Blog Entry #30

 

One Green Apple

By Eve Bunting

Illustrated by Ted Lewin

Clarion Books, 2006

32 pages

Multicultural

 

            One Green Apple is a very touching story that puts you in an immigrant’s shoes, after coming to America. This book is about a Muslim girl, named Farah, and she cannot speak English yet. This is her first day at school after arriving in America, and she goes on a field trip to an apple orchard with her class. She feels very odd, nervous, and out of place, and she cannot understand anything anyone is saying. She wears a dupatta over her head, women and girls wear them, and it is a custom in her country. She notices that no other girls wear them here. Some of the students have welcoming expressions and some do not, and Farah’s father explained that people from her country are not always well-liked in America. She recognizes some common factors throughout the day like laughter, smiling, and dogs barking. Farah makes a few friends and says her first English word out loud that day, apple.

            The illustrations in One Green Apple are done in watercolor. The paintings in this book look so real and so much like photographs. They are definitely done in a quality that could be hung on the living room wall and are very beautiful. One aspect a reader would notice about the illustrations is the shading of the light and darkness. It is easy to see where the light touches each page. There is use of bright colors, but it is done in a soft and subtle way. Some of the illustrations have negative space, using a muted color, to bring attention to the characters’ actions on the page. I really love the colors chosen, and the quality of the paintings in One Green Apple.

            One Green Apple is a second grade level book. I believe it would take at least a student in the second grade to understand how Farah felt and to recognize the underlying conflicts between American and Muslim cultures that affect her in the book. If I were a second grade teacher, I would read this book aloud to my students and make it available in the classroom library. For older grade levels, it could be used to spark a discussion or debate about the issues in America today that are mentioned in this book. It would be a great opportunity to teach about immigration or the Muslim culture. It provides a chance for students to connect to how they would feel if they were in a new place with people that spoke a totally different language from them. One Green Apple has no awards or honors.

Blog Entry #29

 

My Abuelita

Written by Tony Johnston

Illustrated by Yuyi Morales

Harcourt Children’s Books, 2009

32 pages

Multicultural

 

            My Abuelita is a super cute book, and the way the story is told is quite funny. It is about a boy that lives with his grandmother, or abuelita, and her cat named Frida Kahlo. The way the boy describes his abuelita in the book is what is hilarious. The boy and his grandmother get up, get a bath and a shower, have breakfast, get dressed, and he helps her get her stuff in the car and ready for work. She likes to stretch, yodel, and sing to get ready for it, and he does it with her. At the end of the book, it reveals his abuelita is a storyteller, she tells stories to children, and he wants to be one just like her.

            The illustrations in My Abuelita are very unique. They are made up of polymer clay, wire, felting wool, acrylic paints, fabric, wood, metals, and Mexican crafts. They are made, then photographed and digitally altered. It looks like objects are set on top of paintings and different surfaces. The characters are little dolls dressed in fabric clothing. They resemble little baby dolls, especially their hands and feet, and they have sort of strange-looking faces. This book has different illustrations than you would normally see, but that is part of what makes it fun.

            My Abuelita would be appropriate for a second or third grade student and up. It would be a great read for an independent read or for a teacher read aloud. A teacher could really use this book to connect with a Spanish-speaking ELL student. It would be a good read for an ELL student. This book would provide a great opportunity to teach about the Hispanic culture, and it could create a connection through grandparents. Almost everyone has a grandparent they love, and it could bridge the gap between two different cultures in a classroom. The only thing I wished this book had would be a guide to some of the Spanish words, because it is hard to know the pronunciations of them. My Abuelita has no awards or honors.

