Brianne McGlone Childrens Literature Exploration

Book Title: Author: Published: Genre: Summary:

Penguins Ann O. Squire 2007 Nonfiction

Grade: 3 Standards: 3.RIT.2, 3.RIT.7, 3.W.2

Facts about penguins fill the book, starting with an explanation about why

penguins do not fly like other birds. There are seventeen different species of penguins and most of the species are mentioned throughout the book. Penguin life and survival in the cold is covered as well as physical features of the penguins. A penguins outer feathers provide a waterproof coating that covers the down feathers underneath. Penguins can live on land and in the ocean, and many penguins spend about three-quarters of their time in the water. Some penguin species lay eggs in a nest and others incubate the eggs on their feet. Problems for penguins are their predators at sea and on land, and humans. Humans used to eat penguin eggs and use the feathers, skin, and oil from their fat. Some would also scoop up penguin droppings, called guano, to fertilize soil, which became problematic because penguins used guano for other purposes. At times, food becomes scarce and the warming climate leads to less land to occupy. This book can be used in the classroom for a unit on nonfiction. The students can all read the book and then be broken up into groups. Each group can focus on one chapter of the book and then work within their groups to create a poster about the main facts they learned from that particular chapter. Each group can then present to the class their poster and what they learned from the chapter. This book helps students learn about nonfiction and how to gather facts from a nonfiction book.

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If You Lived with the Iroquois Ellen Levine 1998 Nonfiction

Grade: 3 Standards: 3.RIT.1, 3.RIT.3, 3.RIT.7

The Iroquois are made up of five nations and were known as the people of the

longhouse. This group of people did not have written language, only oral language, and used it to pass down stories from generation to generation. The Iroquois lived in villages on high ground, surrounded by an oval stockade, usually near farm fields. Their village included several longhouses, in which families lived. The Iroquois bathed in a small sweat house, which was like a steam bath, then finished their bathing in a stream or lake. The Iroquois ate vegetables, fruits, nuts, meat and fish. They wore hand-made deerskin clothing decorated with beads or quills. Everyone worked as a part of the village and learned from their parents, older siblings and older members of the tribe. This book can be a part of a unit on Native Americans. The class can be divided into groups that focus on specific aspects of Iroquois life, including housing, clothing, and food. Each group will be responsible for becoming experts on their topic of Iroquois life and create pieces of a three-dimensional model of an Iroquois village. The finished product will be a model of an Iroquois village that was created by putting the pieces of all three groups together. For example, the group that studies the housing can build a model of the housing (longhouses, sweat house, stockade), and the group that studies clothing can make paper dolls or clay dolls with appropriate clothing drawn on or glued on. Those focusing on food could create paper or clay animals to be hunted or fish to catch in a stream. This project allows small groups to focus on smaller portions of information and then all the groups come together to form one complete project.

Book Title: Author:

I Have a Dream Text Martin Luther King, Jr. Paintings Kadir Nelson

Grade: 3 Standards: 3.RL.2, 3.RL.4, 3.W.2

Published: Genre: Summary:

2012 Nonfiction This book contains portions of Martin Luther King, Jr.s I Have a Dream

speech and the pictures depict the words of his speech. At the end of the book, there is the complete text of Martin Luther King, Jr.s speech. The main idea of the speech is that King had a dream that one day everyone will be equal and those of all races and ethnicities can be together. He calls for making the phrase Let freedom ring come true, so that everyone can live in peace and freedom. This book can precede Martin Luther King, Jr. day in January. The book can be read to the students and the students can then take what they learned about Martin Luther King, Jr. and his dream speech and write down their own dreams in a construction paper cutout of a cloud. Each student will get their own cloud to write their dream on and after all students complete the project, the students can present their dreams if they wish. The clouds can then be hung up and displayed in the classroom. This book helps students understand what Dr. Kings words meant and the importance they held.

