The New Kid on the Block

Summary of Book: The New Kid on the Block is a compilation of themed anthologies written by Jack Prelutsky and drawn by James Stevenson. The stories are all meant to be written from a child's perspective on life. For example, the poem "Homework! Oh Homework!" is about a child that hates homework and wants it to go away, which is pretty accurate for most students. Another one is from an older brothers perspective on his younger sister being a sissy and how she is afraid of things. This book could be considered themed poetic collection.

Why you would/would not use this book in your classroom? I would not use this book in my class as I don't like the wording and visuals that the poems create. I don't think they are appropriate and some of them are not kind. For example, the poem about "My Brother's Head should be replaced" does not incite a child to think kindly of their younger sibling.

Appropriate age group for this book: 3-7

Ideas for unit of study to include this book or how you might use this book in the classroom: One way to use this book is to read some of the poems and ask the students if they have ever felt the same as the "child" that wrote the story. Then have the students write their own creative poem about things that they either dislike or like.

Comments

Beautiful Blackbird

Summary of Book: Beautiful Blackbird was written and illustrated by Ashley Bryan. This story starts with in Africa and describes that all the birds were multicolored and non at all had any colors of black. One day all the birds gathered at the lake per Ringdoves request, including blackbird. Ringdove asked who the prettiest bird was and they all responded blackbird. Ringdove asks blackbird to color him black, however blackbird said that it doesn't matter what he looks like on the outside, but what's on the inside. However, he still agrees to color him the next day in black. When he does, all the other birds want to be colored black and blackbird agrees and colors them all black the next day. He paints them all and the birds surround him and sing that black is beautiful. Why you would/would not use this book in your classroom? I would not use this book in my classroom because the general theme of the story kind of threw me off and I was not a huge fan of it. It just s...

Words On Fire

Summary of Book: Words On Fire was written by Jennifer Nielsen and is the recipient of the Bluebonnet Award. In this story we follow 12-year old Audra who lives in recently occupied Lithuania in 1893. Lithuania has been occupied by the Russians that want to cut out all aspects of Lithuania life style and replace it with Russian ways only. This includes the destruction of all books and history of Lithuania. Audra's parents are apart of the resistance and are book smugglers. When they get arrested, Audra goes and lives with an old lady named Milda who also works underground. Audra decides that she is going to pick up the torch that her parents left in order to preserve her countries history and also to try and save her parents. In the end, we see Audra reunited with her parents and the book ban has been lifted from Lithuania. Why you would/would not use this book in your classroom? I would use this book in my classroom because this story has a very interesting ma...

Balloons Over Broadway

Summary of Book: Balloons over Broadway was written and illustrated by Melissa Sweet. The story starts with talking about Tony Sarg and that he became a Marionette man when he was only 6 years old. When he grew uo he moved to London to continue to create his marionettes and eventually moved to New York where his popularity continued to grow. Macy's asked Sarg to create a "puppet parade" for his holiday window. And his mechanical marionettes danced and thrilled the little children who passed. Macy's decided to create a parade for immigrants that would include a street carnival from all over the world. As the parade went on, it grew more and more until it had grown to much and the real animals scared the children to much. So Macy's requested Tony to change the animals. So he decided to make much larger marionettes that could be held up in the sky. However, to make sure they were not to heavy, he made them balloons and filled them with helium. He made sure they we...

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