Another World Filled with Magical Creatures

               A Treasury of Mermaids: Mermaid Tales from Around the World, by Shirley Climo and illustrations by Jean and Mou-sien Tseng, brings together a collection of little known mermaid folk tales from all over the world. The book includes stories from Alaska, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Greece and New Zealand.  Scottish and Swiss stories are  also included. One of the best things about this book, is its diversity; I really like how Climo retells stories from places like Alaska, Iceland, New Zealand and Switzerland, because those are places whose stories I never seem see in most story collections.  I feel like most of our perceptions of mermaids in America come from Disney and Hans Christian Anderson, and this book offers many new perspectives from many new sources.
        
            The stories range from Odysseus’ voyage past the Sirens to stories of mermaids who fall in love with humans, only to be betrayed by them, to humans who are betrayed by the mermaids, as well as mermaids who help humans. Something that was interesting in all the stories, was that there was always a distinct impression of the mermaids’ world being divided from the human world. Even in the stories where a character crossed into another character’s world, there was a distinct impression of one character being the “other” who did not belong. These stories would be a great to introduce the concept of outsiders in literature.  It was also interesting to see the similar strands that ran through the stories, and how different cultures dealt with various issues. Since there are are so many similarities  in the stories, they would be great to use for compare and contrast activities for both the plot and the cultural values the stories reflect. Another aspect of this book that I really enjoyed, was the individual introductions Climo wrote before presenting a story, where she discussed the different names and legends that each culture had developed about mermaids.  These introductions provided interesting background for the tales, and they provided a sense that the stories really were authentic to the country the claimed to be from!
  
        This book would probably be best for upper-elementary. There are only a few pictures in the book and the stories are not vivid enough to hold a younger child’s attention for long. Also, although the pictures do not show anything inappropriate, there are some suggestions that there is no clothing or covering underneath the various mermaids’ strategically placed hair.
  
         Despite loving mermaid tales, I found most of this book to be rather stilted and boring. Although there is a decent amount of figurative language, I felt like Climo could have done much more creatively in her writing and retelling of the stories then she actually did. While reading most of the stories, I had a hard time picturing the story in my mind, because there was not very much imagery to help me see it in my head and to tell me what was going on in the story. This book is definitely not good to use for lessons about descriptive words!  Although there were beautiful illustrations at the beginning of the stories, there were none inside of the story, which made it even harder to picture what was happening.  I feel like the use of stilted and boring language a major problem with story collections, and retellings in general, is a fear of being creative with the stories. If you prefer to be true to basic plot line of a story, that is fine, but add enough flourishes to make the story worth listening to!!!

The Wonder of the Junkyard Kids

“I want you all to write the definition on the blackboard. Post it on your mirrors. Look at it every day. Memorize it! The definition describes every one of you.”--Mrs Peterson

 It is always important to shape your views of people, and things, from all angles and all points of view. In her new book, The Junkyard Wonders, Patricia Polacco, shows, once again, that is not what people appear to be, but who they really turn out to be that matters.

     Like many of her stories, The Junkyard Wonders is based on the author’s childhood growing up dyslexic in mid-20th century America. Also, like many of her stories, one of the book’s focuses is on one of Polacco’s many inspirational teachers who enabled her to become the wonderfully successful writer she is today. There a million cool and inspirational, as well as English majory, things I could talk about for this book, but I really just want to talk about the teacher, Mrs. Peterson, because she is the teacher that I want to be. 

Mrs. Peterson calls her class “the Junkyard Wonders”.  All the students in her class have been classified as “different”; they are the kids who are dyslexic, who have diabetes and other physical disabilities, the ones who refuse to talk, the boys who love ballet, and rest of the children, who for some reason or another have been cast off by the rest of the school.  Instead of lowering her expectations and teaching down to these children, Mrs. Peterson expects the most of them, and teaches them to expect the best from themselves. She starts the first day of school, by reading the definition of genius to her class and she tells them that each and every one has genius in them, it was just a matter of finding where it was.  Although many of the students in her class think that the term “junkyard kids” is derogatory and emphasizes their flaws, Mrs. Peterson shows them they are wrong. By taking them to the junkyard and having them pick out pieces of “real junk” to revitalize, she shows them how something that seems to have problems and seems not to work, can actually become something completely different, wonderful and new. In the process of remaking their objects, the students also remake themselves, discovering their own unique talents and geniuses. I like this aspect of the story because of the literary parallelism of how the things from the junkyard acquire a new beauty, a new meaning, and a new wonder, at the same time Mrs. Peterson’s “junkyard” students realize a new beauty, a new meaning, and a new “wonder” at the same time.  Mrs. Peterson is the type of teacher who helps children discover who they are and why they are special, and that is the type of teacher I want so badly to be. 

