Sparking interest in reading has always been right at the top
of my To Do list as a parent. Not only
because it’s great for knowledge, memory, focus, concentration, mental
stimulation, and vocabulary, but because books are a great bonding
experience. Being together in the same house
or even in the same room doesn’t always mean being on the same page. Reading and talking about the same books is an
easy way to learn what kids have on their minds and I’m often struck by where
our conversations lead us. I know that
when my kids are teenagers they are not miraculously going to open up to me
every time I feel like it. Right now is
the best time to develop a habit of talking.
As any dedicated bookworm will attest, recommending the books
one is excited about is part of the fun and we are no exception. About a month ago I asked my seven year old to
make a list of books he would like to tell other seven-year olds about and he
liked the project. He came up with a
list with over one hundred books! Of
course, we needed a more manageable number.
There was a lot of discussion about what books were going to make a list
and which ones we would have to save for other posts. We also talked about what particularly he
liked about the books that made the list and what lessons he learned from them. Believe
me, we had lots of fun putting this post together!
Looking at our list, you might wonder where are the classics
like Charlotte's Web, Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins? We figured
everybody knows about the classics.
We wanted to talk about less known books that rocked my second grader's world. This list also doesn’t include my son’s favorite books about sharks (
Shark Post) and airplane books
(
Airplane Post) because they already have their own pages.
For the longest time I walked past graphic novels
considering them an inferior kind of books.
How can a bunch of drawings with a few words like “grunt,” “sniff,” and
“boom” have any literary merit? When my
friend Violet with a very smart and well-read 7-year old recommended Zita, I
was skeptical, but curious. I got the
books and discovered that there is space for graphic novels on the book shelves
of even the most discerning readers.
First of all, graphic
novels are not to be confused with comic books.
Graphic novels tell a complete story.
They take readers from the starting point through some logical
developments to a definitive end, just as Proust does, maybe even more so. In this story, reminiscent of Alice in
Wonderland and Wizard of Oz, a girl falls into a different worlds and tries to
get back home. I love some other
universal themes explored in this book. Deception
(appearance versus reality, who is a real friend to Zita), duty (did Zita have
a duty to save her friend because she pushed the button that started it all), the
value of good decision (but also the importance of learning from mistakes),
hopelessness (finding hope after a major seatback) and self-motivation (finding
strength within to keep going), survival (this is currently my son’s favorite
topic, here we have Zita’s wits against dark forces, human beings against
robots), etc.
Second, combining text with art not only ads variety, but engages
mind in a new way. I think our minds are
built to hear a narration. When the
words are not provided, mind fills in the gaps.
I hear my son explaining the book to his siblings, “Look! She is surprised to see this guy. He was not supposed to be here. He looks friendly enough, so he might actually
be a friend but you will find out later …. ”
Finally, in a good graphic novel face expressions and body
language seem to be a story of its own. Expressions
of surprise, anger, and pain might be exaggerated but offer a great opportunity
to talk about what characters are thinking and how they feel.
We now discovered that many of our favorite series have
graphic versions too, books by Scieszka and Disney fairies collection. And most importantly we discovered Nicolas
Flux's graphic adventures in history.
A fear of shocking hard core Harry Potter fans is not going
to stop be from being honest. I didn’t expect
much of Harry Potter. I was utterly
bored by the first movie when it came out and flipping through the pages at a
bookstore didn’t lead to a purchase of the book. I was completely caught by surprise to
discover that this story of an underdog who came on top bewitched my whole
family, including me. (Never judge a
book by its movie!) I think this story
is so gratifying because almost everyone at least at some time or situation in
their life felt like an underdog. An
orphan living with wicked relatives, abused, ignored and powerless discovers
one day that he is in fact a talented wizard who defeated the dark Lord
Voldemort in infancy. What follows is an
extremely imaginative tale of witches, potions, dark forces and beautiful
friendships all narrated with an elements of style, suspense, humor, drama, heart-racing
action and (for my kids) even horror.
Author’s imagination is a thing of wonder. And I loved that there were so many wonderful
discussion points (choices we face in life, fundamental need for love, motivation,
etc) that we could talk about for days after the last page was closed with my
kids. Thanks
Shelley for recommendation.
If you are only familiar with a Jumanji movie, you are loosing
out. The book is great and is totally
worthy of its
Caldecott medal. Chris van
Allsburg is an extremely talented writer and illustrator, who is also well
known for
Polar Express, his other Caldecott win. If I could say just one thing about this
author I would say he has one hell of imagination. How excitingly inventive is the idea of a
board game coming to life! And if I
could add one more thing I would say that he is a brilliant illustrator. I recently took a series of drawing classes
and I have a new sense of appreciation for illustrations made with a pencil. If you look at the illustrations closely you
will be astonished by intensity of expression and vivid, realistic shapes of
people and animals Chris van Allsburg achieved with a few pencil strokes and
some masterful shading. And did I
mention there is no color! That’s right;
everything comes alive with no color. This
book really lets imagination go wild!
And very little known fact is that Jumanji has a sequel. At the end of the book two new children
pickup the board game and carry it home with them. The sequel called
Zathura, written 21 years
later, is about these boys. My son who
is pretty excited about space liked Zathura, but not as much as Jumanji.
