Goyangi Means Cat, by Christine McDonnell

Published April 16, 2014 by Dagmar

Goyangi Means Cat is about a young Korean girl, Soo Min, who is adopted by an American family and brought to the United States. Soo Min knows no English. Her new family knows only a few words of Korean. Slowly, she teaches her new parents a few Korean words, including “no”, “hurt” and most importantly the world for “cat”, goyangi. Soo Min is struggling to adjust to her new life with her new family in America. She finds comfort petting their cat. When Goyangi escapes the apartment one day, Soo Min and her new mom look for the cat everywhere. Goyangi finally returns, and Soo Min, as she hugs Goyangi, says her first English word, “home”.

The author did a wonderful job helping my students understand how hard it was for Soo Min to adjust to her new home and family in the United States and how having a pet like Goyangi was a great comfort to her. We all felt Goyangi’s loss when he escaped and all were so relieved when he returned.

Stuck, by Oliver Jeffers

Published April 10, 2014 by Dagmar

The easiest books to read to a group of students are funny books. Oliver Jeffers has written a great book that was a real favorite with my students.

“It all began when Floyd got his kite stuck in a tree…” Poor Floyd. When his kite became stuck in a tree, he threw a shoe to loosen the kite. Sadly, his shoe became stuck, too. Floyd threw his other shoe and then his cat at the tree to loosen his kite. Both became stuck. When Floyd got his ladder, all my students expected that Floyd would climb the ladder to get his kite, shoes and cat. To their amazement, Floyd threw his ladder into the tree as well. 🙂 It, a bucket of paint, a bicycle, the kitchen sink…an orangutan, a BIG Boat, even the firemen who were sent to help all became stuck in the tree. The tree was completely full. So, Floyd got a saw. As you might expect, Floyd threw the saw into the tree as well; and, finally(!), Floyd’s kite fell out of the tree. Floyd, happy, walked away with his kite in hand. In bed that night, Floyd wondered if there was anything he forgot to do. The firemen realizing they might be in the tree for a while, began strategizing about how they might get themselves and everyone else “unstuck”.

This funny and absurd book is a gem. Don’t miss it!

Snowmen at Night, by Caralyn Buehner

Published February 1, 2014 by Dagmar

When I moved from New York State to California 30 years ago, I knew that I would give up the seasons and wouldn’t see snow day to day in winter. Honestly, the latter didn’t bother so much after years of slipping on ice and digging out driveways.

Many of my students rarely, if ever, have the chance to see and play in the snow. They know that it’s cold in winter, that some trees lose their leaves, that bears hibernate and that children make snowmen and snow angels in the snow. I love to share winter memories from my childhood in upstate New York, building snow forts with my big brother, making snowmen and throwing snowballs.

Whether your children or students live in a climate where they know winter well, or whether they only can wonder what it’s like, Snowmen at Night is a great book for a winter read aloud. The rhyming text is easy to read and the pictures by Mark Buehner are so engaging.

What do snowmen do at night? Apparently quite a lot. “One wintry day I made a snowman, very round and tall. The next day when I saw him, he was not the same at all! His hat had slipped, his arms drooped down, he really looked a fright — it made me start to wonder: What do snowmen do at night?”

This is a fun book about the secret life of snowmen that delighted my kindergartners. I hope you have fun with it, too.

Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins

Published January 20, 2014 by Dagmar

I do so love an oldie but goodie. Rosie’s Walk was published in 1968. Rosie, a hen, is going for a walk. Little does she realize that there is a hungry fox following her everywhere. As Rosie walks, fox steps on a rake, falls into a pond, falls into a haystack, has a bag of flour emptied on him and then falls into a wheelbarrow which rolls into bee hives. Rosie completely misses all of the action behind her. She finally ends up at her chicken coop, just in time for dinner. Every time I turned the pages, my students would shriek with laughter when they saw what happened to the poor fox. They were very cute.

I read this to my TK (Transkinder) class, with students who just missed the cutoff for kindergarten. They absolutely loved this book. I then tried it with my preschoolers and found that they had a harder time following this book. I’d recommend it for TK through 1st grade audiences.

So if you’re looking for a quick, funny read for your young students, here it is.

My Brother Martin, by Christine King Farris

Published January 17, 2014 by Dagmar

I have some favorite books to read when celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and his tremendous life. One, is Martin’s Big Words, by Doreen Rappaport. Like me, most teachers love Martin’s Big Words as well. So finding something different but accessible to young audiences is a always a challenge for me in the library.

