Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse

Book Genre: Poetry

Publishing Info: Scholastic Press (227 pages)

Awards: This book won a Newberry Medal

Summary: This book consists of free verse poetry that explains the life of Billie Jo, the main character. She is fourteen years old and the story spans a year and a half of her life. The setting is the Oklahoma prairie during the 1930's. The prairie is a dust bowl (hence the name "Out if the Dust" and is portrayed as a miserable place to live.) Her father is a farmer, and they are trying to survive off the land. The poetry is written and sequenced almost like a personal diary. Through family and personal tragedy, she looses her mother and newborn brother because of an accident that her and her father are responsible for. The accident left Billie Jo physically handicapped and her father emotionally handicapped. Afterwards, the two of them had to somehow mend their relationship and figure out how to get on with life.

Personal Rating: ***Good. It's a good story and the author really makes you feel the emotions of Billie Joe but it's so depressing that it's hard to read. In 227 pages, not a single good thing happens to this child!

Reading Level: 5.3
Interest Level: 5-6

Possible uses in reading and writing across the curriculum: Of course, this would be a good book to include in a literature focus unit on poetry because it's a good example of free verse poetry. It would be easy to integrate this literature into fifth grade science because many of those learning objective could correspond with underlying themes of this novel. For example, climate on the prairie was very harsh, they would go through severe droughts and plants and livestock would die. Then rain would pour and the environment would flood. Fifth grade science teachers have to teach about the water cycle, landforms, eco-systems, and ecology. Even fifth grade social studies learning objectives focus on US history the Great Depression and many of the problems faced by this community were related to that era.

Potential Problems or difficulties: I believe that girls would enjoy this book much more so than boys. The reasons are because that it is written from a woman's perspective and it contains a lot of emotional writings that many boys just don't understand.

A RAINBOW All Around Me by Sandra L. Pinkney

Book Genre: Poetry, Multicultural

Publishing Info: Cartwheel Books, Scholastic Inc. (32 pages)

Awards or Honors:

Summary: This is a wonderful picture type book about colors. It teaches children how colors (yellow, blue, red, orange, purple, black, green, pink, brown, white, and tan) are all around them. Each color has vivid photographs that show the colors in everyday use. It also uses words to describe how the colors look or make you feel. For example, the color yellow shows various photographs of a young girl in a bright yellow rain coat. You can also find words to describe how the color may feel. Such as: "fun, bright, or sunshine in the rain".

Personal Rating & Reason: ****Great! I love the use of color and photographs in this book. The bright use of color and actual photos really catch the eyes. I also enjoy the authors word use. Her words to describe the colors are strikenly dead on.

Reading Level: Pre-K-1 (1.9 AR)

Interest Level: ages infant-6 years

Possible Uses: You could use this book to help the children learn their colors. It could be tied to writing as well as art.
Writing: You could do a color lesson for each color by having the students bring in photos of things that are the color of the day. Then you could have the students pick an item to write and illustrate. Another activity could be to have the children look around the room for items of a certain color. Or you could have the students make up their own describing words for the colors and make charts to put up around the room.
Art: Of course illustrating their writing would be an activity. You could also have the children make and taste items to help concrete the color in their head with tactile manipulatives. For example: green - make shamrocks and taste green apples or broccli , yellow - make sunflowers and taste lemons, blue - draw ocean scenes and touch ice, red - make hearts/valentines and taste red hots, purple - make grape collages and make jam in class, etc.

Potential Problems: None at this time.

A Giraffe and a Half, Shel Silverstein

Book Genre: Poetry

Publishing Info: Harper Collins, 1964 - 46 pages

Awards or honors received: N/A

Summary: The book is a poem of silly things that happen if you stretched a giraffe into a giraffe and a half. Each page introduces a new event for the giraffe, then it repeats all the things that happened previously. It is a rhyming poem that repeats and is very funny. Every page also has an illustration of what is happening to the giraffe and the little boy.
Personal rating and reason for rating: **** This book is very funny and the illustrations are simple in black and white. I think everyone will love this story.

Reading level: 2.3

Interest level: K-8

Possible uses of the text: This story could be a lead-in for many different subjects: rhyming words, poetry, fluency, sequencing, author study
Rhyming Words: students look through the book and “highlight” the rhyming words with highlighter post-its
Poetry: students listen to the teacher read the story and then practice writing their own rhyming poems.
Fluency: students read aloud several times
Sequencing: type up the events that happened in the story, then have students put them in order as they happened in the story.
Author Study: Read several books by Shel Silverstein. Compare and contrast. Research Shel Silverstein.

Potential Problems or Difficulties: The story doesn’t really make sense, so you would not want to use it for comprehension.