Final Relfection

When reflecting on my experience in Children's Lit and what I have learned I have nothing but positive thoughts. At first I struggled with finding quality literature for children because they are so many books out there. I was just grabbing books off the shelf and reading them. Now when I am looking for books that I find valuable I ask myself a few questions.

Some of these questions are:

*Does this book have the following literary elements: plot? characterization, setting, style, theme and point of view

*If they book does have the previous elements, is it written in the form of a compelling story that is appropriate for the target audience?

Other things I now consider in assessing books I pay close attention to a few other aspects:

*How can this story be used in the classroom?

*Does the story have illustrations that will engage the reader and help the reader to find meaning when reading.

Children's Lit has also introduced me to the idea of using different genres of books in my curriculum. I appreciated working on the genre project and listening to the presentations given by my classmates. I really enjoyed looking at the controversial books we were required to read and blog about as well. I felt that I really learned that children's books are more than pictures with text to entertain kids as they are going to sleep at night. They are the most important tool in classrooms.

I appreciated that were required to read both picture books and novels because although I don't plan to teach older grades, I am glad I have read a few books that I could use in my classrooms if I did.

Overall, this was an amazing class that I learned a lot from. The text set alone taught me how to incorporate a genre or topic and create an idea for curriculum around it! I really enjoyed Children's Lit and I think it is one of the most valuable classes I have taken in my undergrad so far!

How to Bake an American Pie

How to Bake an American Pie by Karma Wilson is a story about America and everything that it stands for. The book is written in a poet form with many of the sentences rhyming together. I liked the idea of this book and the illustrations were beautiful, but I think it would be difficult for young children to understand. It needs to be read very slowly and the ideas that pertain to America and the freedoms we have are not ideas that most young children have grasped yet. This story would be appropriate for older students.

City Kids

City Kids by Patricia Hubbell is a collection of poems about the things ordinary kids living in cities see and do. This collection of poems includes both the negative and positive things that happen within city boarders. The experiences kids can have in cities vary and this book captures all of them with vibrant images. I liked this simple collection of poems. I think it would be great to use to show a class diversity that exists in cities.

Hair Dance!

Hair Dance! by Dinah Johnson is a book written in a poetic form about different ways African American women and girls can wear their hair. It describes hair of every length, color, and texture. It incorporates caring for hair with caring for each other and friendships. The photographs that illustrate each page are beautiful as well. They depict girls and women who are happy and proud of their hair and their relationships with one another. I love this book. I think the author did a great job showing how the women in the images are proud of their hair and that it is a part of them! This book brings in cultural diversity to poetry through the genre of hair!

Miss Mary Mack

Miss Mary Mack by Mary Ann Hoberman is a choral book about Miss Mary Mack. At the beginning of the story there is a page that is dedicated to teaching the tune of the song/book and gives hand motions that make the story very fun to recite. The story/song uses rhyming throughout it and follows a track of events that make the story understandable. I think this is a great book for getting children excited about reading and being active while doing it. Overall, I really liked this story and thought it would be a fun book to introduced to students for free reading time!

There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly

There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly by Simms Taback is a great poet story about an old lady who first swallowed a fly, but we don't know why. She continues to swallow other things to catch the fly, but eventually she ends up swallowing a horse, and of course, she dies! because no one can swallow a horse and live. This book is clever and continuously rhymes its sentences with a great deal of repetition. The illustrations are wonderful as well. They are bright and show exactly what is happening in the text therefore a child would be able to infer some of the text not only from the repetitive language used in the story but from the illustrations. Overall, this is a fun story that I would recommend for children!

Love That Dog

Love That Dog: a novel by Sharon Creech is a very interesting book that show the year long thoughts of a boy who went from disliking poetry to appreciating poetry and gaining a passion for poetry. I thought the short thoughts of the student were interesting. The way they were written as if his thoughts were poet was a strange way to read the book. I thought that Jack's progression to liking poetry was very realistic. He did not start to like poetry right off the bat. His first entry was about how he didn't want to write poetry because he was a boy and "Girls do." (write poetry). By January he was able to see how poetry could be typed up and the display that made it look more like poetry made him feel that his writing might actually be poetry, and then by the end of the book when his inspirational poet came and talked to his class he really embraced his writing as poetry and he was proud of it.

I think this would be a good book to use when teaching children how poetry can take many forms and can be done by using other poems as inspiration. Good writing comes from reading. As a teacher I would not have my class read this entire book, but use segments of it to teach lessons to my students if we were learning a poetry unit.

I thought this book was interesting and many of Jack's thoughts would be great for teaching while come of Jack's thoughts could be left out of the poetry curriculum.