Gooney Bird Greene

By Lois Lowry (2002)

Gooney Bird Greene is a great series for all ages!  I really wanted to find a book that the students in my second grade class would like.  I read a lot of reviews before choosing this series, but it was worth it.  Gooney Bird Greene is a second grader who is new to her school.  She dresses in crazy outfits everyday and she LOVES to be smack dap in the middle of everything.  She eventually begins telling her class stories about her life everyday during story time.  One story she told was about her moving to her new town from China on a flying carpet.  The teacher of course told her that it was ok to make up stories, but she shouldn't tell people they were true if they weren't.  There is no way you could fly across the ocean or anywhere for that matter on a flying carpet.  Gooney then got a map and told her there were many cities in the US that also had the name of China.  She then announced that all her stories are absolutely true.  The story about her flying on the carpet was great and it was a story that really happened to her.  All of Gooneys stories seem far fetched and untrue, but after she explains them you can see how the title of her story could be deceiving. I think this would be a great way to show students how the way things sound can be completely different than you think they will be.  It would also be a great way to show how the more details you put into your stories and even in your writing things become much easier for the audience to understand and see in their minds. This novel was a lot of fun to read and I really think that both boys and girls could get into this series.

I was really excited when I found this series by Lois Lowry.  Growing up I loved reading her books and it was great to see a humorous series written by her, since a lot of her books deal with series topics and aren't funny at all.  I remember reading The Giver and Number the Stars when I was younger and I just remember how great both those books were, but how serious they were as well.  This series is written by the same great author but it is light hearted and funny.  I really enjoyed it and I believe students and adults would enjoy it as well.

Aunt Chip and the Great Triple Creek Dam Affair

By Patricia Polacco

This book was amazing!  The story is about people in a town who watch tv all the time.  They don't know how to read or what books are even really for.  All they do all day is watch tv, the kids don't play outside there is no talking or laughing with neighbors just people watching tv. Fifty years earlier the library was knocked down and a huge tv tower was built.  Charlotte the towns librarian said there would be consequences and she took to her bed.  For fifty years no one read a book and they were used for all sorts of odd things.  They held up houses filled in potholes, and were even turned into a dam.  That is until Eli finds out from his Aunt Charlotte (Chip) what books are.  She teaches him how to read and then all the children in the town want to read.  Eventually, everyone in the town sees how important books are and that they need them.  Eli pulled the book Moby Dick out of a huge pile and the dam broke and the water flooded through.  The tv tower came crashing down and the townspeople were furious.  That is until the children and Aunt Chip made them see the importance of books.  The children taught their parents and grandparents how to read.  While I was reading this I thought about how technology is taking the place of books.  While not to the extreme of this book, books are beginning to become obsolete.  I realized how many books I read on my iPad instead of reading the actual book.  TVs, computers, gaming consoles, and tablets are becoming the new thing and books are slowly disappearing.  The illustrations in this book were great.  They really told a story, when the townspeople were only watching tv, the town was gray and the buildings were rundown and falling apart.  Once books came back into the picture the town was colorful and the houses and buildings were repaired.

This would be a great book to show that books are very important.  The students will see that yes technology is available and it may be ok to watch a little tv, but books provide so much to people everyday.  There are so may stories and ways to open the imagination when reading books and other types of literature.    This book is a great way to show that and have the students create a story and write about how they think life would be without knowing how to read and not having books available to them.

Different Just Like Me

By Lori Mitchell (1999)

This was a very inspiring picture book.  It followed a little girl April through a week that was leading up to a visit to her grandmothers house.  It talked about how things were the same as her, yet they were different as well.  It talked about deaf children who were talking using sign language and the page had the hand motions for the letters in sign language.  It also talked about someone being blind and having a service dog and using braille to read with their hands.  On the page it had braille numbers so the reader could feel how the blind read.  The author wrote this book after her daughter was diagnosed with vitiligo, which causes white spots to form on the skin.  It is very true that everyone is different in many ways, but we are all alike in ways as well.  As I was reading this book, I thought about how children see others and that sometimes they stare at people who are different than they are.  It is important for us as adults to talk about how they are the same as we are as well and not just focus on the differences.  The pictures in this book were amazing, but one thing that I noticed was most of the pages the only things that are in color are the people.  The background and other objects in the picture have no color, but the people have full color.  It is like this until they arrive at grandmothers house and then the entire picture is in color.  I think she did this to really show us as the reader that people are people and are alike in many ways.

