Russian Girl: Life in an Old Russian Town

Summary of Book: Russian Girl: Life in an Old Russian Town was written by Russ Kendall. This book follows the life of a young Russian girl. It gives cultural references as well as showing what the daily life of a child in Russia including going to school, cooking with the family and typical Russian dishes, and then what families in Russia will do for fun over vacations. In the end of the book it gives recipes for Russian food and the Russian alphabet and sayings.

Why you would/would not use this book in your classroom? I would use this book in my classroom as a way to introduce and discuss other cultures and countries.

Appropriate age group for this book: 4-10

Ideas for unit of study to include this book or how you might use this book in the classroom: This book could be used during a reading time where the teacher reads the book to the students and then has them compare and contrast the life of the girl in the story to some aspects in their own lives. Then the teacher could write down all the comparisons and all the contrasts, and then the students could return to their desks and write a short sentence on either a contrast or comparison discussed.

Comments

Beautiful Blackbird

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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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