Nonfiction 10 for 10

#nf10for10 is an online celebration of nonfiction picture books. Whether you'd like to contribute or just pop into see what others are featuring, I strongly recommend doing so.

Click on this link to follow along at Enjoy and Embrace Learning blog or twitter with the #nf10for10 hashtag.

Every year I find out about new and sometimes older picture book titles that teachers, librarians, booksellers and parents are giving and reading to children.

My picks are pretty eclectic this year.  It's a list of picture books I enjoyed, found beautiful or made me chuckle.

So in no particular order...


#1. The Butterfly Garden by Laura Weston
      A lift-the-flap book that portrays the life cycle of the monarch butterfly in a beautiful and unique way. This is a black-and-white board book with flaps that open into brightly coloured butterflies, caterpillars, leaves and flowers. Recommended for Kindergarten to grade 2.

#2. Picture the Sky by Barbara Reid
     Barbara Reid's illustrations always amaze me. Composed from clay, she creatively conveys every mood she describes. In this book, the reader is shown variations in the light from skies in different landscapes at different times of the day and night and everything in between. Would be a great mentor text for art and language arts classrooms. Recommended for Kindergarten to grade 2.

#3. The True Adventures of Esther the Wonder Pig by Steve Jenkins, Derek Walter, and Caprice Crane.
      A few years ago Esther the Pig had an adult book written about her. This picture book tells young readers how she came to live in the family that took her in and what life is like living with a  650 pound pig. Emphasis is on lots of love. Lots of love!  Recommended for Kindergarten to grade 3.

#4. Hawk Mother: the Story of a Red-Tailed Hawk Who Hatched Chickens by Kara Hagedorn
     This book is filled with fantastic photographs detailing the journey an injured red-tail hawk lived through, from a wildlife rehabilitate centre to living with a human who tries to give her a life that is as authentic as possible. To that end, Shineshine (the hawk) was given a couple of chicken eggs to hatch after several years of trying to hatch her own infertile eggs. The question would she see these chicks as her's or potentially, as a meal? Excellent nonfiction writing with additional information and glossary.  Recommended for grades 2 to 6.

#5. Welcome to Country: a Traditional Aboriginal Ceremony by Aunty Joy Murphy 
       Written by a Wurundjeri woman from Australia, we learn about the importance of the welcoming ceremony as cultural greeting offered by Elders to visitors to enter onto their traditional lands.The illustrations are reminiscent of bark paintings. Emphasizes the importance to connecting to the land and respecting the people and ancestors of that land.
Recommended for grades 1-6.

#6. The Secret Kingdom: Nek Chand, a Changing India, and a Hidden World of Art by Barb Rosenstock.
      A creative, little boy loves the stories he learns from his family that reflect the rich Indian culture of his village. This is India in 1947 at the time of partition when Hindus and Muslims were separated into two countries. Nek and his family are forced to leave their homes. Moving to a new city that seemed devoid of the culture he loved, Nek collects and re-purposes trash and constructs his own village from it over a period of year.This renown folk artist has up to 4000 people a day visit his Rock Garden of Chandigarh. You need to check out the Foundations website to see some of his sculptures and how he changed the landscape. Amazing! Recommended for grades 3-7. Great book to tie in to units about recycling trash into art, science units about waste in our world and social studies units about India and partition. 

#7. Inky's Amazing Escape: How a Very Smart Octopus Found His Way Home by Sy Montgomery
     I've a soft spot for stories about octopues since reading Sy Montgomery's book, The Soul of an Octopus. This book conveys the intelligence of this marvelous animal while he learn about how they live. This one has the added bonus of an adventure story as a rescued octopus finds his own way back to the ocean from an aquarium that had been his home. Recommended for grades 3-6.

#8. The Brilliant Deep: Rebuilding the World's Coral Reefs by Kate Messner and Matthew Forsythe
      Recounts how Ken Nedimyer was fascinated with oceans as a boy. He noticed that corals in the Florida Keys were in distressed and dying. Through his interest and endeavors he discovered a way to cultivate introduced corals into areas that were in dire need of help. Beautifully illustrated. Recommended for grades 3-6.

#9.  Around the World in Numbers by Clive Gifford and Josh Hurley.
      Divided by continent, the reader who loves trivia will enjoy this book. Lots of statistics are given for a range of eclectic things related to specific countries or specific areas in countries. Examples: 1,500 paintbrushes and 66 tons  of paint are used repaint the Eiffel Tower; 38,000,000 motorbikes are the most popular form of transport in Vietnam; 2.25 gallons of water can be held in an African elephant's trunk; 100,000,000 leather slippers are made in Morocco every year; 5.9 million pounds of maple syrup were stolen by thieves in Canada in 2012, etc. Because such large areas are covered there are not a lot of details for any one country. Good for browsing. Recommended for grades 4-7.

