Woodsong By Gary Paulson.

        I am really kind of embarrassed to say this but I have never read any of Gary Paulsen's books before. I remember when I was a kid, kind of having a sense that he was a "boy's writer" in that he wrote books that only boys would want to read (I know,  I know, what was wrong with me??).  By the time I was old enough to know better,  Paulsen had fallen off my radar screen. However, his memoir, Woodsong, has really made me realize how much I missed out in the past few years.
    Woodsong is almost like a book of short stories about Paulsen's life. Most of these stories discuss the time he spent with his dog team and the life lessons that he learned from his journeys and from his dogs. The first part of the book focuses on the sledding trips he took with his team while living in Minnesota. The second part of the book then focuses on him racing his dogs in the Iditarod.
      I think this book would be appropriate for upper elementary and would be great to read aloud. There are lots of things you could use this book for. It would be great for lessons on visualization and sensory images. It would also be a great book to talk about how we learn things about the world not only through school, but through animals, through life experiences, and through ourselves.

An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793

          An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793, by Jim Murphy is fascinating read about the Yellow Fever  Epidemic in Philadelphia, which was then the nation's capital, at the end the eighteenth century. This book is one of my favorite types of history books; it is the type of history book that tells the historical event from multiple perspectives and how it affected life throughout the city on multiple levels. It also tells about the events that are going on outside of the fever epidemic, and how the epidemic affects those events. For example, it shows the effect the epidemic had on a new nation, when the president had to flee the capital to avoid sickness. Additionally, it looks at how the fever affected people from multiple classes of life. The book also follows Benjamin Rush, a notable doctor, scientist, and thinker of the era, as he tried to do all he could to stop the epidemic.
         Something that I especially liked about the book was that it talked about the role of free blacks during the epidemic. During the epidemic, Rush convinced free blacks who had survived the disease as children in Africa, to nurse ill whites, some of who even brought their slaves with them to the hospital. Despite indignities they had faced previously in the city, and the certain indignities that would follow after the epidemic, free blacks put much effort into nursing the sick folk of the city.This is just one of the fascinating aspects described in this book.
        The book is wonderfully written, and organized. Although the reading level is a bit high for many elementary students, I would definitely have this book in a fifth grade or sixth grade library. This would be a great book, to add a little something extra to any lessons about America as a new nation.  One cool thing to do with this might be to have kids pick an event from the book, and write an article about it for a pretend newspaper.
       This book is a Newbery Honor book and has won many other awards, such as being a National Book Award Finalist.

Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery

           One time, long ago, when I was in the fifth grade,  I was wondering around the elementary school library.  That day was the last day, in a week of days, that students got to come into the library BY THEMSELVES to pick a book to adopt and donate to the school library.  I had wanted to adopt a book so badly, but my parents were hesitant to let me, because, as parents who wanted to put four children through college and who worried about money, they were always hesitant to spend money on something that wasn't essential or wasn't a special present for someone. I had spent weeks begging them to let me adopt a book. It seemed so cool, and I loved books so much, and I wanted to have a book with my name in that would be in the school library forever. So finally, they decided that maybe $20 to adopt a book could be a special present for me and as I walked through the library, I clutched the check that my mom had written that morning.  I remember being disappointed--I had had my heart set on adopting one of the American Girl craft books that had been some of the choices, but of course they had been some the first ones to go--so I walked around looking at the rest of my choices, my heart sinking down further and further becuase all the "cool ones" and then all the "interesting ones" had already been adopted. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I spied this book, Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery by Russell Freedman. I remember taking the book down, considering it, thinking about it, and wondering that if I choose this book my dad--who was always taking to me about civic virtues, great thinkers, and strong women--would be proud of me that I choose this book out of all the others, and so that is what I did.  I choose this book, had my name written down and pasted on the back of the front cover, and then went back to class, still a little sad because I had not gotten to adopt an American Girl craft book.
         When you adopted a book from the school library, you got to be the first person to check that book out from the school library. So I checked it out, took it home, and it sat on the end of a table for a week. Finally, one weekend, in between all the other books I was reading, I picked it up and started to read in and becuase of this book I fell in love with Eleanor Roosevelt.
        This book discusses Roosevelt's life in an honest, engaging way. It does not sugar coat her life, but nor does it cast Roosevelt as a victim.  It does no vilifying, victimizing, or glorifying of its subject like some biographies do. It simply presents Roosevelt as an ordinary person, someone with struggles and triumphs, and everything in-between. It is a great book for talking about the time period of the Depression, the presidency of FDR, and how Roosevelt became her husband's eyes, ears, and feet. It also showcases Roosevelt as a woman of great compassion and wisdom. 
       What made this book so important to me was that, it also showcases Roosevelt as a woman who overcame something that cripples many girls and boys, including myself, an extreme and painful shyness. Until recently, I have barely ever been able to talk in class and I have an extremely difficult time when I'm not around people who I feel comfortable with, and I was this book inspired me, as Roosevelt still inspires me now, to talk to more people and feel more comfortable with myself as a person. As I read this book, I was amazed by how a girl who seemed even shyer than myself as a young girl and as a young lady, could somehow grow up to be this fascinating person, who did all these brave and amazing things, and who talked to all these people, and who people across America loved becuase she took the time to listen, to care, and to understand their lives. It was this woman who I wanted to be, and who I still want to be today. It was this woman who inspired me to want to do things to make lives better and to change the ways people was viewed.
        It is to Russell Freedman's credit to that I had, and still have, these inspirations. Others could have skipped over Roosevelt's accomplishments, her shyness, her struggles, and could have ignored her hardships, but Freedman. They could have made her seem like a victim in some circumstances but  Freedman does not. Others could have made her seem like an unreachable ideal, but Freedman does not.
   This book is 200 pages, and probably would not good for read-alouds but it could be great for a higher level (fifth or sixth) guided reading groups or class reading. This website and this website have great ideas for using it.  It is a Newbery Honor book and both the writing and the pictures are suparb. Another awesome book about Eleanor Roosevelt that I have seen used as a great read-aloud in a volunteerism Social Studies lesson is Eleanor, Quiet No More.  I will definitely have both of these books in my classroom library if I teach upper elementary.
        This book really meant a lot to me when I was younger, and I guess I have talked more about that then given an actual review, but it is a really great book. Also, if you go into my elementary school library, you will not find the American Girl craft books, but you still find this book still there, sitting on a shelf, waiting for another young girl to come and read it and fall in love with Eleanor.


