Annotated Bibliography
The book blurbs found below refer to seven strategies that students must master in order to be literate. Those strategies are:
- Making Connections/Schema (background knowledge): Activating relevant, prior knowledge to make connections before, during, and after reading and storing new information with other related memories
- Visualizing/Sensory Images Creating pictures in the mind using all of the senses and emotions
- Questioning Asking questions before, during, and after reading to better understand what is read
- Inferring Using background knowledge, combined with evidence from the text, to make inferences and draw conclusions
- Determining Importance Identifying the main ideas, what the author considers important, and the theme
- Synthesizing Combining what is known with new information to understand the text
- Monitoring for Meaning or Fix- up Strategies Using “fix-up” strategies when coming to an unknown word or a confusing part of the text
Barclay, Jane. (2009). Proud as a Peacock, Brave as a Lion. Toronto: Tundra Books.
Illustrated by Renné Benoit.
Main Character: Male
Picture Storybook: Contemporary Fiction
Age level: Cycle 1 or Cycle 2
While a young boy looks through an album of his granfather’s war photos, he learns from his grandfather what it means to remember. Going through many similes, his grandfather changes his likeness throughout his wartime encounters. From proud as a peacock, to busy as a beaver, to brave as a lion—the grandson, like an elephant, will never forget the words of his grandfather. This book will help anyone who reads it be a better elephant.
This book is a fantastic way to teach kids to make connections between humans and animals, and how they behavior could be comparable. It provides the context to really visualize these connections, thus making them into better readers.
Browne, Anthony. (1998). Voices in the Park. New York: DK Publishing.
Illustrated by Anthony Browne.
Main Character: Male and female
Picture storybook: Contemporary fiction / Animal fantasy
Age level: This book is appropriate for students in any grade level. The bright pictures are enticing to young students. The story is more appropriate for cycle 2 or 3 because of the social commentary made by the book.
An upper-class mother and her son, Charles, take their dog to the park. A poor father and his daughter, Smudge, take their dog to the park. This is each of their stories, told from their own eyes. The dogs, free from societal restrictions, run and play together even though one is a mutt and the other is a pedigree Labrador. The condescending, judgmental mother thinks others at the park are dangerous and dirty. Her glum son Charles is amazed at how Smudge can laugh and climb and play. He plays with her, but is still reserved. Smudge cannot imagine a world where getting dirty isn’t allowed—she loves playing at the park and the company of Charles. Smudge’s father seems to feel the pressures of the world.
This book stands out because of the illustrations. The characters are animals, but the story is quite obviously about people. The colours of the page speak volumes about the mood and attitude of each character. The illustrations hint at the fact that different eyes see the world differently, because everyone has a different background that effects who they are and how they see the world.
This book leads students to infer the mood of the characters and the tone that accompanies them—it is never explicitly stated in the words, but subtle vocabulary clues and the images help to make inferences.
Flieshman, Paul. (1999). Weslandia. New York: Scholastic.
Illustrated by Kevin Hawkes.
Main Character: Male
Picture Storybook: Contemporary fiction / Fantasy
Age level: Cycle 1 or Cycle 2
A young boy is tormented by his peers and his parents want nothing more than for him to make friends and to be normal. Wesley wanted to have nothing to do with the world of his peers. So, he created his own world during the summer. With seeds blown in on the wind, he cultivated a garden that turned into a forest, in which a civilization grew. Wesley invented his own language and his own writing, and from his forest grew the tastiest fruit whose juices get rid of mosquitoes. When Wesley returned to school after the summer, he was not short on friends who were enthralled by his wondrous world.
The elaborate world spun by Fleischman takes on a feeling of realism. The descriptions and illustratons combine to help the reader visualize him/herself in Weslandia, tasting the fruits and hearing the sound of the plants blowing in the hot summer breeze.
Gaiman, Neil (2003). The Wolves in the Walls. New York : HarperCollins.
Illustrated by Dave McKean.
Main Character: Female
Picture storybook: Fantasy—Literary fairy tale
Age Level: Older audiences will appreciate this picture storybook. Grade 3 students may enjoy it, or they may be terrified. Grade 4 students would enjoy this book, as will anyone older. I wouldn’t hesitate to use this picture book with grade 5,6 or even high school. It is dark and it is fascinating.
Lucy hears strange noises coming from inside the walls. She is convinced that there are wolves in the walls. She tells her mother, her father, and her brother. They all tell her she is wrong. But Lucy is not wrong, and the wolves come out of the walls and wreak havoc. The family runs down the hill and escapes to the garden, but Lucy goes back to get her pig-puppet. Then she decides that she doesn’t want the wolves to live in her house. She brings her family back to the house and into the walls. They scare the wolves away the same way the wolves scared them away: they came out of the walls.
