Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone


Harry Potter by J.K Rowling, illustrated by Mary GrandPre was published by Scholastic Inc. in 1998. It is in the fantasy genre and is about a boy who learns he is a wizard and goes off the wizard school and also on an incredible adventure.
Harry is about as plain as they come. He lives with his Aunt, Uncle and spoiled rotten Cousin, who treat him awfully. One day Harry receives a letter and after a struggle finds out that the letter is from a wizarding school. Harry is actually a wizard! He goes off to school and meets Ron and Hermione and quickly realizes that he is not just going to blend in with everyone else. Everyone in the wizarding world knows Harry’s name and considers him a hero for something he has no idea about. Harry learns that when he was a baby his parents were killed by an evil wizard names Voldemort, but when Voldemort tried to kill Harry, the spell backfired for some reason and Voldemort was supposedly killed.
When Harry arrives at school he is sorted into a dormitory and starts his schooling. He quickly becomes involved in the Quidditch team and sticks to his two friend Ron and Hermione. One day he stumbles upon a hidden room while running from a professor. In the room is a mirror and when Harry steps in front of it, he sees his parents. Harry cannot explain why he can see his parents in a mirror in a random school room, but he spends hours and hours there before the headmaster Dumbledore shows up in this random room and explains to Harry that the mirror shows our heart’s deepest desire. Harry goes on to be very successful at Quidditch and then Hermione, Ron and Harry become entranced trying to figure out who Nicolas Flamel is. They know there is something being hidden in the castle and they know Nicolas Flamel has something to do with it, but they struggle to learn who he is. Finally one day they learn that Flamel is the inventor of the Sorceror’s Stone. As the year finishes out Harry, Ron and Hermione find out more and more about the Sorceror’s Stone and the book ends with a battle between Harry and supposedly Professor Quirrell, a meek, studdering professor, who turns out to be just the host of Voldemort’s weak soul. Harry manages to take the Sorceror’s Stone from the mirror of Erised and keeps Voldemort from coming back to full life.
I, like most of it’s readers, really enjoyed this book. It is so packed full of adventure and friendship and mischief that I don’t know how anyone could not love it. Harry is a classic underdog and he comes out on top! He goes from a miserable life to one full of friendship, love, excitement and belonging. Harry finds friends in Ron and Hermione and never purposefully compromises that friendship. This book showed me a lesson in loyalty. The book talks about the power of love, especially at the very end when Dumbldore is explaining things to Harry. He explains that love like Harry’s mother gave to him when she was trying to protect him from Voldemort leaves a powerful mark on him. When someone loves you, they give you something that cannot be taken away and that makes a lasting impression on you and those around you. I love that the power of love is taken so literally here. That the fact that Harry’s mother loved him so greatly means that Voldemort cannot even touch him because his skin will burn from the love. I know kids already adore this book, but I think reading it with a class and allowing them to talk about it with each other and offering them ideas about plot and character development would be an excellent way to show kids about great literature. This book combines just enough magic with just enough everyday kid stuff to pull in all kinds of children. Kids can relate to Harry and being picked on. The richness of the language pulls you into the story and creates a whole Harry Potter world inside your head. The reader gets caught up in the adventure and just thank goodness there is a sequel. I think the ultimate message of this book has a lot to do with belonging. Harry goes from a house full of people he can’t stand to a school with friends he loves dearly and would do anything for. He finds a home and a family and that is worth more than anything he can imagine.
Obviously this novel would be great for teaching kids about fantasy literature. It can also teach them about friendship and ability. Harry isn’t very old when he starts this adventure, but achieves great things and encouraging your students to believe this about themselves is a worthwhile task. I loved the idea of the Mirror of Erised and how it helped him in the very end. This is a novel idea to think about. What is a deepest most desperate desire. I honestly hope mine is to see God in the Mirror of Erised. I think things like true love and success in life would come to mind as well. But I hope my heart would instantly go to God and find in the mirror, confirmation and affirmation in His face. This activity would be a great one to go along with reading this book to a class. Ask them to think about what their deepest desire is and have them draw it in a mirror template.

