The Gruffalo

The Gruffalo

Author: Julia Donaldson

Illustrator: Alex Scheffler

Publisher: Puffin

Copyright Date: 2006

# of Pages: 32

Genre: Fantasy/ Poetry

            I’ve heard of this story before, it wasn’t until recently that I got a chance to read it. It’s a story about a mouse who is confront by different dangerous animals and each time the mouse declines going with the animals; he tells them that he’ll be dining with his friend the Gruffalo. Each time he keeps adding features to what the Gruffalo looks like until he finally meets a real gruffalo. The mouse tries to convince the Gruffalo that he –the mouse- is the scariest animal in the forest.

            The illustrator uses very bold lines with his drawings. I’m having trouble distinguishing the exact medium or finding it online, but I think it is colored pencils and oil painting. The texture is very rough and organic. The lines are curved and not jagged. The colors are very cool and light.

            There are tons of projects available on Pinterest and teacher blogs for this book. There are gruffalo word problems you and print off or buy and use in your classroom. You could have students try to put together, draw, and write about what they think the Gruffalo is going to look like before they get to the part in the story where you see the gruffalo. There are tons of available teacher resources that are themed from this book online.

Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site

Author: Sherri Duskey Rinker

Illustrator: Tom Lichtenheld

Publisher: Chronicle Books

Copyright Date: 2011

# Pages: 32

Genre: Fantasy / Poetry

 

CRAYON

 

            When I first saw this book, it caught my attention because I was curious if they were making a construction site theme book of Goodnight Moon. This book, in fact, is very close in both the theme and structure of Goodnight Moon. The book starts with the sun setting on the construction site while all the machinery at the site begins to rest.

            The illustrations are done by Crayon and color pencil. The colors are very dark and calming which it refers to night and very red and bright when it’s talking about the activity of  the day. There’s no negative space throughout the text. The illustrator makes good use of incorporating details into every inch of each page. The illustrations have a very rough and organic texture from the crayons and colored pencils. The lines are generally very curvy except for a few parts to not excitement.

            This would be a great reading motivation piece for students –more likely boys—who struggle finding easy to read material on things that interest them. You could use this for a read aloud and talk about rhyme schemes.This book received recognition with the E.B. White Read-Aloud Honor Award.

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons

Author: Eric Litwin

Illustrator: James Dean

Publisher: HarperCollins

Copyright Date: 2012

# of pages: 40

Genre: Fantasy

 

            I was curious to check out another Pete the Cat book after we listened to one in the classroom. The process behind Pete the Cat and His New Shoes and this story are pretty much the same. You have Pete the cat who loves his new coat with his four buttons. He loses a button, but it’s ok; he moves on with his three buttons.

            The illustrator uses water colors and colored pencils to draw the characters and the environment. The colors are very cool and organic. The texture is very smooth with curved lines. The character has a very simple way of just drawing and painting the main character with the environment around him.

            Children love this book because there’s a music accompaniment that goes with it. I think it’s a great book for younger students between the ages of Kindergarten to second grade, but I think any age group can appreciate it. If you were to use this book in a classroom setting, you could do something with a button theme in classroom management. You could also do this as a motivational story before you do a math exercise with buttons.

            

Classic Tales of Brer Rabbit

Retold by Joel Chandler Harris

Illustrated by Don Daily

Publisher: Running Press Kids

Copyright Date: 2004

# of Pages: 56

Genre: Folktale

 

            This book has an exceptionally detailed book cover featuring Brer Rabbit acting like he’s asleep but peering out of one eye. I remember the old Disney Brer Rabbit movie, so I gave this book a shot. The book is broken up into seven stories about Brier Rabbit and other characters from that area. This book is strongly rooted in African American culture, and you could relate back to elements in this book in a discussion of history and culture. Brier Rabbit is a rabbit who is being pursued by other animals. He's tricky and finds ways to outsmart the other animals trying to trap him.

