Love That Dog by Sharon Creech

I thought this book was adorable. I was laughing the whole time I was reading it! I was recommended to read this by the little girl I work on my child study with so I was excited to read it for class. I liked the book because as I was reading the book I was trying to read the book from a child's perspective like I do with most of the other books we read for class, but I was finding myself looking at the book from a teacher's perspective. The teacher was giving the little boy great encouragement throughout his journaling which shows that with the support of the teacher the little boy went from thinking that poetry was for "girls" to enjoying poetry and even being interested in a particular poet that he had read. I agreed with the little boy that this book was easier to read because it had shorter lines. It felt like it was easier to keep my thought going like the little boy said it was for him. The only problem I had with his idea was that it may be hard for him to change his writing someday when he is forced to write in full lines someday. Overall I thought that this was a great example of the relationship that builds confident writers between teachers and students!

Gingerbread Friends by Jan Brett

This book caught my eye from the cover. I know you aren't suppose to "judge a book by it's cover" but the illistrations were very detailed and reminded me of gingerbread houses I have made in the past. We see that this gingerbread man lives in a beautiful gingerbread home in the room of "Mattie" and he has lots of toys and treats but he is missing something. The gingerbread man wanted a friend because he got really sad when Mattie would go out with his friends. Another thing I liked about this book was that on each page there was a different quotation by the gingerbread baby that goes along with the traditional gingerbread story. "I'm the Gingerbread Baby, Peppy as can be, I'll be friends with you, If you'll be friends with me."

The illistrations, like the cover, were so pretty and reminded me of Christmas. They included the main image for the text, but on every page of the story there was a boarder of Christmas decorations, candy, candy canes, and other items that would be around the house around Christmas time. Every page was filled from one side to the other with images and designs that made each page feel full of holiday spirit.

This book would be great to use in an unit on Christmas or holiday themes or to use in contrasting stories of the same idea by different authors. This book is similar but different than other Gingerbread stories that I have read in the past.

Christmas Farm by Mary Lyn Ray

I love Christmas and I loved how the character "Wilma" decided that Christmas began whenever she chose the right Christmas tree and put it into her home. I always put my Christmas tree up right away after Thanksgiving and can't wait to decorate and get ready for the season. The images in this book by Barry Root were beautiful and went with the text very well. They use of paints made the landscapes in the book come alive. Wilma decided that she had grown petunias all of her life and wanted to start to grow something else. She decided to grow evergreen trees in her backyard for those people who didn't have a back hill like she did to pick a Christmas tree. Wilma has the neighbor boy help her plant the trees on her land like he had helped her grow the sunflowers and petunias in the past. This book was great to show children how long it takes for some plants to grow. Some children are only exposed to the growth of vegetables in their backyard or the flowers in their garden, but this book shows that for the evergreens to grow to the size needed to be a Christmas tree they took many seasons and several years! I also found this book interesting because the farmer in the book was a woman. Almost all books portray farmers or planters to be men and this book rids that stereotype.

"A Year of Impossible Goodbyes" by Sook Nyul Choi

This novel written by a Korean author is set during the Japanese occupation of North Korea in 1945. Written from a Korean child's viewpoint we see the struggles that this young girl and her family are put through during World War II. This book was very sad and made me as a reader appreciate everything I have in my life that I take for granted. There are many things that the little girl wishes she had or was able to do that I have and do everyday without thinking of it as a luxury. The little girl is put in a very mature position towards the end of the book when they are running to freedom and she is in charge of her younger brother. I connected to this part of the book because I am the oldest of three daughters in my family and would have done the same thing for my younger sisters if I were put in this situation. I could feel her frustration of being responsible for her younger brother and how she was passionate about making sure he was safe. Although this is a very sad book I think it is a great book to teach kids about war with. We can see the feelings and how war directly affects families and children contrasting to the political aspect we often times see in current events about war that children see in the newspapers everyday.

