*~*Final Reflection*~*

I have really enjoyed this course. I really enjoyed being able to pick different children's picture books and novels to read each week to help figure out what we think is a good book for children in the classroom or even at home. I really liked doing the paired reading. I thought it helped show different perspectives in a serious situation as well as showing a way we could teach reading in the classroom. I liked how we had to pick the controversial books as well as poetry picture books because it gave us another way to look at picture books with children and different things we can study with them. I really enjoyed reading the different chapter books that were required for the course as well as getting to pick a different chapter book per week. Getting to read and respond to children's literature has been very insightful and helped me think of how I am going to put reading into my classroom and different topics and things I will focus on. I really enjoyed the one night in class when the current teachers came to discuss how they've put reading in their classrooms and it really helped me think of how I want to read in my class.
This class has helped me remember books I read as a kid and think of why I enjoyed them. I got to go back and re-read books that I had read before and think of ways I could incorporate my experiences in teaching them in my future class. This class has helped me think deeper into reading children's books and showing my future students ways to look deeper into story books.
I am excited to complete the text set because it will give me an even deeper view into selecting children's books, different topics, and what makes a 'good' book.
I have enjoyed this class and gotten a lot out of it~ Thank you.*

Marvelous Math A Book of Poems

Marvelous Math a Book of Poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins and illustrated by Karen Barbour. This book of selected poems is geared towards children ages 5 and up. I think this makes sense because I am unsure if kids really understand what math is before they are 5. But, at the same time parents could read this to younger children when learning about numbers and colors. I think they could use this with colors because each page has illustrations throughout the page that are filled with bright colors that catch the eye. I really enjoyed reading each of these poems. I love math and numbers so I thought that have a book full of math poems was great! This book would be great to use in a classroom when discussing that different places we see numbers and use numbers every day. I think that reading this book as a read aloud may help break the ice when discussing numbers. This would be a good idea because for a lot of kids, math is tricky, and saying 'its math time' may turn them away. But, if you start with a story it may help ease them in to wanting to learn more about numbers. Although I liked many of the poems in this book, I liked 'Time Passes' by Ilo Orleans a lot.

"Sixty seconds
Pass in a minute.
Sixty minutes
Pass in an hour.
Twenty-four hours
Pass in a day -
And that's how TIME
keeps passing away!"

I like this poem because it relates time, something we use and discuss daily, to math and numbers and may help begin a discussion. I enjoyed the color, illustrations, and poems used throughout this book and would recommend people read it in their classroom as well as extra stories read at home.

I Invited a Dragon to Dinner and Other Poems to Make You Laugh Out Loud

I Invited a Dragon to Dinner and Other Poems to Make You Laugh Out Loud illustrated by Chris L DeMarest is a great picture book of collected poems written by people who were contestants in a nationwide contest to find the best new writers of verse for children. These poems, I thought were funny, and I think that students would too. The collection of poems is geared towards children ages 3-7 but I think that older students could read them too and get something of meaning out of them. I think that these poems could be read in a classroom as a read aloud, when discussing poetry or different kinds of writing, or even when trying to show reading for meaning to students.
One poem I really enjoyed was entitled “Time Out” by Wendi Silvano.

The shoe I hit my sister with was rubbery and soft.
And the chewed-up crackers on the floor went spraying when I coughed.
I know t he couch is smelly, but that’s just the way with trout.
Could someone please explain to me… why am I in time out?
There’s good reason why the kitchen wall is splattered with red paint.
And why the blender’s broken…I cant always be a saint.
And if you’ll let me I’ll explain what this hole is all about.
But could someone please explain to me… why am I in time out?
I did put glue in Father’s show, but try to understand.
The project I was working on was something truly grand.
And midnight’s not so bad an hour to scream and yell and shout.
Could someone please explain to me…why am I in time out/
So I shared Mom’s hairbrush with the dog. Isn't sharing good?
And I cut Dads tie down to his size just as any good kid would.
I try to be the best I can, but it never does work out.
Could someone PLEASE explain to me…why am I in time out?

