Monkey and Me

I did my book talk on Monkey and Me by Emily Gravett

This book is about a little girl and her toy monkey.  Throughout the book they use their imagination and pretend they are at the zoo looking at animals.  It is very short and only talks about the girl and her monkey "going to see" animals.

This book is very short.  I see it as more of a picture book than a story.  For this reason I think it would be great to introduce to beginner readers, or even readers who are a little slower to help encourage them.  Especially because it has a lot of repeating words. 

Reading this book as an only child I felt that I could really connect with it.  Since I had no siblings, I usually played alone and relied on my imagination to get me places.

Overall i really liked the book besides the fact that it had very little content.

Dinosaur VS. Bedtime

This week my book talk was on Dinosaur VS. Bedtime by Bob Shea.

It is a very short book about a dinosaur who thinks he is so awesome that nothing can stop him.  He proves this statement by going against everyday activities and winning against each one.  ROAR!

Then when it comes to bedtime, Dinosaur is no match and bedtime wins.

In the book Dinosaur roars a lot, at least 3 times on each page.  When I first read it, I thought it might be a good idea to teach the students "roar" as a sight word, and when reading this book in class have them roar each time it comes up in the story.

I really enjoyed this book!  I believe that many kids can find a connection because the obstacles that Dinosaur faces are activities that a lot of younger kids struggle with (talking adults, tall slide, a bowl of food, taking a bath.) Kids can try to avoid all of these things if they want, but it is inevitable, everybody falls asleep.

Llama Llama Red Pajama

I did my book talk on Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney.

It is about a little Llama who misses his mama shortly after she tucks him into bed to go to sleep.  She begins to do some house work as he calls out to her.  When she doesn't respond right away Llama Llama red pajama begins to panic and act dramatically.  His mama reminds him that there is no need to act that way because mama loves him.

The story is told in a rhyme and highlights certain vocabulary words.  Even though the story itself doesn't have any certain lessons that can be learned in a classroom (besides being patient) there are vocabulary words that can be discussed such as 'fret' or 'tizzy.'

I really enjoyed this book and found myself being able to easily relate because as a child I was literally attached to my moms hip and constantly worried when I wasn't near her.

I found this cool video of some people singing the story. 

:LL

Old Bear

Old bear falls asleep as the snow starts falling at the beginning of winter.  He begins to dream about himself as a young bear.  In his dream he experiences all four seasons.  The seasons in his dream all have their own imaginative spin on them, for example, in summer the sun was a daisy, the leaves were butterflies and it rained blue berries.  Old bear wakes up thinking he took just a small nap, only to find out the whole winter season had gone by! 

I love this book because all of the imagination in it.  I have a huge imagination and enjoy thinking of different possibilities for ordinary things such as the seasons.  How awesome would it be if the sun was a daisy?!

I think this book is great for the class room because kids enjoys using their imagination as well and hearing of cool things like it raining blueberries.  I think a great lesson plan to follow it up would be to divide the class into groups and assign each group a season.  The groups could work together to paint, draw, or write a story describing their season and add a little imagination to it.

Katie Loves the Kittens

 

Katie is dog dog who is so super excited when her owner, Sara Ann, brings home three new kittens.  Katie loves the kittens and is excited to play with them, but when Katie expresses her excitement, she frightens the kittens.  Sara Ann tells Katie that she is scaring the kittens and warns her to give them time to get used to her.  Still every time Katie sees the kittens she can't contain herself and ends up scaring them away.

I went to the library to look for books for my annotated bibliography and came across this book.  I wanted to check it out but decided not to because I couldn't think of any lesson plans to attach it with or how it would benefit students in an educational way.  I was very excited to learn it was on my book list and I went right away to check it out for this first book talk.  I have a passion for animals having 2 dogs and 4 cats myself.

I think is book is really great for anyone looking to read for entertainment reasons, but like I stated before, there is no real educational lesson to be taken from this book besides maybe patience.