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.