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.

So Far From The Bamboo Grove

So Far From The Bamboo Grove by Yoko Kawashima Watkins is a story about the struggles of Yoko Kawashima following the end of Japanese Rule in Korea. I thought this story was well written. At times I became a little bored as it seemed rather repetitive and the events were very similar to each other as the story continued, but regardless I thought it was a great way to show students what life was like for those Japanese; how dangerous and devastating things could be.

In comparison to The Year of Impossible Goodbyes I thought it was very interesting. I thought The Year of Impossible Goodbyes had more events in it that kept me interested in reading it, but both stories showed the struggles people went through. I think that if either of the stories were to be used in a curriculum setting they other story would be necessary to avoid bias in the controversy. It is obvious from both books that each side had it's own struggles and that not all Koreans, or all Japanese were involved or cared for by the Korean Communists or the Japanese Army. Overall, I enjoyed both books and I think that together they would make for a very strong lesson in the Japanese Rule in Korea and the 38th Parallel that followed.