This book would be great to use in the classroom.  There is a game that the author puts in the beginning called "Same and Different."  You take an object for example fish and talk about how they are the same and then also list their differences.  It would be a great game to play in class and a way for children to see how they are the same as their classmates, but different as well.  It will help them see that being different from others isn't a bad thing.

The Delicious Bug

By Janet Perlman (2009)

This picture book was very cute, yet it taught a great lesson.  The book mainly followed two chameleons, who were best friends. They live in a peaceful forest and love catching bugs to eat.  One day they catch the same bug and they don't want to share.  The chameleons disrupt the entire forest by fighting over the delicious bug they have both caught.  Eventually, the bug gets a way and the two chameleons are almost lunch for two crocodiles.  They end up saving each other and realize how close they were to really messing up over fighting.  They go back through the forest and apologize to all the other animals whose lives were disrupted over their dispute.  While I was reading this book, I thought of all the times my sisters and I had arguments that were really dumb in the long run.  While our fights and arguments didn't lead to us almost getting eaten by crocodiles, they were still over petty little things that really weren't fighting over.  The author makes it easy for the reader to make connections with the story and I think that most people could connect with this story.

The author used many different writing styles in this book.  The font wasn't like a typical book and I think students would like this.  There were a lot of sound effects in the book as well as some of the text being in text boxes.  The pictures were also very good and really showed how the chameleons were disrupting the peaceful forest.  This book would be great to use in the classroom as an example of how arguing and fighting disrupt everything.  Students can also tell how arguing and fighting with siblings or friends isn't fun and share their experiences.

Teacher Appreciation Day

by Lynn Plourde (2003)

This was a very cute book about how students think about what to get their teacher for Teacher Appreciation Day.  In this book all of the students get their teacher Mrs. Shepherd all types of apples, wear her favorite color green, paint her pictures of her pet dog and clean her blackboard.  All of the students except for Maybella Jean Wishywashy.  Maybella can't make up her mind what treat to bring, what color to wear, what picture to paint or what to clean, so she goes all out and does everything to the extreme.  She has a hard time making up her mind so she always says, "Eeny meeny miney mo.  So many choices, I just don't know."  This book is really neat to read because the text is different.  It uses a different type of font that makes it look more handwritten than typed.  Also, when Maybella says, "Eeny meeny miney mo," the font color changes from black to red.  It is really neat to see this and students would really enjoy this.  As I was reading this book, I kept thinking what would Maybella do next.  It was great to see how when all the other students in the class were all doing pretty much the same thing, Maybella didn't mind being the one who was different from everyone else.  The illustrations were done by Thor Wickstrom and were very good.  They were very detailed and showed how many different things Maybella was gathering to bring Mrs. Shepherd.

This book would be great for having students come up with ideas about being different from the rest of a class or group.  It shows them that it is ok to not follow the pack and to branch out on their own and do their own thing.  This would be a great book to read during morning or afternoon reading circles and discuss it with the students and ask if they have ever gone against what everyone else was doing.

Katie Catz Makes a Splash

By Anne Rockwell (2003)

This picture book was about Katie Catz and her fear of the water.  She had heard all kinds of rumors about what lives in the swimming pool, and she hated to have water up her nose, so she refused to get in.  The other kids made fun of her and when she got invited to her friends pool party she didn't want to go. She didn't even have a bathing suit that fit her.  Her mother got her a new bathing suit and signed her up for swim lessons with Patsy Polarbear.  Katie overcame her fear with the help of Patsy and by taking small steps each lesson.  As I was reading this book, I could relate to Katie and the fear she had.   It was great for me to be able to make a connection with the character and I believe that many other people could relate to her fear as well.  I think it is important to make connections like these when you read books.  I also thought the ways that Patsy helped her overcome her fear were great and could really be applied when helping someone get over their fear of water.

This book would be a great way to talk to students about fears they have and how they can overcome them.  They could write about their fears and think of different ways that they can face their fear and what steps they could follow to help them deal with the fear.  The pictures in the book were very colorful and students would really enjoy them and they illustrated the authors point very well.  This book was very cute and I think students would really enjoy it.