Module 5 : The Blacker the Berry

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SUMMARY

This is a poetry book about African Americans and how their skin color makes them beautiful no matter what. The illustrations are happy and melodic with the verses of the poems. This books is about embracing individuality, and that we are people, and we are more than just our skin color. The children's skin is compared to different foods and drinks and beautifully described and enveloped in many senses.

APA REFERENCE
Thomas, J., & Cooper, F. (2008). The blacker the berry: Poems. New York: HarperCollins.

IMPRESSIONS

I am generally not drawn to poems, but this books was well-written and beautifully illustrated. I enjoyed reading this book and will use it in library lessons in the future. I appreciated the comparison of skin tone to different foods. The author beautifully described the tones, and it was a very enjoyable book.

PROFESSIONAL REVIEW
[Review of the book The Blacker the Berry by Joyce Carol Thomas]. Kirkus review retrieved on 09/30/14 from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/joyce-carol-thomas/the-blacker-the-berry/.

“What shade is human?” Thomas’s evocative, colorful poetry seeks to answer that question with this celebration of the diversity of African-American children across the spectrum. From “Raspberry Black” to “Golden Goodness,” Cooper’s soft and realistic illustrations almost leap from the page, incorporating natural images from the text in their depiction of a gallery of beautiful, self-confident children. Difficult intraracial social issues related to skin color are handled with truth and respect. For instance, in the poem “Snowberries,” a fair-skinned child speaks back to those who would question her identity: “The words cut deep down / Beyond the bone / Beneath my snowy skin / Deep down where no one can see / I bleed the ‘one drop of blood’ / That makes Black me.” On the page opposite, an auburn-haired girl smiles at the reader, eyes twinkling. An essential picture book that helps young children understand and appreciate differences in skin color. As the epigraph states so truthfully, “Colors, without black, / couldn’t sparkle quite so bright.” (Picture book/poetry. 5-10)

LIBRARY USES

This book would be a great read during Black History Month or at any time throughout the school year to teach about acceptance, and that we are all the same and beautiful even though our skin tones my be different. 

Module 5 : Chatto's Kitchen

 http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51olRcP6hxL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

SUMMARY

Chato's Kitchen is about two cats who decide to have mice over for dinner, and the mice willingly accept their invite not knowing they are the dinner feast. When their dog friend Chorizo comes over, the tides change and all the likely enemies enjoyed a Mexican dinner together.

APA REFERENCE
Soto, G., & Guevara, S. (1995). Chato's kitchen. New York: Putnam's.


IMPRESSIONS

This book was entertaining, but the illustrations were far better than the storyline. If this book is being read aloud, the pictures must be shown in order to get the full idea on what the author was trying to convey. All in all, it was a fun and entertaining read.

PROFESSIONAL REVIEW
[Review of the book Chato's Kitchen by Gary Soto]. Kirkus Review retrieved on 10/01/14 from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/gary-soto/chatos-kitchen/.

Chato and Novio Boy, low-riding East Los Angeles homeboys of the feline variety, have dinner guests. The invitees, a family of five fat mice who just moved in next door, haven't an inkling that they are the intended main course. But when the mice bring along their friend Chorizo (a worldly mutt in a slouch beret) to share the grub, he thwarts the cats' connivings. This unlikely three- species chow-down is a sweet salute to Spanish cooking, with fajitas, frijoles, and quesadillas sharing center stage. Soto delivers a spare, clever text; the words skip like stones across water--``His tail began to swing to the rhythm. He felt the twinge of mambo in his hips.'' Guevara's swarming, luxuriant illustrations give the atmosphere palpability, with brushstrokes so fresh readers will want to stick their fingers in the paint to feel its texture. Menace hangs in the air; the artist mixes the sinisterness of R. Crumb with moments of Edvard Munch terror, yet it seems likely from the outset that the mice are more than capable of looking after themselves. Incidental touches--little devils and angels darting about, a bird wedding glimpsed through a window--are there for the sharp-eyed. Smart, with a nice edge. Soto's inspired finger-snapping prose has found an equally imaginative comrade in Guevara's colorful urban paintings. (Picture book. 4-8)

LIBRARY USES

Chato's Kitchen can be used to help aid in the understanding of dialect. It can also be paired with any Skippy Jon Jones too. Dialect and inflection is difficult for some students to understand, and reading this book aloud will be a humorous way for students to hear dialect.