Here is a book that I discovered this year that I love for younger audiences. Published in 2006, it provides a different perspective on this great man’s life that students haven’t heard before. When I introduce this book to my students, I remind them that before Dr. King became “Dr. King”, he was a child just like them. My Brother Martin was written by Christine King Farris, Dr. King’s older sister.

In My Brother Martin, Ms. King Farris tells of Dr. King’s childhood on Auburn Street in Atlanta, Georgia. There are funny pranks that the children, Christine, M.L. (Martin Luther) and their younger brother A.D. (Alfred Daniel) played on neighbors and their piano teacher. These stories made all my students smile. Ms. King Farris also tells of the painful time when the children of a white store owner on their street were no longer allowed to play with Negroes (a word I had to explain to my younger students). The white family sold their store and moved away. After years of shielding their children from the injustice and cruelty dealt to black people, this episode brought all that home. Christine, M.L. and A.D. were confused about why their friends would no longer play with them. Their mother explained about all the “Whites Only” signs. She also told her children that this injustice was there, “Because they just don’t understand that everyone is the same, but someday, it will be better.” M.L. then replied, “Mother Dear, one day I’m going to turn this world upside down.” And that he did.

M.L. and his sister and brother now were aware of segregation. They watched as their father, a minister at Ebenezer Baptist Church spoke out against it and how he practiced what he preached. Their father did not allow others to treat him differently because of his skin color and took his business elsewhere when store owners did. Their parents’ example and the pain of their childhood friends’ leaving provided the inspiration for Dr. King’s pursuit of justice.

This is a heartening and inspiring story of Dr. King that provides insights other books don’t provide. I highly recommend it to elementary school audiences. The illustrations by Chris Soentpiet are wonderful.

Red Sled, by Lita Judge

Published January 12, 2014 by Dagmar

I’m a huge fan of wordless books for kids. This genre has really grown. It includes books for young students, like one of my favorites, A Ball for Daisy, by Chris Raschka, and complex and beautiful wordless books like The Arrival, by Shaun Tan, meant for middle schoolers.

Younger students and particularly students who aren’t reading yet get such a feeling of confidence when they can read a story on their own. In the case of my library, students sit quietly and watch the story unfold as I turn the pages for them. Sometimes I have them tell me the story that they just “read”. This time, we just closed the book and smiled.

The Red Sled is not a completely wordless book. The only words that appear are onamatopoeias. The book opens with a red sled sitting outside a house in the snow. A bear wanders by and notices the sled. He decides to take it for a ride, and what a wild ride it is! Soon, a rabbit joins him, then a moose, then two raccoons, an opposum, a porcupine and a mouse. The illustrations are wonderful, particularly the animals expressions as they tumble down the hill on the red sled. My students were so quiet as they read the book, then, they started smiling and soon they were laughing out loud. After the animals finish their sled ride, the bear replaces the sled at the door of the small house. The child who owns the sled walks out the next day, picks up his sled and notices bear tracks. The book closes with the child swinging from the antlers of the moose as the animals go on another sled right that night.

This is a sweet, quick book that kids will really love.

There’s a Wocket in My Pocket, by Dr. Seuss

Published December 21, 2013 by Dagmar

Who doesn’t love Dr. Seuss? I think the most spectacular shrieks of the year came on Thursday when I read, There’s a Wocket in My Pocket, to my K/1 class. My students went wild over all the fantastic creatures with names that rhyme with every day household things, like the Ghair in the Chair, the Nink in the Sink. They were properly spooked by the Vug under the Rug who, let me tell you, has always made the hair stand up on my neck.

This book is not only perfect for beginning readers, this book is also a perfect read aloud for students ready to appreciate some good rhymes. One student, upon leaving, told me to be careful to check my shelf for a zelf and my book basket for a wasket. I dutifully checked everything before the student left; and, of course, jumped three feet in the air when I actually saw the zelf and then the wasket. That made him laugh!

Have fun with this one.

One Fine Day, by Nonny Hogrogian

Published December 7, 2013 by Dagmar

This 1971 winner of the Caldecott Medal worked really well with my kindergarten students. One day, a fox, traveling through a forest, notices a pail of milk. He quickly laps up all the milk but is caught by the old lady who owns the pail. Angry that the fox drank all her milk, the old lady cuts of his tail. He asks her to please sew it back on so his friends won’t tease him. She tells him that she’ll sew it back on if he brings her more milk. So begins fox’s journey to find milk.

