe and it gets stuck, too.

The sequence of the rest of the things Floyd throws at his problem starts off reasonable and veers decidedly to the ridiculous when he throws the kitchen sink, an orangutan, an ocean liner, the house across the street, and a whale...among other things. (Isn't that the way it goes, when you start throwing things at a problem?)

I can't really tell you about the end without taking all the fun of it away from you, but I will tell you that you're likely to have hope for Floyd's problem-solving ability, which will immediately be dashed, and yet, against all odds, there will be success...although you'll want to wring Floyd's neck in the end.

Kids will love this book. For them, it's a funny story of unintended consequences.

Adults will consider sending this book to their elected officials. Except for the fact that doing so would seem an awful lot like throwing a shoe...

Big Red Lollipop

Big Red Lollipop
by Rukhsana Kahn
illustrated by Sophie Blackall
Viking, 2010
review copy provided by the publisher

Rubina has received her first invitation to a birthday party, but Ami won't let her go unless she takes her little sister, Sana, who's screaming and crying to come along. Nothing will make Ami budge, so Sana goes along. Not only does Sana spoil the party for Rubina, all the other girls know that if they invite Rubina, then Sana will have to come, too. Each child gets a goodie bag with a big red lollipop. Sana gobbles hers down before bedtime, and eats most all of Rubina's in the morning before she gets up, adding insult to injury.

When Sana gets her first birthday party invitation, their youngest sister Maryam screams to go along, and Ami is set to make Sana take her to the party since she was taken to Rubina's party.

Rubina remembers how hard it was to have Sana at the party with her, and how long it was before she got another birthday party invitation, and she convinces Ami to let Sana go alone. Sana brings Rubina a special treat from the party.

This is a perfect book for talking about sibling rivalry, birthday traditions, theme, and character development.

The Moral of the Story Is...

Here are two new books to add to your unit on Theme, or your tub of Fables.

Making the Moose Out of Life
by Nicholas Oldland
Kids Can Press, 2010
review copy provided by the publisher

Moose never wants to do anything exciting with his friends. One day, he gets inspired (or maybe just hit in the head with a golf ball) and jumps aboard a sailboat and sets sail. He is stranded on a desert island where he makes the most of island life with his new sidekick, Tuesday the tortoise. Moose is eventually rescued, returns to his friends and suggests they go cliff jumping. The book ends with Moose and Tuesday making plans to meet for a holiday in Africa. Moral of the story? Make the moose out of life so it doesn't pass you by while you sit under an umbrella wearing 100 SPF sunblock.

Ninja Cowboy Bear Presents: The Way of the Ninja
by David Buins and Hilary Long
Kids Can Press, 2010
review copy provided by the publisher

The trio that taught us to appreciate our friends instead of always trying to be the best in The Legend of Ninja Cowboy Bear  are back with a new story about friendship. Ninja loves to play with his friends Cowboy and Bear, but Ninja always wants to play his games, and his games are always rough and rowdy and end badly for Cowboy and Bear. Moral of the story? To be a good friend, sometimes you have to compromise about what to play.

Unit of Study on THEME (a music connection)

Sometimes a picture (and some music) are worth a thousand words about what is meant by THEME and variations.

(sorry about the annoying annotation...you can get rid of it with the tool on the far right of the play-time-volume bar at the bottom of the video)

Unit of Study on THEME -- Poetry Friday Edition

Subtitle: In Which the never-ending struggle to balance direction and instruction from me with enough big chunks of time when I just let go and give my students the freedom to explore and find new paths through the uncharted territory of this project (previous posts are here) results in not very much poetry for this poetry Friday Edition.

Sub-Subtitle: A 3000 Word Essay About What Else We Did Yesterday:

But I digress. Poetry and the Theme Project.

Earlier in the week, it occurred to me that I need to pick a theme to explore in the same way my students are. I need to be able to model for them using real examples from my real work. On the way to school, I was listening to that Miley Cyrus song that I used for Poetry Friday back in September, "The Climb," and decided that my theme would be "Overcoming Challenges."