I think all of the poems throughout this book are well written and really good. I think that they could be read in a class to also help explain things to kids, for example maybe discuss why the things this kid did throughout this poem caused him to be in time out.
I enjoyed the pictures drawn throughout the book because they help explain the poems in more detail in a visual way and I think that helps kids learn and get more meaning out of their reading.

Through Our Eyes Poems and Pictures about Growing Up

Through Our Eyes Poems and Pictures about Growing Up is a book of selected poems selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins and photographs taken by Jeffrey Dunn. I really enjoyed reading this poetry picture book because it shows a lot of insight into what children think and what happens with them growing up. The poems are about children's thoughts, hopes, observations, and dreams. They show different backgrounds children have while growing up. I really enjoyed reading the different poems because it made me think of things I thought or that I went through growing up that were either different or similar to things discussed in the poems. I also really enjoyed the illustrations because they were photographs of children that helped bring out meaning in each of the poems.

One poem I really enjoyed reading is "The New Kid on the Block" by Jack Prelutsky:

There's a new kid on the block,
and boy, that kid is tough,
that new kid punches hard,
that new kid plays real rough,
that new kid's big and strong,
with muscles everywhere,
that new kid tweaked my arm,
that new kid pulled my hair.
That new kid likes to fight,
and picks on all the guys,
that new kid scares me some,
(that new kid's twice my size),
that new kid stomped my toes,
that new kid swiped my ball,
that new kid's really bad,
I don't care for her at all.

I thought this poem was very descriptive and that student that wrote it did a great job. It made me think of when I was growing up and a new kid would come to school, or even when I had to be the new kid and how I felt towards the new kid or towards others when I was the new kid. I think this book would be great to share in a classroom when discussing different types of writing, a poetry unit, and even just as a read aloud!

Messing Around on the Monkey Bars

Messing Around on the Monkey Bars by Betsy Franco and illustrated by Jessie Hartland is a fun book of poems that can be read in any classroom and at home. The poems throughout the book are geared towards children ages 7 - 9. They are poems about school that have two voices being read. I think these poems are great because they show different ways to read poems, with two voices. This means that these poems are meant to be read aloud, which I think would make a good topic of discussion in a classroom. By reading these poems in class would bring up other topics, as well as different interpretations and perspectives that students get while the poems are being read aloud and they are listening or if they are the ones reading them. I thought that the illustrations and color used throughout the poems were wonderful. They are drawn in a way that look like a little kid may have drawn them. The pages also use conversation bubbles which I thought helped link the text to the pictures. I really liked this book of poems and I think that other people would too and that students would enjoy reading it in the classroom as well as at home with the family.

What A Day It Was At School

What A Day It Was At School! by Jack Prelutsky is a fun picture book with great illustrations by Doug Cushman. Each page of the book is a different poem about things that happen, may happen, or thoughts students may have throughout ones day at school. These poems are titled: My Backpack Weighs a Thousand Pounds, I tried to Do My Homework, We're Shaking Maracas, We Had a Field trip Yesterday, I Wish I'd Studied Harder, A Classmate Named Tim, I Made a Noise This Morning, It's Library Time, In the Cafeteria, I know How to Add, A Man Named Mister Hoobybatch, I'm off to the Infirmary, I'm Learning Our History, I Drew a Yellow Unicorn, Show-and-Tell, Teacher's Pet, and I have to Write a Poem for Class. I really enjoyed reading through each poem throughout the book. The poems reminded me of when I was in school and things that went through my day. I think that the pictures throughout the books helped explain the poems well. They were very detailed and showed a lot of bright color on each day. I thought they did a great job describing or showing an image of the poem. I think that students would like to read this and that teachers would like to read this in their classroom because it would show how they can relate to what they read.

Love That Dog

Love That Dog by Sharon Creech is a fun novel to read. It is written as a journal entry of a student named Jack. I thought it was a great book; you can tell that he is writing responses from comments from his teacher, Miss Stretchberry, throughout the story. Jack writes his entries so you can get a feel of what the teach writes. I think this is a good book to have students read because through his journal entries you can see that poems do not have to rhyme they can be just simple words written or typed on a page. This story shows Jack getting more and more confident in his writing throughout the story. I really enjoyed reading this quick read and feel that students would like to read it too. I think they could learn a lot from reading it about their writing, reading, or even observation of others writings.