Monday, April 21, 2008

A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson

A child's Garden of Verses is written by Robert Louis Stevenson and illustrated by Ruth Mary Hallock. It was published in 2007 by Barnes & Noble Inc. It is an anthology of poetry. I chose this anthology of poetry before I read the "contemporary" part of this assignment, but I really enjoyed these poems so I decided to write about them. Robert Louise Stevensen writes in a older form of english. He uses words that you do not hear everyday, but this language is what makes his poetry great. These words are what makes his poetry traditionally and stereotypically poetry. He uses apostrophes, similes, personification, repetition and a very traditional rhyme pattern in most all of this poems. In his poem, The Wind he writes "O wind, that sings so loud a song!" This gives the wind human characteristics. This line of the poem is also repeated at the end of every verse. In his poem, My Bed is a Boat he likens his bed to a boat and rhymes about the adventures a little boy takes while he is really asleep. He rarely, if ever, uses alliteration or onomatopoeia. These poems do not relate well to every student. I think most kids will be bored after 2 or 3 of these poems. But, given the right reader and the right context I think a class could appreciate this type of poetry. The book is illustrated by Ruth Mary Hallock. Her drawings are old timey but enchanting. They embody the feel of the poems they illustrate very well. She seems to use drawings and watercolors to get the feel she is looking for. There are not illustrations for every poem in the book. Her drawings are spread out among the poems. While this book has an older feel than some I think the poetry in it is lovely and really embodies what poetry is all about.

One of my favorites is:
Picture-Books In Winter
Summer Fading, winter comes-
Frosty Mornings, tingling thumbs,
Window robins, winter rooks,
And the picture story-books.

Water now is turned to stone
Nurse and I can walk upon;
Still we find the flowing brooks
In the picture story-books.

All the pretty things put by,
Wait upon the children's eye,
Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks,
In the picture story-books.

We may see how all things are,
Seas and cities, near and far,
And the flying fairies' looks,
In the picture story-books.

How am I to sing your praise,
Happy chimney-corner days,
Sitting safe in nursery nooks,
Reading picture story-books?

I like this poem because it shows the mind of a child realizing that time stands still in books. The child is realizing that as the weather and the world changes outside, the world is always the same and always magic inside a book. I love that Stevenson was able to capture this in a poem.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Rosa by Nikki Giovanni a biography of Rosa Parks


Rosa is written by Nikki Giovanni and illustrated by Bryan Collier. It was published in 2005 by Scholastic Inc. It is a biographical and informational text as it talks about Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Movement. It won the Coretta Scott King Award for Non-Violent Social Change in 2006.
This children’s book outlines the events surrounding Rosa Parks famous ride on a public bus. It takes you through a normal day for her and lets the reader see that she was not someone on a mission to upset everyone around her, she was just a woman riding a bus who did not want to give up her seat for a white man. The story also relates some of the other major happenings during the civil rights movement such as the march on Washington and Martin Luther King Junior’s famous speech. The illustrations in this book are what really make it a wonderful book. The pictures are made with watercolors and a collage technique. The collages are amazing because of the materials used. When it talks about Rosa working in a sewing factory, Collier uses material to make the collage. The page almost seems to be bunched in places like real fabric would be. In some of the pictures you see the capitol building in the background, reminding the reader that this story affected our government, our history and most importantly our lives today. The coolest parts of the illustrations for me were the ripple affects around Rosa and Mr. King’s heads. When one illustration shows Mr. King giving his speech there is a ripple affect coming from him that shows the picture around him but with the affect from his voice. It shows his affect on the world around him and how his words made a tangible difference in the society he lived in. The crown-like ripple around Mrs. Parks, which is shown on the front cover as well, shows her impact on history. It shows the she stuck out on the bus she was riding as someone going against the grain. The art in this story is truly beautiful. This story makes history real and interesting and shows readers who this woman was. It is no wonder that this story won the Coretta Scott King Award.
Here is Bryan Collier's website for more about his artwork.

