The Pain of Teeth and the Pain of Growing Up

Title: Smile
Author: Raina Telgermeier
ISBN:0545132061
Publisher: Scholastic

When I was young, I had the unfortunate experience of knocking out my front two teeth. I can look back now at the event before and after the incident with humor, but at the time it pretty much sucked. Two root-canals, the shaving down of what was left of my real teeth, temporary teeth that were so huge they made me look like a rabbit.

I also had the pleasure of having braces on my teeth for over two years. Mouth gear and all, the experience pretty much sucked as well. The tightening, the food getting stuck, the rubberbands that left marks on the insides of your mouth. Makes me cringe just thinking about it!

So, with that being said, the reasons I chose Smile by Raina Telgermeier will become very clear. You see, Raina is a young girl who was just coming to terms with the news that she would need braces when a trip and fall leaves her with even bigger problems. She knocks out her front two teeth!

Raina endures the craziness of procedure after procedure over the next four years in a quest to have a normal smile. All this, while she is also dealing with the normal-coming-of-age problems like boys, friends and family.

Telgemeier does a fabulous job with this memoir. She manages to present events in a beautiful balance of humor and heartbreak, inspiring readers even if they've never had braces. Very clever cartooning illustrates the storyline add to the appeal of readers, I would say, as early as the third or fourth grade, though, I really enjoyed the read myself!

The introduction to memoirs at the elementary level can give validation to students the worth of their thoughts and opinions. Asking students to share who they are and what makes them who they are opens the door for expression at the deepest level. The earliest grades can make life-sized cut outs, collaging with magazines and drawing answering the questions, “Who am I?” and “What makes me who I am?” This activity can grow with students by adding quotes and other writing to expand their thoughts on these very “big” questions.

Gotta Love That Dog...

Title: Love That Dog
Author: Sharon Creech
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0060292873

Love That Dog by Sharon Creech is a collection of poems that will inspire children to find enjoyment in reading and writing several forms of poetry, just as the main character does. The collection of poems follows Jack, in journal form, as he comes to enjoy poetry and begins to use his life experiences to write it.

You see, at the start of his journey, Jack thinks that only girls write poetry and that his "brain's empty", just as many children do. Creech does an amazing job using Jack's voice to express what many of us feel about poetry. She does an even better job making the reader realize how easily poetry can enrich our lives.

As the poems progress, Jack finds that his brain is actually filled with lots of things to write about. Some of those things are painful, like the loss of his dog, Sky. As we move through Jack's slow progression coming to terms with his feelings about his dog, Jack suddenly becomes inspired by writer Walter Dean Meyers. This inspiration gives Jack the strength to write a special poem about the death of his dog. By the end, Jack find that poetry can not only be fun, but can provide an outlet for dealing with painful memories.

Newbery Metal winner, Sharon Creech, incorporates several styles of poetry in "Jack's work". The shape poem being one of my favorites. Creech also includes the poetry of inspiration; Robert Frost, Arnold Adoff, and Walter Dean Myers to name a few. This combination makes Love That Dog a wonderful classroom tool to inspire students to write in their own way and in their own time based on the work of some of the most loved poets.

As we learned in yesterday's class, our knowledge about poetry is more intuitive than we know. Poetry often tells a story that can be sometimes funny and sometimes painful. It can be easy to follow or it can leave us scratching our heads. Sharon Creech leaves me feeling that poetry is at its best when you just let it happen, as Jack does in Love That Dog.

The Tradition Of A Folktale

Author: Paul Goble
Illustrator: Paul Goble
Publisher: Atheneuml/Richard Jackson Books
ISBN: 0689845049

This September will mark my grandmother's 100th birthday. If that is not incredible enough, she still lives in her own home and still loves to tell a great story. Those stories are often a look back at an event from her life as well as the life of her parents and grandparents. They reflect the cultural beliefs of our family that have been passed down from generation to generation. My Nana's storytelling has created a wonderful piece of folktale history for my family which has helped me closely identify with my history and culture.