This story is fantastically creepy and dark. The illustrations are right out of a horror movie. The best part of this book is that the story and the pictures do not seem to go together. Taken by itself, the story seems quite innocent. If it were illustrated in a bright, cheerful way, it would seem to be a quaint fairy tale, like the Three Little Pigs. With the illustrations, it completely changes the story. The words seem to mean much more than they say, and it becomes a psychological horror story. This is a great book to teach children about what a picture can say, and how a picture can change the meaning of words. I also appreciate the repetition of the phrase “You know what they say, when the wolves come out of the walls, it’s all over” followed by the reasonable questions “What’s all over?” and “Who says that?”. It shows that just because something is repeated, it doesn’t make it logical! I love how original and unsettling this story is.
Questioning is an important skill for readers to use while reading this book. The characters ask the questions “What’s all over?” and “Who says that?”, but the reader will be asking right along with the characters. This is a great book to ask, on each page, what is going on here? What is making me feel so unsettled? What do the words say? How do the images add to the words? This book requires readers to wonder and question in order to fully appreciate the story.
Korman, Gordon. (2007). Schooled. Toronto: Scholastic.
Main Character: Male
Novel: Contemporary
Age level: Cycle 3
When his grandmother, Rain, breaks her hip in an incident with an apple tree, Capricorn Anderson finds himself rocketed into the treacherous world of a middle school. Having been raised and homeschooled by one person on a farm commune, and 1100 student school was beyond the reach of anything Cap could imagine. A world of television, bullying, and school elections, Cap soon finds himself as the center of attention after being voted class president—a position reserved for the nerdiest kid in the school, as chosen by the jocks. Cap, however, was not what anyone could ever have expected. He didn’t succumb to any pranks, because he didn’t understand that they were pranks. After taking command of the school bus after the driver has a heart attack, Cap is soon actually liked and hailed as the best president of all time.
This is a phenomenal feel-good story about confronting adversity and raising up against the odds. Cap helps make anything seem possible, and makes the world of middle school not seem like the end of the world after all.
The most notable aspect of this book is that each chapter is narrated by a different character. The reader gets all the different perspectives of the characters in the story, being in their shoes for short chapters at a time. It is a very interesting way to read a book. Students will have to use monitoring for meaning and fix-up strategies as the put themselves into the shoes of different characters. It is necessary to fill in the blanks, and sometimes to skip back a few pages to find out which character the reader is. This writing strategy also helps students work on synthesizing skills, as they need to put each character’s viewpoint together in order to make sense of the story.
O’Malley, Kevin. (2005). Once Upon a Cool Motorcycle Dude. New York: Walker & Company.
Illustrated by Carol Heyer and Scott Goto.
Main Character: Male and Female
Picture storybook: Contemporary Fiction / Fairy tale
Age Level: Any age in elementary can appreciate this story for different reasons. It would be ideal for younger audiences, but older students could also find the humour in it and would be more likely to use the idea of the story to create their own story in a similar fashion.
This is the story of a story, and how it was created. This story takes us into a classroom, where a boy and a girl struggle to cooperate on the writing of a fairy tale. Their tale justaposes the elegant, graceful images of beautiful Princess Tenderheart, with her flowing pink gown and her eight precious ponies. A dreadful ogre steals all of the ponies. Luckily, the cool motorcycle dude with lots of muscles comes to save the ponies, at a cost. There are volcanoes and lightning and swords and motorcycles—and LOTS of muscles. The story ends with the motorcycle dude charging the princess nightly to save the ponies. The story ends again with the princess working out, and taking on the giant by herself so she didn’t have to keep paying the motorcycle dude. The story ends again with the princess and the dude arguing so loudly that the giant jumps off a cliff. The characters may or may not fall in love to have a beautiful baby boy or girl.
The children who are authoring this story appear on every page, bickering about what will happen in the story. It fantastically juxtaposes the delicate images of the girl’s story, the hash images of the boy’s story, and the comic book styled boy and girl, complete with speech bubbles. This story is humorous and the bickering is familiar—it would likely be appreciated by students at any grade level.
This book helps students to practice the reading strategy of determining the importance. Because the theme changes every few pages and what the author considers important changes depending on whether the pages are part of the boy’s story or the girl’s story, students will be on their toes to figure out exactly what is important and where the plot is going.
Scieszka, Jon. (1991). The Frog Prince Continued. Toronto: Peinguin.
Illustrated by Steve Johnson.
Main Character: Male
Picture Storybook: Fairy tale
Age Level: This book is perfect for elementary students—it is ideal for grades 3 and 4. At this age, they would be old enough to see how the tale is reversin a fairy tale, and they would be able to appreciate this best.
