Celebrate Picture Book Month

Just sharing a post from my middle school book blog: 

Celebrating Picture Book Month in the Middle

"I have always believed that literature begins in the cradle -- the poems we say to the babies, the stories

we tell them -- prepare them to become part of the great human storytelling community. We humans are

the only creatures in the known universe who make and remake our world with story."

- Jane Yolen from her Picture Book Month essay

Dianne de Las Casas is hosting a Picture Book Month site for the month of November, so I thought I'd concentrate on some of my favorite Picture Books that we use at the Middle School. We may have a different intent in bringing them into the classroom, but I think that it works because it continues to connect us to the "great human storytelling community."

Summary: Vashti is a frustrated artist who is ready to give up in her art class when her teacher challenges her to just make a dot, then sign it. When her teacher honors Vashti's efforts and helps her to see her work from a different perspective, Vashti is inspired to push herself and with practice and confidence, her dots do become great pieces of art. At the end when she meets a young, frustrated artist Vashti is able to turn around and become a mentor for this young child.

What it looks like in the Middle:

I love to start the year off with this book, read it aloud, then ask my students why I read it. What does this story have to do with this class and what I expect from you?

That's usually all I need to ask. Some of what the students get from the book about the coming year:

• Just do it (in this case, since it's English, just write)
• When you write it, put your name on it, own it
• Don't edit yourself ahead of time
• Work will be honored and published
• Push yourself to do better
• Mentor others

What are your go-to picture books and what do you do with them at your level?

Storyline Online

One of our 2010 Fellows, Esther Kotke posted this site on our ning, but I finally was able to check it out and had a wonderful experience. The site is http://storylineonline.net/ and students can have some favorite books read to them by professional actors. I listened to To Be a Drum read by James Earl Jones, but I noticed some other LWP favorites like Thank You, Mr. Falker, Knots on a Counting Rope, and Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge.

While the actors do the reading, the video shows the illustrated pages and subtitles appear on the bottom so that students can follow along in their own books or read together from the screen.

In addition, there are activities and questions for each book. The site is out of funding, so they probably won't add any more books, but they have a nice little collection.

To Be a Drum can still be used in my high school class because it's a nice companion piece to Paul Laurence Dunbar's "Sympathy," and it works as a hook to give them some background knowledge to start their research on slavery in America.

Thanks Esther for sharing this resource. If you find resources that would benefit other teachers, let us know. We'd love to hear from you.