Year of Impossible Goodbyes

Year of Impossible Goodbyes by Sook Nyul Choi is a good novel to read. I thought it was a very moving book that helps us understand one perspective of the experiences that occurred during the end of WWII. I thought it was very good to read this book as a paired text with Far From the Bamboo Grove. Reading both books together helped us see that there are always different perspectives of things. On the one side we had Japanese hiding from Koreans and thinking they were bad, but somewhat good at the same time, while in the other was about a Korean family and how much they disliked the Japanese. These two books help us see that not everyone that is a certain ethnicity is like people who we see in the news, for example, of that same ethnicity. I think it would be great to do these in a paired text, or books like it in a classroom. I think these two books are very effective to showing different points of view of a serious topic like war. I think these books could be related to current events and would be a great learning experience for students when talking about such serious and sensitive topics.

How Do You Wokka-Wokka?

How Do You Wokka-Wokka? is by Elizabeth Bluemle and illustrated by Randy Cecil. This new picture book is geared towards children ages 3-5, but I think that older students would like this story too. This is a fun story that is about a certain movement called a 'wokka-wokka'. I really like this story book because it shows that there are multiple ways to do different things; in this case it is involving the wokka-wokka and showing how people do it differently. The cover of this story is very appealing because the title is written in what could be paint or chalk on a sidewalk with children playing outside. The inside cover helps you wonder what it is all about. It says,

"Some days you wake up and you just gotta wokka. Wokka what? Wokka-wokka! It's about dance. It's about movement. It's about shimmy-shakin' be-boppin' and more!
Its about gathering the neighbors and joining the party. Come on!"

The text in this story is all over the page, wrapped around the illustrations of children moving around, doing the wokka-wokka. This book would be great to read to early readers as well as any child really, when discussing different movements or just a fun read-aloud! I think this book could be read in the classroom or even at home to the children. I really enjoyed reading this book, and I know kids will love it too!

...By taking another look through the story, after my friend pointed it out, it seems as though all of the characters in this story are of the same skin color. I feel like maybe it is a suburb of New York or something because of the stairs in front of each building and them close together, no yards, and other things displayed throughout the story. I am unsure of what it means; I do not think that the skin color displayed in this story negative, I think it is positive, energetic and fun. This book shows kids laughing and playing like all kids do, no matter the skin color. This is just an observation I have noticed but I do not think it really means anything. I do not know what other readers think of this though.

Robot Zot! by Jon Scieszka and David Shannon

Robot Zot! by Jon Scieszka and David Shannon is geared towards children ages 3-7. This is a fun, new story about a robot named Zot. This robot thinks he can conquer all, but as seen throughout the illustrations in the story, the things he conquers are kitchen appliances. This story is fun and inventive. I ended up reading this to my pre-school art class that I teach at the Recreation Center and they loved it. I was surprised they sat still through the entire story because they are all about two years old, six of them, and they always run around crazy but every time I say 'story time' they sit down quietly. I was unsure if they would sit through this one because it can get kind of lengthy, but they did and they loved it. The color in this story is bright and bold. I love books that have bright colors and bold pictures that stand out. I feel like this helps tell the story. I really enjoyed this picture book and would recommend to read to a classroom as well as at home to any kid whether they like robots or not because they can learn and see about adventure, imagination, and many other fun things to discover while reading a new book!

Jon Scieszka's Trucktown Smach! Crash! by Jon Scieszka, David Shannon, Loren Long, David Gordon

Jon Scieszka's Trucktown Smash! Crash! is part of a series of stories about trucktown, written by David Shannon, Loren Long, David Gordon and Jon Scieszka. This series is geared towards new readers, or ages three to seven. The books are about characters that are all trucks, but all carry characteristics of preschoolers: crazy, wild, eager little kids that just want to have fun! This particular story is about the trucks Dan and Jack who love to smash and crash! The color used in this story is bright primary colors, mostly. They are all bold and the illustrations are great! The text is not too difficult and words that young readers can relate to and understand when they read. I think this story would be good to read in a younger classroom as well as when at home with children! Little kids love trucks and will probably relate to these characters because they are written with little kid characteristics in mind.