And....

#10.  Mama Africa!: How Miriam Makeba Spread Hope with Her Song by Kathryn Erskine.
       Born in South Africa apartheid was enforced, Miriam uses her amazing voice to sing songs of protest to raise awareness and protest the oppression that black South Africans live  under. This picture book tells of the trials and tribulations that she endured. Extensive author's notes, timeline, glossary, bibliography and additional reading list are included. Recommended for grades 4-7.

Snow Day Wish

It’s beginning to snow again here in Calgary and it was the perfect time to pick up Before Morning by Joyce Sidman this morning.  Who doesn’t love a snow day?

Besides being a story written as an invocation, it is a story that reminds us of the beauty of a gentle snowfall.  It’s all too easy to grouse about the shoveling, driving conditions and overall inconveniences that snow can bring. And if it’s a snow day and you have kids you likely have additional issues that come with school closures.

The illustrations tell the story of a family with a mother who needs to go to work. She’s a pilot and after making her way to the airport, the snow prevents her flight from taking off. The snow could also prevent her from returning home to her daughter and husband but she hitches a ride on a snow plow and makes her way through the city. Her unplanned day off allows for the family to spend it together, enjoying the snow, tobogganing.

The illustrator, Beth Krommes, conveys a cozy, warm feeling of a family tucked up in their home as beautiful, crystalline flakes gently drift down.  The illustrations of the home are filled with details about living with winter like bulky masses of outdoor clothes, skates, skis, toboggan and lots and lots of mitts. The muted colour palette captures the subdued light, the cloud-blanketed sky and pillowy snowbanks covering the streets. I can’t say enough about how well the illustrator has captured the outside light. This is winter as I know it. You will too, if you live in a place where it snows.  

The text is the invocation that I mentioned earlier. Though not told in a child’s voice, it is the little girl’s wishes for her mother to stay home that is hoped for.  Here are some of her wishes:

“Let the air turn to feathers, the earth turn to sugar, and all that is heavy turn light. Let quick things be swaddled, let urgent plans founder, let pathways be hidden from sight. Please –just this once- change the world before morning: make it slow and delightful…and white.”

This book is simple and beautiful.

I highly recommend this for the primary grades for a read aloud and higher grades for poetry units.

PBA: Pinterest board ALERT!

Just a quick reminder to everyone out there about the Doucette Library’s Pinterest page.

This page includes numerous boards that support the Alberta Education curriculum but can support any kind of teaching depending on the topic.

Here’s the link for all the boards: https://www.pinterest.ca/tflander/boards/

If you’re teaching about plant and growth and in Alberta then you’re teaching grade 4 science and you can consult this board (https://www.pinterest.ca/tflander/science-gr-4e-plant-growth-and-changes/) to see what resources the Doucette Library has to support it.  If you’re not in Alberta, I think there is enough here that would useful for others to consult, as well.

What I’ve worked on so far:

**Social studies grades 1-9;

**Science grades 1-8 (9 is coming soon);

**Math grades 1-6 organized according to board mathematical concept;

 and many topical boards based on requests from the education program’s students such as LGBTQ resources, picture books for older readers, resources for STEM, activists and activism, funny books, fractured fairy tales,  and indigenous education.

I’m sending out the reminder because I’ve just added to new boards for English language arts (ELA).  These two boards compile titles of books with strong leads or good beginnings and literary devices.  These came about because students had asked for recommendations for both of these kinds of books and as a reference librarian it’s a time consuming request. This time I decided to record the work as Pinterest boards. I’ve also asked Paula Hollohan, coworker and guest blogger, to contribute to the boards to have a couple of different points of view.

Literary devices in picture books: https://www.pinterest.ca/tflander/ela-literary-devices-in-picture-books/

Good beginnings/strong leads in juvenile literature: https://www.pinterest.ca/tflander/ela-good-beginningsleads-in-juvenile-literature/

Take a look and let me know if you have some suggestions of books to add. I’m always open to suggestions.

Five Star Fractured Fairy Tale

I’ve been getting lots of requests for recommendations for fractured fairy tales from the student-teachers as they head out on their practicums.  It’s just that time of the year, I guess.

I usually recommend checking out my Pinterest page first to see what grabs them. Many don’t come with any idea as to which fairy tale they want to look at so I find this kind of gets them started.