Book Title: Author: Published: Genre: Summary:

Chicken Soup with Rice Maurice Sendak 1962 Fiction

Grade: 1 Standards: 1.RL.3, 1.RL.7

This fiction book has a poem for each month of the year about chicken soup with

rice. In January, the boy in the story sips the soup while sliding on ice. In February, it is a snowmans anniversary, and the snowman gets cake while the boy gets his soup. In March, the wind blows the soup to the floor then laps it up, and in April the boy dreams of soup in Spain or old Bombay. The soup is concocted in a robins nest in May, and used to pep up drooping roses in June. In July, a turtle is selling the soup from the bottom of the ocean and a hot pot is cooking the soup on the stove in August. In September, the boy rides a crocodile down the soupy Nile, and serves the soup to witches, goblins and a ghost in October. In November, a whale spouts soup and soup bowls adorn a Christmas tree in December. At the end, the last poem is about how chicken soup with rice is good to eat in all seasons. This book can be used to help students connect each month to the details used in the story. Students can be divided into twelve groups, and each group can be assigned a month. Each group can work on drawing a calendar picture for that month based on what is common for that month. For example, students assigned to January might draw a snowman. After each group has completed their picture, the class as a group can add important holidays and birthdays to the calendar days. This book helps students make connections to details based on things that occur in specific months.

Book Title: Author: Illustrator: Published: Genre: Summary:

Mousetronaut Mark Kelly C.F. Payne 2012 Fiction

Grade: 3 Standards: 3.RL.2, 3.W.2, 3.W.4

Astronauts are training for a trip into space, and they are going to be bringing six

mice with them. Mice in a cage are training because they want to be chosen to go into space with the astronauts. One of the mice, Meteor, is smaller than all the rest but works very hard. None of the mice think he will be chosen, but he is chosen for the sixth spot. Once in space, the other five mice cling to the mesh walls of their cage but this little mouse enjoys floating about. The astronauts let Meteor out of the cage and he has fun floating throughout the space ship. One of the astronauts loses a key in a crack between the computers and cannot reach it. None of the astronauts can, but Meteor crawls into the tiny space and retrieves the key. Meteor saved the day and the astronauts, and once back on earth is given his own space suit and rewarded with praise. The end of the book is filled with facts about NASA and the true story that inspired the story of Meteor. After reading the story, ask students what a summary is. Write down ideas that students share about what they think a summary is. Have students then practice writing summaries by asking them to summarize Moustetronaut in no more than three sentences. Then have a few students share their summaries. Then have the students summarize the story in two sentences and have some students share. Then ask the students to summarize in one sentence and share. This makes the students find the main idea and central plot in order to keep writing shorter summaries. Emphasize main ideas and necessary and unnecessary details when discussing their summaries. This helps students learn to write summaries.

Book Title: Author: Published: Genre: Summary:

Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs As retold by Mo Willems 2012 Fiction

Grade: 3 Standards: 3.RL.9

Three dinosaurs live together: mother dinosaur, father dinosaur, and a smaller

dinosaur that happens to be visiting from Norway. The dinosaurs cook chocolate pudding at three different temperatures and leaves to go somewhere else, but the dinosaurs really just go hide in the trees outside of the house and wait for Goldilocks to come to the house. Goldilocks comes to the house and enters. She then eats all three bowls of pudding and the dinosaurs watch, mentioning that she is now delicious chocolate-filled-little-girl-bonbons. Goldilocks then tries to sit in a chair, but all three chairs are too tall. The beds are too tall too. When she is in the bedroom, she hears the dinosaurs outside and realizes she is in a dinosaurs house, not a bears, so she runs out the back door. The dinosaurs run in to eat her but she had already run out of the back door. The moral of the story for Goldilocks was if you are not in the right story, leave and for the dinosaurs it was to always lock the back door. Prior to reading this story, read the class Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Then read this story. Create a Venn diagram on the chalkboard and have students identify the parts of the stories that were the same and the parts of the story that were specific to each version. This teaches the students to compare and contrast two different approaches to a similar story.

