Ryan's Book Share

Trade Books:

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - By: Judi Barrett

This was one of my favorite books as a child. This book is full of humor that children will love. I have read this book to many children and they all love it. No matter how old of a book it is, it never loses its humor. This book is set in the town of Chewandswallow, which is an amazing name for the town, based on the book. In this town, the weather is quite different than what we are used to. In this town, the weather is totally based on food. During breakfast, lunch, and dinner, food will fall from the sky. The citizens of Chewandswallow were so excited that they were getting so much food! They would receive cheeseburgers from the sky, and when it would rain, they town would get lots of soup! Could life get any better? Well, what was a good thing quickly came to an end. As time went on, the weather got much worse, which meant that more food was falling and it was falling in larger portions. When it would rain, the town would be flooded with soup! And, the school was flattened by a pancake! Finally, the townspeople left Chewandswallow on boats that were made of bread and moved to a new town where they could not get their food from the sky. They actually had to buy their own food!

Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse - By: Kevin Henkes

This is a wonderful story that revolves around Lilly who is a mouse that finds herself in a remorseful situation. Lilly is a student who enjoys school and is also very fond of her teacher, Mr. Slinger. However, one day, Lilly brings a musical purse to school and every time she opens it, it starts to play music during class. After this, her favorite teacher, (Mr. Slinger), takes away the musical purse because Lilly cannot stop playing with it and interrupting class with the music. Lilly is then enraged with anger and decides to get even with Mr. Slinger. She draws a picture of "Big Fat Mean Mr. Stealing Teacher!" and puts it into his bag for him to find. However, when she gets her purse back, she looks inside and finds a generous note from Mr. Slinger. Lilly is then horrified because she just slipped a mean drawing into her favorite teacher's bag, only to find out that he slipped a very nice note into her purse. This is a great story because it shows not to jump to conclusions, to accept responsibility for your actions, and to not let your emotions get the best of you.

Goodnight Moon - By: Margaret Wise Brown

This is an older book that is an absolute classic. This book is in poem form and it surrounds around how a bunny says good night before going to bed. The bunny says good night to many things including, "Good night cow jumping over the moon." Throughout most of the book, the bunny prefaces everything with "Good Night." The repetition throughout the book really makes the book interesting because the reader is wondering what the bunny is going to say goodbye to on the next page. Also, throughout the book, things will disappear and things will appear. There are small details on many of the pages. For instance, on one page, there is a copy of Goodnight Moon on the nightstand. This book is always fun for students because it is calming and the text really stays in your head. I can still repeat many of the lines today, from when I listened to the story when I was a young child.

King Bidgood's in the Bathtub - By: Audrey Wood

"King Bidgood's in the bathtub and he won't get out!" is the refrain to this whimsical children's tale about a king who refuses to take on the challenge of his role as king. Instead of leading his country, King Bidgood spends all day splashing in the tub. The royal court is worried about the king and the state of his kingdom. One by one, they visit the king begging him to assume his royal duty and GET OUT OF THE BATHTUB! But the king would rather play and shrink away from his responsibility than to do his job. The king convinces his royal subjects that all of his royal duties (feasting, battling and fishing, etc.) can be done in the bathtub. Finally, a lowly page boy convinces the king to pull the plug on his irresponsible frolicking in the bathtub. This book is very funny and when I read it to the students, they are often mesmerized by the pictures in the book and the details on all of the pages.

Resources:

Readinga-z:

www.Readinga-z.com/more/trade_books.html

This website has many different lesson plan ideas for trade books for grades K-6. With all of these books, there are lesson plans, worksheets and circulation cards that can all help the teacher with teaching with the trade book. The only drawback with this website is that there is a membership fee. However, there is a significant discount when the school buys a membership for a certain number of classrooms. This website seems like a great resource for teachers and students because the website covers so many influential trade books that students and teachers would enjoy. This is also a vocabulary section to this website. Some of the vocabulary words and the references for helping to teach vocabulary supplement the trade books that are listed on the website. This is such a great tool because the website pinpoints some important vocabulary words from the text, thus eliminating some research work for the teacher.

Money Management:

www.moneymanagement.org/education/resources

I came across this website this past semester when I was doing a lesson on money. I remember being dumbfounded that a website named "Money Management" would have a section on children's trade books. However, to my surprise, this website has been a great resource. I am a big believer in using trade books in math. It helps to break up the usual numerical mathematics and allows the children to enjoy a book, while still learning about math.

This website lists many trade books that deal with money. For instance, the Berenstain Bears book The Trouble with Money, deals with the money and the finances. This website provides the teacher with possible activities and projects, in teaching the students about money and clothing. There are also projects and extension activities that are available for each trade book. The website tells the teacher the necessary materials and gives the teacher some guiding questions for the trade book and for the teaching of the math. This is an amazing website to use when implementing trade books into the math curriculum.

Children's Trade Books in Math:

http://math.asu.edu/~bethgn/bibliography.shortened.htm

As stated before, I am a big believer in using trade books when teaching math. This website contains a vast amount of trade books that can be used in teaching math. This list was compiled by professors at Arizona State University. Although there are not any resources on this website, the website does have many great trade books that are broken up into many different categories: counting and number books, number operations, geometry, money, large numbers, and miscellaneous math topics. These lists that are broken up into different categories make it extremely easy to find a good trade book about a certain math topic. With these lists, the author, the published date, and the ISBN number are all listed, which make it even easier to find the book at the library.