However, I have a recommendation today that I gave 5 stars to in Goodreads and would recommend for everyone. (I rarely give 5 stars for any books.)  After the Fall: How HumptyDumpty Got Back Up Again by Dan Santat is that wonderful!

This is Humpty’s story: he likes sitting high up on his wall to be close to birds; the Great Fall was just a silly accident; he was patched up but developed a fear of heights; not able to ascend his wall and commune with birds has left him joyless; a chance encounter with a paper airplane inspires him to construct a flying paper bird which helps take away a little of his sadness. His new found solace, however, is short lived as the paper bird flies over the wall by accident. Humpty almost walks away from the bird and wall but decides that he is not going to be defeated by this turn of events. He  tackles the wall, succeeds overcoming his fear and now wants to be known not as the egg who falls off a wall but the egg who gets back up.

This story definitely has a message, which might have been too didactic, but the way Dan Santat tells Humpty story, it’s not that in the least.  Humpty is very relatable as a character. He conquerors his fears that have developed from an incident that just happened. The illustrations add a level of humour which is subtle and wry but obvious. I especially loved the pages depicting Humpty grocery shopping for his favorite cereals which he can no longer reach because of his fear of heights.  All the ‘good’ cereals (aka. High sugar ones) are on the top shelf so he now must eat those he can reach which are all the ‘bo-rings’, ‘twigs & berries’ and ‘chicken feed’ brands on the bottom. The ending is uplifting and eye-opening, too. I had never really considered what kind of egg Humpty was and in this story we find out. Brilliant!

I highly recommend this title for elementary grades.

Doing the Right Thing

I’ve two recommendations for today’s post that promote understanding for what it’s like to be Black in the United States today.

The first one is by Jason Reynolds’, Long Way Down. This story takes place in an elevator as it descends seven floors in an apartment building and Will, the protagonist, is on his way to avenge the death of his older brother Shawn.  He’s struggling with THE RULES that govern the lives of black men and boys in his big city neighbourhood: No Crying – No Snitching – Get Revenge. As the elevator goes down seven floors, seven ghosts who knew Will and his family and experienced gun violence too, visit Will and offer subtle guidance that will help him make up his mind about his next set of actions.

Jason Reynolds is a fantastic writer. This story, told in narrative verse, took me to a place that I had no way of knowing about and gave me a glimpse into the mind of a young man like Will. Reading about gun violence and gang-related murder in the news does not provide much insight as to how this kind of thing continues to be perpetuated.  It’s the strength of a novel like this that allows me to feel the pain and the hopelessness that must consume young black men when they feel that have no choice but to live by THE RULES.

The next book, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas has been getting lots of well-deserved attention in review journals and blogs. It was a National Book Award Finalist. Again, this story puts the news reports that we hear nightly, into a perspective that is totally relatable and gives new resonance for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Starr is a sixteen year-old high school student who lives in a poor, black neighbourhood but goes to a predominately white school in another part of town. She’s working out how to mesh the two people she must be to live in two vastly different universes. When a friend, a young, black man, Khalil is shot by a white police office while with Starr one night, everything changes.

By telling people, school mates, police, journalists and neighbours about what happened that night puts Starr in a precarious situation. Those fighting for the rights of black people see this as an opportunity to create awareness and demand justice. Those in positions of power are cautious about the information Starr provides as it will jeopardize the police officer. Starr fears that if her classmates know she is the witness that will jeopardize her place in the school.The desire to do the right thing is strong and eventually overcomes Starr's fears.

Again, this was a compelling story that opened a world that I will never experience firsthand. There is considerable profanity (tons of f-bombs) used by almost all the characters but this made it feel very authentic. The ending is also very realistic, sadly.

I highly recommend both of these books for grades 9 and up and for adults. Amazing reads!

Being philosophical

Nothing like starting off the new year with some of the big questions in life.

 In Why Am I Here? by Constance Orbeck-Nilssen and Akin Duzakin, introduces us to a very thoughtful child (might be a boy or a girl), who wonders about some of these kinds of questions:

Why am I here?

Why am I in this place?

What if I was in a different place? Would I be different, too?

What if I lived in a city? Or a city with a war going on? 

Or live in the desert?  Or a place with ocean and melting icebergs?

What if I had to move?

After pondering these and many other deep questions, he or she ends up deciding,

                Why am I me, and not someone else?

                And why am I here?

                Maybe that’s how it is –

                I am my own house.

                And I will be at home

                Wherever I am.