Stone Girl, Bone Girl: The Story of Mary Anning by Laurence Anholt


Stone Girl, Bone Girl: the story of Mary Anning was written by Laurence Anholt and illustrated by Sheila Moxley. It was published in 1998 by Orchard Books and is a biographical children’s book about Mary Anning and young fossil hunter who makes a huge discovery at the age of 12.
Mary Anning was born in England and when she was only a baby she was struck by lightening. Her parents didn’t think she could survive something like that, but Mary surprised her parents and started out her life in an extraordinary way. She kept up her extraordinary ways after her father, Pepper, showed her a fossil down by the sea. Mary was fascinated and spent all of her time their looking for “curiosities,” as she called them. As time went on Mary developed a large collection of curiosities, but she did not develop a large amount of friends because she spent all of her time along by the sea. The other kids would tease her and sing, “Stone girl, Bone girl. Out-on-your-own Girl!” Mary would always run back to her father who she loved most anyways. One day she met some of her father’s friends, the Philpot sisters, who also collected curiosities. They told Mary about a sea monster hidden somewhere in the cliffs by the sea that would be a great treasure to find. Mary’s father soon grew ill and her story saddens with his death, but a dog finds Mary and helps her keep looking for her treasures. Mary begins to sell her curiosities to help her mother support the two of them. Then one day Mary and her puppy find the sea monster that the Philpot sisters had talked about! Mary became known as the “Fossil Girl” and made enough money from her discovery for her and her mother to live off of for the rest of their lives.
This story has a lot of sadness in it, but it also has a happy ending. I thought it spoke a lot to individualism, because Mary did not fit in with her peers. She sticks with her passion though and makes a huge discovery that even adults could not find. I also thought this book did a good job of dealing with death. Losing a parent is one of the scariest things for kids, and talking about it or reading about it might make it easier for kids to not be so worried about their parents dying. The pictures in the story were really colorful. They really helped tell the story by giving visuals of where Mary was searching for fossils. I loved the little fossils that were drawn in the rocks, it makes the reader know where the sea monster is hidden before Mary even finds it. This is exciting for kids and helps them understand about fossils more. Overall I thought this was a great example of a biography for younger children.
A Biographical Poem on Mary Anning:
MaryExtraordinary, Loner, Exploratory, Perservering
Daughter of Pepper, mentee to the Philpot Sister’s, friend of the little dog,Lover of curiosities, Pepper and exploring.Who feels fascinated by fossils, worried for her father and a bit left out by her peers.Who finds happiness in discoveriesWho gives support for those who don’t fit in.
Who would like to see the alleged sea monster that the Philpot sisters talked about.
Who enjoys digging up cool things from the earth.
Resident of Lyme Regis, England.
Anning

Mama by Jeanette Winter an informational text about the Tsunami Disaster of 2004


Mama is written and illustrated by Jeanette Winter. It was published in 206 by Harcourt Inc. It is basically a picture book and also an informational text about the tsunami disaster in 2004. It is the story of a baby hippopotamus who spends all of his time with his mama. One day they are swimming in the ocean when a huge tsunami comes and separates the mama and son. The baby is found by people from a zoo and is taken to live in the zoo with other animals because he cannot find his mama. The baby hippopotamus is sad at first, then he finds a stand-in mama in an old tortoise.
This story is beautifully illustrated. The colors are bold and beautiful and compliment each other very well. You wouldn’t think that basic lines would create good drawings, but this is the technique that Jeanette Winter uses. The lines just grab your attention because of the boldness and are so beautiful because they are so basic. The text is bold and a bit playful. The only words in the entire story are “mama” and “baby.” I love that though there are only two words in the book, there is an entire story in the pages. The story includes family bonds, separation, sadness, a struggle between holding onto the memory of the hippo’s mama and finding a new home and mother figure at the zoo. This is truly a heart breaking story, but it can be read almost by 2 year olds! The author’s note at the end gives a more detailed description of the tsunami and the facts behind this picture book. It explains that the baby hippo was really found and brought to the zoo and that one day they hope the hippo will form a bond with another mother hippo that is also living at the zoo. I was almost mad at first that they took the hippo to live at the zoo, but the author’s note helped me realize that the hippo was in need to protection and camaraderie that he may not have found by himself in the wild.I have really fallen in love with this story. It is so beautiful and easy to understand for younger kids. I think it has a great lesson to teach and include in any classroom.

First Thoughts on Informational Texts

My first gut reaction to this assignment was that we were going to have to read textbook-like accounts of some famous dead person. I was not excited about the thought. It didn’t even occur to me, at first, that there would be children’s literature or even picture books that could be considered informational. When I picked out the books I wanted to read I got more excited but a little confused. I was still confused as to how they were going to be entertaining for small children and also informational and aligned with historical facts. I guess I was very skeptical of the assignment as a whole. I think students, especially at the elementary level will have basically the same reaction. Kids will hear biography or historical and their eyes will immediately glaze over. I know there must be better books out their to address these subjects and I'm excited to read a few to see what is being written.