Module 4 : The Twenty-One Balloons

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SUMMARY

This Newbery Award winning book begins as a retired school teacher, Professor Sherman builds a hot air balloon house which fails, and he lands on a fantasy island. Once he spends a year alone in his travels, the people of his country want to know what he saw during that time.

Once his hot air balloon house fails, he lands on an island is full of diamonds, wealth, and the people on the island are quite the inventors. They live in a mostly worry free world, other than a big volcano that may erupt at any given time. However, they are fully prepared to make a mass exit in the even that happens. 

The volcano of the Krakatoa Island erupts, and Professor Sherman along with the other islanders climb aboard their invention which is a platform that is held afloat by twenty one balloons. This invention gets him back home safely, to which he is able to finally describe his adventures. 

APA REFERENCE
Bois, W. (1947). The twenty-one balloons,. New York: Viking Press.

IMPRESSIONS

This books was a fun and imaginative read, full of inventions, diamonds, and beaches. To a small extent, it resembles the Disney movie "Up". Some of the chapters were lengthy, and had some irrelevant information, but being the book was published in 1947, author William Pene Du Bois was ahead of his time.

PROFESSIONAL REVIEW
[Review of the book The Twenty One Balloons by William Pene Du Bois]. Kirkus Review retrieved on November 1, 2014 from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/william-pene-dubois-4/the-twenty-one-balloons-2/.

Fanciful adventures of Professor Sherman, who wanted to retire for a year's vacation in a balloon. He broke the 8-Days Around the World record; he landed in a volcanic heaving island of the Pacific; he saw solid diamond mines, the incredible islanders and their incredible way of life, and with the help of a volcanic eruption, he managed the rest of the trip and came home to San Francisco's Explorers' Club to recount his adventures. His Odyssey is a blend of Gulliver and the Oz books -- straight adventure fantasy, flimsy fun. Mr. duBois has done his own beguiling pictures.

LIBRARY USES
This books has had a cover upgrade, and a library lesson could be to compare the original cover with the new cover and explain how publishers are making covers more detailed to entice readers and to shed some insight on what the book is about. The new cover is easier for the reader to infer what the book is about. 

Module 4 : The Giver

 

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SUMMARY

Newbery Award winning author Lois Lowry writes a futuristic novel about a world where there are no feelings, everyone is equal, and lives day to day with no worries. That is until Jonas turns 12 and receives the job as "The Giver" with all the other children in his community that turn 12 and receive their new duties as well. The responsibilities of being "The Giver" bears too much weight for Jonas to carry, and he takes it upon himself to get out of the community and saves Gabriel, a young child that is staying with his family unit that is due to be released the next day.

APA REFERENCE
Lowry, L. (1993). The giver. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.


IMPRESSIONS

This book does a great job creating the sense of numbness within the characters. It isn't until about half way through the book that Jonas starts to question The Giver and his realities. Like Jonas, the reader then gains a sense of frustration and begins to fight for the others in the community to be allowed to feel, see color, and all the other things that being human allows us to do. The ending was a bit confusing and frustrating. It leaves the reader unsure if there is a sequel, and unclear as to what happens to Jonas and Gabriel at the end.

PROFESSIONAL REVIEW
[Review of the book The Giver by Lois Lowry]. Kirkus Reveiw retrieved on November 14, 2014 from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/lois-lowry/the-giver/.

