Ready to Dream

Ready to Dream by Donna Jo Napoli and Elena Furrow
Illustrated by Bronwyn Bancraft

Overview: Ready to Dream tells a story about a young girl, named Ally, who travels to Australia with her mom for a month. Ally is an artist and as they explore she paints pictures of what she sees. Upon arrival, Ally meets a local artist named Pauline. Ally's art seems to always have an imperfection but Pauline helps her see the beauty in the imperfections.

Target Audience: Students who are perfectionists and/or are interested in painting/art.

Reading Level (according to amazon.com):
Age Range 4- 8 years old
Lexile Measure AD490L

Rating: 30/32 (based on rubric listed above)

- I rated the book 4/4 on Accuracy and Theme/ Storyline because it portrayed aboriginal people accurately and built up to a natural climax.

-The book received a 3/4 on Critical Thinking because the moral of the story allows students to think about how things that may seem imperfect can be perfect in their own way but it doesn't allow for much critical thinking besides that.

Literary Elements:

The literary elements listed below are some that can be taught using this book

-point of view: third person omniscient 

-figurative language

-setting

 Napoli, D. J., Furrow, E., & Bancroft, B. (2009). Ready to Dream. New York: Bloomsbury Children's Books. 

The Rain Stomper by Addie Boswell

The Rain Stomper by Addie Boswell Illustrated by Eric Velasquez

Overview: The Rain Stomper is about a young African American girl, named Jazmin, who wakes up excited because it was the day of her big parade. She twirls her baton and puts on her new red suit and then she notices there is a thunder storm. Jazmin decides to create her own parade and becomes "The Rain Stomper", making the best out of a bad situation.

Target Audience: Early elementary students.

Reading Level (according to amazon.com): 

Age Range: 6-8

Grade Level: 1st - 3rd

Lexile Measure: AD270L

Rating 32/32 (based on rubric listed above):

-The book received a 4/4 in Diversity because it has a diverse protagonist and shows diversity in the rest of the characters in the book.

-I gave the book a 4/4 in appropriateness because it has no vulgar or explicit language or images that could be inappropriate for K-5 students.
-Overall, I loved the book, the storyline and the message.

Literary elements:
-personification

-onomatopoeia

-conflict

 Boswell, A. (2008). The Rain Stomper. New York: Marshall Cavendish Children. 

Rubric

Below you will find the rubric I will be using to evaluate the children's books you will see in this blog.

I Hate English! by Ellen Levine

I Hate English by Ellen Levine Illustrated by Steve Björkman

Overview: I Hate English is a book about a immigrant Chinese student, named Mei Mei, from Hong Kong. Her family moves to New York where everything is in... English. Although Mei Mei was a great student in Hong Kong where everything was in Chinese, she doesn't speak or participate at school in New York because she hates English. Mei Mei starts going to the Chinatown Learning Center where she helps younger students in arithmetic, plays games and sings all in... Chinese. One day Mei Mei gets a teacher at the Chinatown Learning Center to help her with English. Mei Mei is not happy about it but eventually learns to appreciate both languages.

Target Audience: Immigrant students who are having trouble fitting in and assimilating to a new culture.

Reading Level (according to scholastic.com):
Grade level equivalent: 1.8
Lexile Measure: 390 L
Guided Reading: L

Rating: 30/32 (based on rubric listed above)

-I rated the book 4/4 in relatability because it portrayed a very realistic struggle that many immigrant students face as they assimilate to the American culture ( learning English, not being the one that makes the decision to move, struggling to fit it, not excelling academically).

-The book received a 3/4 rating for stereotypes because it has a few stereotypes in the book. The one that particularly stuck out to me was that in the book Mei Mei is said to have been a "good student" back in Hong Kong and helps children at the Chinatown Learning center with arithmetic. Asian students are often seen as smart and good at math.

-Although the book portrayed a realistic representation of the culture, it did not show a realistic representation of other characters. The book received a 3/4 rating in diversity because it shows only characters with caucasian and asian features. It follows Mei Mei around most of the time but the few times it shows other characters, like in the classroom, there is no sign of other ethnicities besides caucasian shown. 

Additional Pros: 
-Lets teachers see what goes on in children like Mei Mie's minds since most often, children like her go through a silent phase like Mei Mei did.
-Builds empathy for ESL students who aren't often understood.

Literary Elements:
The literary elements listed below can be taught using this book
-theme
-conflict
-tone

You can also view a reader's response that I created on Animoto in the following links:

Part 1 - I Hate English!      Part 2 - I Hate English!      Part 3 - I Hate English!

Levine, E., & Börkman, S. (1989). I Hate English! New York: Scholastic.

My name is Cristina E. Soria and I am a teacher candidate at the Institute of Professional Education Development at the University of Wisconsin- Parkside. A few other things about myself: I was born in California but raised in Wisconsin, I like to spend time outside with my dogs and my favorite food is pizza.

About the blog: I will use this blog to share my evaluations on 24 different children's books that I choose throughout the course of January in my EDU 333 ( Children's and Adolescent Literature and New Literacies) class.  The goal is to be able to choose literature that is culturally informed, sensitive and relevant to children's interest.

These are the types of books you can expect to see:
- picture books
- graphic novels
- early chapter books
- books written in the last four years
- books that support a diverse protagonist (gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, economic, familial and religion will all be considered)
- bilingual
- books that will engage middle school readers
- online materials

I am beginning to pick some books out, if you would like to make any suggestions I would love to hear about them in the comments!