Blog Entry #28

 

 

The Friday Nights of Nana

By Amy Hest

Illustrated by Claire A. Nivola

Candlewick Press, 2001

23 pages

Multicultural

 

            The Friday Nights of Nana is a book that reflects Jewish culture, and I have not seen many children’s books that mention the traditions of this culture. It is a really nice story about a girl, named Jennie, and her Nana. Jennie is helping her Nana prepare for a Sabbath meal for the whole family to eat. Nana and Jennie pick out their clothes, get flowers, bake pies, and braid the dough for challah. It is about everything they did to prepare for the Sabbath meal, from the morning to the dinner that night. The Friday Nights of Nana makes you feel the religious traditions of the Jewish culture and the pleasure of being with family.

            The illustrations in The Friday Nights of Nana are drawn in pen and ink, and filled in using watercolor painting. The illustrations are very realistic, like a painted photograph. The lines are very soft and thin. There are pops of bright color on every page, but it is usually from the characters’ clothing and items in the background setting. The majority of the background is clean, with muted colors, and there are a lot of white and taupe shades. I think the illustrations are very appealing and simple, yet formal. The formal look is due to the illustrations being framed-in square, and the negative space that is given for the text.

            The Friday Nights of Nana would be appropriate for a second grade level and up. It would be a great book for an independent reader or for a classroom library. It would be a good book for a teacher to read aloud and use as an opportunity to teach about a different culture, the Jewish culture. It would be great for students to see how families in other cultures gather together or to talk about grandparents, and the traditions they have in their families. The Friday Nights of Nana has no awards or honors.

 

Blog Entry #27

Walking Home to Rosie Lee

By A. LaFaye

Illustrated by Keith D. Shepherd

Cinco Puntos Press, 2011

32 pages

Multicultural

 

            Walking Home to Rosie Lee would be considered historical fiction, but I chose this book because of the heartwarming story about the African American culture. This book highlights a common struggle among African Americans, after the freeing of slaves. It is about a little boy named Gabe, his father died, and his mother was sold to another slave-owner before emancipation. Gabe walked and walked all over the South, from Mobile to Tennessee, in search of his mother, Rosie Lee. He met many different people in search of family members and many different Rosie’s, just not his. Gabe was tired, hungry, and just about to give up on ever finding his mother when he saw her sitting out pies in the windowsill of a hotel kitchen. This book will definitely tug at your heart strings and make you realize just how many people were walking the roads, all over the South, in search of their family members. It really places in your mind just how many families were worn torn apart, some were never reunited, and it is something many today would never even think about.

           The illustrations in Walking Home to Rosie Lee were done in acrylic paint. They all have a rough-edged texture and depth of color. The colors used in this book really pop and are pretty bright. The characters in the book are realistic when shown up close but still done in a graphic style. I believe the illustrations really reflect the mood of the story and the African American culture. The reader can feel the emotion and rich history on every page of the book.

Walking Home to Rosie Lee would be appropriate for a least second or third grade and up because of the content area subject matter. This book would be great to use during a social studies lesson about the post Civil War reconstruction period. It would be a great teacher read aloud or an addition to a classroom library. This book would be wonderful to pull out during Black History Month every year. Walking Home to Rosie Lee is a great read about African American history in the United States. It was selected as a 2012 Skipping Stones Honor Book and for the 2012 IRA Teacher's Choices Reading List.

 

           

Blog Entry #26

 

How Do You Sleep?

By Louise Bonnett-Rampersaud

Illustrated by Kristin Kest

Marshall Cavendish Children, 2005

30 pages

Nonfiction

 

            My first impression of How Do You Sleep? was that it did not really seem like a nonfiction book, because it has a nice rhyme to the text and beautiful illustrations. The text in this book is written in a repetitive, poetic style and has good use of rhyme. The pages visit different animals and tell how each one of them sleeps. How Do You Sleep also mentions where each of the animals sleep and describes what they look and sound like. At the end of the book, there are children. Their dad reads them a story, and it tells how they fall asleep for the night.

