October 26th

Title:  After Tupac and D Foster

Author:  Jacqueline Woodson

Grade level:  Middle School

Rating:  5

Summary: This book is about three girls who become best friends after D shows up and Neeka and her best friend’s doorsteps.  This book also takes place during the time period when Tupac Shakur gets shot and killed.  The book is centered around these three girls friendship as well as the impact that Tupac and his death have on their lives.

Opinion:  I thought that this book was a very fun and easy read.  The whole book was a pretty quick read that kept my attention the whole time.  What I found to be very interesting was the way that the two girls thought of D.  To them, D was the most interesting but mysterious person they had ever met.  They never really knew much about D until the very end of the book, and this was something that was kind of odd to me considering they had been friends for a while by that time.  One part of the book that I found to be pretty interesting is when the two girls find out that D is allowed to ride the bus by herself and doesn’t have to be back to her foster mom’s until nine.  At this point in time D was only about eleven or twelve years old, so I found it just as shocking as the other two girls did that D was allowed to just “wander” as she put it.

Connection:  Given the fact that I plan on being a lower elementary school teacher and I believe that this is more of a middle school book, I don’t really think that I would ever use it in my own classroom.  However, if I were to teach a higher grade, I think that this book could be very beneficial to my students.  It felt like a book that a lot of students could relate to.  The main character in this book is going through a couple of losses in her life (the loss of Tupac and D), much like a lot of middle school students may be experiencing in some way.  This is also a story of friendship and family, another thing that everybody can relate to.

Title:  David Goes to School

Author:  David Shannon

Grade Level:  Early Elementary, K-2

Rating:  5

Summary: As the author says in the “Authors Note” teachers (especially his teacher) used the word no a lot.  This book is about David’s day at school.  Throughout the day all David hears his teacher say is no, or stop, quiet, sit down, etc.  The whole book is centered around all the things that David does wrong during the day to earn him time after school.  At the very end of the book David’s punishment for drawing on his desk is to stay after school and clean the desks.  When he is done the teacher gives him a gold star and tells him what a good job he did.

Opinion:  I thought that this book was very fun to read.  I have never read a “David” book even though I have seen a lot of them around.  I think it’s interesting that the author took something that happened during his childhood and made a book about it.  While just reading the story a lot was fun, I couldn’t help but laugh as I flipped each page and looked at the pictures.  Since there was no illustrator listed I’m assuming that David Shannon did his own illustrations, and I think that they were all done so well.  Every picture was exactly how I would picture a little boy acting with each scenario that the author presented.  There was one page where the teacher says “Again?!” and in the picture we see David standing up with his legs crossed, hand in the said, and painful look on his face.  I would have to say that I immediately knew that it meant he was asking to go the bathroom, and thought that that was exactly what a little boy would look like if he had to go really bad!

Connection:  I think that this would be a fun book to share with the class!  As a read out loud it would be an entertaining book for the students to listen to, but it would also be a good book to do a class discussion on the carpet about.  This is a great book for a teacher to use to show and talk to their students about how we should and shouldn’t act.  For example, on one of the pages it shows David shouting out an answer to the teachers question while his classmate is next to him raising her hand.  This would be a good page to stop the reading and ask your class if David is acting appropriately, or what the rules are for raising hands in your class.

Title:  Come Along, Daisy!

Author:  Jane Simmons

Grade Level:  Lower Elementary

Rating:  5

Summary:  This book is about a little baby duck named Daisy.  Daisy is supposed to stay close to her mama, but as the book progresses Daisy gets distracted by many different things.  Eventually Daisy and her mama get separated due to Daisy not staying close enough, and Daisy gets really scared.  In the end Daisy and her mom are reunited and she learns her lesson.

Opinion:  I thought that this book was pretty boring, and really predictable, however, I gave it a five out of five rating because I think that the lesson that it tells in the story is extremely well done and easy for young students to find.  I also think that it is one of those stories that might be boring for adults, but that young children in the early elementary school years might really enjoy. 

Connection:  As I stated in the opinion section, I think that this book could do an excellent job of relaying an important message to young kids.  As kids seem to be very adventurous when they are young, and understandably so, they also have to realize what their curiousness could cause.  In the book, Daisy’s curiosity causes her to become separated from her mother, and only after the separation does Daisy seem to realize the seriousness of the situation.  Prior to being separated, Daisy seems to not have a worry in the world.  We see her very scared while she is lost.  This is a message that I believe even the youngest of students can understand and possibly even relate to, if this has ever happened to them.

Title:  Frozen Noses

Author:  Jan Carr

Grade Level: K-1 (Early Elementary)

Rating: 3-4

Summary:  This book is all about the fun of winter.  Throughout the story we see a group of kids playing and doing different activities that are common for children to do in the winter.  At the end of the book we see the best thing about playing outside, coming inside to hot chocolate and blankets!

