Crispin by Avi

I absolutely love to read children’s literature. It may be my favorite genre. But I definitely get stuck in the rut of reading the same kinds of books and historic fiction is not usually my cup of tea. So I went into Crispin fully preparing to not like it. And at first I had a really hard time getting into it, but then Avi definitely sucked me and I got lost in the story.

I don’t think that this is a book I would use with my kiddos. I think they are too young, first of all, and I also think there is a lot of talk of religion. I kind of hate that teachers need to be so politically correct in schools nowadays, and I can just hear the angry parent emails already. In a public school I think it’s too touchy of a subject to delve into, or at least delve into well. If I taught older kids, or if we studied the time period in the book it might make more sense.

Some other award winning books I have read include The View from Saturday by EL Konigsburg and A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L’engle. It’s hard to compare books like these. I think that historic fiction is such a different genre because there is so much research and background that go into it. And if you have the background info on the time period of a book you will take something much different from it than a person who knows nothing of the history.

It’s good they have guidelines for the Newberry Award because something like great literature is so subjective and changes from person to person. I can’t even imagine having to pick a winner. I think it would be incredibly hard. Throughout Newberry winners I see a lot of common themes. They are often great tales of childhood, and children overcoming tremendous obstacles. These books all have great morals that I would want to share with my children.

Kid's Lit Websites

One of the sites I found and really enjoyed is the site for Chris Van Ahllsburg. http://www.chrisvanallsburg.com/home.html

I love Chris Van Allsburg’s books. They are wonderfully written and beautifully illustrated. They also have great morals and themes that make them wonderful books for classroom discussion. One of my favorite books of his is The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. This book lends itself to creative writing and there is a place on the website where students can actually submit the stories they have written to Van Allsburg.

Another site I found was Roald Dahl’s website. http://www.roalddahl.com/

It is very fun and interactive and I use it with my third graders because we do an author study of Dahl. They just enjoy getting to explore the site and all the interactive features. 

http://www.scholastic.com/home/

Scholastic has fantastic teaching resources available, many for free. Printables, daily starters, book clubs and videos are just a few of the things teachers have access to.

http://www.goodreads.com/

This site is not specifically for children’s literature. It is a book social networking website. I would show my kids how to use it and allow them to peruse it themselves. You put in and rate books that you have read and the site recommends books to you based on the reading you have done. This would be fantastic for reluctant readers to help them find appropriate and interesting books to read.

http://www.childrensliteraturenetwork.org/

This site has video book trailers that give a book talk to get kids excited about reading. It also has video interviews with authors and illustrators to get kids excited about writing!

Poetry Websites

http://www.seussville.com/

http://sciencepoems.net/

http://www.scholastic.com/browse/search/teacher?query=poetry&as_values_054=&channelOnly=true

I have always been able to find a plethora of astronomy resources online. It just seems to be a topic that enough people are interested in and post cool websites and books and information. When I was specifically searching for this assignment the first website I came across was http://www.kidsastronomy.com/. This website is targeted at children and it appears to be very user-friendly because of that. I think that my third graders could easily navigate this site. The purpose of this website is educational: to be a free resource to teach kids about astronomy. It was created by the Kids Know It network, and they have websites about lots of different topics for kids to learn from.  Kidsastronomy.com is strictly facts based: there are not opinions or biases. The information is aimed at younger students, so I’m sure that more in depth information is absent purposefully. I tested several of the links on this website and they all were still working properly, and there were no spelling or grammar errors that I saw. The copyright date on the page is 1998-2013. This is an astronomy site and a few of the topics covered on it include the planets, black holes, distances in space, constellations, and space shuttles. There are also astronomy games, free lessons, and videos available.  I am very excited that I found this website and I will definitely be incorporating some of it’s content into my integrated unit.

Roald Dahl Books

Two of the books I read this week were The BFG by Roald Dahl and The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl. I do use both of these books with my third graders. I so an author study in my class where each reading group is doing books by the same author. Dahl has a very wide range of reading levels among his books. The Magic Finger I use with my lower readers. It is considered a grade level 3.1 equivalent. I use The BFG with my advanced readers. It is considered a 4.8 grade level equivalent. When we get together as a class to discuss our books I like to Identify similarities and differences with the different books by the same author. We talk about the tone of the book, the style of writing, the kind of words used, and the moral of the stories. Students could even create a venn diagram to show their findings. Another activity could be using non-linguistic representations. Students could “jigsaw” read the books and then share what their book was about in a creative fashion, such as a play they act out. That way all the students in the class will have an idea about what each book was about, while only needing to read one of the books. Jigsaw is a great way to get a lot of information to students while they only need to master a small piece of the information.