Darlene's comments (member since Jan 29, 2009)

Darlene's comments from the Spring 09 LLED, Altoona group.

Congratulations to Mrs. Weatherford and her book Moses for winning my award. Thank you everyone for the variety of choices that I was given to read they were all really good books. Thank you to Erica for nominating this book for the Hear my cry award.

I nominate "When the rain sings" by Young Native Americans. This book is a book of poetry dedicated to the young native american life. My favorite poem is called Ration Day. These poems definitely evoke an emotional response and some of the issues they bring to light have been issues brought to our attention through the media years ago.

I nominate "Papa Gatto" an Italian Fairy tale by Ruth Sanderson. This book is a fairy tale twist similar to Cinderella. The Prince's advisor was a clever cat called Papa Gatto. His wife had recently passed away and he was looking for someone to come and help care for his babies. Sophia came to cook for the kittens and keep the house tidy while he was away. When he got back the house was destroyed and she had taken a necklace of diamonds that had belonged to his wife. He had to go away again so he announced again that he was looking for someone to come and take care of his babies. This time Beatrice came and she loved them, cooked for them, and kept the house tidy. When he came back she explained that she did this to right the wrong of her sister, she wanted no payment. She was very sad to leave the kittens behind. Then the Prince came to be looking for a wife and he wanted Beatrice, but Sophia tried to dupe him into thinking that she was Beatrice. Really enjoyed this story of Beatrice's selflessness and kindness.

I nominate "How to be an older brother or sister" written and illustrated by Mike Venezia. This is a great book coming from the child's point of view that was the only child. This book tells us things that we might not think about like how we need the child to be quiet and it also goes into things that it sees as positive for being an older brother or sister. The book uses different characters and different little stories to express differing opinions on the addition of a baby to a family.

I nominate "Greenpeace" by Melanie Ostopowich. This book is a really good introductory book, it explains all about Greenpeace, gives you things that you can do in the classroom, further readings and web sites and it also includes and index and glossary.

I nominate "The house that jack built" illustrated by Paul Galdone. This book isn't just a book of poems but it's a story that rhymes the whole way through it. The story line builds as you go. It starts with this is the house that Jack built and adds a line as you turn the pages. There is a rhyme but not every time, then it repeats the lines that you already read.

I nominate " One I love, two I love and other loving mother goose rhymes" illustrated by Nonny Hogrogian. This book displayed some interesting words that were used for rhyming. Some examples of the words are ickle, ockle, blue bockle, and Willy, Willy, Wilkin, kissed the maids a-milking. I found this book to be quite humorous with it's made up words.

I nominate "The rabbit and the turtle" by Eric Carle. This book contains Aesop's fables that are retold and illustrated by Eric Carle. One of the most memorable fables for me is the rabbit and the turtle. The rabbit is know to be faster than a turtle, but in this tale the turtle wins the race. Each short story has the moral printed at the bottom of the page. The moral for the rabbit and the turtle story is slow and steady wins the race.

I nominate "The mountain that loved a bird" by Alice McLerran and illustrated by Eric Carle. This was an interesting twist for me with the mountain being personified, usually when I think of personification it’s with animals. The mountain has feelings of being sad and loving the bird. It wants the bird to stay. The bird then begins to bring seeds to the mountain as it is weeping and trees and plants begin to grow on it. The book ends with the mountain getting its wish that Joy the bird can stay. The mountain which is an inanimate object was built up as the secondary character of the story. This would be a great book to use for studying personification.

I nominate the book "Cancer what's it like" by Angela Royston because of the real view that the book gives for children and all the things that cancer patients may ago through. It talks about what is cancer, cancer treatment, preventing cancer, and many other topics. The book has real life illustrations of things like the blood cells, x-rays, and chemotherapy.

I nominate "Paula Deen's my first cookbook" by Paula Deen and illustrated by Susan Mitchell for this award. This book is a great book for kids of all ages. The book shows pictures of what you need so even kids that are not able to read words can read the pictures. This is a good introduction to reading non-fiction as it has table of contents, glossary, a safety first section, and an index. It even gives some recipes for making things that children wouldn't eat like bubbles and play clay.

I would like to nominate "Emily and Alice Best Friends" by Joyce Champion. This book is all about friendship. The book starts off with a girl Emily who notices that there is a new girl moving in next door and she wants to go be friends with her and invite her over but as she starts to go over to her house she starts to doubt herself and is about to turn back when the girl notices her and then they do talk and start to become friends. Emily has her over for cookies and their relationship goes from there. Really good illustrations to go along with the story. The illustrator's use of white space leads to the positive feelings that you get when looking at the pictures. The text is complimented by the lighter colors used for the backgrounds, which gives us the positive feelings of hope and brightness.

I nominate "The lion, the witch, and the wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis and illustrated by Pauline Baynes. I nominate this book because it is a classical story that uses many mythical characters. The mythical characters that are used are not your normal average characters that you think of like dragons, unicorns and others, they are a good lion, a bad witch, a faun, and many other animals that all are able to talk and communicate with humans. The story starts off with Lucy and her brothers and sisters being sent to a very old home in the country. Lucy finds this magical wardrobe which leads her to another fairy tale world where she meets these mythical characters. The Witch, who acts like the Queen wants to get to the children and turn them to stone. Aslan the lion then goes on to give his life up to the witch instead of her taking the life of one of the children. The children are a sign of hope to Narnia. The development of characters as you go through the book is extraordinary along with the development of the plot. There is irony in the fact that the Queen is really a witch.

The Hear My Cry award is named for all ethnically and racially diverse authors. We need to bring more diverse authors into our classrooms and that is the basis of this award. This children’s literature award goes to a book that lets us see into the culture of another race or ethnicity.

This award is about the invisible social issues of not having diversity of literacy in the classroom. Throughout the article “Reading the World of School Literacy”, Willis addresses the issue of how teachers feel they have great literacy programs that they are using in their classroom, but most do not have any diversity to ethnicity or race even when those races are present in the classroom. Theoretically, each literacy program purports to be culturally neutral and not mediated by any dominant view of language, when, in fact, a Eurocentric, mainstream cultural view dominates.

The book that wins this award will show us about the culture of those that are ethnically and racially diverse and the author must be ethnically or racially diverse. For this award we are looking at all genres and all grade levels. Nominations are due on March 5, 2009.

Work Cited
Willis, Arlette. Reading the World of School Literacy: Contextualizing the Experience of a Young African American Male. Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 65 No. 1, 1995.