Caps for Sale: A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys and Their Monkey Business by Esphyr Slobodkina

Book Genre: Folktale, Classic

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 1938

Awards or honors received: Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958, Reading Rainbow Book

Summary: A peddler walked around town trying to sale caps on his head for 50 cents each. He would walk up and down the streets of town shouting for people to buy his caps. One day he did not sale any caps, so he decided to go to the country for a walk. Once he was in the country he decided to take a nap. While he was asleep monkeys stole all of his caps. Once the peddler realized what had happened it became a battle of monkey see monkey do! In the end, the monkeys returned the peddler his caps.

Personal Rating, **Ok. I consider this book standard with average illustrations. I thought the colors in the illustrations correlated well with the words of the text, very monotone.

Reading Level: 3 grade (A.R. Level 3.1)

Interest Level: K-2

Possible uses of the text in integrated units of study:
The text would be a superb choice to use for several different math lessons. Students could use the caps to study different types of patterns and money. A lesson on positional words and phrases: over, under, on top of, behind, in back of, in front of, and beside.

Students possibly could study community jobs, entrepreneurs, in a social studies lesson.

Reading: Compare and contrast two different folktales. (Caps for Sale and The First Strawberries)

Writing: Write a short journal essay on, "What would you do if monkeys took something that belonged to you?"

Potential Problems or Difficulties: I could not find any potential problems or difficulties.