      

Bread Comes to LIfe: A Garden of Wheat and a Loaf to Eat

               Since we got so many free nonfiction books from the Agriculture in the Classroom presentation we attended, I thought that I would take advantage of this opportunity to actually read one of them! I found Bread Comes to Life: A Garden of Wheat and a Loaf to Eat by George Levenson to be lacking and content and instead to be propagandist towards bread over all other type of foods (not surprising, considering it was donated to Agriculture in the Classroom by the Virginia Small Grains Board).  The short book talks about different types of bread and also vaguely follows the journey grain takes from the field to the oven to being bread.  This book would not function very well as read aloud, or an explanation book for a learning cycle lesson on grain to bread. However, I do think this bread would be good for a reader in the primary grade who likes nonfiction. It is written in a sing-songy poem verse which I think would appeal to younger readers, and it does have absolutely beautiful photography and a good one-to-one text to pictures. 
               Something I did not consider until I saw this review on Amazon.com was that it would be a good book to teach the economics of natural resources and how grain goes from bread to the table. This again, would work especially well with young children. There is also an educational video narrated by Lily Tomlin that goes along with this book.  This book has also gotten many awards, so maybe I am wrong, or maybe I have spent to much time in the upper grades, but for some reason I was just not impressed with this book!

Penguins! National Geographic Kids

        The kids in my class love penguins and a lot of people have been telling me to check out the National Geographic Kids nonfiction series, so I decided to combine the two and read Penguins! by Anne Schriber from the National Geographic Kids series. I really, really liked this book! I think Schriber did an excellent job of using easy language to talk about penguins, while still keeping the writing interesting. Unlike many children's nonfiction picture books, that are horribly written, this one was actually fun to read. I learned a lot too! For instance, did you know that penguins usually live in colonies of millions of other penguins and the all huddle together when it gets cold? And did you know that they leap out of the water when they want to swim faster and that it is called porpoising?
       The other thing I liked about this book was that it explained any unusual terms to students. Also, although it did have text bubbles interspersed with the pictures (a trend I have noticed in children's nonfiction which often distracts me), it was only a little and was formatted in a non-distracting way.  Also the pictures matched the text and were always interesting and relevant to what the author was talking about. Another pet peeve I have with children's nonfiction is that it often seems like they choose pictures/photos at random to put in the book, but there was none of that in this book. The photography was beautiful as well.
     I will definitely have this book, and others from the series, in my class library and I will definitely use them in my instruction.  Also, if you are interested you should go to the National Geography Kids website; it is definitely worth exploring!

So You Want to Be President?

        So You Want to Be President by Judith St. George is a humorous books of random facts about past presidents. It includes trivia such as the shortest president, the tallest president, the various ways various presidents became presidents. It also has other funny facts such as the number of presidents who were born in log cabins and how many different pets there have been in the White House.
        This book is very fun to read and has extremely humorous pictures in it and it won The Caldecott Medal. One picture has the fattest president (Taft) being lifted into the bathtub with a crane! Additionally the facts in it are surprising and fun to know. 
         This book would be an excellent way to introduce the presidency to young children. It shows presidents as human beings with all their quirks and it will be sure to make all your students roll on the floor laughing! It would also be a great book for President's Day!
         I do have one reservation about this book.  It is only goes up to President Clinton, so a teacher may want to have supplemental material on President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama when using this book. Here is a great suggestion from Scholastic for adding President Obama to lesson.
There are a ton of great lesson plans online in addition to this. Here is one more.
Additionally, here is an interesting review from The New York Times if you want to learn more about the book.

Tornadoes

The book Tornadoes by Seymour Simon, really reminded me of the types of nonfiction books I hated as a child. It has facts about tornadoes, some good pictures, some useful signs to know about tornado paths, and some examples of famous tornadoes. Although the book has good information and could be used to inform students about tornadoes, it was poorly organized and it did not explain all terminology used (for example it kept referring to the "F-1, F-2 scale" but didnot explain how the two were distinguished. Although I find tornadoes interesting usually, this book could not keep my attention. The pictures were marvelous as well.   One could use it in a class as an explanation, but I would look for other options first.