Paul Goble's The Girl Who Loved Horses is a Native American folktale that successfully captures Native American culture. It is about a young girl who has an incredible gift for understanding and caring for her village's horses. So much so, she spends all of her free time with the horses. When a sudden storm causes her to be dragged away from her village, she overcomes her initial fear to find a freedom beyond all that she has imagined. When that freedom is challenged by her "rescue" and return to her village, the girl's family must make the difficult decision to let her go back to the pack of wild horses where she belongs. Once returned, the girl eventually becomes a beautiful new mare and her legend lives on through village stories of the girl who loved horses so much so, she finally become one herself.

The story is told with very simple words while still offering the reader an accurate connection between nature and Native American culture. The simple text may quickly draw in the reader, but it is Goble's beautiful and amazing artwork that give real dimension to the clothing, customs and surroundings of Native American culture. It is a style I find reminiscent of the artwork I have seen in museums of authentic Native American pottery, drawings and other artifacts. I would imagine Paul Goble's culturally accurate illustrations gave cause for his win of the 1978 Caldecott Metal for his artwork in The Girl Who Loved Horses. Goble's story offers endless possibilities in the classroom. The traditional folktale link between man and animals would be a wonderful direction of study that would develop students cultural awareness of Native Americans and their influence on folktales.

Paul Goble is an artist born and trained in England. With over thirty books based on Native American folktales to his credit, one has to wonder how a guy from England came to identify so closely with Native American cultures? From my research, it seems that Goble has always felt a connection to the spirituality of Native American culture and began visiting various Indian Reservations over the years before settling in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It is from here that Goble accurately re-creates traditional Native American folktales allowing us, as readers, to identify with the important historical and cultural traditions of Native Americans.
You can check out Paul Goble at http://www.worldwisdom.com/public/authors/Paul-Goble.

Why Wait For A Prince?

Author: Ellen Jackson
Illustrator: Kevin O'Malley
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0688123228

Ah, fairy tales...magical stories filled with the promise that no matter what terrible obstacles you may face there will always be a handsome prince to come to your rescue. Wait. Is that really what I want to teach my daughter? To simply accept the wrongs being dealt to you while you wait for a man to save the day. NO WAY!

In arrives my new hero, Cinder Edna, by Ellen Jackson. She is NOT they type of girl who will wait around for a prince to save her from an arduous situation. The character, Cinder Edna is in stark contrast with her neighbor, aptly named Cinderella. The two girls have similar situations, both being forced to work for their wicked stepmothers and stepsisters. But instead of accepting her lot in life like Cinderella, Cinder Edna uses the skills she has learned to earn money on the side. Money that will pay for a dress for the ball she buys on layaway and money that will also pay for a bus trip to and from the ball. All this while her neighbor, Cinderella, traditionally depends on a fairy godmother to give her a dress and a pumpkin turned into a carriage.

Both CinderEdna and Cinderella end up marrying their princes. But while Cinderella ends up marrying the dull, handsome Prince Randolph and living in the grand palace, "the girl who had been known as Cinder Edna ended up in a small cottage with solar heating. During the day she studied waste disposal engineering and cared for orphaned kittens." Cinder Edna happily marries the handsome prince's brother, Rupert, who is in charge of the recycling plant.

With the combination of the simple, direct writing style of Ellen Jackson and the appeal of the illustrations of Kevin O'Malley, Cinder Edna proves to be a book that grabs, and keeps, the attention of children. All this while sending a message of what can be done without the help of a fairy godmother. Depend on yourself, not others, to change your station in life.

Fairy tales, in their classical form, can instill hope in a hopeless situation. They can stress the importance of remaining true and kind in the face of adversity and rewards such behavior with "happily ever after". There are now oodles of re-tellings of the classical fairy tale from the perspective of different cultures, such as; A Golden Sandal: A Middle Eastern Cinderella Story by Rebecca Hickox, Yh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China by Ai-Ling Louie and Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters: An African Tale by John Steptoe. All of which should be included in a unit of study on fairy tales. I would also like to think that a humorous twist on the classic fairy tale, like Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson, is also necessary in such a unit of study and would be a useful tool to compare and contrast with the original Cinderella.

The Appeal of the Picture Book

Author: Gene Zion
Illustrator: Margaret Bloy Graham
Publisher: HarperCollins Childrens Books
Publish Date: 1956
ISBN: 0060268654


I am writing this blog from a local playground while I am watching my children play. I actually can't think of a better place to be; away from the dirty dishes in the sink, the pile of bills by the computer and the ten loads of laundry I need to start, to remember what it is like to be a child.

