Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins

Rosie's Walk is a book about a cute little hen who goes on a walk across the farm she lives on. It is such a simple story - the entire book is just one long sentence. Reading the story, there seems to be just one character, so the book is very easy to follow. However, what is fun about this book is the story that is being told in the illustrations. Though he is never mentioned in the story, the pictures introduce a new character to the book: a sly fox who wants to eat little Rosie for lunch. He follows Rosie as she walks across the yard, around the pond, over the haystack, past the mill, through the fence, under the beehives, and finally back home for dinner. Teachers can use this book to show young learners that they have to not only use their ears but also their eyes to understand the full story.

Teachers can also use this book to begin talking to young kids about direction words.

It is a short, sweet story that young kids would love to read and feel proud about their reading.

Trainstop by Barbara Lehman

I would pick out a wordless book by accident. I knew when I saw the cover of Trainstop that something looked familiar. The second I opened the book, I realized that it was illustrated by the same woman who illustrated the wordless picture book, The Red Book. The main character looked so similar to the girl from The Red Book that I imagined it being the same young girl. She has just found herself in a new adventure in this story.

The young girl gets on a train and, when all of the other passengers are asleep, she sneaks off the train into a new world. My favorite part of the book, though, was when the girl was sitting on the train watching the landscape pass by outside her window. It brought me back to one train ride I went on with my best friend. We rode the train from his house in Wheaton, Illinois, to downtown Chicago. It was the first train I had ever been on, probably a fifty minute ride. I remember sitting by the window watching the cities pass by. We went downtown to see the musical, Wicked, which was absolutely amazing. Afterward, we knew we were cutting it close to the last train's departure. Of course, we were about five blocks away from the trainstation and the train was leaving in two minutes, so we ran as fast as we could across downtown Chicago to catch our train. It was so fun and definitely the first thing I think about when I think of trains. This book brought me back to that memory.

Daley B. by Jon Blake

Aw! This book was so cute. Ha, I loved it. It's about a rabbit, Daley B, who is very confused. He does not know what kind of animal he is, or especially why he has such big feet. He finally decides that he is a squirrel, and he sits in the trees eating acorns with them. Honestly, it reminds me of a couple very confused people I know. But we won't get into that.

It's hard to read too deeply into this one. It is definitely a book that is intended for kids to have fun reading. They can get inside Daley B's crazy, confused imagination as he wonders what kind of animal he is. The illustrations are simple and colorful, as is the rest of the book. Ya know what it reminded me of? Tacky the Penguin! No wonder I liked the book. And there's a text-to-text connection for ya - take that, Block A. :)

I would love to have this book in my classroom library. I think it is something that kids would read over and over again because it is so simple and fun.

George Washington's Teeth by Deborah Chandra & Madeleine Comora

Back to the historical fiction books apparently. I'm not quite sure what led me to selecting this book off the shelf. I felt like I had either read it before in one of my classes or that someone had recommended it to me. Either way, I had heard of the title, and maybe it was in search of where I had heard it that I picked this one up.

I thought it was a fun book. It depicts George Washington, a very serious character in American history, from a playful angle. We get to learn all about his teeth, which apparently were the cause of great pain for him. We see him in a vulnerable state that we never really hear about in school. And the book is all about teeth, which young elementary students have lots of experience with.

The book was simple, with an ABCB rhyme scheme that can really help beginning readers learn to decode words. They realize that the second and last lines have to rhyme, and they can use this clue to help them read words that would otherwise be somewhat advanced for them. This book also includes a real timeline in the back where students can learn about some of the great accomplishments of George Washington as well as some of the real dates in which his teeth were causing him trouble. This one would be kinda fun for kids in history class.

Never Poke a Squid by Denys Cazet

I have to admit I was kind of intrigued by the title to this one. It sounded like it would be an amusing book, and for the most part, it really was. The best part of this book to me is that it takes place on Halloween. In an elementary school, Halloween is one of the most fun and crazy days of the entire school year. The kids wait all morning to finally put on their costumes and walk around the school yard in a celebratory parade. Then they go back to their classroom and eat sweets until we send them home with their parents who know the sugar high is just beginning. It is seriously my favorite day ever.

This book is formatted so that there is one main story that runs throughout the book. However, there are also little side stories taking place on each page, where the kids are bantering back and forth and getting into all sorts of mischief, usually while the teacher is talking or doing a lesson. The side conversations were fun because it was a very realistic depiction of the craziness that goes on at school, especially on Halloween.

I also thought it was interesting how the author used exaggeration. It is no secret that kids are prone to exaggeration. In this book, though, the kids' tales of the stories that happened that day at school are very modest - short and to the point. The exaggeration lives in the illustrations, and it is through them that we see what really happened at school that day.

This was a pretty fun book. The kids would especially love reading the conversations on the side of the story - they make the book exciting. I also loved that there were Spanish words. Overall, I'd say this one was pretty good.

One Smart Cookie by John Nez

I'm pretty sure you could get any kid to like a book about a dog named Cookie who wears glasses and loves to read. Maybe some kids wouldn't jive as much about Cookie loving to read because, let's face it, a lot of kids don't enjoy reading themselves. That is really what this book is about. While Cookie reads everything he can get his furry paws on at home, the children in the family avoid reading at all costs. Cookie starts going to school with the little girl, Duffy, and enters the school spelling bee. Although he loses, Cookie alerts Duffy that there is a fire in the school and Duffy saves the day by reading the directions to pulling the fire alarm. Reading literally saves the day.

This story can really encourage young children to read and write. It presents these processes as though they are inherent in all of us, we just have to search for them deep down. This is an effective approach to reading for kids who think they cannot do it. We can show them that they can do it - reading and writing is somewhere within them; they just have to keep looking. The book also couples reading and writing into one process, which is also very important to notice. Reading and writing are highly intertwined - it is very difficult to do one effectively without being able to do the other. I have learned in my classes that it is most effective for students to work on both reading and writing at the same time, because as you are writing, you are reading what you are writing; the boundaries are gray.

As I was reading I was thinking of my second grade buddy with whom I am helping to read and write. At the beginning of our first session, I asked him if he was a reader. He immediately said no. However, he has shown me that he is an incredibly talented reader who is, in fact, reading at an advanced level for his age. He had just never thought about being labeled a "reader" before. I think it is important for teachers to teach their students about their literate identities in both reading and writing. It seems like that is all Duffy and Nash needed in this book - someone to show them that they, too, are readers and writers. This book is a good one to show emerging readers and writers that they are literate as well.

So Far From the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Kawashima Watkins

This text is a complementary text to The Year of Impossible Goodbyes. Well, maybe "complementary" is the wrong word. The two books present the opposing sides of the same conflict between Korea and Japan. This text comes from the point of view of a Japanese family living in Korea at the time of the conflict. The family had to flee the country, disguising themselves and hiding in order to survive. Showing different perspectives of one issue is something that is very enlightening for students. They are often presented with one very American view of history. In fact, sometimes it is even hard for kids to recognize the fact that there is a different side of the story. Teachers should really work to show kids that there are multiple perspectives and interpretations of every event.

In class, we talked a bit about how knowing both sides of a story really changes things. Knowing all of the angles makes things less black and white, making it harder to label one side as "right" and one side as "wrong." I had that experience in reading these two books. It was hard for me to look at the Koreans as being right after reading So Far From the Bamboo Grove, even though that was my initial reaction after hearing how much they suffered from the Japanese imperialism presented in the first book. I would not have believed that I would feel sympathy for the Japanese after reading the second book. But I really did as I was reading about the tragic life of this Japanese family.