Ocean's Child

This book has cool artwork, and it looks like it was airbrushed. The story uses rhyming and repetition to tell another bedtime story. It is interesting because it talks about different sea creatures and describes how they sleep. For example, a baby whale rests on the back of its mother and dolphins rest close to the surface of the ocean. This is something I had been interested in as a kid- how fish sleep, or if they do. This could be a cute story to read with kids during a science unit about the ocean.

            The only negative thing about this book is that I found the repetition somewhat predictable and annoying. On the other hand, kids might not feel the same. In a classroom setting, when I have heard teachers read repetitive books, the kids have enjoyed that fact that they can expect one part of the story every time and say it along with the teacher. This keeps them in the story. For me, it was just annoying, but I didn't read it aloud with a bunch of overly excited kids in the room, so that may be part of it.

Desert December

This book is a South African children's book that my mom brought back from there when she visited a family friend. It tells the story of a little boy and his amazing adventure when he travels many miles to give his mother a present. The author uses great word descriptions to weave a lovely story of this boys family and life in South Africa. It is interesting also how it feels different from the American Stories I have been reading. It reads a little differently, although it is in English, and some of the word descriptions were different from anything I've heard before. For example, the author uses the phrase hosanna blue to describe the nights sky on Christmas Eve. I've never heard this term used to describe a color, but when I looked it up, it works. Hosanna means an expression of adoration, praise or joy.

It was also interesting how much the story paralleled the Christmas story. I didn't notice this until I looked it over a second time, but the ending has an image of a baby in swaddling clothes surrounded by two parents and the little girls brother. There is also a star shining overhead and this star helped the boy find his mother and her new baby, similar to the three wise men who followed the star to baby Jesus. I think this would be a great book to read to my class around Christmas time since it brings in elements of other cultures while bringing in elements of our own.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

I really like this book. It would be a great book for talking about seeing things from other's perspectives or walking in someone else's shoes. Each page has an animal and it says that the animal is seeing the animal on the next page. The last animal sees a teacher and the teacher then sees children and the children see all the animals and their teacher. It might be fun to do a swapping of roles for this story and have all the students switch off reading a page of this story to their teacher. I also really like the big cut out animals. They are made of simple shapes yet show allot of movement and energy, which I don't think is an easy thing to pull off, considering the limited materials they used. It's a simple but fun book and I think you could do allot it with in a classroom, creatively. As an art student, it might be fun to do an art project from this book where the students "see" their classmates and do a collage of another student, who does a collage of someone else and so on. 

Good Night Moon

         I remember reading this as a kid and loving it. Reading it again, I couldn't figure out why it had been such a classic book during my childhood. The story was simple with few words and the images not as exciting as other books. I asked my mom in the car about this book to see if she would remember anything and she gave me some helpful information. She said that this book was more fun than other books because it was one of the first books that had an untold story hiding within the images that didn't come out in the text. The images have allot going on that you wouldn't notice at first and it was really fun as a kid to find all these "hidden" things. For example, the mouse that showed up in different places on every page, and the mittens moved around and had to be found. It was an interactive book with lot's of detail. This made it fun for a kid with a big imagination. And the story was so simple that you could practically memorize it by the third or fourth read. As a grown up, I completely forgot about all these things and so reading this book again, I did not pin it as a great book because it lacked a dramatic, advanced story line and amazing artwork. I think I'll need to ask kids what they think is great literature, since my idea of great children's books might be really different than what kids like. 

          I think this would be a good book to have in the classroom library for kids to browse through themselves. 

