A New Year and New Picture Books

Hello from Ontario and sub-freezing temperatures! From what I can tell being home by the fire on maternity leave is a pretty good place to be today. Snow days! Ice storms! Polar vortex!

It looks like Old Man Winter means business this year. 

I've always purchased a tonne of picture books for my classroom, even when I taught Grade 7 and 8, but now that I have 2 daughters of my own buying picture books has become even more easily justified! 

Vocabulary!

Here are some great ones that I received from Thomas Allen & Son to review. I can't wait to get back in the classroom and use them with my students as part of our vocabulary studies. 

Petey, Pru and the Hullabaloo by Ammi-Joan Paquette

The pictures in this book are fabulous and the vocabulary is out of this world! If you are a fan of the Fancy Nancy books and teaching students to use "fancy" words then you will love this book as well. There are some great words like "tranquil", "cacophony", and "peeved". The end papers are even used as a dictionary with the definitions of the words in the book. Genius!

Your students will love this story as well. Pru is feeling "tricksy" and ruins Petey's lovely day in the garden with all sorts of tricks and shenanigans. It would be a great book for  teaching about problem solving among friends. 

Another great book for both vocabulary and problem-solving/ inclusivity is Xander's Panda Party by Linda Sue Park. 

Xander wants to host a panda party...but he's the only panda at the zoo! So then he invites all the bears, but a koala isn't a bear so he invites the mammals and so on and so on. This book is super cute! And what a great way to introduce classification on animals to young children. I also really enjoy the rhyme scheme that runs throughout the book and the challenging vocabulary that will help to stretch your student's abilities. 

Just for Fun!

Have you ever read a Barney Saltzberg book? If not, you are totally missing out. I bought Beautiful Oops a few years ago and love reading it with my daughter (it makes a great introductory picture book for a visual art class) so I was very excited when I saw A Little Bit of Oomph in my box from Thomas Allen & Son.

This book is super cute. I love how it uses phrases and amazing pop-up illustrations to deliver it's message of hope, positivity and forward thinking. This is a great book for any collection-home or school. Do yourself a big favour and look into more Barney Saltzberg. 

Wouldn't it be great to have students make their own pages for this type of book? Researching pop-up books? Quotes and favourite sayings? I see a class book in the making. 

Last but not least...

Frog Trouble by Sandra Boynton

As a big fan of country music I was super happy to see this book emerge from the box. A picture book with a CD of kids songs sung by some of my all-time favourite artists. Yes, please!

I am by no means a musical person myself...other than singing along badly to the radio so I don't really have too many ideas for lessons or classroom involvement for this one. But I can say that you won't be disappointed when you check it out. Maybe one of the songs would be good for any upcoming Spring concerts? 

You know, when old man winter let's us out of his icy clutches. Hope you are staying warm!

Halloween Picture Books

When I first transitioned from teaching Grade 7 and 8 to teaching the younger kids it took me a while to realize that I needed to integrate the holidays more into my classroom. It's just not something that was a big part of my planning with the older kids. Now that I am teaching Grade 3 one of my favourite ways to integrate the holidays is by reading a picture book as part of our Book of the Week or just as a fun read aloud. 

So you can imagine how excited I was when I received a new box of books from Thomas Allen & Son to review and there were some new Halloween picture books!!

Five Little Monkeys by Eileen Christelow

This book, and the whole series of books, is so cute! The original Five Little Monkeys Jumping on a Bed was one of my daughter's favourites when she first started picking her own bedtime storybooks. 

This is a great book for a read aloud for younger students, probably Grades 1-4. I like that it's not scary and the students will love the tricks played by the 5 little monkeys. One of the things that I like best about the Monkey books is the illustrations. They are so colourful and fun. I think the students in any class would really enjoy writing about their own trick or treating experiences, imagining themselves as the monkeys and the types of tricks they might play. 

In The Haunted House by Eve Bunting

I love Eve Bunting! 

The pictures and rhymes in this book are just fabulous. It's definitely a little scarier than the Five Little Monkeys, although my almost 3-year old has seemed to gravitate to it. This would be a great book to use as part of a poetry unit especially if you were teaching rhyming couplets. I think creating a class Halloween book would be super fun. Each student could create a couplet about a haunted house or their own Halloween experiences and then illustrate their writing. 

All kids will enjoy lifting the flaps and seeing the Halloween ghouls hiding underneath. There are also some touch and feel aspects to the book that children will like to explore. I have enjoy doing a number of picture walks through the book with my daughter as it has introduced her to some of the "scarier" aspects of Halloween in a safe and fun way. She has also really enjoyed tracking the shoes of the little girl and her father as they made their way through the haunted house.

Mr. Wuffles by David Wiesner

Oh, David Wiesner....your books are so, so, so....!

This book isn't necessarily a Halloween book but I thought it would make a great creative writing activity, especially for the older students around this time of year. Like many of David Wiesner's book this one has very little writing or dialogue but what it does have is a very clear plot line. The structure of the book is organized like a comic book with a variety of panels that move along the story line. 

This is the blurb provided by Thomas Allen and Sons website:

Another comic tour de force from three-time Caldecott medalist David Wiesner. Mr. Wuffles ignores all his cat toys but one, which turns out to be a spaceship piloted by small green aliens. When Mr. Wuffles plays rough with the little ship, the aliens must venture into the cat's territory to make emergency repairs.