Anticipation Guide for "A Year of Impossible Goodbyes"- Elizabeth McIlwee, Brian Hudson, and Jessica Anderson

"A Year of Impossible Goodbyes"

*Notice when the image of the laughing Buddha appears in the story.

*Imagine the scent of pine and notice the significance of the pinetree in the story.

*Imagine the bond of a young girl taking care of her little brother during war time.

*Take note of the little things that were taken away from the Koreans by the Japanese during this war that we take for granted in our everyday lives.

*Keep this image and the importance of the hair pin as you read.

Night of the Gargoyles by Eve Bunting

I chose to read this children's book after a classmate did their author study on Eve Bunting and her books interested me. This book was a great book to use in an unit around Halloween time. The illistrations are in all black and white which make the book seem mysterious and scary. On the first page of the book there is the definition of a gargoyle. The definition says that gargoyles are "a watherspout in the form of a grotesque human or animal figure projecting from the roof or eaves of a building." This is different than than how the gargoyles are portrayed throughout the book. The gargoyles are seen as scary creatures that roam around during the night and hate the birds who sit on them and the humans who made them. They are seen moving off of their walls and are sneaking up on humans when they are not aware. Overall I think this, along with many of Eve Bunting's other books, is a great book for children.

Piggies by Audrey Wood and Don Wood

This is a another great book by Audrey Wood who I did my author study on. This is a great book to read to children around bedtime because the ending of the story talks about how the "little piggies" on each finger of the child finally go to bed. This book doesn't have much text so it is great for young children who are just learning how to read. It would be easy for children to read the text, but also great for them to look at the pictures and analyze what is going on in the illistrations. Each page adds one piggy on each finger and then in the end we see the piggies giving a good night kiss to the piggie on the same finger on the other hand. It also shows the piggies in different situations such as in the bathtub, in the cold, in a mess, etc. The piggies are dressed up in creative outfits that are funny for children to look at!

Letter to the Lake by Susan Marie Swanson ande Peter Catalonotto

I love going to the lake in the summer and have always been around the water every summer. The beginning of the book is a letter from a little girl saying how much she misses the lake and how what she remembers about it. The little girl goes on to say that she misses the summer now because it is winter and very cold. This reminds me of harsh Iowan winters and how much I look forward to the summer during these times. She notices that he mother is stressed out because her buttons are crooked and this is a great example of how observant children are. The illistrations in the book are very creative such as when the illistrator shows the little girl eating her breakfast and her mother in the background stressing out about a bill in the reflection of the toaster. Another example of this creativity is when the illistrator shows the little girl smiling at her mother in the car through in the reflection of the car window.

Making Plum Jam by John Warren Stewig and Kevin O'Malley

I connected with the book immediately when I began reading it because the little boy didn't want to go to her great aunt's house for the week. I used to have to spend a week at one of my great aunt's house in the summer and I would become so bored. Immediately when he gets to the house her aunt asks her what she learned at school that year. That is a universal question that I think every adult ask children when to begin conversation. I further connected with the book when the little boy talks about how his aunt doesn't have electricity. My family went to visit an Amish family when I was younger and I didn't understand why they didn't have lights and in place of them they used candles. I found it cute that the little boy wouldn't eat the bacon at breakfast because the big used to be his friend.
It was funny that the aunts were stealing plums from the neighbor farmer in front of their nephew. The little boy was suprised of their misbehaving! The little boy takes jars of jam back to the farmer with a thank you note that night.

The Disappearing Island by Corinne Demas

I enjoyed reading this book. The illistrations by Ted Lewin were very detailed and went along with the text very well. This book was about a real island off the shore of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, which I found out by reading the author's note at the end of the book. The book went into detail about the ocean and the boat that the little girl and her grandma ride on. This book would be great to use in a unit about the ocean or other topics concerning the coast. I liked how the illistrations were different in the story when the little girl was daydreaming. The illistrations were all in shades of orange and yellow to portray her sight from behind her eyes under the sun! This book was very helpful in explaining how the tides of the ocean work and why this particular island is slowly disappearing in the middle of the ocean.