In a radical departure from her realistic fiction and comic chronicles of Anastasia, Lowry creates a chilling, tightly controlled future society where all controversy, pain, and choice have been expunged, each childhood year has its privileges and responsibilities, and family members are selected for compatibility. As Jonas approaches the "Ceremony of Twelve," he wonders what his adult "Assignment" will be. Father, a "Nurturer," cares for "newchildren"; Mother works in the "Department of Justice"; but Jonas's admitted talents suggest no particular calling. In the event, he is named "Receiver," to replace an Elder with a unique function: holding the community's memories--painful, troubling, or prone to lead (like love) to disorder; the Elder ("The Giver") now begins to transfer these memories to Jonas. The process is deeply disturbing; for the first time, Jonas learns about ordinary things like color, the sun, snow, and mountains, as well as love, war, and death: the ceremony known as "release" is revealed to be murder. Horrified, Jonas plots escape to "Elsewhere," a step he believes will return the memories to all the people, but his timing is upset by a decision to release a newchild he has come to love. Ill-equipped, Jonas sets out with the baby on a desperate journey whose enigmatic conclusion resonates with allegory: Jonas may be a Christ figure, but the contrasts here with Christian symbols are also intriguing. Wrought with admirable skill--the emptiness and menace underlying this Utopia emerge step by inexorable step: a richly provocative novel. (Fiction. 12-16)

LIBRARY USES
This book could be used as a book talk in how a story can seen as utopian and dystopian at the same time. There could be lengthy discussions on how perception and reality fit into our lives, an "outside looking in approach".

Module 3 : Ox Cart Man

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SUMMARY
Ox Cart Man is a poetic storybook about early America written by Donald Hall and illustrated by Barbara Cooney. The pictures are very golden with thin outlines. The story takes the reader on a year long journey in New England through the seasons.

APA REFERENCE
Hall, D., Cooney, B., & Viking Press. (1979). Ox-cart man. New York: Viking Press.

IMPRESSIONS
The pictures are almost like a painted collage, and that makes this particular style of illustrations work with the setting being in New England. The reader is really taken on a journey, and is able to travel with the characters in the book.


PROFESSIONAL REVIEW

[Review of Ox Cart Man, by Donald Hall]. Horn Book. Retrieved 10/15/14 from     http://www.hbook.com/2013/10/news/awards/horn-book-reviews-caldecott-medal-winners-1980-1989/#.

Like a pastoral symphony translated into picture book format, the stunning combination of text and illustrations re-creates the mood of nineteenth-century rural New England. Economical and straightforward, the narrative achieves a poetic tone through the use of alliteration and  repetition, as in the description of the ox-cart man’s preparations for his journey to Portsmouth. “He packed a bag of wool / he sheared from the sheep in April. / He packed a shawl his wife wove on a loom/ from yarn spun at the spinning wheel / from sheep sheared in April.” As an appropriate contrast, the full-color illustrations, suggesting early American paintings on wood, depict the countryside through which he travels, the jostle of the marketplace, and the homely warmth of family life. The various phenomena of the New England landscape —  the vibrant foliage of autumn, the lurid sunsets of winter, the delicate abundance of an orchard in spring — evoke the pattern of a lifestyle geared to the rhythm of the seasonal cycle. Quiet but not static, the book celebrates the peacefulness of a time now past but one which is still, nevertheless, an irrefutable part of the American consciousness.

reviewed in the February 1980 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1981

LIBRARY USES

This would be a great story to read aloud, and have an open discussion to talk about all the different jobs that each family member had. A discussion can also be about how families work together to make things happen for the better. This story shows how a family working together is a lot like teamwork. Another discussion could be how we do things differently in modern times versus how they were done in the story. 

Module 3 : Flotsam

 

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SUMMARY

The definition of flotsam is debris or items that have been washed up on shore. This book is a wordless book, yet the storyline is crystal clear. This story is about a boy who finds flotsam, and one of the more intriguing items he finds is an underwater camera. This camera is such a treasure because it holds images from deep down under the sea.

APA REFERENCE
Weisner, D. (2006). Flotsam. New York: Clarion Books

IMPRESSIONS
Beautifully and vividly illustrated, this book works even better without words. The reader can swim through the pages and photos from the underwater camera as though they were there themselves. It also gives the reader a bit of hope and surprise to find an item like that too!

PROFESSIONAL REVIEW
[Review of the book Flotsam by David Weisner]. Kirkus Review retrieved on October 21, 2014 from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/david-wiesner/flotsam/.