The Frog Prince and the Princess lived happily ever after…for a while. The Frog Prince longed for his pond, and the Princess longe for a Prince who could slay a dragon or two. After a fight, the Frog Prince decided that he could take no more. He ran into the woods, looking for a witch who could turn him back to a frog. He met several witches from different fairy tales, until finally the Fairy Godmother turned him into a…carriage. He sat in the woods, unable to move, longing for his happy life back. When the clock struck midnight, he turned back into a Prince, and ran home to his Princess. He hugged and kissed her, and never let her go. The kiss turned them both into frogs, and they hopped off the pond to ive happily ever after.
The illustrations in this storybook pleasant yet all done in darker colours. This dark hue sets the tone for the book, and matches the Frog Prince’s emotions. It is in stark constrast to the cartoonish characters.
The book requires children to make connections to their prior knowledge of fairy tales in order to identify the witches that the prince encounters.
Tan, Shaun. (2008). Tales from outer suburbia. Toronto: Tundra Books.
Illustrated by Shaun Tan.
Main Character: Various
Illustrated collection: Fantasy / Unlikely situations
Age level: This book would seem humourous to younger audiences, but older audiences may begin to draw connections between the events in the short stories and contemporary reality. This book would ideally be used for grade 6 (or high school), but could also be entertaining for grades 3, 4 and 5.
Tales from Outer Suburbia is a comilation of diverse tales. These snippets are wonderfully woven snippets of fiction. Ther are not typical stories—they do not al have a begining a middle and an end. They have very little in common aside from the fact that they they are unusual and unexpected. The characters are very diverse, and it is hard to make sense of it all. The images are done in Shaun Tan’s amazing and eccentric style. The use of colour and line combine to give the images depth and add the the sense of intrigue surrounding the stories.
These stories are a fantastic way to get kids questioning, “what is going on here?!”.It is difficult to understand what is being rea, and students have to use they questionning and infernce skills to assign meaning to the words and to make sense of the stories. This compilation is a great way to kick the mind and the imagination into gear.
Watt, Mélanie. (2008). Scaredy Squirrel. Toronto: Kids Can Press.
Illustrated by Mélanie Watt.
Main Character: Male
Picture Storybook: Animal Fantasy
Age Level: Cycle 1
Scaredy Squirrel never leaves his nut tree. The world beyond his tree is unknown and is therefore most certainly treacherous. Scaredy Squirrel has a set routine and a strict plan for any emergency. But when he is attacked by a killer bee, his emergency escape system does not go according to plan—he drops his emergency kit! He jumps after it, without his parachute and…he begins to glide! He is a flying squirrel! This will change everything…or not.
This wonderful chidren’s story is written using tables and lists to detail Scaredy Squirrel’s life. It is an interesting set up and it is accompanied by vibrant illustrations that are sure to catch any child’s eye with the thick, black outlined giving emphasis and displaying actions.
This book beging with a summary of the story, which can help students with their summarizing skills. The lists help students develop skills of synthesizing, because they have to combine what is learned from the lists to the actions of Scaredy Squirrel to make sense of his actions and responses.
Mollel, Tololwa M. (1990). Orphan Boy. Toronto: Oxford.
Illustrated by Paul Morin.
Main Character: Male
Picture Storybook: Myth
Age Level: Ideal for Cycle 2—it is too long for younger students. It could also be appropriate for Cycle 3, but it is not as involved as books I would normally choose for Cycle 3.
One night, the old man noticed a star missing. The next morning, Kileken entered his life. A young orphan boy claiming to have wandered miles in search of a home becomes a companion to the old man. Kileken is mysterious, he brings the old man prosperity and good fortune. He seems to do chores faster than could be possible, and when the old man asks about it, the boy asks only for trust.. During a period of drought, the young boy manages to keep the cows fat and content. The old man can take the secrecy no longer and follows the boy one morning. He sees magic stream through the boy and turn a desert lush and green—but Kileken sees the man. The fat cows, lush greenery, and the boy all disappear, and leaves the old man alone and saddened in the desert. That night, the missing star was back.
The book goes on to explain that Kileken is Venus, the morning star. The Maasai call Venus Kileken, “the orphan boy, who is up at dawn to herd tout the cattle after morning chores, and who returns to the compound at nightfall for the evening milking”.
This story is magical and the images are absolutely stunning. They are paintings with layer upon layer of texture. I especially appreciate that the book both begins and ends with the old man looking at the night sky, like bookends to a tale.
This story can help students develop their skill to synthesize while they read. They must combine what they found out about a missing star with the new information the story relays about a mysterious and magical boy appearing out of nowhere. They should have an “I got it!” moment at some point while reading this story, to place Kileken as the missing star.