Picture This!!!

Who doesnt love picture books. Especially books that are aesthetically pleasing to the eye. I really liked what the text stated about picture books.

"For all picture books, even in those intended for younger readers, there is an expectation that the books are well written with pleasing, literary language. Age is taken into account, but the writing is not simplistic, choppy, or condescending to children."

This shows that even young readers have taste and appreciate good literature. Even though the pictures may be fantastic and colorful, the readers mind would still like to be stimulated with words. I've learned in my educations classes that picture books are instrumental in picture walks. Students will go through the book without reading the words and make predictions about the story through the pictures and what they see. It is fun to see how the story plays into the pictures and may or may not be different from that predicted.

David Wiesner is an incredible illustrator who has also written a couple of stories. His illustrations are amazing with the shapes and the colors and how they play together.

http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/authors/wiesner/images/homesec7-over.gif

Flotsam

The Three Pigs

Sector 7

Tuesday

Hurricane

Night of the Gargoyles

David Wiesner's work is often referred to as having a dreamlike quality. His books are often considered to be cinematic because the pictures invoke the readers mind to think about what comes after and leading up to the next image.

Teaching traditional literature in the class room is important for all students. It provides an opportunity to share literature that all students can relate to by sharing from each culture. Our group decided to pick Traditional literature as our genre project because it comes from a hispanic background that we can all relate to. It is important that each student connects to some form of traditional literature because it gives them a sense of ownership in their own culture. It is also important because it provides a learning opportunity for other students to learn about a culture that they would not otherwise know. Our country is a mixture of cultures, we are known as the melting pot, so we know that there is not one dominant culture in literature. Traditional literature also helps form the culture and continue traditions as its stories are passed down from generation to generation. The characters in the book take on extraordinary forms or characteristics that are superpower. Such magic and trickery are characteristics of traditional literature that contribute to the meaning and underlying themes of the stories. In researching traditional literature I was very excitied to see Mother Goose come up. I personally recall my mother telling us the nursery rhymes when we were little at bed time, these are what makes them traditional is her orally telling them to us.

TOMie DEPAOLA

Tomie dePaola grew a love for books when he was young because his mother would read to him everyday. When he was just four he would tell people that he wanted to draw pictures for books and write stories. His first book was The Wonderful Dragon of Timlin.

Tomie has now illustrated over 200 books and written the stories for over 100 of those books. He has book projects scheduled for years to come.

He works in a new studio attached to a renovated 200-year-old barn in New London, New Hampshire.

This is a good website for aspiring young authors, Tomie describes his personal writing process as he goes through it. He is creative in his process and encouraging as well.

Poetry Slam?

I have always enjoyed poetry, so I especially took interest in chapter 5. I can recall studying poetry in the fifth grade and having to create a poem for each type: Limerick, Hiku, Free Verse, Acrostic, and others. Even as an adult, I really relate to poetry and enjoy reading it as well as writing it. I feel as though it is an opportunity for the author to express and share their feelings about whatever it is they feel. I think that it is great that poetry can be about anything imaginable. This gives students the ability to enjoy it as well, as long as they are given a topic they like. I can remember reading (as mentioned before) reading Shel Silverstein's books over and over again. Poetry has to be my favorite genre to read for pleasure. I can also recall reading The Random House Book of Poetry.

Poetry allows the author to be creative and experiment with word and shapes, for instance, shaping poems into forms that represent what it is they are about. I think alot of people relate as well as students to poetry because poems can be songs. They can be sung as well, or they started out as a poem and then turned into a song. And we all are familiar with music being the universal language.

Here is another Children's Poet that I came across:

Roald Dahl

http://www.poetryarchive.org/childrensarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=7177

This website is full of information as well as a biography about the poet/storywriter. But it not only contains information about this poet, but many other notable poets. Roald did all his writing in a little hut at the bottom of his garden. It was rather shabby, with an old armchair and photos stuck to the walls, but he liked the peace and retreated there for four hours every day. Roald used a particular brand of pencil and wrote on special yellow (his favorite color) paper which he ordered from America. He carried on writing right up until he died in 1990 and you can still see the last notes he made in his wastepaper basket if you visit his hut which is now part of the Roald Dahl Museum.

