The Dark

  Summary of book: The Dark was written by Robert Munsch and illustrated by Sami Suomalainen. The story follows a little girl that lets a small dark thing out of her cookie jar one morning. Jule  Ann names it "the Dark." The Dark thing starts to eat shadows and the more shadows it eats, the bigger it gets and the shadows disappear. Eventually the shadow gets so big that it is bigger than Jule Anns house. Finally, she finds the shadow of a chair and breaks off pieces to lure the Dark into the same cookie jar that it had come out of. The Dark gets into the jar and Jule Ann ties up and tapes the jar shut and with her friends she throw's it away. At the end of the story, all the shadows took a full week to come back. 

Why you would/would not use this book in your classroom? I would use this book in a kindergarten classroom to discuss being brave and also, if I worked in a private Christian school it could be a good tie into the idea that as Christians, we have the light of Jesus Christ that always overpowers the dark. 

Appropriate age group for this book: 4-8

Ideas for unit of study to include this book or how you might use this book in the classroom: I was researching ideas that could be used for this book and found an entire unit around Robert Munsch books. And from there they use the books, including The Dark, for teaching and learning skills such as text connections, cause and effect, story elements, vocab, etc. I think that I would use this book in a unit including several of Robert Munsch's books.