The fox meets a cow who won’t give him milk unless the fox gives her some grass. He goes to the meadow, but the meadow won’t give him grass until she gets water and so on. Finally, after six different people ask him for something the miller takes pity on the poor fox, giving him some grain to give to the hen so he can have an egg to give to the peddler and so on until he has enough milk to pay back the old woman. The old woman does finally sew back on the fox’s tail. My guess is that our fox won’t be stealing milk again. 🙂

Enjoy!

Wild Horse Winter, by Tetsuya Honda

Published December 6, 2013 by Dagmar

This book was a sleeper, sitting for the last three years in a paperback picture book basket. As I flipped through my basket, organizing books one day, I was intrigued by this book. You may have read that my first grade students board my library plane each week, taking trips to different continents and countries. Thinking that this book took place in Wyoming or Colorado, I was already to break out my state books. The fact that I was rushed and hadn’t read the book before I decided to read it to my students was quickly discovered as the horses in the book inexplicably reached the ocean. Last time I heard, there are no oceans in Colorado. My very forgiving students were happy to re-board our plane and head West, all the way across the Pacific Ocean to the island of Hokkaido in Japan.

This beautifully illustrated book by Tetsuya Honda is about the wild horses that live on the island of Hokkaido in Japan. These horses, according to the author’s note, were brought to the island of Hokkaido three hundred years ago, by merchants and fisherman. In the winters, the merchants and fisherman would abandon the island to go to the mainland, but left their horses to survive the harsh winter on the island. In this story, we see a colt and his mother brave the winter by sleeping in a snow drift as they try to find their way from the grassy inland to the ocean. According to the author, Dosanko horses are known to lie down close to the ground and allow the snow to cover them in an effort to stay warm. Over many years, yhe horses, known as Dosanko horses, adapted to the harsh winters gradually developing longer hair, shorter bodies and stronger hooves. There are now only about 1,000 of these horses, living mostly on wild horse preserves.

This book was a jumping off point for lots of discussion: about Japan, how animals adapt to harsh conditions, how the native tribes near the arctic circle sometimes use ice to build homes to stay warm and how you might stay warm if caught in a blizzard or avalanche.

The book really captivated my students. I recommend it for first through third grade audiences, or younger audiences at home.

Lesson idea: Whales, Oceans and The Snail and the Whale

Published November 3, 2013 by Dagmar

This is a lesson I’d wish I’d done earlier in the year, because the book I chose to feature in this lesson is about a snail who is itching to travel and see the world. That’s just the sentiment that I want to inspire in my own students.

This week in our library journey, my first graders and I became whales and traveled the world’s oceans. We finished our trip by reading the fabulous book, The Snail and the Whale by one of my favorite author’s, Julia Donaldson, author of Room on the Broom.

It was very fun to become whales. Using the Oceans Alive of the Blastoff! Readers series, published by Bellwether Media, we learned about whales. Oceans Alive We held up our arms with our hands together like whale tails and swam by moving our big whale tails. We learned that our hands were called flukes and loved breaching and blowing air out of our blow holes. We put out our arms and learned that whales steer and stop with their fins.

If time permits, this is also a perfect time to learn about oceans. Using another set from the Blastoff! Reader series, Learning about the Earth, we learned that oceans cover most of the earth, that ocean water is salty, that there are different kinds of coasts and talked about the concepts of shallow and deep and different animals that live in the ocean.

In the Snail and the Whale, a snail with an “itchy foot” wants to travel through the world’s oceans and decides to hitch a ride on a whale. Together, they travel until one day, the whale gets confused by motor boats in a bay and is beached on a shore. The quick thinking snail goes to a school and leaves a message on a classroom chalkboard, “Save the Whale!”. Quickly, students, teachers and the whole town come to save the whale. The whale is saved. Together the Snail and the Whale return to the rock where they found each other only to take off again with all the snails on the whale’s tail, ready to see the world.

Update: This year, I used books but added a second week of whale books with a great, suspenseful book called Humphrey the Lost Whale, the True Story of Humphrey, a humpback whale who swam under the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco Bay and up the Sacramento River in the 1980s. My students absolutely loved this book by Wendy Tokuda. Another companion book is Baby Beluga, the “song” book by Raffi. We read and sing Baby Beluga every year in kindergarten. so it’s nice to bring it back while we’re learning about whales.

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