 One thing I also have to add about this book is the way Polacco makes every character be important. There are no minor characters in the book; every character mentioned in the story has a distinct personality and a specific and important role in the story. Her emphasis on character can also be seen in the pictures she draws in the book.  In every picture, it is impossible not to notice every person; each one has a distinct expression and personality.  Even in the pictures where there are large crowds it is impossible not to be drawn toward every face, and by looking at the faces you know what each one is feeling and something about their personality without even knowing what the text says. She even focuses on facial expressions of characters not in the story, giving each one of her drawings an identity the reader can relate to.
  
 This story is an excellent example of a book where you need to read every single word in it, even the ones not directly in the story, to fully understand the story. Both the introduction and the afterword have important details that enable the reader to understand the story at a new height.
   
 I would be more inclined to use this book in upper elementary, especially in a class where there is a student, or multiple students, that have low self-confidence and maybe who feel like they are a “junkyard kid”. I would also use it to teach about diversity and about getting out of one’s comfort zone to make friends with someone who others think is weird or not cool. Hopefully students would then be able to see outside of the labels schools put on their peers.

No matter how you use The Junkyard Wonders, it is a wonderful and touching story and would be a wonderful addition to any class library!

*Picture from:http://unioncitylibrary.wordpress.com/

The Food is Falling, The Food is Falling . . . from the Sky!!

I chose to read Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, by Judi Barrett, because many of the children in my cooperating teacher’s classroom had written about it in their reading journals and had liked it a lot. It is a very cute story about two children, their grandpa, and the stories they hear from him. One day, prompted by an unfortunate incident with a flying pancake, Grandpa tells the children “the best tall-tale bedtime story he’d ever told”. The story is about ChewandSwallow, a town that has no grocery stores because all of their food falls out of the sky.  One day, however, the weather goes awry and destructive meatballs and giant pancakes threaten the survival of the townspeople.

 The pictures in this book were a lot of fun of to look at because there were lots of hidden jokes inside them. You have to really study the details of the pictures to find most of the fun details, such as in the picture showing an overview of the town, where all the movie titles displayed on the movie theater’s masthead had to do with food. Also, if you look at the pictures you realize that they are telling parts of the story that don’t get told in the text. For example, the reason Grandpa accidentally flips a pancake on Henry’s head (an action that later prompts him to tell a story about ChewAndSwallow) is that he trips over the dog as the dog chases the cat. However, the cause of Grandpa’a accidental pancake toss is never specified in the text; you instead have to see the picture of the dog chasing the cat and Grandpa tripping over them. It is also extremely fun to look at the pictures and discover all the different activities and facial expressions that are going on in them.
 
 Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, seems like  a great way of teaching the concept of a story within a story, as well as teaching about basing fiction on incidents from real life. It is also a presents a good opportunity to introduce the concepts of hyperbole and tall tales to children, who may be able to relate to having a family member telling excessively silly stories. 

This book is extremely fun to read and to look at. I highly recommend it!

*Picture from:http://blissfullydomestic.com/2009/cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs

What Happens When A City Mouse Goes to the Country?
Mr. McMouse  by Leo Lionni
  
Mr. McMouse is a story about a city mouse who finds himself unexpectedly living in the country. In order to get accepted by the country mice, Mr. McMouse must pass a series of tests, each of which he fails. As he is about to attempt the final test, a cat attacks all of the mice, and Mr. McMouse uses his city smarts to save himself and his friend. Thus he shows himself, and they country mice, that sometime being different and having unique skills is a good thing.

One of the major themes of the story is a feeling of not belonging.  At the beginning of the story Mr. McMouse runs away from home. One day he doesn’t recognize himself in the mirror and is frightened, so he runs away to the country. There he meets more mice like himself; however, to be accepted by them, he must prove he can act like a country mouse through completing a series of tests to get his “Field Mouse License”. But what really happens is that Mr. McMouse learns that, although he cannot do all the things that the other country mice can do, he does have his own unique talents to offer. 

