Kindness is Cooler, Mrs. Ruler by Margery Cuyler

Book Genre: fiction

Publishing Info: Simon and Schuster, 50 pages

Awards or honors received: N/A

Summary: At the beginning of the story the students in Mrs. Ruler’s class stuck inside because it had been raining all week. The students began to misbehave and treat each other badly. So Mrs. Ruler kept 5 of the students to speak to them about kindness. She told them they each needed to perform 5 acts of kindness and share what they did at show and tell. The next day at show and tell some of the kids couldn’t wait to share their acts of kindness with the rest of the class. The whole class was excited and they decided to design a class project where everyone would participate. Everyday the class shared their kindness acts. Everyone was excited except for one little boy , David, who couldn’t think of anything to do. The class continued to share their random acts and wrote them down. Everyday they would count their acts of kindness. One day the class gerbils go out of the cage and everyone panicked. David ran around the room collecting the gerbils and his act was added to the kindness wall.

Personal rating and reason for rating: **** This is a cute book with a great theme, and the teacher speaks in rhymes. Students will love it and get ideas for random acts of kindness.

Reading level: 3.7

Interest level: K-5

Possible uses of the text: Social Studies - have your class participate in random acts of kindness. Read the book and discuss examples of how to be kind. Then have the students/teacher/parents write each act of kindness and display. Try for 100 acts of kindness. Expand your kindness to the school by picking up trash on the playground, bringing the principal a snack, holding the door open for other classes, etc. Get your community involved by collecting toys to give away, collecting food to donate to a food shelter, makes cards for a senior center, etc.

Potential Problems or Difficulties: none