Snow White

I have read this book as a kid but never remember the ending being as gruesome as this. The evil queen comes to Snow White's wedding and is forced to dance in red hot iron slippers until she falls down dead. I find it interesting that I don't remember this part, since I read this story multiple times as a kid. Maybe my mom skipped it, or maybe it wasn't such a big deal, then. Either way, I was kind of shocked when I read it again now. Other than that, the story is beautifully written and the images are breathtaking and full of detail. I don't think I would read this to my class since it is somewhat long and is a story most people know. I also think that Snow White is a pretty bad example for kids when it comes to the wise advise that you don't talk to or take things from strangers. I was really frustrated with her when she repeatedly made the mistake of talking to the old witch, who was wearing a new disguise each time, even after she had been warned multiple times by the seven dwarves not to open the door for ANYONE. She might have been beautiful, but she didn't seem that smart to me. I think that is why I love Beauty and the Beast more than any other fairy tale. Belle is beautiful, kind AND she has brains! 

The Moon Came Too

This was probably my favorite book as a kid. The little girl in it reminds me so much of myself. She loves to dress up and when she goes to grandma's house, she has the hardest time deciding what to bring with her. I could seriously crack up for a long time when I think about all the junk I would take on family road trips. I had this thing that had about 10 pockets that had a hanger on top that you could take in the car and hang on the clothes hanger hook. I would fill it up with random stuff like bouncy balls and anything else I could find around the house, mostly stuff from this one drawer in the kitchen. I have no idea why I needed so much junk, but it seemed to keep me entertained. 

This book is about a little girl who takes just about everything she owns with her when she goes to visit her grandma. When she gets there, she looks up in the sky on her grandma's porch and realizes that the moon came too!

Going to visit my grandparents was also one of my favorite things to do in the summer so this book is pretty much about my own life. I might read it to my kids before spring break or something. We could talk about stuff we take with us on trips or stuff that is important to us. We could talk about how our stuff defines, or doesn't define, who we are.

Je Veux une maman

I want a mother...

This book is in french, and I have it from being a kid. It would only work as a book in a multi-language school or maybe as a tool to learn a foriegn language, but I could just translate it myself as I'm reading it. It is about a little boy in southern France who lived along in a little house. He had to take care of himself and do everything a mother would do. One day, he decides to go out and find a mother, he is tired of working. After many false attempts, a sweet short haired woman takes him home to be his mother. He is now a happy member of a family, with a mom and dad. I think this is really cute book since this little boy has to do all the things a parent does. He even wears grown up clothes. It is really cute. He even puts a diaper on himself. You sort of fall in love with the wise little boy. He is so wise he knows he needs a mother and so he packs his bags one day and goes on a search to find one. 

This would be a fun book to read with kids and might even spark a little thankfulness in kids when they see a boy doing all the things their mother's do. The kids might think: what if that was me? Phew, good thing I have a mom!

Amy the Dancing Bear

This was one of my favorite books as a kid. It is written by Carly Simon and reads just like a song or lullaby. The images are beautiful and full of detail. As a kid I loved Amy the dancing bear because she reminded me of myself. I was always full of energy and never wanted to go to bed. 

This book is about a little dancing bear, Amy, who doesn't want to go to sleep because she is having so much fun dancing. She talks her mother into letting her stay up late into the night to keep on dancing her heart away. Finally, when it gets to be midnight, Amy puts her mom to bed.

I can still remember how, as a kid, staying up late was such a big deal. It was so exciting to stay up later than the parents and also terrifying if you got caught. I still remember how I was at my grandparents house with my cousins and we were staying up way later than we should have in the upstairs bed room. For some reason, we needed some ice, so I snuck down to the kitchen to get some and ran into my grandma in the kitchen. I completely froze with fear and could not open my mouth. I pretended to be sleep walking and stumbled back up stairs. The next day my grandma mentioned it, and I completely denied having any recollection of the incident. Now, I think it is funny that I was so afraid to be caught staying up late.

This would be a cute book to read to kids, but I might not read it in my classroom but save it as a book to read to my kids, since it is a little less educational and just pure fun.