Book Title: Author: Published: Genre: Summary:

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore William Joyce 2012 Fiction Morris Lessmore loves books and writing, and every day he writes his story in his Grade: 3 Standards: 3.RL.3, 3.W.3, 3.W.4

book. One day a storm came and ruined his house, so he wandered until he came across a girl floating through the air being pulled by a bunch of flying books. She sends him a book and the book floats him to a place where books nest, which is a library with flying books. The books are all over the place because the tragedies like to befriend the comedies and the encyclopedias like fiction. Morris Lessmore gets to work organizing and repairing the books and continues taking care of and sharing the books with others until he is very old, at which time the books take care of him. When he fills the last page of his own book, he knows it is time to move on and flew off, becoming his younger self again. The books are sad but then realize he left his book with them. A little girl shows up at the library and Morris book flies to her, and the story ends the way it began: with a book being opened. After reading the story, have students brainstorm their hopes and dreams. Have each student create a book about them and include basic details like age, birthday, hair and eye color, etc. Also have each student include things that they like to do and things that they want to do in the future. This will become their all about me books. This helps students understand how to write a personal narrative.

Book Title: Author: Illustrator: Published: Genre: Summary:

Little Quacks Hide and Seek Lauren Thompson Derek Anderson 2004 Fiction

Grade: Kindergarten Standards: K.RL.1, K.OA.1

Mama Duck has five ducklings and decides to play hide-and-seek with them.

Each duckling finds a hiding spot, and each page has a quack-u-lator to count along with to keep track of how many ducklings are left after each one finds a hiding place. Little Quack cannot find a hiding place in time, and hides behind Mama Duck. Mama Duck finds each of the other ducklings one at a time, but cannot find Little Quack until he finally reveals that he had been hiding behind her the entire time. While reading the story, have the students count along with the number of ducklings. Keep track of the ducklings with the students by counting how many are left each time one finds a hiding spot. Help the students understand that one leaving means there is one less, and one being found is one more. After finishing the story, give the students each small blocks or coins and have them count and subtract from their pile of blocks and then count the remainder. This helps young students count while enjoying a story.

Book Title: Author: Illustrator: Published: Genre: Summary:

All the Awake Animals Are Almost Asleep Crescent Dragonwagon David McPhail 2012 Fiction

Grade: 3 Standards: 3.L.3, 3.RL.4

A boys mother tries to get him to go to sleep at night. He does not want to, so

she tells him about animals that all sleep. She describes an animal for each letter of the alphabet. For each animal, alliteration is used to go along with the first letter of the animal name. At the end, the mother lulls the child to sleep with all of the animals also sleeping. Prior to reading the story, ask the students if they know what alliteration is. If they do not know what it is, explain it to them. Ask them to listen for similar sounds in the book. Read the book and ask them to point out words that sound similar and might be alliteration. After the story is over, ask students to write one sentence using alliteration. Have the students write a very short story using alliteration. Ask the students to illustrate their stories and write the stories to display in the classroom. This helps students understand alliteration.

Book Title: Author: Published: Genre: Summary:

Arthurs Pet Business Marc Brown 1990 Fiction

Grade: 2 Standards: 2.RL.1, 2.RL.3, 2.W.2

Arthur wants a dog. His parents tell him that if he can prove that he is responsible

enough for a dog, he can get one. He decides to start a pet sitting business in order to prove that he is responsible with pets. His first call is to pet sit Perky, a very mean dog. After he starts watching Perky, he gets calls to watch other animals including a bird, an ant farm, frogs, and a boa constrictor. Arthur even missed going to the movies with his friend because he had to take care of the animals. When Perky was about to be picked up, she went missing. Perkys owner came and Perky was still missing. Arthur eventually found Perky under his bed. Perky had puppies, and Perkys owner let him keep one of them. At the end of the story, ask students to define responsibility and ask what responsibilities Arthur had. Ask why he decided to watch other peoples pets and if he did a good job. Divide students into four groups. Give each group a poster and markers, crayons or colored pencils. Assign each group as either Home, School, Friends, or Community and have each group write down and/or illustrate what their responsibilities are in the category their group has been given. After each group finishes, have the groups present their responsibilities to the class. Ask the students if they have different responsibilities in different places, like school and home. This helps students understand responsibility and how to apply the responsibility in the story to real life.