… and this is how we’re feeling.
(We’ll get through it though because vacation is almost here!)
4.5 Days AND COUNTING
by Matt
What do you think?
Looks can be deceiving!
Which grades do you think this book fits by looking at the cover?
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If you know this story, let us know by posting a comment on this post below.
Some Suggestions
Dear Mrs. Eaves,
This took a lot of thought. I couldn’t think of anything right away, but while reading your post, Poppy did come to mind. But after looking through the bookshelf, thinking very hard, and asking my twin sister, I came up with three books:
- Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl
- My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
- The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl
The next book that I think is fitting is Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl. After reading Mrs. Eaves recommendation for Midnight Fox, I realized that this has a fox, a farm, but a totally different concept. It is about Mr. Fox’s life and the farmers who live in the farm next door. A chant from the book about the farmers Boggis Bunce and Bean is below:
Boggis, Bunce, and Bean
Boggis and Bunce and Bean
One fat, one short, one lean
Those horrible crooks
So different in looks
Were nonetheless equally mean
This Roald Dahl book is about the Fox family adventures, their encounters with the crooks without good looks, and lots of other things that capture the reader and make them connect to the characters. The way this is wilderness is that they talk about Mr. Fox’s fox hole and the also go through the barn, so that might be a good learning experience for 3rd graders as well.
The last book I recommend is The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl. This story has a little bit of wilderness and woodland theme, bit mostly it is a funny and enjoyable read. I think 3rd graders will like this book because it is a fantasy type book that will capture readers. It is about a girl who apparently has supernatural powers. She only uses this power when she gets angry and she can’t control it. This time, she’s done something very bad. She’s turned the neighbors into a group of… read to find out! 3rd graders will LOVE this book. It is fantasy, but as with all these books, readers can connect to the character with ease.
I hope my suggestions will help your class!
Good Luck,
Matt 🙂
Morpheus Road: The Black
SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE FIRST BOOK, MORPHEUS ROAD: THE LIGHT.
At the end of The Light, Marsh and Sydney discover that the real reason behind their hallucinations is a spirit named Damon, a soldier who fought with Alexander who wants to prove himself. Marsh and Sydney also discovered that Cooper was a spirit, and he had been given permission to be able to be seen by Marsh and Sydney to help them through the crisis with Damon. Now there is a different twist on the story. It’s from Cooper’s perspective.
Cooper tells the story of how he died and he finds himself in Stony Brook, his hometown, but it is filled with people who have passed away. He meets up with his deceased grandfather and he tells Coop all about where he is. He is in his vision, in the Black. This book is a big mix of ghosts, twists, battles and supernatural stuff, and it creates an AWESOME book! D.J. MacHale applies his same style of writing of Pendragon to make a book with something that science-fiction and just about any reader will like.
Click on the book cover to go to D.J. MacHale’s website. He is even involved with producing TV shows as well as writing books!
(Click on the Amazon.com logo to buy the book.)
Dr. Seuss
Theodore Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) is one of the most valued children’s books writers of American history. You probably know him because of The Cat in the Hat or Green Eggs and Ham, but most people don’t know who he really is and his story.
He was born on March 4th, 1904. He was raised on Fairfield Street in Springfield, Massachusetts and attended Springfield Central High School. After High School, he attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. His writing and drawing and humor really took off there. He became editor of Jack-o-Lantern, the school’s humor magazine. In his senior year he was stripped of that job due to drinking during the times of Prohibition, so he started publishing cartoons under various pseudonyms including Dr. Seuss. That is when he officially adopted his pen name.
He married a Dartmouth classmate Helen Palmer, and his first real success was the “Quick, Henry, the Flit!” This catchphrase was featured in advertisements for the Flit bug repellent. The ads were of someone saying to Henry the catchphrase when there looked to be a massive cloud of bugs bearing down upon them. That phrase was the “Got Milk” of that time; everyone knew it. For the next three decades of his life, he made advertisements for all different companies, including GE, Ford, and many other big names.
His first children’s book was And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and he wrote eleven others until his HUGE success, The Cat in The Hat. It is what he is most known for. The book surfaced from the Doctor’s ( 🙂 ) friend from the publishing company Houghton Mifflin asking him to write a book with 225 words that first graders should know. The Houghton Mifflin director also wanted the book to be entertaining for the kids. In nine months, Dr. Seuss had used 223 of the words and included 13 more in The Cat in The Hat. There has been a TV show made from it as well as a film. It really took off with the kids and parents of America.
March 2nd, a few days ago, would have been Seuss’ 109th birthday. But people have not forgotten. For one, Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in The Hat are number 5th and 9th on the all time best selling children’s books. But also Dr. Seuss’ birthday has been made National Read Across America Day by the National Education Association (NEA). It was created to promote reading in America, which fits him perfectly!
CHECK OUT WWW.SEUSSVILLE.COM – AN AWESOME WEBSITE!
Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat
by Lynne Jonell
I read this book in 3rd grade (With Mrs. Eaves as a teacher!) and I remember how I could really feel the story, especially the evilness of Miss Barmy. I hope you can too… Enjoy!
