A Book by Mordicai Gerstein

     Mordicai Gerstein did a fantastic job with this book. With it's simple title and wonderful story this is a book I would love to have in my classroom. There are so many different characters and there are so many ways to integrate this book into the curriculum. You could even do a whole unit just using this book. In this book a little girl is trying to find her story. So she goes through the pages of this book looking for her story and with each turn of the page she experiences new adventures and stories but they just aren't her story. By the end of the book she comes to the realization that she needs to write her own story and decides to be an author.

     What I love about this book is as the little girl goes through each page she encounters characters and experiences different genres of literature. The author does a wonderful job of integrated all these genres and easily recognizable characters within the book. The author also portrays a great message that you can't live someone else's story, you have to find your own. 

365 Penguins

     I have become such a big fan of this book. This book is so interesting to read. The text isn't linear and you have to look around the page to find the story. The text and graphics together make this story fantastic and fun to read.  It starts with a family who gets a very special package delivered to them on the first day of the new year, a penguin. The next day the same thing happens, and the next day and the next day, and every day after. They soon realize they have a house full of penguins. Each time they get a penguin there is a note attached that is a little rhyme. As the family keeps getting penguins every day, they read the notes and they remind them of someone, but they still don't know who is sending them penguins. As the story goes on the family has to try to figure out what to do with all these penguins. It's fun to see the things they come up with.
    
     The authors, Jean-Luc Fromental and Joelle Jolivet, did a wonderful job writing this story and the illustrations that go along with them only add to this quirky, sometimes chaotic, story. The one thing I love about this book is they have integrated real math problems into the story. It is a good example for a word problem and then it hows it in numerical form. "February has only twenty-eight days. Each morning another enguins arrived. That made: 31 + 28 = ?" (Fromental & Jolivet, 2006). They also include multiplication problems and lots of opportunities to try to come up with solutions to solving problems in this book. This would be an excellent book to use in the classroom to use during both math and reading.

Fromental, J., & Jolivet, J. (2006). 365 penguins. (p. 10). New York, NY: Abrams Books for Young Readers.
    

26 Fairmont Avenue by Tomie dePaola

     26 Fairmount Avenue is a non-fiction chapter book. In this book the author recalls and shares memories from his childhood. He begins by talking about the apartment he lives in and how his family is building a house. This story follows his thoughts, observations, and feelings as a child living in this apartment and ends when they finally move into their new house at 26 Fairmount Avenue. We follow him through a hurricane, his first day of kindergarten, and such comical experiences like eating laxitives with his "Nana Upstairs" because he thought they were chocolate. This book is the first in a serious and was awarded a Newberry Honor in 2000.

     I enjoyed reading this book. Tomie dePaola does a fantastic job of recalling memories in detail and almost makes you feel as if you were right there beside him. This book is set between 1938-1940 and I feel if a younger person were reading this they may be confused. He refers to things from his past that they might not know of but most of the time he explains what he is referring to. For example, he talks about going to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a child and he writes about watching the newsreel, but explains that it is basically the news we have now on TV. But he also recalls getting mad while watching the movie because Mr. Walt Disney did not get the "true story" right. I am not exactly sure what he was referring to, but it makes me want to read the original Snow White story.  I feel this book was an easy read and the author writes like he is speaking to you instead of a more informal written story. This would be a good book to have and use in the classroom. I believe children would enjoy reading it. This would be an ideal book to use to teach students how to write non-fiction.