            The illustrations in How Do You Sleep? are just stunning. They are done in oil paint on paper and are very realistic. The illustrator did a wonderful job making the animals look as real as possible, and the settings of the illustrations are also accurate. The color is very nice and soft, and not too bright. There were very natural colors used in the paintings, because all of the settings are in nature. The pages that include the children are not, but they look like the classic, historical paintings of children. The way the children are dressed, along with some other features of the paintings, makes it feel like they are in an earlier time period.

            How Do You Sleep? feels like one of those books you could read to a very young child as a bedtime story. It would be appropriate for a teacher to read aloud in preschool or the early elementary grades, like kindergarten or first grade. I think it would be great for a beginning reader, the text is not lengthy, and the vocabulary would not be difficult. I believe the repetitive nature of the book makes it a great book for a student to choral or echo read. The first two words of each line repeat, and two lines on each page rhyme at the end. The book would be great for poetry lesson because of this, and it has poetic form. This book has no awards or honors.

Blog Entry #25

How People Learned to Fly

By Fran Hodgkins

Illustrated by True Kelley

Collins Publishers, 2007

30 pages

Nonfiction

 

            I chose How People Learned to Fly, because I thought the title was interesting and wanted to read about it. This book connects with the thoughts and answers the questions children would have about flying. It really explains scientific things like gravity, drag, thrust, wind, lift, wing shape, and engines. It also gives some details about the history of flight and some of the first machines made to test flight. It basically explains what it takes to fly, and I found it pretty interesting. One very interesting fact in the book was about an English man named Monk Elimer. He strapped some wings on his arms and broke his legs after a 15 second flight in A.D. 1010.

            The medium was not mentioned in the book, but it looks like it was done using acrylic painting. Some of the illustrations resemble watercolor painting, so it could be a mix of both media. I assumed painting was the medium used because of the visible brushstrokes in the illustrations. The illustrations have depth and texture, and some look realistic but some look like cartoonist style. The planes, birds, and landscapes look realistic, but the people look like cartoon characters. The illustrations are very bright and contain a lot of blue sky, which would be appropriate for a book about flying.

           

          How People Learned to Fly would probably be more appropriate for third grade and up, since it contains a lot of content area subject matter. This book could be added to a classroom library for a student to read independently, if they are interested in the subject. A teacher could use this book for a read aloud if he/she were doing a science lesson on flight. There are a lot of experiments that could stem from reading this book. It could be used as an introduction to the history of flight, although it does not go into great detail about that. There are plenty of opportunities to teach new vocabulary from How People Learned to Fly. This book has no awards or honors.

Blog Entry #24

 

 

Roadwork

By Sally Sutton

Illustrated by Brian Lovelock

Candlewick Press, 2008

30 pages

Nonfiction

 

            Roadwork is a lyrical nonfiction text that would appeal to most boys, and that is why I chose this book. This book goes through every step that it takes to build a road from start to finish, and it gives the names and information about the machines at the end of the book. What I really loved about this book was the text is written lyrically, like a poem. The second and last line of every page rhymes. The lines are very repetitive and have a lot of expressive sounds to depict the roadwork throughout the book. This was not how I expected a book about roadwork to be written, and it was a pleasant surprise.

            The illustrations are done in pigmented inks, but they almost look like paintings. The texture in the illustrations looks like there are paintbrush strokes on the pages. The colors used in the book are very bright and are mostly primary. The illustrations are very simple, some have a lot of negative space, and the machines or the setting is usually the focal point on the page. Every page has a double-page spread illustration and the text format is mostly formal. The illustrations are very cute and look just like a little boy’s style.

            Roadwork would be appropriate for as early as preschool to first or second grade. This book would be a great addition to a kindergarten or first grade classroom library or for a teacher to read aloud. A teacher could really grab a boy’s attention with this book. Poetry could be taught from this book, because it has a poetic form and rhyme. Onomatopoeia would be one of the best things to be taught from this book, because every page has sounds of the roadwork expressed in words. Choral reading could be done easily. Roadwork has no awards or honors.