Focus Titles: Love That Dog & Hate That Cat

Wooo Hooo! The sequel to Love That Dog, entitled Hate That Cat, was published last month. Nick, one of my students, found it online and shared the exciting news with our class. Of course I put the book on hold at the public library, read it aloud to my reading classes, lent it to a teacher friend, and went to Barnes & Noble to buy my own first edition.

Thanks, Nick!

In case you're wondering what all the hoopla is about, I'll tell you. Every year we read Love That Dog by Sharon Creech as an introduction to poetry. A couple of years ago I bought a class set of books from Scholastic Book Clubs so all of my students could share in the experience. Love That Dog is a short novel written in the form of a communication journal between Jack, a fourth-grader, and his teacher Miss Stretchberry. Jacks journal entries are written in free verse form and chronicle his awakening to reading and writing poetry. You can read the book straight through in less than an hour, including discussion time. I always begin by reading the poems used by Miss Stretchberry in the appendix at the back of the book. This way my students are familiar with the poems Jack mentions in his journal entries. My class especially enjoys the Robert Frost poems "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" and "The Pasture." Another popular poem is an excerpted stanza from the poem "Love That Boy" by Walter Dean Myers. The full poem is published in his book Brown Angels. Prolific young adult writer and poet Walter Dean Myers even makes a guest appearance in the story.

After reading Love That Dog, my students choose a poem from the appendix to memorize and perform for our class audience. Then we start writing poems of our own beginning with couplets, then quatrains, and free verse. Sharon Creech's web site is a great resource for readers and teachers alike. Interested teachers may want to download a free special teaching guide for Love That Dog and Hate That Cat.

Sharon Creech

http://www.sharoncreech.com/

Walter Dean Myers
http://www.walterdeanmyers.net/

Focus Titles: Prairie Songs and My Daniel

We have almost finished the first two focus titles of the year, both historical novels set on the Nebraska prairie, by children's author Pam Conrad.

The AM class has been reading Prairie Songs, a coming-of-age story about a young girl whose life is changed by the tragic life of a young doctor's wife from New York.

The PM class has been reading My Daniel, a heart-rending story told in flashbacks by a grandmother taking her two grandchildren through the Museum of Natural History in New York.


A third Pam Conrad book, Prairie Visions: The Life and Times of Solomon Butcher, is a related nonfiction title about a man who photographed the people who lived on the Nebraska prairie in the late 1800s. The book is a great visual for Pam Conrad's readers, giving us a peek back in time to see what prairie soddies and the pioneers who lived in them were like.

In addition to reading these great books, we have been studying Pam Conrad's writing craft, particularly the way she writes original similes and metaphors to create visuals in the reader's mind. We are learning how to recognize these figurative literary devices in writing and also how to use them in our own writing.

In Prairie Songs, Louisa, the main character, memorizes a poem by Tennyson to recite at the Fourth of July festivities. We are memorizing the poem, too.

The Eagle: A Fragment

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

There are a few surprises yet to come in our Pam Conrad prairie unit, but if I revealed them now it would spoil all the fun. So stay tuned and perhaps there will be a follow-up post.

Focus Titles: Peak and Stepping On the Cracks

We had to have a major read-a-thon the last couple of days of school in order to finish our final two focus novels of the year, but we knocked them out. The AM class read Peak by Roland Smith, and the PM class read Stepping On the Cracks by Mary Downing Hahn.

Roland Smith is one of the most popular current writers in the adventure fiction genre, and this story about a young man who makes an attempt on Everest is one of his best. I'm glad we were able to fit this novel in before the end of the school year, although we definitely cut it close. Two of the commonalities among the characters that populate Smith's books are a young person in some kind of trouble and an older wise person who fills the role of mentor. Another feature of Smith's books, in addition to the action-filled plots, is that they usually include international or domestic air travel. As a teacher, I can appreciate this element because it creates an inclusive worldview in the minds of young readers and by default teaches them not to limit their potential.

