The awesome black and white illustrations, along with the surprise at the end made this the sure winner. Chalk was a distant second, but it is one of the most checked out books in our library! The kids and I were all sad to move on from wordless books, but we've got fairy tales, fables, non-fiction, poetry, and tons of other fun stories to read in the 2nd half of the year. I'm so excited!
We've been studying wordless picture books for the last month or so in kindergarten through 2nd grade. The kids absolutely love having to "read" the pictures and figure out what is happening in the story. This week, we will vote for which book was our favorite.
We've read some great books including:
Flotsam, by David Weisner
Owly & Wormy, by Andy Runton
One Scary Night, by Antoine Guilloppe
Chalk, by Bill Thomson
A Ball for Daisy, by Chris Rashka
The Lion & the Mouse, by Jerry Pinkney
Where's Walrus?, by Stephen Savage
Chicken and Cat Clean Up, by Sara Varon
Bow-Wow Bugs a Bug, by Mark Newgarden
Beaver is Lost, by Elisha Cooper
The Last Laugh, by Arianne Dewey
Here is our first grade telling of Owly & Wormy: Friends All Aflutter using Voicethread:
To close out in 2nd grade, we read some Owly & Wormy shorts and wrote what was happening beneath. We hung those as a display in the hallway. Then the kids looked at some Garfield comics, and some from Bubba World. Their "reading" isn't perfectly accurate, but some of them are just super cute and some use their most expressive voices and crack me up. Here are some 2nd graders "reading" their comic strips:
These are the posters I created for each role in our 4th grade lit circles. I don't have one for Summarizer done yet, but we've practiced that a lot, and kids generally know what to do. We are using Edmodo to communicate between sections, so that's why everything is posted into Edmodo. We just finished discussing all of the jobs, but we're off to a good start.
Based on the true story of a gorilla named Ivan, this book will make you cry, laugh and really think. All the things a good book does.
What I love most about this book is the depth of the characters. Ivan, Ruby, Stella, Bob, Julia & Mack all have their stories woven into it, bound together in their relationships with each other. The depth of these relationships is what makes the book so beautiful and so heart-breaking at times.
This is a book that I could read over and over. I read it aloud to two 5th grade sections this Fall, after reading it myself last Spring. I still cried both times I read it, and both classes cheered at the end, but were very sad that it was over.
1. Magic--I'm not crazy about books about magic. Fantasy isn't really "my thing." However, though the magic was important in this story, as Rebecca (main character) says in the end, the story isn't really that different with the magic omitted. There were times I forgot that the book was even partially fantasy, because I connected with the main character so deeply that it just seemed like realistic fiction. There was just enough magic, but not too much.
2. Characters--At one point, I literally stopped reading and thought, "Wow, I care so much about Rebecca." I was truly feeling the emotions she was feeling. As an adult, reading a book about a kid who is mad at adults, that wasn't an easy feat. I also enjoyed her connection with Lew and her grandma as the story went on.
3. The ending--I love the ending. I won't give it away, but it just fit perfectly with the rest of the story. The plot took several different changes and I wasn't able to guess what would happen next. Rebecca was on a great adventure. The author's note at the end made me connect all the more. Hearing Laurel Snyder's connection to the story made me understand how she was able to write in a way that pulled me in.
4. The balance--The heartbreaking, the funny, the sentimental, the happy...all the moments just fit so well together.
This is the first book I've read in awhile that I've truly felt a connection to--and I never even went through a similar experience to the main character. The writing was just phenomenal.