You Are Special by Max Lucado

I really love this book. I remember reading it when I was young and being impacted by the story line. It is about a little puppet who is criticized by the other townspeople and given grey dots to wear to show his shame. If another puppet likes something about you, you get a star, but this puppet only gets dots. One day, he hears from a fellow puppet who doesn't have any dots or stars on her that he can go to the carpenter at the top of the hill to be like her. He goes to see the carpenter that made him and starts to learn that it doesn't matter so much what other people think. He starts to realize this because he begins to realize how much he is loved by and cared for by his maker. 

This story is really touching and made me shed tears. It is written so well and the images of amazing. I love the little puppet punchinello and how he drawn, looking so bright eyed and happy after he goes to see his maker. This is a great story for kids I would definitely read it in my classroom. 

Stars Above Us

This is a cute story about a father and daughter's relationship. The little girl in the story is afraid of the dark and her dad takes her outside to show her all the good things that live in the dark, like fireflies and stars. Then her dad puts stars on her ceiling to bring those good things from outside into her dark scary room. Amanda and her dad spend more time together in the book and then her dad goes off to war. Amanda is concerned about him, but she hopes on her lucky star and he comes home safe and sound. 

This might be a good book if I was teaching in town where there were military kids who had fathers who went to war, or this might be a good book to read on fathers day. The artwork is made up of beautiful watercolor paintings similar to Pinkney's Little Match Girl. This would also be a good book for talking about science and outer space since it talks about different constellations.

Sky Magic

      I love this book because it takes poetry written by famous poets and compiles it into one book with beautiful, rich illustrations. The subject of the poetry is all about the sun, moon and stars. Many of the poems are by poets I have never read before, but the poems are really fresh and interesting. I especially like the poem Rising by Sarah Hansen. It goes like this: 

Like a fresh loaf,

Sun rises,

Tempting dawn

To break

Her golden crust-

Taste morning!

Most of the poems are really short, but there are a few longer poems. The poems are organized into a progression from day to night, from sunrise to sunset. The art work in this book is notable for its brilliant oranges and blues and it has allot of depth to it. The images are magical and not the obvious depiction of the poem but have elements you wouldn't expect, like paper hat boats and piano's spewing stars.

If America Were a Village by David J. Smith

This is a new book all about our country, America. Because America is made up of many different kinds of people, the book simplifies the subject by talking about America as if it were one single village of 100 people. Most of the people in the village can afford housing, but a small percentage of villagers cannot, similar to the United States. Each page of the book addresses a different topic such as "What do we own?" or "What religions do we practice?" The facts in the book are directly proportional to statistics in America. 

This would a great book to teach kids about economics, sociology and many other subjects by taking facts and figures and bringing them down to a level that is easy for kids to understand. There is allot of writing on each page and so it would be difficult to read in one sitting. It would be a good book to read just a page or two a day, or take just sections from it at a time relative to the current classroom subject matter. The art work in this book is made up of bright and colorful paintings of regular life in America, and relates well to our own lives.

Love That Dog

                         Although this was not one of my favorite 

books 

          we have read, 

I am glad 

    we read it 

                            since it would be a great book to get kids 

interested 

in poetry. I think 

                        it would also help young people 

                           

realize that if this kid can 

be a poet, 

           we can too! 

Any walls or barriers keeping 

kids from thinking 

poetry is for them would be broken 

                                                                     

                                                                      down 

 when they read 

the simple 

                           "poems" written by the author. I think it would get them excited 

to think that they can take just 

about 

a      n        y           t       h       i    n   g and break 

                     it 

                            up 

into 

    lines and 

call it 

                             a poem. 

This kind of revelation 

would get kids imaginations reeling...

            

This book would also be a great tool to introduce kids to other famous poets. It would demystify the process of interpreting poetry by making them realize that maybe the poet didn't even understand what he was writing about when he wrote it. Maybe William Carlos Williams was just sitting by a red wheel barrow and some white chickens, and, having no idea what to write about that day, decided to write about what was right in front of him and wanting to make his boring circumstances really exciting threw in the line: so much depends upon... Maybe he was just like any young student who wanted to make something exciting out of something mundane and boring and he used language to do that. Now everyone is asking: what is so significant about this wheel barrow and white chickens that makes everything depend upon on them? I think good writing should make people ask questions and I think kids can come up with poems that do that, even if they don't have the answers themselves. Writing shouldn't be easily understood, because if it can be, then it doesn't stretch one to think outside the box, or find the sacred in the mundane.