Since I was going to ask my students to search for poems that fit with their theme, I did the same. I showed them that I didn't find any poems entitled "Overcoming Challenges." I had to read the poem and think about what it said so that I could decide if it fit my theme.

Some of the students had an easy go of this. With a theme of "Friendship," you can hardly turn around in a poetry book without finding a poem. For at least one group, the guys who are exploring "Power," this activity changed the way they are thinking about their theme. With some guidance from me, they found poems about Mt. St. Helens, Old Faithful, and dragons.

Now back to the subtitle for this post. I showed my students the posts in this series and invited them to write a little bit about how one of their poems fits with their theme so I could use their thinking for this post today. They worked hard for the whole period...on podcasting their interviews, polishing their Pixie images, adding to their Keynotes, typing up and illustrating their poems...

One student came through for me. A student whose theme is Power.

CHINESE DRAGON

As the sun came up a ball of red

I followed my friend wherever he led.

He thought his fast horses would leave me

behind,

but I rode a dragon as swift as the wind!

--Chinese Mother Goose Rhyme

He dictated his thoughts to me:

"My theme is Power. I chose this poem because dragons are strong and they breathe fire out of their mouths. Have you ever seen "Heroes" (the TV show) and how they fly and have powers and everything? And they try to save the world every day? Dragons are a different kind of power. Some try to save the world, some try to destroy the world, some try to just be dragons. The thing I really like about dragons is that there is so much history about them. There are old stories and cool pictures about them."

So I don't have too much to share today from this poetry facet of the project, but with this student's writing as a model, I have a way to lift the level of the writing the other students do about their poem(s), and make this student feel really good about himself! (for those who are worried about grading, this little piece of the project will be for a grade--choosing a poem and writing a paragraph about how it fits the theme)

Coming up tomorrow: integrating this project with the music teacher's curriculum.

Now, go get your Poetry Friday fix: Susan Taylor Brown has the round up today at Susan Writes.

Unit of Study on THEME (middle, part 2)

Subtitle: In Which I Integrate Reading and Composing Workshops

Tuesday I wrote about how I laid some of the groundwork for studying theme with 4th graders. Yesterday, I described the Theme Project we're working on in Composing Workshop.

This exploration of the idea of Theme is in preparation to write Literary Essays, a genre that depends equally on work in Reading and Writing (or Composing) Workshops, so at the same time that I started spinning the Theme plate in Composing Workshop, I began my first round of Literature Circles in Reading Workshop. I chose titles on a wide range of reading abilities, and all short enough for students to complete in the three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. All four books have pretty obvious themes. The choices were:

On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer

Tommy Trouble and the Magic Marble by Ralph Fletcher

Riding Freedom by Pam Munoz Ryan

Flying Solo by Ralph Fletcher

Each child has a little folded paper booklet in which they keep track of the characters and character traits, most important events, possible themes, questions, predictions, sketches and such. These booklets have helped guide their first foray into literature circle discussions. I'll be interested to see if they want to continue with something like them in future literature circles.

In read aloud, I decided to do a shared reading of Baby by Patricia MacLachlan. I collected enough copies from the public library so that every child can follow along as I read. This book is complicated enough to make it a perfect pick for shared reading in fourth grade. I can help the students navigate the flashback/memories, notice all the clues in the beginning of the book about something unspoken in the family, and think about the ways MacLachlan uses poetry and songs to reinforce the themes in her story.

Coming up tomorrow: what happens when poetry and music are added to the mix.

Unit of Study on THEME (middle, part 1)

Subtitle: In Which Writing Workshop Becomes Composing Workshop

Yesterday's post told about how I laid some of the groundwork for studying theme with 4th graders.

Other groundwork had been laid long before I ever imagined this project: although my writing workshop looked fairly traditional (paper on pencil) in the first trimester as we studied Narrative Structures, I had spent some time introducing my students to applications like ComicLife, Pixie, Pages, and GarageBand. I'd been itching for them to have some way to USE these applications -- some authentic content -- so that I could shift our WRITING Workshop into a COMPOSING workshop, where we would use the design process to make things (workshop style) with our words and ideas.