The illustrations are perfectly suited for this introspective book that induces a kind of calm while thinking about topics that might be scary such as living in a place where there is conflict. There is a softness in the rendering with a muted palette of colours encouraging quiet contemplation.

Besides being a discussion starter for general conversations about life, our place in the world and our purpose, there are curriculum connections to be found in social studies and language arts. Also, a book that could be a way to approach learning about empathy, too.

Great book to pair with a Stormy Night by Michele Lemieux that also poses questions that can keep one up at night. 

 Recommended for grades 1 to 6.

Importance of Identity

I’ve been pretty wrapped up the last several weeks doing lots of instructional workshops around interdisciplinary teaching. The student teachers are grouped with students from various disciplinary backgrounds. One of the ways I help with this particular course is to speak to conceptual thinking and connect it to resources found in Doucette Library’s collection.

The Arrival by Shaun Tan is a crucial part of this workshop as I use it as an example of a provocation, a resource that can be used as a hook for engaging student interest. I come back to it, throughout the workshop, as this book epitomizes conceptual thinking. There are so many concepts to be found in this book such as identity, power, conflict, relationships, interdependence, communication, change, movement of people (immigration) and many more.

If you’re keen to learn more about this please visit the library guide that has been develop to support the workshop.

One of the concepts that often came up in the workshop during the discussion period is identity. Identity is one of those concepts that overarches the social studies curriculum from Kindergarten to grade 12. Connecting identity to English language arts, I think, is fairly easy. There are notions of identity found in both science and math, too, which, depending on how the concept is further developed, may be brought in to a unit. Not all content areas needed to be integrated in the units.

Today’s recommendations all touch on the concept of identity. These are just a few of my go-to fiction books when it comes to identity for all ages.

Grades K to 3: Elementary

Hello My Name is Octicorn by Kevin Diller and Justin Lowe 

The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi 

Red: a Crayon’s Story by Michael Hall 

Ten Birds by Cybele Young 

Thunder Boy Jr. by Sherman Alexie 

Wolfie the Bunny by Ame Dyckman 

Grades 4-8: Middle school

Better Nate Than Ever by Tim Federle 

George by Alex Gino 

In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse by Joseph Marshall III 

Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt

One Half From the East by Nadia Hashimi 

The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sis 

Grades 9-12 (Books I wish I had more opportunities to recommend.)

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

Aristole and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz 

Ms Marvel by G, Willow Wilson

Nation by Terry Pratchett 

Scythe by Neal Shusterman 

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld 

Writer’s block at the starting gate

I’m starting today’s post with a, “When I was in school...” story.

When I was in school, I dreaded hearing the teacher tell the class that today was the day we were going to write a story. That we’d use our imaginations to write stories about fabulous places and interesting characters doing who knows what. No sooner were the words spoken and I was panicking because every thought I might have had was gone.

Blank. Zip. Nada.

But maybe if I’d been given an idea to start with, say an open ended scenario, a stimulating

picture, a pertinent or perplexing prompt then maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t have felt so lost.

Once Upon a Line by Wallace Edwards is one such book to provide story starters for struggling writers. It has a clever premise that every story begins with “Once upon a line”, line referring to the first sentence of the story as well as a physical line used in illustrating this picture book. Wallace presents the reader with the challenge of finding a very particular shaped line that is found in each illustration. (See image below.) I did find this challenging. Kids might like this component more than I did.

But I can see this book being particularly useful as a classroom tool for getting students to come up with some pretty intriguing stories. The format is a one page illustration, captioned with “Once upon a line,” and then an open ended statement that connects to the illustrations and needs to be finished by the reader.

For example, “Once upon a line, there was a knight who was allergic to horses. This was not a problem because…” is paired with an illustration of a trio of medieval knights riding into battle (maybe?) but one of them is sitting on an octopus.

Or

“Once upon a line, Captain Kurd grew eager to sight land. If he didn’t find land soon, he was going to have to…” which shows a small boat with two mice holding musical instruments and the captain who happens to be a chunk of cheese searching for land using his eyeglass.

The illustrations are nicely composed with fanciful and sometimes humorous images that will help struggling writers construct their stories.  Still, lots is left for the imagination to get a work out but the pressure for creating the original idea is eliminated.

Other picture books to check out for story starters are:

Fish on a Walk by Eva Muggenthaler (lots of surreal images and only two word prompts to get a story started)

Breakfast on a Dragon’s Tail by Martin Springett (interesting illustrations with a good chuck of a story provided and a couple of questions to help spark ideas) and finally,

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg (my personal favorite, a classic picture book with a single super realistic, surreal illustration and only a single sentence to spark the reader’s curiosity.)

