A Tiger Called Tomas

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 them. When Tomas goes home he looks in the mirror and is shocked they all new who he was. His mom said that they all liked him and Tomas feels amazing and realizes that he liked them as well.

Why you would/would not use this book in your classroom? I really enjoyed this book and the story of it. I thought it was cute and well written and the illustrations were really good. The only reason I would not use this book in my classroom is because I do not celebrate Halloween. It goes against my faith and so I'm not sure that I could read a story about it.

Appropriate age group for this book: 3-6

Ideas for unit of study to include this book or how you might use this book in the classroom: A cute activity of incorporating this book would be to read it and then have my students create their own masks that cover their faces and then have everybody in the classroom try and recognize who everybody is.

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