Reading Review with Christal

  Title: The Rough-Face Girl Author/Illustrator: Rafe Martin/David Shannon Genre(s): Folklore, Fiction Age: 4-8      This book takes a twist on the beloved classic story Cinderella. Long ago there was village off the shores of Lake Ontario, and there were many wigwams, off from the rest, stood one great wigwam. It was painted on its sides, and this was the wigwam where the great and powerful Invisible Being had lived, but no one could see him, except for his sister. There were many women who wanted to marry him, but only the one who could see him, could marry him. There was a poor man who lived in the village with his three daughters. The two oldest daughters were cruel and hard-hearted, and they made their youngest sister sit by a fire, and get burned by the sparks that popped off, and she became very burnt and scarred, and her hair became rugged and charred. They called her ugly and a Rough-Face Girl, and made her life hard and miserable.    One day the ...

Bomer talked about how we can explore reading lives. I feel this is important for teacher's to get a sense of how and when their students like to read. Some questions he presented are listed below: How does your current book travel around with you? What exact part of your backpack, pocket, purse, or whatever is involved? What are the regular sections of your day? What little reading appointments might be possible in there? What are some possible places for reading? How might different places go with different types of reading? Like what could you read on the bus, in bed, at the kitchen table, in school? What are the challenges about each of those places, and how do you deal with those challenges? Who knows what you're reading right now? Who do you sometimes think about telling about your book? Who gives recommendations? Whose reading do you wonder about?      I think these questions make our students think about their reading and what they find works best for them. I refl...

Title: The Rough Patch Author/Illustrator: Brian Lies Award(s): Caldecott Honor Book (2019); Massachusetts Book Award Honor (2019); Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators Crystal Kite Award (2019); Charlotte Zolotow Award Nominee for Highly Commended (2019) Genre(s): Fiction, Picture book, Children's Literature Age: 4-8     This book is about a fox, Evan who created a beautiful garden and maintained it with his best friend, his dog, They did everything together, went on many adventures, loved listening to music and lost of delicious treats. In Evan's garden everything grew as tall and beautiful as the sky. Everything was fine, until Evan's dog died one day. He buried his furry friend in a corner of the garden, and since things weren't the same, the garden became a lonely place full of sadness. One morning he destroyed the entire garden out of anger, and threw all of it into a large pile. The garden quickly started to grow weeds, they were itchy, prickly, spi...

     One of my favorite moments in my life was when I won prom queen my senior year. I very vividly remember having fun with my friends, and worrying about being late, because of hair and make-up, even though I was right on time. I snapped some pictures with my fellow seniors, and friends, and asked my close friends to consider voting for me, as well as other attendees and left it at that once I walked in. We had dinner, danced, and then midway through the night it was time to announce the queen and king. My mom was there, because she was one of the chaperones, and she came in along with our senior sponsor. I was curious why she came in and had her phone out to record, but I didn't think too much of it, at the time. Later I found out our senior sponsor asked her to record for "graduation purposes", it was all a play to help her catch this amazing moment. They announced prom king, as one of my friends, and when she announced queen I was shocked, and happy to hear my name c...

  Title: The Undefeated Author/Illustrator: Kwame Alexander/Kadir Nelson Awards: 2020 Caldecott Medal winner; Golden Kite Award for Picture Book Text Genre(s): Poetry, Children's literature, Narrative poetry, Children's Non-fiction literature Age: 6-9      The Undefeated conveyed stories of different African Americans through a poem. The illustrations allow us to feel what is being said, and showed the various faces of important figures in the African American community. The words in the book talked about the struggles they went through, but highlighted how they were able to pave the way for someone else, and they continued the journey, and the torch is continuously passed from one generation to the next. The author wrote this poem, because so much of the story has been left out, or forgotten. Many American textbooks provide a false narrative, or only tell part of the story, they only highlight so many of the common figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa P...

Title: Show Way Author/Illustrator: Jaqueline Woodson/Hudson Talbott Award(s): Newbery Honor(2006), New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing Genre(s): Fiction, Picture books, Children's Literature Age: 4-8           Show Way by Jaqueline Woodson is about a story of seven generations of African-Americans, based on the author's own personal familial experience. Soonie's great-grandmother was seven when she was sold to a different planation by herself in South Carolina. She left with some bright red thread, and two needles to have as a reminder of her home. She was then raised by Big Mama, and many of the other slave children. She would tell them stories about how children were able to get themselves free, and the children loved these stories. When they were able to rest during the day, Big Mama taught Soonie's great-grandmother sewed colored thread into stars and moons, that as children grew up, they would follow at night leading them to fre...

    For the most part my secondary experiences with literature were rather positive. My middle school English teacher had quite the impact on my literature experience as she took time out to explain things and make them relative to us. She wasn't always my favorite, but helped me understand literature better, and dig deeper. We had a project for a book we read ( The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien), and we were allowed to create any multimedia project that represented something major from the scene, or how we thought a character might look. I chose to do Smaug, the monster who lived in the mountain, and after school for about a week or so she would help me p apier-mâché my character, and questioned why I chose this character, and how I planned on incorporating it in my presentation, it was conversations like these that helped made me question literature, and the book we read. Originally I was not into this book, and when she gave us this project midway through it changed ho...