           The illustrations are very detailed with the use of oil painting and warm colors. Daily makes use of perspectives and has a lot of depth to the illustrations. You can look at the character’s faces and see a lot of human expression in the animals in the story. The feel is very organic and lively. This would be a great book to read during the fall because of the colors and subject matter in the book.

            If you were to use this in a classroom setting, you could use this story as a writing prompt about conflict and resolution. You could use this for character education. You could use this for cultural education.

            

The Old Woman and Her Pig: An Appalachian Folktale

The Old Woman and Her Pig: An Appalachian Folktale

Retold by Margaret
Read MacDonald

Illustrator: John Kanzler

Publisher: Harper Collins  

Copyright Date: 2007

# of Pages: 32

Genre: Folktale

I was excited to come across another pig book in my quest to find traditional literature. I was interested to see the low sticker price, and it wasn't until I got home to read it that I discovered why it was marked so low.

The story starts off with an old woman going to town to get a pig after coming across some change she found on the street. She can’t get the pig to hop the fence, so she gets a dog to bite the pig. The dog won’t bite the pig, so she gets a stick to hit the dog. This process goes on way too long before there’s ever any resolution to the point that it becomes terrible mundane. I would not suggest getting this book.

The illustrator uses a combination of digital and acrylic painting. His colors are very warm and textures are very rounded and smooth. They weren’t anything terribly impressive, but you could tell that the illustrations have to make up where the story lacks.

If you really wanted to use this in a classroom, you could use this as a project on sequences. I could image someone using a large chart page to list and number each event, and then have students trace back the events. You could also use this in a conflict and resolution lesson.   

The Three Pigs

The Three Pigs

Retold and illustrated by David Wiesner

Publisher: Clarion Books

Copyright Date: 2001

# of Pages: 40

Genre: Folktale

            The cover drew me to the book by the expressions on the pigs’ faces. Not a lot of people know that pigs naturally have curved mouth that makes them look like they’re always smiling. Since I own a spoiled rotten pig, I chose this book to see what David Wiesner did to beef up the old folktale of the three little pigs. This is the folktale about three little pigs who each have their own houses while a wolf tries to come in and eat them.

            This book won a Caldecott for Wiesner’s illustrations. He uses gouache, water color, colored inks, pencil, and colored pencil on Fabriano hot press paper. How Wiesner makes this story his own is by using some graphic novel style speech bubbles along with having characters come out of the story and maneuver between scenes. When characters transition between the boxed scenes and out/around these scenes, you see a drastic shift in detail. The lines are very bold and the textures are smooth in parts and very detailed in rough in others –particularly through the transitions of characters in and out of scenes.

            This book would be appropriate for all school ages. You could use the pigs as classroom management tools, such that you could have laminated pigs with white thought bubbles connected to them that could be a parking place for thoughts and ideas. You could also use this in a comparison and contrasting exercise between other versions of the three little pigs stories.

Poetry Speaks Who I Am

Poetry Speaks Who I Am

Edited by Elise Paschen

Series Editor: Dominique Raccah

Illustrator: David Gordon

Publisher: Sourcebook Jabberwocky

Copyright Date: 2010

# of Pages: 176

Genre: Poetry

            I spent a lot of time looking for a good poetry book with a recent copyright date I could use. When I came across this book, I was attracted to the cover’s grungy texture on the cover. It looked like a school notebook that has been drawn on. There are 108 poems from different poets in this book that cover subjects that range from death, love, race, animals, anger, and confusion. This book was a lot more mature than the other books of poetry I’d read previously. This book would be something that’s appropriate for sixth grade when a lot of these feelings and emotions are really starting to take center stage in these students’ lives.

            The illustrations are done in computer graphic print and hand drawn with black ink. Each page has this texture to it that’s very rough and splattered. The illustrations are nothing more than doodles of figures like flowers, mouths, and eyes. A couple of the pages have boarders drawn above them. In general though, the illustrations are just there to give the book this feeling of a doodled in personal notebook.

