Mentor Text Library by Kylie Towry

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

KylieTowry — 2025-09-19 04:45:29 UTC

The Very Hungry Caterpillar includes key early childhood learning with counting, days of the week, and various foods. Writing activities: write how many of each fruit there are and draw a picture.

Niko Draws a Feeling

KylieTowry — 2025-09-19 17:27:55 UTC

Niko Draws a Feeling is a great book to learn how things make us feel. Niko uses "the low Autumn sun peeking out from behind a cloud" with the illustration of a warm bright orange sun with a beam of light. This can be used to show students to express their emotions in freeform ideas rather than objects. Could be used as an activity to correlate emotions to color. Writing activities: draw an emotion or how something makes you feel. Then, label it on the bottom.

Wonder

KylieTowry — 2025-09-19 17:36:22 UTC

Wonder follows a boy named August that has a genetic disorder causing facial deformities. We follow August through fifth grade to show the themes of empathy, acceptance, and resilience. This book can help students understand the impact of their actions and words especially with the multi POV. I would use this as class reading throughout the first half of the year. Writing activity: Write a summary of each chapter, or relate to August in a short response.

Where the Wild Things Are

KylieTowry — 2025-11-27 02:58:16 UTC

Where the Wild Things Are supports imagination and internal conflict through a physical world helping children understand emotional intensity. Writing Activity: Students draw a feeling either abstractly or by creating their fictional world/character. Then write a brief paragraph explaining the feeling they chose to draw.

The Gruffalo

KylieTowry — 2025-11-27 03:14:05 UTC

The Gruffalo includes sequencing and repetition. I would use this text to help students identify the beginning, middle, and end of texts. Writing Activities: Students write their own story using repetition.

Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race

KylieTowry — 2025-11-27 03:25:50 UTC

Hidden Figures supports historical and biographical literature. This text shows the complexity of the space race in a demographic that is not portrayed often in media. Writing Activity: Students research a minoritized historical figure and create a timeline of their life.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

KylieTowry — 2025-12-05 05:01:47 UTC

The Invention of Hugo Cabret follows an orphaned boy named Hugo who lives in the walls of a train station in Paris. He maintains the stations clocks after the death of his father. It is a folktale that uses rhyming to explain the overall themes. This novel uses detailed sequencing of wordless visuals to advance the written plot. Writing activities: Students draw a sequence of a chapter and write one sentence explaining each section.

The Magic School Bus

KylieTowry — 2025-12-05 05:08:47 UTC

The magic School Bus is a great example of blending fiction and non-fiction. It helps teach science using diagrams and labels to convey complex information. Writing activities: Students pick a scientific topic to research and create a report that includes a diagram that is labeled with a glossary.

Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices

KylieTowry — 2025-12-05 05:16:44 UTC

Joyful Noise supports writing with rhyming, fluency, and rhythm. It also teaches formatting conventions with the use of stanzas and space on the page. Writing Activities: Students create their own poems about how a specific animal moves. They should include a specific sound or onomatopoeia. Then, they will share it with their table.

The Bad Guys

KylieTowry — 2025-12-05 05:21:52 UTC

Bad Guys is a graphic novel that focuses on visual cues such as panel cuts and facial expressions or sound effects like onomatopoeia to articulate emotions. Writing activities: students must create a comic strip using dialogue and visuals to show emotions.