I have looked into this series a little more and I think it is great what these people do! They have a website that I have posted on a previous post that is for trucktown. The website has other activities involving the characteristics of Trucktown as well as a parents and teachers section that will help adults get acquainted with the series and what is about. The website also informs people of when more of the books will be coming out and what is already out. It is great.

Seen Art? by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith

Seen Art? by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith is geared towards any aged person. We read this story in our methods art class and I really enjoyed it. It is about this boy and his friend named Art going to meet on a corner in New York one day, but he couldn't find him so he began to ask around, "Seen Art?" and people would think he's talking about art. This is a really engaging book that gives readers a look through New York's Museum of Modern Art. This book is very informational about different artwork. I really enjoy the use of color and illustrations throughout this story; they are colorful and look well together. I really enjoy this story and think it would be good to read in a classroom when discussing artwork. The text was all over the page and made the story fun to read. I would recommend reading this story to students, family members, anyone really.

Math Curse by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith

Math Curse, by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith is an intense story about a math curse, obviously. This student wakes up one morning and because of the math lesson the day before realizes that everything can be a math problem. He goes through the entire day thinking of everything as a math problem and starts to go crazy. This book is full of color and energy. I really enjoyed reading it! I really like math and I think that this story would be good to read to a classroom more at the beginning of the school year but could really be read anytime before a math lesson. I think this story is a fun way to show that many things we use and see everyday can be put into a math problem but it doesn't have to take over our minds!...because, as it says on the last page, "YOU KNOW, you can think of almost everything as a science experiment..." Inside the cover and the back cover are bright orange like the front cover with many different math problems written all over them in different ways. I really like this I think it brings out and shows how crazy the story is. =)

Baloney (Henry P.) by Jon Scieszka

Baloney (Henry P.) is by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. This story is geared towards anyone at all, and I agree. This picture book is about an alien telling his story of why he is late to school this particular morning. It uses different words that we are unfamiliar with. I think this helps focus on looking at the pictures for clues and using the surrounding sentence to think of what the word could mean. This is a fun way to learn different reading strategies. Another fun thing about the words we are unfamiliar with is that they are actually words from other languages so it gives us an opportunity to compare languages and learn about other languages. The colors in this picture book are bright and eye catchy. I think this book would be very helpful to read in a classroom when discussing different reading strategies as well as maybe when students are using their imagination to write a story, when talking about space, or a just for fun read!

So Far From the Bamboo Grove

So Far From the Bamboo Grove is by Yoko Kawashima Watkins. This novel is about her life experiences in traveling from Northern Korea to Japan at the end of WWII. There were so many intense things that occurred during this novel that I could not put it down! Yoko and her family, her mother, father, sister Ko, and brother were a Japanese family living in Korea. Yoko's father works for the government. The father was in another town at the time and so was the brother, so the mother, Ko, and Yoko had to flee in the middle of the night one night to hide from the Korean Communist Army. The novel was filled with a lot of different mental images that I found and still think would be so hard and difficult for an eleven year old (the age Yoko was). They saw so many devastating things: people getting killed, raped, hurt badly. They had to steal, hide, pretend they were Korean, for many months live in a train station living off not very much food. They would hope for the best, that they would make it to Japan and that their father and brother would meet them there. I found this novel gore but told the story the right way, I thought. I think books like this are important to read because it shows a point of view of a large piece of history that not many experienced or have any experience like it. It shows a personal point of view of what went on. I think it would be difficult to read this in a young teen classroom, but think it would be really good so, if a letter is sent home to parents about reading the book and telling the students the seriousness and honesty shown throughout the novel that it would be good. I really liked this novel. I somehow felt connected to the author, by the way she was telling the story I could picture what was going on. I felt so sad that they had to live off nothing, lie about who they were and steal food, live in a train station. I was so sad when the mother died. I thought that something bad would happen to the girls because they were young and alone with practically nothing. I was so glad they met nice people to give them a place to live. I was also so glad that the brother ended up finding them! I was confused that it ended so quick after that, but thought it was good. I really liked a lot of the book. My favorite quote is probably the last page when it says, "As I lay in mine I saw the stars shining like petals of white chrysanthemums. For the first time since I had left Nanam I felt their loveliness. And each star that sparkled was like great fireworks in the enormous sky for the gladness of our reunion." I liked it because of I was so glad she was happy again; it had taken a long time but the three were finally back together. I also saw that Yoko wrote a sequel to this book called "My Brother, My Sister, and I" which is about their life after this first book and I am going to look into it and read it because I am so interested to see what happened next!

