Three Cheers for Tacky by Hellen Lester

Genre: Fiction

Publishing information: Scholastic, INC 32 pages

Summary: This story is about Tacky, the odd penguin. He lives with a group of penguins in an icy land. Tacky's school decides to enter a cheering contest where the first place prize is blue shiny bows. Tacky had a lot of trouble in practice following along and finding the right costume. Finally the day before the contest Tacky got it right, but at the contest Tacky messed up. The judges and crowd ended up loving them, because the other teams had been so boring. Tacky's school won the contest and the blue shiny bows.

Personal rating: ****Great! This book has great pictures. Tacky is a funny character that requires a lot of expression, kids would love him. Three Cheers for Tacky has a great message that it's ok to be a little "odd."

Reading level: 2.8

Interest level: K-3

Integration: Three Cheers for Tacky would be great to use in a science unit about penguins. This book could be used before or after reading a non fiction book about penguins. Then the class could compare/contrast the two books. The class could talk aboout what is true in Three Cheers for Tacky and how it relates to real penguins.
This would also be great when talking about differences in people and how Tacky makes life interesting for all the other penguins. The students could talk about what Tacky did that was different and why everything ended up working out in the end.
In writing you could have your students write their own story about Tacky and the penguins.

Potential problems: The only problem I see is that when Tacky speaks there are no quotation marks. This could be confusing for younger children reading this book. They are just learning fluency and using expression and without the help of quotation marks they may have trouble.