My Children's Library by Ilana Gunson

I Can Save The Ocean- Alison Inches

icgunson — 2024-09-24 18:09:22 UTC

Because this book follows an environmental and call-to-action style narrative, it can be used to show how tone, voice and style of writing is different than in a traditional picture book. I would get my students to write a letter to a sea creature promising them to take care of the ocean.

Room On The Broom- Julia Donaldson

icgunson — 2024-09-24 18:10:24 UTC

This book has a very clear beginning, middle and end, so it is perfect to teach about narrative organization. For an activity, I would ask students to go through the book and try to map out the plot points on a narrative map to see if they can point out the different points of the story!

The Secret Garden- Francis Hodgson Burnett

icgunson — 2024-09-24 18:11:11 UTC

This book is good to teach about characters and interesting details. As it is aimed at older children, I would use excerpts of this as a class read-aloud, or try and find an abridged picture version online. For an activity, I would get students to create a drawing of what would be in their secret garden and have to write a caption for it.

I Will Never Not Ever Eat A Tomato- Lauren Child

icgunson — 2024-09-24 18:14:24 UTC

This book is great to teach about ideas, zooming in into interesting details with strong characters. For an activity, I would ask students to write a few sentences about a time that they were wrong, or maybe had their minds changed, just like Lola did in the book.

Sam's Super Seats- Keah Brown

icgunson — 2024-09-24 22:53:49 UTC

This book is great to teach about having a strong beginning, middle and end, which we can clearly follow. This I would pair with an empathy promise, where students write a pledge to help students who are different and treat them fairly and kindly. We can talk about how a pledge would be organized and they can learn about another kind of writing style!

Who's Afraid of The Big Bad Book- Lauren Child

icgunson — 2024-09-24 22:54:54 UTC

This book is brilliant, as it ties in other stories to create a new one, meaning it is a good way to teach students about ideas and how old ideas can be transformed into new media. For an activity, I would have my students create their own fairytale, using aspects and characters from other fairytales! It would probably be a week-long project.

Freckle Juice- Judy Blume

icgunson — 2024-11-05 16:13:20 UTC

This book has a very strong voice, and we can teach our students how to convey a strong voice and use humor in their writing! I would pair this with an activity where students could use humor in their own writing- and then perform them as skits to the whole class.

Creepy Carrots- Aaron Reynolds

icgunson — 2024-11-05 16:17:12 UTC

While this book is largely pictures, it has a very clear established narrative and students can learn how to build suspense through a narrative! For an activity, I would ask them to go back through the word and find out some specific words or phrases that created suspense and tell us why. We can discuss why something spooky is written in a different way than something funny or factual.

The Word Collector- Peter H. Reynolds

icgunson — 2024-11-05 16:22:36 UTC

This book teaches students about the power of words! I would pair it with an activity where students are given a zip-loc bag of cut-up words and ask them all to create a one-sentence story with some of them. We can discuss how different all of the students' stories are.

The Day Punctuation Came To Town- Kimberlee Gard

icgunson — 2024-11-05 16:28:25 UTC

For this book, after reading, we could have an activity where students cement their knowledge of punctuation by getting phrases and deciding where to put the punctuation and which to use. For instance, we can discuss "lets eat, grandma!" and "let's eat grandma!" to show them the impact of using correct punctuation to completely change the meaning of their writing.

Harold and the Purple Crayon- Crockett Johnson

icgunson — 2024-11-05 16:34:56 UTC

This book shows students that when we write, we can create our own world. For an activity, maybe integrated with an art class, I would read this book and then ask students to draw a world for themselves like Harold did. After describing the world with adjectives, we would talk about the power of creativity and world-building in literature.

Rufus the Writer- Elizabeth Braun

icgunson — 2024-11-05 16:37:46 UTC

Rather than a lemonade stand, Rufus comes up with a word-stand! He writes little stories for his friends and family, which could easily link to an activity where I ask my students to do the same. We would discuss why we would write different stories for different people in their lives and think about how the books we read are often written for us.

Fly Guy And The Frankenfly- Tedd Arnold

icgunson — 2024-11-07 18:56:53 UTC

This book is about a little boy and his best friend the fly, who creates a 'frankenfly' from his imagination. For the writing activity, I will talk about voice, and ask students how we can use writing to create something from their imagination and bring it to life! I can also discuss that the fly only says 'Buzz', but he can still communicate, which means I can ask students how they can communicate without using their words. In second grade, students learn about how images connect to the ideas presented in the book, and therefore this book is a great mentor text when having that discussion about presentation!

The Giving Tree- Shel Silverstein

icgunson — 2024-11-14 15:22:00 UTC

This book is a classic, and it is a classic for a reason. This book tells the story of a little boy and a tree he keeps coming back to as he grows up. The writing style itself is beautiful and the variety of sentences as well as pauses in stanzas are perfect for teaching sentence fluency. For a writing activity after this, I would ask students -- after a discussion on the impact different length sentences can have-- to write their own poem about something they enjoy spending time with.

The Grumpy Monkey: Freshly Squeezed- Suzanne Lang

icgunson — 2024-11-14 15:34:06 UTC

In this book, students will follow Grumpy Monkey in his quest to find his perfect 'stress orange' to squeeze. Written as a graphic novel, this is a great book to teach students about how stories can be presented in different ways! As an activity, I would have students come up with a three panel comic/graphic novel to describe their life up until now.