29 days of book love together…

Groovy Girl was sick-light-headed and green-yesterday after school so I have to admit my focus was elsewhere. It wasn’t until this morning that I remembered my goal to blog everyday in February.  Two together works for me.

1. My Brother Charlie by Holly Robinson Peete and Ryan Elizabeth Peete is a book filled with love. Ryan’s brother RJ has autism and this book is a tribute to the very real hurdles they’ve experienced as a family. Charlie doesn’t like to be affectionate, is antisocial, and needs time on his own and he is also daring, smart, and kind. The illustrations by Shane W. Evans are beautiful: 

2. Fish in a tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt is another favorite this year. I can’t keep it on the shelf here.

Ally has everyone fooled and getting in trouble is a lot easier than admitting that she can’t read. Her mom is busy waitressing at the local diner, her dad is serving his country oversees and her older brother loves working on engines. Ally doesn’t want to bother anyone with her troubles until Mr Daniels becomes her teacher. Proving once again that teachers can be the best Ally begins to spill over with joy. Everybody IS smart in different ways and this book does a great job of illustrating that fact. 

Friday Features; Kindness

This week in the library our focus was on kindness.  We do have Character Counts! at our school but I really wanted to get at the idea of each of us making another person feel special.  The world would be a better place if we could all make that happen. 

I read Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud and David Messing to each class except kindergarten (they had Eric Carle).  Even the 5th graders listened and it opened up a good discussion of what each of us could do to fill someone else’s bucket.  A first grade student said that the bucket is like your heart!  Ah, thank you [big teacher smile]  He understood the message. 

With that book I read one of my all-time favorite picture books, Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon by Patty Lovell and David Catrow.  The message and the illustrations come together into one outstanding tale of being true to yourself.  We conversed about bucket fillers in this book (Grandma and Molly Lou) but also that Ronald Durkin learns to be less of a bully and more of a bucket filler by the end.  I found this great Molly Lou video by Spoken Arts. 

I also read Todd Parr’s It’s Okay to be Different and Carrie Weston’s The New Bear at School.  I read Todd Parr all the time to kids but Weston’s book was a new read aloud and perfectly transmitted my kindness message.  Stay tuned for more as I look forward to more kindness next week. 

Do you have book favorites that share this message?  Any book suggestions would be much appreciated!

I also finished off a beginning of the year order and sent it off to my secretary just because Jana at Milk and Cookies; Comfort Reading waxed poetically about getting her first school order of books for the year.  I had to jump on the bandwagon!

Happy Friday!