Anticipation Set Response for Year of Impossible Goodbyes

After thinking about the title, I imagine that in the book Year of Impossible Goodbyes, similar to So Far From the Bamboo Grove, characters are forced, due to war, to leave behind people and things they love to go to another, foreign, land. Not only do they have to say goodbye to these things but also to other less tangible things like their freedom and their ability to sleep peacefully at night. I think the quote about the life of the spirit being long and life being short applies to the book because, while life may be ephemeral and fleeting, the life of the spirit does not soon give up or quit as easily, but can keeps on going for a long time. It could also mean that there is hope because there is an after life where the spirit of a person never dies but goes on to a better place.

Hope would play a huge role in my heart because hope is my heartbeat; it keeps me going. It's just like why go on if nothing has meaning, If there is no hope? Hope is everything. What is hope? That is a good question. Hope is a reason to live, it's something you are looking forward to. Hope is waking up in the morning and expecting great things to happen to you that day and the next day and the next. I would imagine I would need this hope all the same if I were in Sookan's situation.

 

Alfred Noble: The Man Behind the Peace Prize

I thought it was interesting to learn from reading this children's book that the very man who invented dynamite was the same man who created the Noble Peace Prizes. It also blows me away how just one man, one really rich man that is, could make such a big difference in the world. The Noble Peace prize is an amazing thing and it is not only an award for great men and women of the world but it has also found it's way into high schools. For example, my high school graduation included an award for the person who was most likely going to win the Nobel Peace Prize. I still remember who won that award, and I remember looking up to her allot. 

I think this book would be a great one to read in the classroom. You could talk about so many different subjects- war, violence, peace, science. I think it would also be a great book to talk about the idea that it only takes one person to make a difference. Every great thing you will learn about usually began with just one inspired person. This fact will never cease to amaze me and would great inspiration for young individuals.

So Far From the Bamboo Grove

This book was deeply moving and quite incredible. It amazes me that one girls journey, at only the age of 11, could be so intense. They had so many close calls and encounters with death, it's hard to imagine that happening in America or in my own comfortable life. War is such a foreign concept to me, since I have never had to experience it that directly. I am thinking about how notable Ko's consistent survival methods were. Talk about persistence! She sort of reminded me a little of my older sister Elizabeth who is now a surgeon in Dallas. When Yoko put up the signs for her brother Hydeyo in the train station, I was thinking about how she said there were so many other signs up there too, and I started to think about how many other similar stories like Yoko's were out there, stories of survival, of courage and overcoming impossible odds. This thought sort of blows me away to think about- that every person really does have a journey of their own, and I believe everyone's journey is just as interesting and significant as everyone else's, even if yours is not as action packed as Yoko's.

Maybe my own journey is also full of many 'close calls'. For example, my Dad. He went into medicine, not because he loved medicine, but because he was told there was more money in that field than in marine biology, his true passion. This decision began to affect my life when I went to school and my parents forced me to do nursing instead of art, my true passion, since they insisted I'd never find a job as an artist. I failed to get into the nursing school at Iowa, thank heavens!, and now I'm following my passion so the cycle has stopped! That was a close call, not with physical death, but with the death of passion and talent, and what is life without passion or without destiny?  So there are stories that make up every person you meet on a the street and just like the title of Yoko's essay, it takes understanding to see that and to be willing to hear their stories.

      I wish that more information had been given about the essay that Yoko wrote; maybe she could have included portions of it in the book. I was interested to know what she was thinking about when she wrote it. 

