Babushka’s Doll

·      Author = Patricia Polacco

·      Illustrator = Patricia Polacco

·      Publication = 1995

·      This book is about a girl named Natasha who is very bossy, controlling, and spoiled.  Her babushka, which means grandma in Russian, refuses Natasha’s demands all morning long.  After lunch Babushka needs to grow for groceries and allows Natasha to play with her special doll.  Natasha is excited to play with such a treasure but little does she know she took on more then she could bargain for.

·      This text is great to use in classrooms to help children understand you need to treat people how you want to be treated.  This is a huge lesson that teachers talk about all the time.  This is also a great book to use if you have a bully on your hands.  It shows children that being bossy and demanding is not cool.

·      The common core standard that would go along with this book is number 3, identify characters.  With this you can identify character traits and explain good qualities and bad. 

Rufus Goes to School

Rufus Goes to School is written by Kim T Griswell and illustrated by Valeri Gorbachev is about a pig named Rufus wanting to go to school to learn how to read his favorite book. He thinks material items such as a back pack, lunchbox, and blanket is what he needs to enroll in school when the principle stops him each time and gives him silly things a pig would do in school. There is only one reason the principle accepts to be a good enough reason for Rufus to go to school.

This would be a good book to read on the first day of school since the students themselves just went school supply shopping. You during the reading you could have the students predict what the next school supply would be that he gets. The students will laugh at the silly things the principle thinks Rufus will do. The students will be able to identify different character traits that Rufus has displayed through the book. I fell in love with this book when I first read it, I also used it for a read aloud for my third grade class and they too enjoyed it.

We Are in a Book!

For my book talk, I chose We Are in a Book! by Mo Willems. It is part of the Elephant and Piggie series and was published in 2010. In this book, the two main characters, Elephant and Piggie, discover that they are being read by a reader. The whole book is a dialogue between Elephant and Piggie. Throughout the book, they even make the reader read aloud words. I chose this book because I loved it as soon as I read it in our library at Rider. When I went into the field, I noticed that this book was a favorite of my kindergarteners. When my kindergartners had library, they all rushed to the Elephant and Piggie series to check them out. I like this books because it is a one of the most unique childrens' book I have read and it is humorous. Not only is a lighthearted book, but it shows the readers the structure of a book through Elephant and Piggie's dialogue. It is done in a fun way that the children do not even realize it. This book shows the reader where the page numbers are in the book, how the reader is reading Elephant and Piggie's dialogue through word bubbles, and how the book has an ending. Lastly, this book encourages the children to want to read this book again because at the end of the story, Elephant and Piggie ask the reader "Will you please read us again?"

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

By: Laura Joffe Numeroff 

Useful While in a Classroom Setting

- Helpful for creating predictions

- Cause and effect relationships

-Recalling the sequenced text

Activities

- Retelling story map

-Beginning-middle-end sequencing

-Write their own version of the story with them being the mouse

-Prediction charts

Big Pumpkin

I chose Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman and illustrated by S. D. Schindler because its theme is relevant for this time of the month. It has a witch, a ghost, a vampire, a mummy, a bat, and a pumpkin, which are all things kids see and hear about during October for Halloween. The witch plants a pumpkin seed and intends to make pumpkin pie. When the pumpkin grows to be too big to pick up, each character takes a turn trying to pick the pumpkin from the vine. Then they work together to pick it and it comes off and the witch is able to make her pumpkin pie that they all enjoy together.

I think this book would be great to use in a kindergarten or first grade classroom because of the rhyming and repetitive use of lines. It is something that will keep students engaged and I can use it to have the students help me finish a sentence if they catch on. Also, there is big illustrations on each page that depict what the words are describing so it can also be used for independent reading where a student can either read the words or the illustrations and have an understanding of what it is about (RL.1.7). Some standards that I would meet as a teacher in doing this would be to discuss who the author and illustrator are and what each of their jobs consist of (RL.K.6). Also, the students can write and/or draw a picture of an alternate ending or their favorite part of the book (W.K.6).