Always Mom, Forever Dad

Title: Always Mom, Forever Dad 
Author: Joanna Rowland  
Illustrator: Penny Weber 
Publisher: Tilbury House Publishers 
Publication Date: May 15th, 2014 
Genre/Format: Realistic Fiction/Picture Book 
GoodReads Summary: In today's world, more and more children have parents who live separately. As these children move between homes, they can't help but wonder: will mom still love me? Will Dad? In this reassuring picture book, young readers see children who have two households,whether because of divorce, separation, or other circumstances, experiencing life's ups and downs with both parents, secure in the knowledge that Mom will always be Mom, and Dad is forever Dad. 
What I Think: Books will always be a great way to share stories with kids because they give us the opportunity to talk about real life topics that might be difficult to discuss. They give us a starting point and a safe way to approach topics because we can think through the lens of the characters in the book. Kids can ask questions and share their thoughts in safe place because it doesn't have to be directly personal to them, it can be about the book or about the characters in the book but we can relate to them and learn from them. Always Mom, Forever Dad is a book just for that, starting conversations and sharing ideas.
     I really enjoy how this book helps children see how it's okay if your parents are divorced. It makes me sad to think that kids might feel badly if their parents are divorced or separated. Life takes is in all sorts of different directions and sometimes to places we never expect. I believe parents want what is best for their children but sometimes what's best for their children is taking care of themselves and making sure that they, as parents, are in healthy relationships. It's sad to see parents get divorced but sometimes I believe it's what's best. This book helps kids know that their parents will always love them even if they aren't married.
     As a mentor text, I can see how this might be a book that kids can read and make connections to but it can also be a great opportunity to get kids thinking of their own personal narrative stories about their parents. There are also lots of examples of AAAWWUBBIS that are great for middle grade students to look at.
     I was excited to share the cover reveal for this book back in March and now I'm excited to share the book itself! 
Read Together: Grades 2 - 4 
Read Alone: Grades 3 - 5 
Snatch of Text: 
"When I'm with my dad, he makes me pancakes for breakfast. He takes the whipped cream and puts a happy face on them. I decorate his pancake like a jellyfish and we laugh." 
Writing Prompts: Write about a time in your life when something changed. How did you feel about the change? What helped you deal with the change or feel better about what had changed in your life?
Topics Covered: Family, Relationships, Love, Belonging 

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Brothers at Bat - #NFPB13

Nonfiction Picture Book Wednesday

Nonfiction Picture Book Wednesday is hosted by Kid Lit Frenzy and The Nonfiction Detectives. Every Wednesday, I'll review non-fiction picture book. (It may not always be a picture book. Be sure to visit Kid Lit Frenzy and see what other non-fiction books are shared this week!

Title: Brothers at Bat: The True Story of an Amazing All-Brother Baseball Team 
Author: Audrey Vernick 
Illustrator: Steven Salerno 
Publisher: Clarion Books 
Publication Date: April 2012 
Genre/Format: Non-Fiction Narrative/Picture Book 
GoodReads Summary: The Acerra family had sixteen children, including twelve ball-playing boys. It was the 1930s, and many families had lots of kids. But only one had enough to field a baseball team . . . with three on the bench! The Acerras were the longest-playing all-brother team in baseball history. They loved the game, but more important, they cared for
and supported each other and stayed together as a team. Nothing life threw their way could stop them.

Full of action, drama, and excitement, this never-before-told true story is vividly brought to life by Audrey Vernick’s expert storytelling and Steven Salerno’s stunning vintage-style art.  
What I Think: Reading this book had me simultaneously wanting to be a kid again, ready to run out and play baseball, and wishing I had oodles of brothers. The artwork does a great job of bringing the story that Audrey tells to life. One image that sticks with me is when all the brothers are running out of the houses to play baseball. It was like I was watching them rush out of the door, hearing the screen door slam behind them as they wooshed by. There are more and more non-fiction picture book biographies popping up but I like that this book isn't about just one person, it's about all the brothers and how they worked together and were all bonded by baseball. They had moments of adversity, but by supporting each other, they persevered. I find it admirable to see how loyal they were to each other but also how passionate they were about baseball.
     The girl in me desperately wants to know that their sisters were up to while the boys were playing baseball...even if they weren't playing baseball, I'm sure they were involved or at least up to something themselves. I'm so curious about that!
     I'm really excited to hopefully use this book with a group of middle schoolers this year. At the beginning of the year, they will be focusing on expository writing and I'm going to use this as a jumping off kind of mentor text as well as possibly a mentor text for looking at how we use commas. I really like how narrative non-fiction draws a reader in and this book seems to prompt so many different opportunities to branch off into research: baseball, history of baseball, brothers playing baseball, war, sports in general, etc. I think this is a great text to use to talk about how we have to do research and let research lead us. Recently, I gathered a stack of non-fiction books to start brainstorming ideas for my own non-fiction narrative picture book biography and just checking out the books and seeing what has already been written about the subject I'm interested in is a great first step. Like Chris Lehman talks about in his book on research, Energize, we have to help kids venture into seeing what research is there and making adjustments in topics based on what they discover is out there. I love the possibilities for kicking of a research project with Brothers at Bat.
Read Together: Grades K - 12 
Read Alone: Grades 2 - 12 
Read With: Here Come the Girl Scouts and Players in Pigtails by Shana Corey, We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson
Snatch of Text: 
     "But there was no jealousy, no rivalry, no fighting. As the younger brothers grew up, the older ones shared playing time. If someone dropped a fly ball or struck out, no one screamed or threw down his glove or stomped off the field.
     'We stuck together,' Freddie said."
Reading Strategies to Practice: Activating Background Knowledge, Making Connections, Asking Questions, Visualizing 
Writing Strategies to Practice: Expository, Informational, Personal Narrative, Commas (series), AAAWWUBBIS, Repetition 
Writing Prompts: Write about a time in your life when you felt part of a team, whether you were working with family or friends. Do research on baseball and create an informational text to share what you learned about baseball (get creative about what format you use to share your information).  
Topics Covered:  Family, Friendship, Baseball, Integration - History, Teamwork, Determination, Integration - Sports, Adversity

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Jen Rereads The Fault In Our Stars!

