Tuesday

It's Tuesday and that means reading with the kids at school.  Today I chose these.  I hope your little ones like them.

 Notice goose has one foot.  Our little narrator notices the goose when the flock came in the spring to settle at their pond.  Something like fishing line was tangled on goose's foot and eventually the foot fell off.  Goose had to learn how to live with one foot and how best to do that.  Over the course of the summer goose ate the corn our narrator left for her and then moved on to the fresh grasses and she grew stronger.  She learned to swim and she was not ostracized by the flock when she swam because she didn't look different.  One day in the fall the flock leaves and goose is gone.  Did she fly off?  Was she hiding because she couldn't take off?  This sensitively told story is a great starting point for talking about the things we leave behind that could be trouble for animals. 

 

 Sometimes the best laid plans....

 We've all had this happen to us.  All of us.  We get up from our chair and when we return we find it taken by someone else.  And the "that's my chair" discussion starts.  We've all done it.  This is a great story and every single one of us can relate.  Everyone in first grade sure did!

 "Courage is tasting the vegetable before making a face" and a whole book of other everyday things that take courage.  This one had hands up from everyone in third grade sharing their experiences with what it takes to have courage. "Courage is sending a valentine to someone you secretly admire and signing your real name."  Courage is two candy bars and saving one for tomorrow."  We've all been there!

 Max's brother Ben saves stamps and his brother Karl saves coins and they won't give even one to Max.  So Max starts saving words.  He begins with the little words: if, and, the, is... Then he saves words that make him feel good: park, baseball, dogs.  Then he saves words he likes to eat: bananas, pancakes, ice cream....Then he saves colors: green, blue, brown.  Max cuts words out of newspapers and magazines and his collection grows.  But his brothers tease him because in their opinion he really doesn't have anything.  But when Ben arranges his stamps he just has a pile of stamps.  When Karl arranges his coins he just has a pile of coins.  When Max arranges his words he has a thought.

OK, you want to get a boy's attention? Give your book this title.  Like many of my favorite authors, William Joyce is a genius.  This is a true story of a time when he was a boy in fourth grade with big ideas that were not always appreciated by his teacher or principal.
For a school book competition Billy enters with a story told from the perspective of a booger.  I'm sorry, I'm not going to tell you any more than this.  Even you will want to read this for yourself.  Really.