I really love the illustrations in this book. For one thing, Lionni ,who also does the illustrations, uses basic shapes to create them. By using the basic shapes such as circles, ovals, and triangles to make complicated art, he shows how easy it is to draw once you understand the basics. The reader can look at the pictures and understand how the collage’s shapes work together to form the illustration.   Another really cool thing about the illustrations is that he uses a collage not only of shapes, but of textures and designs as well. The textures in the art create an interesting contrast between Mr. McMouse’s life in the city and his life in the country. While he was living in the house, his environment only had two colors, one pattern, and one shape, but when he runs away, he runs into a world full of different shapes, patterns, colors, and textures. The further Mr. McMouse travels into the country, the more diverse the shapes, colors, patterns, and textures become. This contrast between the two environments really emphasizes the contrasts between Mr. McMouse’s narrow and boring world perspective in the city, and his broadened and diverse worldview in the country.

Mr. McMouse is a great book to teach shapes, colors,textures, and art to a younger audience. In an upper-elementary class, it would also be a great book to discuss how illustrations can deepen the reader’s understanding of a book’s underlying themes.


*Picture from http://children.bookbest.com/node/literature/other/18333_10.html

More than Black and White

             David Macaulay’s Black and White has four stories within one book. Or is it one story with four parts? On each set of pages are four squares, which claim, at the beginning, to represent four different stories.



            One story, that is always told on the upper half of the left page, has a boy returning home to see his parents. This story is told only with  the boy’s  observations and only from his point of view. There is no other perspective or dialogue. At one point, a train stops due to a black and white blob on the tracks. Luckily, the black and white blob eventually moves away from the track. The second story, told on the lower half of the second page, is about a child whose parents seem completely normal, until one day they come home acting strange, and insisting on dressing in newspapers. This story is told completely from the daughter’s point of view.  The narrator and her brother like to play with their train set.




                                                                           The stories portrayed on the right pages are both told almost completely in pictures. One  is about a group of people who are stuck waiting at a train station for a train that is mysteriously late.  The other story is about a group of cows, who, when they move out of the field in a group, look like just one big black and white blob.

                What I really liked about this book was that figuring out how the story worked was like reading a puzzle. You had to look at all the details, and read all the text and then put them together o figure out what was going on in the story. This book would be really fun to read with a group of strong writers and readers to see how long it took them to figure out what was going in the story.  It also is a great way to demonstrate the different layers and aspects that go into story writing, because there are several stories going on at one time, but then they all come to the same conclusion.  This book really shows how story telling goes deeper than things just black and white.

Click, Clack, Moo.  What happens when you have cows who can type?

    Click, Clack, Moo Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin is hilarious! The book is about Farmer Brown and his troublesome cows who, after finding an old typewriter, start typing out demands of things they want Farmer Brown to do in exchange for all the milk they provide for him. When Farmer Brown refuses their demands, the cows go on strike and soon other farm animals follow their example. So what is a poor farmer to do when his animals type demands and go on strike? Find out in this laugh-out-load book!

One of the best aspects of this book is that it can be used in lots of different ways, with lots of different age groups. The text has a rhyming, sing song, rhythm to it, that makes it appealing to younger students. It also makes extensive use of onomatopoeia, which is an aspect of syntax that younger students really understand and appreciate. This book could also be used to demonstrate cause and effect by asking students questions such as  what caused the animals to strike and what the effect of their striking was. It also might be a cute, unique, if slightly silly way of introducing a social studies lesson on labor movements, because of its whimsical take on an overworked group striking to get better working conditions. Yes, I know, it seems a slightly silly and trivial way to introduce the subject, but it might serve as useful hook to get kids interested in the subject of working conditions, labor unions and the strikes of the nineteenth century.

The pictures are awesome too. The illustrator used interesting water color techniques and blends colors in interesting way to emphasize when the farm animals are plotting how to best get their demands. For readers who are also interested in art, the artist included an interesting note on the copyright page explaining her technique in making the pictures.

You do have to read this book to your class no matter how you use because it is adorable.  It will brighten your day to read it.

*Picture from http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/766955.Click_Clack_Moo