I love that the aliens in the book has distinct dialogue bubbles that shows the conversations they are having. Wiesner uses a variety of symbols to create the dialogue which means the students are required to infer what the aliens might be saying to each other. If I was to do this type of an activity with my Grade 3 class I would have my students work in groups of at least 3 or 4 students in order to create the story and dialogue for the book. Older students could perhaps complete the activity in partners or even independently. A concentrated study on the use of quotation marks would coincide nicely with this creative writing activity as well. 

Coming up soon!! The ladies at A Class*y Collaboration have some spooky fun planned...Oct 24th- 31st.

Children's Book Reviews

I was contacted back in the late spring by Heather from Thomas Allen & Son about reviewing children's books....and of course loved the idea! Then the summer hit, we moved house, I'm pregnant, it was hot...etc, etc and somehow the draft of the this post got lost in the shuffle.

But, I've found it and it's ready to go!

First up is Mad Science 2- Experiments You Can Do At Home, But STILL Probably Shouldn't by Theodore Gray.  The title alone is enough to get anyone excited about this book!

I think any boy I've ever taught would grab this book off the shelf and dive right in! (Quite of few of the men I know would do the same...and then run to the hardware store for supplies....!) This book has amazing pictures and some really interesting scientific information. The non-fiction reader in your class would probably gobble it up. I think it's a little advanced for my Grade 3 class, but I've no doubt the boys would enjoy skimming through and exclaiming over the pictures and ideas. 

I would recommend that this book be in classroom libraries for grades 5 and up, and could be used as a suggestion for reluctant readers. It would also make an excellent addition to a non-fiction text features unit!

Next up we have, Just Grace and the Trouble with Cupcakes by Charise Maricle Harper. 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book! The cover is enticing and the title grabs the reader's attention. My two and half year old daughter was even intrigued by this book and we have sat down together to read a few pages here and there...and if a chapter book can hold the attention of a toddler that's saying something!

I would love (and plan to) to get more copies of this book and the rest of the books in the series. I think they would be a fantastic addition to my Grade 3 classroom library and to use for literature circles or novel studies. 

Harper's writing of Grace and her classmates is very realistic and positive. It shows the actual trials and tribulations of a grade 3 student (especially a girl) without seeming preachy or condescending. I also enjoy the pencil drawings (i.e. Diary of a Wimpy Kid) found throughout the book. The drawings and heading require the reader to delve a little deeper into the text on the page as they are a part of the story.

Just Grace and the Trouble with Cupcakes is about the school fair that Grace and her classmates have been assigned to plan by their teacher. Of course, they have to pick a theme which leads to a rift in Grace's friendship with her best friend, then she ends up in a group of kids she's not sure she likes and to top it off the visit from her Grandma does not go as planned. The students will enjoy reading how Grace handles these real-life student problems and be able to connect to their own experiences in the classroom.

This book is definitely a A!

The first book I read when the box arrived was Parched by Melanie Crowder. 

What a powerhouse!

This is the kind of book that makes me miss teaching the older kids...where was it 5 years ago when I taught Grade 7 and 8! For anyone with a social-justice focus in their class this is a must have book. I will admit though, it's a challenging read. For some students the vocabulary and story-telling from multiple perspectives might prove to be difficult. However, it would do well as a class read aloud or a lit circle book for more advanced readers.

If your curriculum involves water and conservation than Parched would be an excellent way to integrate your literacy and science curriculums. Here is the description from Thomas Allen & Son's website:

In this haunting, lyrical novel told from three perspectives, Sarel has just witnessed the violent murder of her parents. But she is not completely alone on the drought-ridden land. Nandi is the leader of a pack of dogs who looks out for her pups and for skinny Sarel-girl. Nandi knows they are all in trouble, and she knows, too, that a boy is coming—an escaped prisoner with the water song inside him. A hard-hitting but ultimately hopeful survival story.

This book drew me in from the first page (okay, the cover) and I just couldn't put it down. Imagine the conversations it could spark!

The last book in the package was The Ugly One by Leanne Statland Ellis. 

This is an interesting book...and yet, I'm not sure if I liked it.

Here's the description from Thomas Allen & Son:

I had always been ugly, as far back as I could remember.

Micay has a deep scar that runs like a river from her right eye to her lip. The boys in her Incan village bully her because of it, and most of the adults ignore her. So she keeps to herself and tries to hide the scar with her long hair, drawing comfort from her family and her faith in the Sun God, Inti. Then a stranger traveling from his jungle homeland to the Sacred Sun City at Machu Picchu gives her a baby macaw, and the path of her life changes. Perhaps she isn’t destined to be the Ugly One forever. Vivid storytelling and rich details capture the life and landscape of the Incan Empire as seen through the eyes of a young girl who is an outsider among her own people.

The content of the book are interesting and I like connections to a Cinderella type story but I had some trouble maintaining my focus while reading. The slightest noise or movement would draw my attention away from the book. 

With the changes that have taken place in the Ontario Social Studies curriculum this year I am not sure where this book could be placed most effectively for integration either. I think that for a good understanding the students reading this book would have to be at least Grade 6 or higher, perhaps an advanced Grade 5?

I do think it's worth looking into if the description intrigues you...the storyline is rich in detail and lends itself to a great deal of visualization. I would love to see student drawing's of Micay as part of a class art project.

This is one I'm just not sure about. It wasn't my cup of tea but I wouldn't say it wasn't interesting either. 

Have you read any good children's books recently? I'd love to hear about them.