Other books and Poetry by Roald Dahl:

James and the Giant Peach

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

The Big Friendly Giant

Danny and the Champion of the World

We can see through his writings the creativity that he embellished on to write such fantastic stories that children will love. His stories are also filled with such adventure that students have a hard time putting down.

Kevin Henkes/ Maruice Sendak

Kevin Henkes was first an illustrator and then an author. He first began illustrating at the age of 19. He had been drawing since he was a kid and was encouraged by his parents and teachers. On his website he reminds us what it is to have respect for a book, and tells us about how the books he respected as a child went everywhere with him. He has created a series of books about mice, including the notable Chrysanthemum. Along with picture books he has also written novels.

Here is a link of activities that can be used while reading Kevin Henkes books with your class. These are activities that are engaging and interact with the reading of the story. They are also good for getting good descriptions of the characters and what the characters are feeling beyond what is told in the story. He is the author and illustrator in his children's books.

http://www.kevinhenkes.com/meet/fun.asp

Other stories by Kevin Henkes:

A Box Full of Lilly

Lilly's Big Day and Other Stories

Chester's Way

Julius, the Baby of the World

Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse

Wemberly Worried

Bird Lake Moon (novel)

Maurice Sendak is another author who also illustrates his own books. He is most famous for the children's book Where the Wild Things Are. He was inspired to be an illustrator when he first saw Walt Disney's Fantasia. His famous book is recently being released as a Major motion picture.

Some of the Books that Maurice has both Written and Illustrated:

Nutshell Library

Very Far Away

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle's Farm

Pierre

Outside Over There

We Are All in the Dumps With Jack and Guy

Who knew the Child could write?

The most interesting information that I have come across was the Writing Do's and Don'ts. I found it amusing to read that a lot of the don'ts were things that I could recall as a student being done. for instance, the "use of red pens to correct pieces or write vague comments on papers." I remember that ugly feeling of getting your draft paper back after the teacher reviewed it. You could immediately tell simply by glancing over the paper if you did well to the teachers expectations or not so good noticing all the red marks and comments that were on your page. It was really a confidence buster. Especially since I had always liked writing, and I always thought that what I was writing was great. I understand that the need for revision was necessary, however I also recall getting it revised by peers and not feeling so bad about it. The writing do that I absolutely loved is the tip to "demonstrate to students that sometimes writers abandon pieces they do not like; some writing can be for practice and needs no evaluation." I really like this because even as an adult I tend to write when I get stressed out. Sometimes I would like to write about a certain situation but never finish it because of either time, or I ran out of things to say, and the stress is gone and the fire that caused me to begin writing it is no longer there to fuel it.

I really like reading things that students write because they have such an imagination and a candid way of saying things that you couldn't really get otherwise. They are usually not afraid of what they are writing and how it will affect the reader, at the moment when they are writing it, it is something that they are feeing. Which is why it is good to not constrain the writing of the child. You wouldnt want to cut their idea short.

Patricia Polacco grew up on a small farm in Michigan, after her parents separated when she was three she would spend the school year with her mother and summers with her father. In her stories she relates the young characters interaction with an elderly character to her real life when she would be with her grandparents. She feels that this is where she learned to respect them and especially her babuska ( grandmother) that she often writes about in her stories.

As a young student Patricia often thought that she was 'dumb' because she would see her friends doing well in school and she could not. She did not learn to read until the age of 14 and was constantly teased in school. She later discovered that she had a learning disability dyslexia. I was amazed by this information because you usually assume that some one who is a prominent figure in education as she is with her books would have been a well educated person. However she did become well educated once she discovered her disability and overcame it. She eventually got her Ph.D in Art and History. She began writing children's books at the age of 41.