From arguably the most inventive and cerebral visual storyteller in children’s literature, comes a wordless invitation to drift with the tide, with the story, with your eyes, with your imagination. A boy at the beach picks up a barnacle-encrusted underwater camera. He develops the film, which produces, first, pictures of a surreal undersea world filled with extraordinary details (i.e., giant starfish bestride the sea carrying mountainous islands on their backs), and then a portrait of a girl holding a picture of a boy holding a picture of another boy . . . and so on . . . and on. Finally, the boy needs a microscope to reveal portraits of children going back in time to a sepia portrait of a turn-of-the-century lad in knickers. The boy adds his own self-portrait to the others, casts the camera back into the waves, and it is carried by a sea creature back to its fantastic depths to be returned as flotsam for another child to find. In Wiesner’s much-honored style, the paintings are cinematic, coolly restrained and deliberate, beguiling in their sibylline images and limned with symbolic allusions. An invitation not to be resisted. (Picture book. 6-11)

LIBRARY USES

This book would be fun to display on the projector for the entire class to view. There could be 2 activities that could take place. A quiet story time would be as the librarian flips the pages, the students would write words to the story, and then share their own words to the illustrations of Flotsam. Another activity would be more interactive, and the students could tell the story out loud as the librarian flips the pages.

Module 2 : Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs

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SUMMARY

This fantastic book is a quirky story written by Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett. The story takes place in a town called Chewandswallow. In this little town, when it rains, it rains food! The townspeople have no reason to go grocery shopping or to go out to eat for dinner because every day, food falls from the sky. Eventually the "storms" get so bad, the food is so gigantic that it now is creating catastrophes for the citizens. By the end of the book, the people of Chewandswallow must now get their food the normal way, and grocery shop and cook as usual.

APA REFERENCE

Barrett, J., & Barrett, R. (1988). Cloudy with a chance of meatballs. New York: Atheneum.

IMPRESSIONS

With dated illustrations, and dull colors, this book depicts the 1970's era. Simple lines and cross-hatch shading make the drawings a tad rough, yet allow the reader to embrace the story. Every human loves to eat, and what better way to obtain food than have it fall freely from the sky. Although most would think this would be a great way to avoid the grocery store and cooking, the gluttony and laziness of the townspeople starts to wreak havoc on the community. This is a fun book for young children to fantasize about such a fictitious event.

PROFESSIONAL REVIEW
[Review of the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, by Judy Barrett]. Kirkus Review retrieved on 10/30/14 from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/judi-barrett-8/cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/.

A flying pancake at breakfast triggers Grandpa's bedtime story set in the far-off land of Chewanswallow, where the food comes out of the sky and ""whatever the weather served, that was what they ate."" Most of the book consists of nothing more than elaborations on this conceit, with running menu information decked out in weather report terminology, but Judi Barrett's examples are nutty enough so that kids won't tire of the gag--even though Ron Barrett's flippy pop cartoons are too literal to enlarge it. The plot thickens with the maple syrup, and at last the portions grow so large that the people are being bombarded and buried by food--and so they all sail off on peanut-butter sandwiches to a land where food is purchased at the supermarket. A dubious improvement perhaps, but Grandpa's imaginings are very close to a little kid's funny bone--which everyone knows is located somewhere along the intestinal tract.

LIBRARY USES
This would be fun to create a class book. Each student could write a short essay and begin the title with "Cloudy with a Chance of ________". Once the books is complete, it could be bound for a library read aloud, and also for student checkouts. 

Module 2: Swimmy

http://www.randomhousekids.com/media/images/books/cover_images/9780394826202.jpg.172x250_q85.jpg

SUMMARY

A tiny little black fish helps a scared school of red fish become brave by overcoming their fears. There were many scary predators deep in the ocean, and it made the little red fish want to hide together without exploring the ocean. Swimmy comes along and teaches the school that with teamwork anything is possible.

APA REFERENCE

Lionni, L., & Lionni, L. (1963). Swimmy. New York: Pantheon.

IMPRESSIONS

This is a great book for young readers to learn about collaboration and teamwork. The images are soft and airy, yet display a strong message. It displays scenes of strife where most "people" would give up or walk away, yet Swimmy is confident, positive, and creative in his solutions.

PROFESSIONAL REVIEW

Linda (April 11, 2014). [Review of Swimmy, by Leo Lionni]. Goodreads. Retrieved 10/10/14 from https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/114308.Swimmy?from_search=true#other_reviews.