I’d recommend these books for upper elementary and into junior high.

Sense and Perceptions (a lost manuscript by Jane Austen – just kidding)

They All Saw A Cat

by Brendan Wenzel is a new favourite of mine.

What an interesting way to explore perception, senses and even identity.

So, we start with an intrepid cat who engages with the world with those parts of its body that help it sense what is around; its whiskers, ears and paws but not, funnily enough, its eyes.

But what about how other creatures perceive this cat?  This is what the book is really about.

There is the child who sees a friendly, smiling creature with big eyes and a heart-shaped nose with invitingly, touchable soft fur. However, the dog sees a cat as a skinny, slinking, sneaking creature with narrowed eyes and a too large bell hanging from its neck (all the better to hear it coming, I suppose). 

My favorite image is how the goldfish perceives the cat through the glass of his bowl: large and looming, a fuzzy, grey lump with huge yellow eyes peering intently at him.

Some of the images seem to convey a more of the feeling a creature might have when encountering a cat such as in the case of the mouse. This double-page spread displays a ferocious beast that is all tooth and claw with a whip-like tail and body against a vibrant, danger –signaling red background.  A teeny tiny mouse would be overwhelmed with fright.

Looking at this cat from the perspective of a bee, a snake, a bat, and a worm gives us unique ways of ‘seeing’. The bee’s multifaceted composite eye constructs a multicoloured mosaic whereas a worm’s perception is based on vibrations. The snake differs yet again as it sees the cat in infrared in a vibrant, somewhat lurid shade of yellow with glowing red eyes. A bat uses echolocation to ‘see’ the cat.

The illustrations are terrific at capturing the various ways all the animals perceive this cat.  Sometimes bright colours or muted shades in a range of mediums (“in almost everything imaginable” – author’s words) are used to aptly create the perceived image of the cat or to convey a feeling.  A single image sometimes fills two pages or might only be on one page but be juxtaposed with the image on the opposite page such as between the worm and the bat. Sometimes Wenzel uses zig-zag lines (vibrations) or dots (mosaic) to represent the cat.

I would recommend this book for elementary grades especially in grade 1 science for senses. There might be some use for this title in grade 2, science for the small crawling and flying animals unit. For the older grades I would look at the cadence of the language which reads almost like a poem making it great for a read-aloud. Co-worker Paula (and sometime guest blogger) suggested this as a writing prompt for the older grades, too. 

Pairing this with the Black Book of Colors by Menena Cottin would make for an interesting combo for looking at perception. Both books take an unusual look at a ‘thing’, one a cat and the other colour in atypical ways.

Highly recommended.

Metaphorically speaking

You may remember that back in February I participated in the Nonfiction 10 for 10 event.  Besides getting me to really think about which nonfiction books I find indispensable, I gleaned titles of many books from other participants, too.

The Tin Forest by Helen Ward and Wayne Anderson is one of these books.

In terms of a classroom resource there’s a lot to recommend:

*language arts – metaphor

*science/social studies – environmental issues; interconnectedness;

*storytelling and everyday life connections – pursuing dreams, living creatively, imagination, and hope.

If you remember the movie Wall-E from a few years back and enjoyed it, this book may work for you.

There is an old man who lives in a place “near nowhere and close to forgotten” that is barren of other life.  There are no plants or animals, only vast piles of other people’s garbage that the old fellow spends his time trying to dispose of.  Yet, nightly he dreams of verdant forests abundant with many creatures, great and small. His dream inspires him to create his own forest made from the refuse that surrounds him.  Slowly a forest is born and with it comes a stray bird who brings his mate to take up residence in the man-made forest. 

They also bring seeds that grow into plants that attract other creatures -- and eventually the forest becomes the forest of the old man’s dream. It is colourful and beautiful and filled with life. The “build-it-and-they-will-come” theme is prevalent and conveys a sense of hope that an individual can make a difference and fulfill their dreams.

The illustrations are terrific, with a real steampunk vibe.  Though the birds, insects, other creatures, plants and trees that the man create are made out of scraps of metal and other odds and ends, they definitely have a friendly look to them. The coloring throughout the book perfectly reflects the mood being conveyed: grey and dismal in the beginning when all we see is an open landscape filled with garbage; sparks of colour are introduced as the man-made forest is being created; and finally, a warmly, fully coloured two-page spread filled with life.

Though the book is metaphorical, I didn’t think it is too overdone.  The environmental themes are obvious but not heavy-handed.  The forest grows quickly and the old man never ages but that’s beside the point of the story.

I recommend this book for elementary and middle grades.