The trimester-long multi-media multi-genre project that I imagined was this: every child would pick a theme, then they would explore that theme by making things that illustrate or describe or embody their theme.

To prepare to explain the Theme Project, I made a chart listing all the themes we'd identified in the video clip and THE LION AND THE MOUSE, and specific themes that are mentioned in our state's 4th Grade Language Arts Standards. The last section of this list has themes we've added since the project began -- we've talked about theme as "the moral of the story" and read both traditional Aesop's Fables as well as Scieszka's SQUIDS WILL BE SQUIDS, and some of those final themes were brainstormed when students couldn't find a theme they wanted to work with on the big list, while others came from our read aloud (more about that tomorrow).

Posible themes:

practice

perseverance (don't give up)

honesty

confidence

*

friendship

helpfulness

family

power

*

overcoming challenges

loyalty

kindness

love

*

"Don't judge a book by its cover."

"Do unto others..."

service to others

celebration

leadership

loss

healing power of language

arts make our lives better

I also made a list of possible things to make. Notice that not all are digital:

poems (original, collected)

narrative

skit (video? iMovie?)

interview(s)

images (original photos, Pixie)

music (GarageBand)

podcast

Keynote

ComicLife

mural

collage

sculpture

We talked through these charts and then I sent them back to their writer's notebook to make a web with the theme they'd chosen in the center, and around that theme, a few of the things they wanted to try to make.

And we all lived happily ever after? No, but this is what I love best about teaching: launching a big project that is untested and not completely planned to the minute...and then teaching off of and around all that happens when the students take hold of it and make it theirs.

Some of the challenges we've had so far have been understanding that this is a project around a theme (big idea, moral of the story kind of stuff) and not a topic. But they're 10. We'll get there. I'll tell you about this journey in more detail in a future post. Maybe on Friday...it would fit with Poetry Friday...

Then there was the child who was making a list rather than a web. For every theme, she was picking a something off the Possible Things To Make list. A little one to one correspondence going on that needed to be shifted into "web one theme" mode. This project will really stretch my literal thinkers. For some of them, it might have to be more of a project on a topic rather than a theme. (I think that's called differentiation...)

And then there's the ongoing struggle with the student who's unwilling to let go of a successful character he created (original comic superhero) during the narrative structures project. I can't seem to get him to understand that his character can be a part of this project, but this will not be a project about his character. (This isn't differentiation, this is where the teacher puts her foot down...)

Tomorrow: How I have integrated reading and writing workshop (because the ultimate point of all of this is to get them ready to write a literary essay).

Unit of Study on THEME (beginnings)

This week, I am going to do a series on the unit of study on THEME that I've just started in my 4th grade classroom. I knew as soon as I mentioned it last week that I would need to write more about it.

Our district focus for 4th grade writing workshop this trimester is "Literary Essay." I couldn't imagine my 10 year-old writers maintaining any interest in a workshop dedicated to nonstop literary essays. I knew I needed to get my students wrangling with the big ideas they would need to address in a literary essay. Big ideas like theme.

First, I showed my students this video that Doug Noon shared on his blog Borderland, and we started our conversation about the difference between plot (the story; what happens) and theme (the deeper meaning; the author's possible message; the possible message we infer whether the author intended it or not).

My students were completely captivated by this video. We watched it over and over again. Some were so amazed by the tricks that they declared it to be "fake." We talked about the "plot" (a movie about bike tricks) and the "themes" (practice, perseverance, follow your dreams, have confidence, believe in yourself).

(And how did I get this video off YouTube and into my classroom? Zamzar made it into a QuickTime file.)

The next day I shared THE LION AND THE MOUSE by Jerry Pinkney (I reviewed it here). The students picked right up on the themes of family and power and helpfulness.

This video and book laid the foundation for me to introduce the multi-media multi-genre project I had in mind for my students. Tomorrow I'll continue this series with more details about the project and how my writing workshop has been transformed into a composing workshop.