Andiematis

    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...

    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...

   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...

    Summary of Book: A Tiger Called Tomas was written by Charlotte Zolotow and illustrated by Marta Alvarez Miguens. The book starts with Tomas sitting on his front stoop in his new neighborhood and his mom keeps pushing him to go and talk to his neighbors and the little children, but Tomas keeps questioning and asking but what if they don't like me, to which his mom says "why wouldn't they like you?" However, he never goes up to them and continues to sit on his stoop. At Halloween, Tomas's mom gets him a tiger costume with a mask that covers his face. He has the confidence to go out and get candy from his neighbors since he thinks they won't recognize them. However, as he goes from house to house, his neighbors all recognize him and the lady with the cat asks him to come back and visit the cat because she gets lonely. And then Gerald, the tall boy asks him to come play as well. And one by one neighbors recognize him and ask him to come back or to play with th...

    Summary of Book: drawn together was written by Minh Le and illustrated by Dan Santat. This story starts with a Vietnamese grandfather and his grandson alone. Whenever they try to talk with each other they cannot because the grandfather does not speak English and the grandson does not speak Vietnamese. And then the grandson is drawing a picture of a warrior in his book and the grandpa sees it and gets excited. He goes and gets his own notebook and they start to write together and the gap of communication is bridged and they are now able to speak and communicate through the use of drawing and illustrating. In the end of the story we see that the grandpa and grandson are overjoyed that they are finally able to communicate and relate to one another and are "speechless." Why you would/would not use this book in your classroom? I'm not sure if I would. I appreciate the underlying message, but also I feel as though it is a bit bland and a little boring for students. I like b...

    Summary of Book: Last Stop On Market Street was written by Matt De La Pena and pictured by Christian Robinson. This story follows a little boy named CJ and his nana as they get on the bus after church on Sunday. As they wait for the bus and travel on the bus, CJ keeps complaining about little things such as why they have to walk in the rain and why they don't have a car and have to take the bus. Every time he complains about something, his nana always responds positively. Her reply to the rain is that it's good for the trees and they need to water, and her reply to why they take the bus is because they get to meet the nice bus driver and all the interesting people on the bus. While on the bus they meet a blind man and a man with a guitar plays for them and with all those things along with his nana's sweet words, CJ begins to see the positive side of things. As they get of the bus and head towards the soup kitchen where they are going to serve, CJ tells his grandma he...

    Summary of Book: Thread of Love was written by Kabir Sehgal and Surishtha Sehgal and illustrated by Zara Gonzalez Hoang. This story follows a girl that makes a rakhi for her brother for the Indian festival called rakhi. We read as she reads it and then as she gives it to her brother and then as the siblings spend time together and love each other and then as they spend time with their other families. The story seems to follow a song theme as well as you read it.  Why you would/would not use this book in your classroom? I'm not sure if I would use this story in my classroom because it is apart of the Hindu religion and festival that as a Christian I don't necessarily support. So I'm not sure if I would or not.  Appropriate age group for this book: 3 months-8 years.  Ideas for unit of study to include this book or how you might use t his book in the classroom: I would use this book by reading it and then having students practice retelling the story and demonst...

    Summary of Book: A Gift From Abuela was written and illustrated by Cecilia Ruiz. This story follows the relationship between Abuela and Nina who live in Mexico. These two have a very special bond and they love to spend time together, but their favorite thing to do is sit on the park bench, eat pan dulce and watch the people go by. Abuela decides that she wants to start to save up some money each week so that she can take Nina and do an adventure together, so as time goes on she saves money. However, times in Mexico get harder and Abuela has to start working more and has less money and less time to spend with Nina. And Nina also gets more busy with her own life. One day, Nina realizes she hasn't visited her Abuela in a while, so she goes to her house and finds it dirty and dusty so she starts to clean it. While she's cleaning, she finds the money that Abuela has been saving. Unfortunately, when the government had changed their money style, Abuela had not exchanged her old m...

    Summary of Book: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a pop-up adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Original Tale by Robert Sabuda. This story follows the age old story of Alice as she follows a rabbit into a hole and goes into a grand and fantastical land where she starts an adventure including Mad Hatters and tea parties, a weird Cheshire Cat, and a Queen of Hearts that is intense and scary, and then a trial for stealing the queens tarts. At the end of the story we see Alice being put to execution of beheading for arguing with the king on his interpretation of a letter in defense of the Knave of Hearts. She grows to a huge size and knocks over all of the cards and then abruptly wakes up on her sisters lap, tells her about the weird dream, and then they go in to their house to have tea.  Why you would/would not use this book in your classroom? I would be nervous to use this particular book in my classroom because it is so delicate and easy to damage. So I'm not sure if I wou...