The Swiderwick Chronicles

I read this book for one of our series books and I really enjoyed it. It was riveting and held my attention, I kept wanting to read it. It was a sort of spooky-harry potter-esque book but it did not fall into the category of being cliche or predictable. On the other hand, it was pretty creative in it's story line. I think this is a book that children would really enjoy. 

One aspect that could be improved from this book is that there could be more character development. That would make the books longer, but I think it would make them more memorable. I think it is the character development in Harry Potter, plus the amazing subject matter, that makes it such a popular book- you fall in love with the characters you are reading about and want to know what happens to them. Spiderwick Chronicles could have more of that, but, like I said, it's a short read, which might be nice for younger age groups, so the extra length might change the audience make up.

Something worth commenting on about this book is that it included drawings with the text. In some places this was affective, like when the drawings depicted non-existent creatures like elves that might be hard to visualize, but in other places it was less affective. I think it was somewhat less affective when it depicted the character's themselves, since the images were similar to or less illustrious than what I imaged in my head, and so somewhat repetitive or detractive from the story. 

Tango Makes Three

    This children's book is a story about two male penguins who aren't interested in other female penguins. They spend all their time together and are not like the other penguin couples. In the story, they end up raising another baby penguin together who's name is Tango. This book is controversial because it addresses the controversial topic of homosexuality.

The back of this book says that it was based on a true story, but what they do not mention is that the penguins were not observed in the wild but were observed while in captivity. Animals are not meant to live in captivity but to live in their natural habitat away from human influences. Anytime a human or animal is taken into captivity it becomes corrupt. For this reason I would not read this book in my classroom because it deceives children into thinking that homosexuality is normal and takes place naturally among animals in the wild, when this is not case.

The Giver

         I think this is great book to have kids read. It brings up so many interesting concepts about life, love and pain. An interesting concept I liked thinking about while reading it was the concept of the Giver himself. He was the one person who had to bear all the pain of the past by himself. The community never had to think about the Giver or about pain, and so there was no name for him after his training of receiving was over. He got the name the Giver because Jonas gave it to him; he had been known by the community as just the receiver, even though he had stopped receiving for a long time. Jonas knew the Giver by his name Giver but now the community was going to know the Giver as the Giver, not just a receiver, but as the one who would give them the memories of the past and change their lives forever.

An interesting thing I noted while reading it for the second time since middle school was the fact that although this was a supposedly "perfect" community, the people were still very far from perfect. The people were still cruel and judgmental toward one another, even though every possible thing had been done to eliminate violence or evil. For example, when the old woman Larissa called the other older woman dumb and a parent, in anger, called his child by the number 23. 

Anticipation Guide: "So Far From the Bamboo Grove."

Yoko Kawashima

This guide is by: Sarah Gistenson, Rachael Pitts, Rachel Von Lienen

"When will peace come so that we can turn on the lights? I heard the last train
pass. It was bedtime. I was so tired I threw myself down ontop of the futon with
my clothes on hoping there would be no air raid to wake me." (20)

Go to this link and read the first two paragraphs about the author and Japan's history:

http://www.uvm.edu/~litblock/webquest/236Spring2003/King/

After reading this, how do you feel about what you have read?

"Through the opening I saw the body of an engeneer, burnt black. 'Don't look,' Ko said. Mother kept on walking.We had been the only healthy ones to get on the train at Nanam, and now we were the only healthy ones to get off. I looked at the long road we were about to take, rails stretching ahead, shining mysteriously in the light of three quarter moon." (42)

This book, like many books, recounts a portion of one's person's journey
through life, their attempt to get from one place to another. This story is
about one woman and her families journey from Korea to Japan, from a place of war to a place of saftey and peace.

Looking at the map below, follow with your eyes the journey of Yoko from Northern Korea to Japan, through the city of Seoul.







As you read this book, try to put yourself in the shoes of Yoko or Ko, and imagine what it would have been like to go through what they experienced. Like Yoko, you too are on a journey of your own. How do the experiences that Yoko speaks about in the short passage above and what you read about on the link, compare to your own life?

Enjoy Reading!