Jon Scieszka

In doing this API study I learned a lot. The first half of the assignment, researching the author and getting materials they have written was great. I learned a lot about the author as well as saw similarities in his writings. I also thought the second half was great, presenting the material we found important to a small group. I liked this part a lot because it was helpful to learn about other authors and think of how you could teach about authors to students in your class. This semester I have heard a lot of books by Jon Scieszka, so I decided to study him for my API project.
Jon's website is http://www.jsworldwide.com/ . This website has a lot of cool information about Jon, books he has written, and other things he has done and is in the process of doing.
Jon was born in Flint, Michigan on September 8, 1954 to Shirley and Louis Scieszka. He was the 2nd oldest son of 6 boys. His mother registered nurse and his father was an elementary school principal. Jon Scieszka went to Culver Military Academy for high school and became Lieutenant Scieszka. Jon wanted to be a doctor so he studied both Science and English at Albion College in Albion, Michigan, graduating in 1976. Scieszka lived in Detroit then moved to Brooklyn, NY to write instead. He earned his MFA in Fiction from Columbia University in New York in 1980. Jon painted apartments and taught at The Day School in New York City as: 1st grade Assistant Teacher, graduated to teaching 2nd grade, taught 3rd and 4th grade Math, 5th grade History, and then some 6th, 7th and 8th grade. Jon decided to take a year off of teaching to write stories for kids. He realized that kids are smart and the best audience for weird and funny stories.
Scieszka sent stories around to many publishers, and got rejected by all of them. He kept painting apartments and writing stories.
Jon's wife, Jeri, worked in New York as a magazine art director and introduced him to Lane Smith. Lane Smith has since been an illustrator of many of Jon Scieszka's books. In 1989, Regina Hayes, editor at Viking Books, published The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs. Jon's books have won many awards and sold over 11 million copies all around the world. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, and 2 kids: Casey (daughter), Jake (son).
Some interesting facts about Jon are:
-First book read was Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss; it’s the book that made The Stinky Cheese Man possible.
- He gets ideas for stories from many different things around him
- He reads many things, thinks about different stories all the time, scribbles things down, types them, changes them, thinks more, adds more, always editing until story feels and looks satisfactory
- Scieszka writes books because “loves to make kids laugh”
- Jon's motto in writing is: “never underestimate the intelligence of your audience”
A few of Jon’s stories are:
Math Curse, Science Verse, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, Robot Zot!, Baloney (Henry P.), Seen Art?, Da Wild, Da Crazy, Da Vinci, See You Later, Gladiator and The Stinky Cheese Man
Extra things Jon Does that I find inspirational:
-Trucktown, which is a giant pre-school publishing program that is a world where all of the characters are trucks. All of the trucks act like real preschoolers – loud, crazy, wild, and funny. The link to Trucktown's website is: http://www.simonandschuster.com/specials/kids/behindthepulse/trucktown/
I really liked this website because it has a section for parents and teachers and another for extra activities for kids. It helps people of all ages get to know the series.
Another things Scieszka does is 'Guys read' which is a literacy initiative for boys. The mission is to help boys become self-motivated, lifelong readers. I think this is a great idea because, as the website shows, research shows that test scores in reading are lower in boys than girls. The website to this initiative is: http://www.guysread.com/ I think this website is great because it shows different books that guys have read that they think other guys would like.
I thought all of these websites were great because they all had a lot of good history information about the program or what Scieszka has done, but also what is presently going on and what we can see in the future. I think this is a great idea because it will help us as readers look for the new material to come.