The Magical Garden of Claude Monet by Laurence Anholt

This is a story about a little girl who spends an afternoon with Claude Monet in the garden where he made many of his famous impressionist paintings. The little girl is based on a real girl who was the daughter of one of Monet's painter friends.
This book would be good to keep in the classroom because it will teach learners about Monet's life and contains several of his paintings. The plot of the story is somewhat cheesy, especially when the flower the little girl loses in Monet's garden in the country shows up outside of her apartment in Paris. Overall I think young readers would enjoy this story and potentially gain an understanding of impressionism through reading it.

There Was an Old Monster by Rebecca, Adrian, and Ed Emberley

This is a short picture book written for early elementary readers. It is a spin on the classic There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly poem. The monster keeps swallowing progressively larger animals in order to catch the tick it swallows in the first place.

This book would probably be entertaining for most young children. The best part about it are the illustrations, which are made from collaging different brightly colored pieces of construction paper.

Blueberies for Sal by Robert McCloskey

This is a somewhat inconsequential picture book written for early/middle elementary readers. Written in 1948 it tells the story of a young boy, Sal, who goes with his mother to pick blueberries. During their blueberry picking Sal gets switched with a young bear cub. Sal follows the mother bear and the bear cub follows Sal's mother. The mothers discover the mistake and pretty soon each finds her own baby.
This story was kind of drab... there was very little excitement in the story and the plot was not very interesting. The only thing I liked about it was the old pictures and the vinagey style of writing. I would probably not bother reading this story to children.

Love That Dog by Sharon Creech

The story in this book is told through a series of poems written by a young boy (mid-elementary school). The boy writes about his reactions to different famous poems and writes some poems himself. This book does a great job showing how people's reactions to poetry can change the more they are immersed in it and begin to understand it. It also shows how not all poetry will affect all people but that sometimes you find a poem that really touches you.

The little boy who writes the poems in the book starts out disliking poetry and not understanding the point but gradually begins finding things he likes in poems and writing better poetry himself as a result. The boy is eventually able to express the loss he feels from the death of his dog as well as the happiness his dog brought him through poems. This story of what poetry does for this boy is a microcosm of what poetry does for humanity. I think this would be a great book to use when beginning a unit on poetry with younger kids. Many students seem to have a knee-jerk reaction of disliking poetry but this book can help them on the road to more of an understanding for why people write and read poetry.

The Year of Impossible Goodbyes by Sook Nyul Choi

This is an autobiography written for later elementary/junior high readers from the perspective of a child during and after World War Two. Sook Nyul Choi writes about her experiences as a Korean living in her country under Japanese occupation. It was interesting reading this story after reading So Far from the Bamboo Grove, which is written by a young Japanese girl. Both girls experienced unimaginable horrors and hardships yet were on opposite sides of a battle. Reading these two books together in a unit would help show that in war no side is completely innocent and everyone suffers.

It was interesting how my perspective shifted throughout the book... when I first started reading I was critical of how the author described the Japanese as harsh and was still more on the side of the Japanese. This changed the further I got into the story... both the Koreans and the Japanese were guilty of horrible atrocities and it seems the real war was between the victims who happened to be living in the wrong place and the governments and generals who were giving the orders.

Grasshopper on the Road by Arnold Lobel

This is a book by the same author/illustrator who made the Frog and Toad books. It is several chapters long and tells the story of a grasshopper, Grasshopper who sets out on a road to find adventure. Each chapter tells the story of Grasshopper interacting with different animals and insects along the way.
I really liked this story because there is a lot of wit and depth involved in each of Grasshopper's interactions with other characters. For example, in the first chapter Grasshopper meets a group of beetles who are members of a club dedicated to celebrating how great morning is. Grasshopper is welcomed into this club with enthusiasm after agreeing that morning is nice, until he mentions that he also likes afternoon and evening. The beetles immediately reject Grasshopper and leave him alone, because they think people who like the afternoon and evening are stupid.
I may be reading into this too much but I thought this story could teach readers something about human nature. I took this story to be an example of how similarities can bring people together and also that fanaticism can lead people to turn on others the minute they find they are in disagreement about something.
These subtle yet profound lessons make Lobel one of my favorite children's book writers.

Elmer by David McKee

This is a book written for lower-middle elementary students about an elephant named Elmer. Elmer is a multi-colored elephant living in a herd of grey elephants. Even though the other elephants love him Elmer feels self-conscious about his appearance and leaves the herd to make himself elephant-colored so he can fit in.

I really liked this story, mostly because the illustrations are very colorful and quirky. The story has a good lesson about self-acceptance and individuality... Elmer ends up inspiring the other elephants to decorate themselves to be more unique instead of needing to color himself gray in order to fit in.