As a 50th Anniversary edition, you know it's got to be a classic. Indeed, it is.

Swimmy is a little black fish. He swims the big sea alone much of the time and is lonely. He does find other small fish to be fearful of those big fish, the predator fish. Swimmy comes up with a wonderful teamwork plan to keep them safe and yet able to swim in their ocean rather than staying huddled up inside a cavern or behind a rock. It is their home too, you know.

This is a book filled with great illustrations that takes the reader below the surface of the sea. Through discovery in this big wide ocean, Swimmy finds that a little bit of community and working together to overcome danger and releasing fear turns loneliness into fresh expansive living by being open to what is before you. We can take this lesson and use it whether under water, in the air, or on the earth. You will love this book if it is new to you or if it is time to break it out for the grandchildren.

Award: Caldecott Honor Book - 1964

Reading Level: Age range: 3 - 7 Years

LEO LIONNI wrote and illustrated more than 40 picture books, including four Caldecott Honor books--Inch by Inch, Swimmy, Frederick, and Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse. He was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1910. He attended schools in Europe and the United States, eventually earning a PhD. He spoke five languages. In 1939, he immigrated to the United States, and was naturalized as a citizen in 1945. He worked as a design director, artist, author, and sculptor. His work has been shown throughout Europe and America. He died in 1999 at the age of 89.
Random House has devoted a page with links to learn more about Mr. Lionni @ http://www.randomhousekids.com/brand/... It includes activities, videos, and all the books that they have published of Mr. Lionni's.

LIBRARY USES

This book would be great used in an elementary setting to demonstrate anti-bullying. There could also be a short reenactment of the story line to show how it is easier to stand up against the bad if you are in a large group (power in numbers).

Module 1: Interrupting Chicken

SUMMARY
This is a story about a quirky young chicken that loves to get read stories before bedtime. He is so excited when his papa starts to read him a story, he can't help himself not to finish. His papa gets frustrated, and tell the young chicken to read him a bedtime story instead. 

Stein, D. (2010). Interrupting chicken. Somerville, Mass.: Candlewick Press. 


IMPRESSIONS

This is a sweet book that shows the relationship between a father and son during a sweet part of the day, bedtime. Most stories try to evoke emotion between a mother and her children, yet this children's book displays a father doing what seems to be a night routine with his son. I love how this book shows the young chicken eager to read, and the reader can tell there is so much excitement that this little chicken looks forward to this part of the evening. The illustrations have an oil pastel feel about them, and at times display rough sketch marks. The colors are deep and warm to show that even though the book doesn't show windows, it is still night time. The lit up lamp creates a circle glow around the characters to make the reader feel as though they are in a theater to show where the spotlight is on the actors. I also love how the papa chicken reads the young chicken classic stories like Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood for bedtime. The illustrations of the classic stories shows little chicken in the book, which also shows the reader how interested and excited he is to hear these stories.

PROFESSIONAL REVIEW
[Review of the book Interrupting Chicken, by D. Stein]. Kirkus Review retrieved on Sept. 9, 2014 from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/david-ezra-stein/interrupting-chicken/.

Despite repeated vows to stop interrupting, a little red chicken can’t resist jumping in to cut her Papa’s bedtime tales short with plot giveaways—“DON’T GO IN! SHE’S A WITCH!”—and truncated, happy endings. Endowing his poultry with flamboyantly oversized combs and wattles, Stein switches between stylish but cozy bedroom scenes and illustrations from each attempted story (into which little red chicken forcibly inserts herself) done in a scribbly, line-and-color style reminiscent of Paul Galdone’s picture-book fairy tales. Having run out of stories, exasperated Papa suggests to little red chicken that she make one up for him, which she does in laborious block print on lined paper, complete with crayoned stick-figure illustrations. Closing with an intimate snuggle after Papa instantly dozes off, this tender iteration of a familiar nighttime ritual will be equally welcomed by fond parents and those children for whom listening to stories is anything but a passive activity. (Picture book. 4-6)

LIBRARY USES

This would be a great lesson for the beginning of the year for young elementary students. If a librarian does a read aloud, it would be a nice way to show that although the students may have read or heard the story before, they need to listen quietly. It is also a good way to start a lesson on listening and library manners.