On the website given below, there is so much information that you can access regarding this author and her work. There are also resources that you can use and show your students. She has even provided a link to print postcards from illustrations from her book. I think this could be a good writing opportunity to write a short response to a favorite story and select the image to go along with it.

http://www.patriciapolacco.com/author/bio/bio.html

Other Stories by Patricia Polacco:

In Our Mother's House

January's Sparrow

Just Plain Fancy

Babushka's Doll

Tikvah Means Hope

Rechenka's Eggs

I Can Hear the Sun

Questions Anyone?

The way a student responds to a question may give more insight to what the student knows and what they are learning. As chapter 3 discusses, questioning is a reliable way of assessing students comprehension of reading. I can vouch that literal questioning is what I've been taught for most of my education. Any questions that are asked about text that I've read, I can expect to find the answer with in the text itself. This even goes back to questions that were asked on standardized tests. The inferential questioning I vaguely remember coming across in standardized tests, but i do remember a few. I cannot remember which tests they were but the questions were posed, "According to the text, we can infer that...." Which we already know that to find the answer we had to use our context clues to get the answer and make an assumption. I think these two types of questionings are easiest when reading. The harder questions would be critical questions because you have to assume a point of view that was not directly given in the story or text. This requires a lot of thinking and can let readers ask more questions.

Critical questions are what I remember being asked when taking my 1301and 1302 History courses. We were given documents and had to analyze them critically and attempt to assume the identity of the author or persons involved to understand what it was they were experiencing or why they made the decisions that they did.

I think that is important for the comprehension of a story to be able to answer questions. I think that it causes someone to think more deeply about the text rather than if they did not have questions to ponder.

Philip Eastman was a children's literature author who wrote many books under the influence of Theodore Giesel (aka Dr. Seuss). He published many books under the Random House publishers, the same publishers that published Dr. Seuss Books. He wrote the book, Are you My Mother? and What Time is It? He made books about animals in all situations. His books are entertaining for young children and are easy to read for beginning readers. He wrote about subjects that children could understand, such as seasons, animals, and mothers and fathers, time, rhymes, and opposities.

Dr. Seuss was a very famous children's author. So much so that his birthday is celebrated in schools in honor of his contribution to children's literature. He has created many great works of literature. I was most surprised to learn that he created the Cat in the Hat on contract to use 225 new reader vocabulary words. This book has been an inspiration to even create a movie from. He has won many awards for his books and even the movies based on his books. He is influential to young readers.

www.catinthehat.org/history

When You Have Nothing Left to Give...

Shel Silverstein was a poet that I grew up with, Where the Sidewalk Ends and The Light in the Attic. I was surprised to learn that his first book was published in 1974 but was so popular when I was in school. He had a wit for poetry and a knack for cartooning. I was surprised to learn that he had not intended for his books to capture the attention of the youth, but was more geared for adults. However, his books of poetry are introduced to young students and exposes many of them to their first dose of poetry.

I can remember reading them when I was in the third grade, but just reading them over and over. My mother had bought me the book and I found the poems to be really random and funny, which made them memorable.

Another book that Shel Silverstein is known for is The Giving Tree. It is a simple story about a tree and a boy. I recommend this story for everyone. If you had read this story as a child it might be read simply as that, just a story. But as an adult this is a very touching story about giving, and taking. What do you do when you have nothing left to give?

I appreciate Shel Silverstein's poetry because he can be really inspiring to young children to practice and understand poetry. He would write about things that are real and some things that are imaginary, but it would make you feel that you could write about something that you saw on the ground walking to school, or something that your parents bug you about, or any little aspect of life.

This is great for understanding what we have been discussing in class, we learn to write by reading. Poetry is a prime example of this. Children often study poems in class together and are then asked to create their own. They may study the different types of poems and how they are written. They would not be able to write their own if they had not been exposed to the poems and how they are to be read. Now as they write them they can hear them in their head and determine how they want them to sound. They will complete the writing process as they go through the prewriting and planning the poem, to drafting, revising, editing, and publishing the final product.