Last year in January, we had a blast participating in John Green Week and then we reviewed the awesomeness that is The Fault in Our Stars by John Green during Book Blogger Appreciation Week in the fall. As I read The Fault In Our Stars, I highlighted passage after passage, line after line of amazing. I was in awe of the whole book...I totally understand that not everyone shares my complete and utter, and maybe irrational, love of this book but it's hard to deny that this book is a great book. It happens to be my favorite John Green book and what I believe to be the best of what he has written so far.

Enough of my gushing about The Fault In Our Stars though. My goal in rereading this month is to focus on what great snatches of text I find in the books I'm rereading and also what I can learn for myself as a writer from my rereads. I have specific examples of each of these today!

*Please note that all page numbers are from my e-book copy that I have on my Nook so they may not exactly match up with the physical copy of the book. 

Characterization and Word Choice

At the beginning of The Fault In Our Stars, John Green introduces us to Hazel, Isaac, and Augustus. I love reading how authors carry out the exposition in books. How exactly do they introduce us to a character while at the same time start to share the story? There is definitely a finesse to this and it's not easy. In the two passages below, you can see how he weaves in description of the three main characters. Notice how each character gets a jam-packed paragraph that helps us visualize each of them. Word choice is insanely critical here because I'm guessing John Green wanted to give readers a clear picture of each character without spending too much time describing each of them. I also love how critically Hazel describes herself and what that tells readers about her. Readers have a lot of clues to help them infer what Hazel thinks of herself.

     "The only redeeming facet of Support Group was this kid named Isaac, a long-faced, skinny guy with straight blond hair swept over one eye.

     And his eyes were the problem. He had some fantastically improbable eye cancer. One eye had been cut out when he was a kid, and now he wore the kind of thick glasses that made his eyes (both the real one and the glass one)  preternaturally huge, like his whole head was basically just this fake eye and this real eye staring at you. From what I could gather on the rare occasions when Isaac shared with the group, a recurrence had placed his remaining eye in mortal peril." (p. 10-11)

     "A boy was staring at me.

     I was quite sure I'd never seen him before. Long and leanly muscular, he dwarfed the molded plastic elementary school chair he was sitting in. Mahogany hair, straight and short. He looked my age, maybe a year older, and he sat with his tailbone against the edge of the chair, his posture aggressively poor; one hand half in a pocket of dark jeans.

     I looked away, suddenly self conscious of my myriad insufficiencies. I was wearing old jeans, which had once been tight but now sagged in weird places, and a yellow T-shirt advertising a band I didn't even like anymore. Also my hair: I had this pageboy haircut, and I hadn't even bothered to, like, brush it. Furthermore, I had ridiculously fat chipmunked cheeks, a side effect of treatment. I looked like normally proportioned person with a balloon for a head. This was not even to mention the cankle situation. And yet - I cut a glance to him, and his eyes were still on me." (p. 13)

Writing Challenge #1: Describe yourself or a character in five sentences or less. Read over your description and revise to make it as concise and full of punch as possible. 

Writing Challenge #2: Sum up yourself or a character's story in 6 words. For examples of Six-Word Memoirs for teens, check out SMITHTeens.

Metaphor

"My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations." (p. 192)

Simile

"Lidewij drove a clunky gray Fiat with an engine 

that sounded like an excited four-year-old girl." (p. 122)

I love comparing similes and metaphors with students and talking about how they help readers visualize. I've had many discussions about literary devices and just why an author chooses to use them and which he or she decides to employ. I have always felt that metaphors elicit a stronger conviction. The above metaphor is one of my absolute favorite lines from The Fault In Our Stars. It seems to have a very different tone when compared to the above simile although both definitely help a reader imagine.   

Writing Challenge #3: Write a description as a simile and as a metaphor. Compare how your description changes depending on how it is written. Which one do you like and why does it resonate with you as a simile or as a metaphor?

Independent Clauses and Commas

     "Flirting was new to me, but I liked it." (p. 40)

     "Isaac bit his nails, and I could see some blood on the corners of a couple of his cuticles." (p. 52)

     "He lit up with a real Augustus Waters Goofy Smile when he saw me, and I couldn't help but smile back." (p. 73)

     "My mouth tasted horrible, and I tried to keep it shut for fear of poisoning the airplane." (p. 99)

I love using Jeff Anderson's strategies for using snatches of text to ask students to look at what they notice about sentences and grammar. The above quotes from The Fault in Our Stars are all examples of two independent clauses connected with a conjunction. When you connect two independent clauses with a conjunction, you need to put a comma before the conjunction. I like that the sentence lengths vary because it's not about the length of the clause that makes it independent. It's about whether it can stand alone. 

Writing Challenge #4: Look at your own writing and see if you used commas correctly when joining together independent clauses. Do you have any sentences that can be joined with a conjunction to give some variety to the sentences in your writing?

Awesome Quotes

Penguin Group Australia put together a great Teacher's Guide for The Fault In Our Stars. I especially love all the wonderful quote cards at the end that can be printed for use in discussion or in various other ways. 

I hope you enjoyed revisiting the stellar-ness of John Green's The Fault In Our Stars. It was the perfect read to start off my month of rereading. I would love to hear if you have used The Fault In Our Stars as a mentor text and how you used it or plan to use it. As always, thanks for sharing!