Song and Dance man by Karen Ackerman

This Cadecott Medal winner tells the story of a grandpa who used to be a vaudeville song and dance performer. Now instead of performing onstage he performs for his grandchildren in his attic while they wait for dinner. The story is told through the eyes of the three grandchildren. This story is touching because it conveys the splendor of the grandfather's years as a performer. His passion for performing as well as the delight he still brings his audience. The way the grandfather's performance is written about and drawn makes you feel as though you are actually watching him perform. This is a very well written and illustrated story and I would definitely keep it in my classroom.

If America Were a Village by David J. Smith

This is a great book for helping children (and adults) gain a better understanding of America and its people. The book is full of statistics about things like populations, energy use, income, housing, etc. The author symbolizes America's 304 million people by having 1 person represent 3 million people and framing statistics that way. For example instead of saying that there are 250 million Christians in America the book says that out of the village of 100 people 82 of them are Christian. Breaking down statistics in this way makes the information much more easy to process and remember. I would definitely keep this book in my classroom and use it for different units to help students gain a better understanding of what statistics represent.

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.