Opinion:  The first thing that really stood out to me about this book was the illustrations.  On every page I was trying to figure out how the illustrator was making the pictures that he produced.  As I looked closer the conclusion that I came up with was that it looks like she used some sort of fabric or felt for each of her illustrations and then laid them out maybe?  However she did it, it feels like the illustrations are very unique.  I also like the layout of the story.  A lot of the book has a rhyming theme to it, so it was very catchy while reading it.  The sequence of events in the story was also fun to follow.  We saw the kids in the morning wake up to snow, then play All day (just like I’m sure we all did when we were little), and finally coming in at night to hot chocolate and a warm house.

Connection:  I think that this book would be fun to use in a winter unit with Kindergarten or first graders.  This could be a unit where you have them write a story, or draw pictures about what they do outside when it is snowing, or even what their favorite thing about winter is.  Reading this book would generate a lot of ideas for the students to draw from.

Title:  Ready, Set, School!

Author:  Jacquelyn Mitchard

Grade Level:  2^nd-4^th grade

Rating: 4

Summary:  This book is about a Kit raccoon named Rory who is right about the age to start his first year of Raccoon school.  The beginning of the book starts with a night where Rory is supposed to spend the night at his aunt’s house with his twin cousins.  This is where we find out that Rory is scared to be away from home.  His parents finally calm him down and Rory stays the night and has a ton of fun.  At the end of the book Rory starts school.  On the first night of school while Rory is about to leave his parents begin to make a fuss about him starting school, only to have Rory calm them down like they did for him earlier in the book.

Opinion:  I thought that this book was pretty good.  Like some of the other books I have posted about, I feel like the message that is portrayed in this book is one that a lot of students could learn something from.  I also think it’s funny to read books like this where the author takes an animal and gives them human characteristics or makes them do things that are common from humans, such as going to school, having sleepovers, having a sleeping bag!

Connection:  Like many of my other books, this would be a good book to use if you want to relay the message the book is trying to give to your students.  Especially with the younger students, trying new things isn’t the most popular thing.  In this book we see that although trying something new may be scary, it could also turn out to be something fun!  In the case of Rory, he was very nervous to be away from his parents for a whole night.  Not only did Rory end up having fun, but he also learned that it is ok to try something new, because you never know what it may bring you.

Title:  Oil Spill Disaster in the Gulf

Authors: Mona Chiang, Cody Crane, Karina Hamalainen, and Lynda Jones

Grade Level:  Upper Elementary

Rating:  5

Summary:  As you could probably guess by the title, this book is all about the Oil Spill disaster.  It gives a background of other major oil spills that have happened, as well as many elements of oil spill, including how to stop the spills, the effects it has on animals in the water, as well as wetlands.

Opinion:  Reading this book was shocking to me.  Even though I occasionally watched the news and got updates on the oil spill and what was happening, there was so much information in this book that I never knew about.  I also found it very interesting to read about some of the statistics about oil and the United States.  One fact that stood out to me is how much oil we use compared to other nations.  It says that the United States uses 19,498,000 barrels of oil a day, the next closest is China with 7,831,000.  This was one of those jaw dropping facts that I would have never imagined.

Connection:  This would be such a good book to introduce for projects.  As I mentioned, it does such a good job of introducing statistics that most of us would have no idea about.  It also does an amazing job of giving other facts about the oil spill.  I could see this book being implemented in my classroom to show how much of an effect the oil spill had on the everyday life of the people living on the Gulf Coast.

Title:  The Giver

Author:  Lois Lowry

Grade Level:  Middle-High School

Rating:  5

Summary:  This book is about a kid named Jonas who lives in a community where everything is very uniform.  There is no color, everyone is given jobs instead of picking them, and as we find out, nobody really knows anything except for the Giver.  Jonas is assigned to receive special training from the giver, and receives memories of everything that has ever happened.  Only after Jonas has worked with the Giver does he realize how little the rest of the community really knows.  His life can never be the same again.

Opinion:  This book is one of those books that a lot of people either read in middle school or high school as part of some unit that their language arts teacher set up.  I however, have never read this book before.  From about the second chapter on I was completely hooked on the book.  I think that the way it is written and the story it tells really can’t turn anybody off.  I found myself feeling a lot like Jonas felt throughout the reading of this book.  When Jonas found out that when people are released they are really killed, and when his dad has to release one of the twins and realized that his dad was going to kill the baby, that’s when I really felt for Jonas.  I found myself telling him not to go home! Of course his dad wasn’t going to kill Jonas, but I still sympathized with him.  The whole book was a lot like this for me, whenever something happened to Jonas I felt for him.  I became so enthralled with his character, that when Jonas was happy I read it happy, when he was sad it read it a little sad!

Connection:  If I were a middle or high school teacher I would really enjoy using this book in my English classroom.  I think that my students could take so much out of this book, but really enjoy reading it at the same time.  Them enjoying a book as well as getting meaning out of it is a very important concept to consider.  When I was in school reading was the last thing that I wanted to do, so choosing a book that the students will enjoy is very important to me.  The one thing that makes me nervous about this book is the fact that a lot of schools don’t let their teachers teach it.  Even if my school allowed it, I would still be worried that parents might have a problem with it being taught to their children.