            If you used this book in your sixth grade class, you could use subjects that are newly relevant to students in the class to begin discussions about things that are hard to talk or write about. This book also comes with a CD with the poems read by the poets accompanied by music. You could incorporate this into an audio center that accompanies your library. In the back of the book, there are pages for students to write their own poetry. I liked this feature a lot because it not only tried to relate to students on a visual level, but it also was able to connect with student’s sense of creativity.

Every Thing on It

Every Thing on It

Author and Illustrator: Shel Silverstein

Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers

Copyright Date:2011

# of Pages: 208

Genre: Poetry

            I was surprised last year when I came across a new Shel Silverstein book. It’s a little eerie feeling you get when you come across a piece of your childhood that you thought was concluded, but I went ahead and dove in. This poetry book is everything I remember as a child from his original work. You have poems about Zootches that ward off nightmares, transparent boys, and all manners of creative concepts. The illustrations are as funky and hand drawn as when the last Silverstein book I read.  

The illustrations are done in black ink on a lot of negative space. You’ll see maybe one or two characters per page, but the poems usually describe them in such a way that you really can’t have the text without the illustrations. Most of the lines are very smooth and curvy. The illustrations are very simple without a lot of detail in texture.

This book would be appropriate for all school age children. You could introduce this to your class when discussing writing prompts for creative characters or simple poetry. Some of the poems can be used to teach how differences are important. There are a broad number of teaching activities you can do with this.

Forget-Me-Nots: Poems to Learn by Heart

Forget-Me-Nots: Poems to Learn by Heart

Author: Mary Ann Hoberman

Illustrator: Michael Emberley

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Copyright Date: 2012

# of pages: 144

Genre: poetry

            This book really stood out to me in the book store. The front cover displays children their work around a large elephant. When I read the introduction on page 5, I had to read it. The message and purpose of this book is to encourage children to build skills for memorization and a relationship with the poetry genre. The poem increase in complexity though the book, but like the title says, the goal is to get children to learn poetry by heart.

            The illustrations are done in pencil, watercolors, and pastels with a lot of negative space. The lines vary from smooth to rough depending on the poem’s message or feeling. There are a few pages where there is no negative space and the illustrator uses dark blues for night time and cool blues for under water. He makes use of reds to accent energy or excitement. Most of the illustrations are either of animals with human characteristics and/or people being funky and silly.

            This book is introduced and compiled by the Poetry Foundation’s Children’s Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2010 Mary Ann Hobertman. She selected these poems in such a way would be especially useful to teachers. Since the poems increase in complexity throughout the book, you could introduce poetry at any grade level and use it in discussions of memory or reading comprehension skills. This would also be a great book for students who struggle with orthographic skills by giving them an incremental way of increasing their reading performance.

Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in Year 1888

Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888

Author: Ernest L. Thayer Illustrator: Christopher Bing

Publisher: Chronicle Books

Copyright date: 2000

# of pages: 32

Genre: historical fiction / poetry

            I chose this book because I love baseball. I remembered hearing about this poem by Ernest L. Thayer as a child, but when I found out that it won a Caldecott honor award, I had to read it.

The story is about a baseball game in a place called Mudville. The player by the name of Casey is this cocky player loved by the crowd. In the end, it tells the story that confidence isn't everything. I could see this book being appropriate for a second grade classroom and up. You could use this book in an integrated literacy lesson or for lesson on rhyming words.

The illustrations are made to look like old newspaper clippings and photos. When you’re reading through the poem, it’s almost like someone is telling you this story of a baseball game that they attended and saved all of the clippings of the event. The illustrator uses ink drawings and digital enhancement through computer manipulation of drawings as a medium. The poem already follows a very linear narrative, but the sepia aged illustrations give the book that extra level of realism to build on this realistic fiction. Because of these illustrations, Christopher Bing was able to revitalize a story and win this book a Caldecott Honor Award.

(Here's a great link for a read aloud. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-2lXQQcXb8)