Stepping On the Cracks is a perennial favorite of mine. Set in a suburb of Washington, DC, during the Second Great War, this novel was the perfect follow-up to our World War II and Holocaust unit. Complete with bullies, a mysterious stranger, and engaging dialogue, this novel shows the internal and external conflicts of both soldiers and civilians on the homefront while the war raged overseas.

Focus Title: Daniel's Story

We have been doing our World War II and the Holocaust unit of study for several weeks now, and we recently finished reading Daniel's Story, our unit focus novel. Daniel's Story is the official children's book of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Many teachers of Holocaust education prefer to use diaries and memoirs of the period rather than fiction with their students, and I truly recognize the value of first-person literature. Although Daniel's Story is fiction, it is based primarily on actual events, and it gives the young reader a great introductory overview of the period. I think it is a good story, and my students really enjoy it.

Our Holocaust unit of study incorporates many different resources including informational and picture books, slides from my trips to Holocaust sites in Poland and Yad Vashem in Israel, documentaries and movies, various learning activities, viewing of primary sources, and a truly special event you will hear more about this week. Of all the literary and thematic units I have conducted over the years, our study of the Holocaust is the one my former students seem to remember the most. As well it should be.

Focus Title: A Dream of Freedom

The focus title for our Black History and Civil Rights Movement unit of study is A Dream of Freedom by Diane McWhorter. This full-color nonfiction book traces major events of the modern civil rights movement from 1954-1968. The author was a white child who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, the most segregated city in the nation, during the 1960s. This background gives her an interesting point of view on the era.

So far we have learned about Plessy v. Ferguson (1892) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the two monumental Supreme Court cases that ruled on the doctrine of "separate, but equal." We have also studied the terms segregation, desegregation, and integration. Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are some of the key people whose stories we have read who each had their own "dream of freedom."

Focus Title: Woodsong by Gary Paulsen

Our latest focus title, Woodsong by Gary Paulsen, is a memoir of his adventures with a dog team. The first section of the book gives an account of how both domestic and wild animals taught him about nature. The second section is a daily log of the first time he ran the Iditarod, an 1122 mile dog sled race across Alaska, in 1983. Gary Paulsen is the author of the modern young adult classic Hatchet and many other fine books for both children and adults.

Click here for Gary Paulsen's 2008 Iditarod profile and links to other official Iditarod information. Another link is Gary Paulsen at Random House.

An older Woodsong cover

The newest Woodsong cover

The original Woodsong cover

Adult readers who enjoy adventurous nonfiction may enjoy Gary Paulsen's Winterdance. This book tells the same story as Woodsong, but it is written for a more mature audience. I read the book years ago and loved it!

Focus Title: Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle

Some of you may remember Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle, the popular anthology of modern verse from the 1960s (original cover shown below). The second edition has been updated and revised, and we have been reading it for several weeks now. This collection of poetry contains some of the best and most familiar modern poems in print, and each section has an unwritten theme we try to decipher. We will continue to read through this volume in small doses into the new year, and students will be selecting a new poem from this collection to memorize.

The first poem all students memorized this year was "The Eagle" by Tennyson. The poem was used in the the novel Prairie Songs by Pam Conrad, AM class's first focus title of the year.

The Eagle: A Fragment

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Later, when we read Love That Dog by Sharon Creech, students selected one of the featured poems in the book to memorize. The favorites were "Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening" and "The Pasture" by Robert Frost, as well as "Dog" by Valerie Worth.

Focus Titles: Zach's Lie and Jack's Run

The PM Class is currently reading Zach's Lie, an adventure novel by Roland Smith about a boy whose family must be placed into the Witness Security Program after his father is arrested for illegal drug trafficking. The AM Class is reading Jack's Run, the equally engaging sequel.

I have encouraged my students from both classes to read independently the companion novel the other class is reading so they can know the whole story. Some students have already started, and at least one or two have finished the other book already.

Roland Smith is the author of several other adventure novels. For more information visit his web site at this link:

http://rolandsmith.com/

Both titles are available from Scholastic Book Clubs. December book club newsletters will be distributed Monday, November 19, and the deadline for orders is Monday, December 3.