My friend Violet recommended this book as her childhood
favorite and I’m so glad she did. It’s
an amazing story and I’m not surprised that it sold 5 million copies and got
numerous awards, including Newberry Honor Book medal. My daughter loved the book, but it’s my son
who is absolutely obsessed with it. How
can it not be titillating to read about adventures of a 13-year old boy who - following
a crash landing in Canadian wilderness - has to figure out how to survive on
his own, with only his instincts and a hatchet?
The book touches many important themes and stimulates hours of
discussion. I really went to town with the power of positive thinking because it
is one of my pet subjects to talk about.
If you are looking for some ideas check out Spark Notes or online study
guides. We started a notebook of
favorite quotes with kids with the best quote from this book, “You are your
most valuable asset.”
Unless you are a Buddhist monk (and if you are, thank you
for reading my blog) you get angry from time to time. Most people were not taught what to do with
their anger. I wasn’t. I used to feel so guilty for feeling
angry. “If only I was a better person, I
would not feel angry,” I would tell myself.
This book teaches that anger is not a bad emotion. It’s just one of the emotions on a large
spectrum of human feelings. This is an
important message for kids and their parents alive. So, if you are like me, and need help
teaching your kids how to accept their emotions and deal with them, or if you have a child that can benefit from some new anger management techniques this book
is for you.
Anh is a little boy who gets angry when his grandpa tells
him to stop playing because it’s time for lunch. After an angry outburst Anh is sent to his room
where he meets his anger. The
illustrations complement the story. Each
page is a vibrant multi-colored textured collage. Anger is represented as a rug-doll
monster. It gives a physical depiction
to something kids can’t see - their feelings.
The monster is not scary and it will not scare children. In fact, all my kids love the monster. It’s as if they meet a long lost friend who
moved to another town.
After any kind of quarrel or disconnection I always try to
come up with some peaceful activity that seals the peace and bring us on the
same loving page. So one day, after both
of my older kids got in trouble for fighting over a toy, I came across a pile
of mail by the front door and had an idea of using store catalogues to make a
collage of their anger. My kids loved it
and now it’s a regular exercise. I asked
my son’s permission to post a photo of his collage here but he said it was
private.
Don’t expect kids to immediately drop their comfortable and
automated response to anger just because you read this book a dozen times. Just aim to put the necessary information
into their emotional tool belts and don’t forget to model the behavior you want
to see. It took my kids at least half a
year to start sitting comfortably with their anger, but it’s so worth the
wait.
This again came into our house on a friend’s recommendation
and I’m so grateful for my bookworm friends.
Granted it is not what you would normally expect to find on a boy’s
bookshelf, but that’s the benefit of having siblings. My daughter came down with a fairy fever and
my son caught it from her. In this
collection there are a total of a few dozen books, including some graphic
novels. We are about half way into the
stack and having a blast. If you are
thinking, what can possibly a bunch of fairies teach my kids, I’m here to tell
you that apparently a lot! Each book in
this series is full of important themes like conformity (Trouble with Tink), alienation
(Rani in the Mermaid Lagoon), sense of self, power, friendship (in each one), …
Not only I can always find a nice topic to talk about with my kids, but also I
can wrap any math or science lesson in a fairy dust and they will take it with
a thank you. One thing, among many
others, that I like about this collection is that fairies have different
talent, which means we can talk about different professions, what it takes to
do each job and explore their own interests and talents. Right now they are mostly in the Tinker stage
and they like all the tinkering projects I can throw their way. But yesterday my son said, “I want to try to
be a cooking Talent today and bake muffins.”
And he did (with minimal supervision, if I might add braggingly).
Everything by Jon Scieszka is a big hit in my house. I’m so happy we got to meet him when he
visited Chicago on a book tour. He was
as funny in person as you would expect from his humorous books. My two older kids were surprised that he
looked just like “a real person.”
All my kids love
TruckTown series. And for both my older kids these were the
first books they were able to read on their own. Scieszka’s wacky fairy tales is our other love. In
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs,
this classical tale is told from the wolf’s perspective. I really credit these kinds of stories with the
fact that my kids consider an issue from many angels. For example, recently when I asked my 7-year
old what is the morale of
Little Red Hen, I expected him to say something along
the lines of “
if you don’t work, you don’t eat.” Instead, he said, “morale of the story is
communication problems. I think hen is
not a good communicator. If he explained
to animals that they are not going to get bread unless they help, they would have helped.” My jaw
dropped. I read
Little Red Hen five
thousand times, and never once I thought about communication problem!
After fairy tales my kids graduate to
Time Warp Trio series. The set up is perfect. Three boys from New York travel back and
forth in time and find themselves in all kind of wild adventures. In the first book we read called
Summer Reading is Killing Me boys find themselves in a wacky world surrounded by
characters from books on their summer reading list. Many of the characters were familiar to my
kids and it only added to excitement. All
of the books in this series are great. The
jokes and mishaps keep things interesting and the story goes really fast. Growing up as one of six boys and a public
school teacher of every grade between 2
nd and 8
th, Jon
Scieszka really gets kids and what makes them tick and his stories appeal to
kids’ sense of humor.
What do you think about graphic novels for kids? Are you a Harry Potter fan? What are your favorite book recommendations
for elementary grades?
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