As adults, we become burdened with responsibilities that hinder our abilities to look at something with the fresh eyes of a child. Now, as I watch my children run and laugh with unadulterated fun, I try to bring myself back to my childhood as I eye the pile of picture books sitting next to me from a child's perspective.

I can remember, as a young girl, playing in my backyard dirt pile that used to be my mother's garden. I loved making mud pies and burying treasures to be discovered at a later date. As much as I loved getting dirty, I loathed the bath time that always followed. I guess that is why I always felt connected to Harry of Harry and the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion.

A good picture book must speak to the readers experiences. Just as I would do everything in my power to avoid bath time, so does Harry. He runs away from home and gets dirty, dirtier and dirtiest until "he changes from a white dog with black spots to a black dog with white spots". Most children can connect to Harry as becoming dirty seems to be at the top of their "list of things to do" on a daily basis.

A good picture book must also use illustrations hand in hand with the text. Margaret Bloy Graham created pastel-washed drawing to successfully enhance Gene Zion's text. Her simple, but lively, pictures brings Harry and his adventures to life. They are also a useful tool in using prediction or sequencing during a read aloud.

But, to be a great picture book, like Harry the Dirty Dog, it must work on both levels. An adult must be able to perform, out loud, a story filled with thoughtful words, repetition and rhythm crafted by a skilled author. At the children's level, a picture book must capture, through its words and illustrations, the heart and soul of a child who feels things in the most basic of ways.

Bringing Multiculturalism Into the Classroom

Author/Illustrator: Patricia Polacco
Publisher: Philomel Books, 1972
ISBN: 039921366

My first trip to the Todt-Hill/Westerleigh branch of the New York Public Library was met with locked doors thanks to a broken HVAC system. The next day I headed over to the Richmondtown branch. There, I had a nice girl help me look up titles, but was unable to offer any suggestions as she is normally not placed in the Children's Section. This project was not going to be as easy as I thought.

Luckily, I had written a paper last semester on multicultural picture books that gave me a good idea where to start. I knew author's names like Patricia Polacco, Pat Mora, Gary Soto, Kadir Nelson and Eve Bunting, so I just started hunting among the hundreds of picture books. I did not find any Coretta Scott King Award winning books. No Caldecott or Newbery Metal winners, either. Instead, I brought home a pile of books and was left to decide which of these books would be considered "quality" multicultural literature.

I had a good start with my list of authors. These were men and women who were writing about his or her personal background providing an authentic and accurate representation of the cultures they were portraying.

Next, I began reading the books looking for stories that would allow readers see past the differences of race and religion and instead to simply imagine the lives of others who just happen to be of a different religion or have skin colored in a different hue.

Last, I examined the illustrations for authenticity as they should reflect the reality of the differing cultures instead of perpetuating stereotypes or historical distortions.

I found a Patricia Polacco book, Chicken Sunday, to be a stand-out among the others. Chicken Sunday offers an authentic representation of cultures in its story of a young Jewish girl's friendship with her African-American neighbors. Children from each of these cultures can read words that accurately reflected their heritage in the pages of this book. Whether it be in the description of the Sunday dinners of fried chicken, collared greens and fried spoon bread (yum!) or the way the children "decorate eggs the way my bubbie taught us", Polacco gives the readers the sense of these differing cultures. Polacco successfully represents the meshing of two religious groups in such a way that differences are naturally accepted and instead the commonalities between the religions becomes the focus.

Through her vivid watercolor illustrations, Pollacco visually reflects both cultures. From the accuracy of the traditional garb of the Jewish store-keeper, right down to his numbers tattooed on his forearm, to the depiction of life inside a Baptist church with women wearing their "Sunday Best" singing and dancing to the choir, Polacco successfully illustrates the reality of Jewish-American and African-American life.

I chose this book, Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco, as a "quality" multicultural picture book as it is an accurate textual and visual representation of differing cultural and religious backgrounds. Chicken Sunday offers a representation of literature that help students of all cultural and religious backgrounds develop an understanding of the similarities that can cross cultural lines.