It feels to Emmy like she has no parents at all. They are always off on trips, exploring faraway places and she is stuck at home with her nanny Miss Barmy. Emmy never talks back to her nanny, nor does she refuse vegetables, not do her homework and things of the sort. Miss Barmy is very mean to her and she makes her eat and drink peculiar things. She writes letters to her parents, but she never gets a response. Life is not so great.
Emmy does not have many friends, but she likes to sit by the classroom pet, the Rat. This was because she could hear him speak. A rat, speaking! Nonetheless, he was rude and and angry all the time. No one else could hear him until one day, when a boy in her class, Joe gets bitten by him. Joe is talking to Emmy and in response to him saying “I was just trying to feed him a carrot. You’d think he would have been grateful.” the Rat said “Ha!” Joe was stunned. He had to leave right after, but for most of the rest of the book, Joe becomes 4 inches tall. Read this story and In guarantee that you will want to read the next book, Emmy and the Home for Troubled Girls, right away.
Click on the book cover to access Lynne Jonell’s website and her summary of the book. And click here to see the video book review on YouTube courtesy of 60secondrecap PickoftheWeek.
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“Jonell takes readers on a merry, sometimes scary romp… It’s fun to watch remarkably good Emmy and especially bad Barmy spar.”
— Booklist, starred review
The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe
The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia #1) by C.S. Lewis
The Pevensie Children have just been sent to live with a Professor Kirke, since their parents feel that is unsafe for the children where they were living in World War II. Soon after they arrive, they start to explore the curious and enormous house. Wandering aimlessly, they stumble upon a room without anything in it. Except a very large wardrobe. Peter, Susan and Edmund leave the room and they are not in the least bit interested. Lucy, the youngest of the four, stays and ends up getting inside. Doing this unlocked a whole new world for the children… literally! Deep inside the wardrobe Lucy found herself standing in a “snowy wood.”
If you are a fantasy reader, then this book is for you. It has lions, an evil witch and a magical wardrobe that is the entrance to a different world… Narnia.
Click on the picture to access the C.S Lewis Website.
Click here to buy this book from Amazon.com!
As always, leave a comment if you have read this book or you just want to comment!
Ribsy
Henry Huggins lives on Clickatat Street with his parents and his dog Ribsy. When they bring Ribsy to the mall in the station wagon, and he somehow manages to put down the window and hop out. Being color blind, he finds his way into another families station wagon. Ribsy goes home with them and then has many adventures with different people in different environment. If you read this book, you will grow to love the characters and setting that Beverly Cleary uses and also her style of writing.
This was a book that I took out of the library lots of times, and took three copies when they were discarding the old ones. Beverly Cleary’s series of related books are so great, they give you an excellent image on what’s happening. I recommend this book from when I was 6 years old.
Beverly Cleary’s Website: www.beverlycleary.com
Buy Ribsy by Beverly Cleary on Amazon.com here.
The Giver
The Giver by Lois Lowry
In this community, there are very few differences. You are assigned a job, a spouse, and children by a group of distinguished Elders. You have designated privileges at different ages, a haircuts at eight, a bicycle (the only form of transportation besides walking) at nine, and so forth. You all turn the same age on the same day, and there is a ceremony for all the ages up to twelve. The ceremony of twelve is the special ceremony where each child is selected for a job by the Elders. Jonas’ turn has come.
Jonas is a normal kid, with a normal family. A mother, father, a male child and a female child. The only difference about him is that he has unusually pale eyes, and only a couple other people that he knows of has them. When Jonas’ is about to be assigned a job, he is skipped. He was SKIPPED! They passed over his number. At the end of the ceremony the Elder said,
“‘Jonas has not been assigned,’ she informed the crowd, and his heart sank. Then she went on. ‘Jonas has been selected.”
He was selected to be the Receiver of Memory. This is an immensely important job to the community, so Jonas is told, and he will be working with the old Receiver of Memory, who now becomes the Giver.
The Newbery Award winning book is a short book, but not a quick read. It is deep, thorough and thought-provoking, as it winds its way through the ‘adventures’ of Jonas and the Giver. Lois Lowry does a great job, and although it is great to read any book more than once, with this book you want to read it again, right away.
Lois Lowry’s website can be found here. It is a very good author’s website.
Read this book! Leave a comment below and tell us what you thought!
A Long Walk to Water
A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park
Salva Dut, an eleven year old boy, lives in southern Sudan, in the Dinka tribe. A revolutionary war rages throughout the country, and on one very sad day, the war hits his home village while he is at school and he gets separated from his family. He has no choice to walk away from the fighting with a group of unknown people, and from there he runs into numerous obstacles and barriers, but he also triumphs in small ways.
Linda Sue Park makes this a dual novel, adding in the story of a young girl named Nya, her family, and their troubles with water in 2007 – while Salva and his journey starts 1985.
Do not be fooled into thinking that this is a beginner’s read by it’s length of 115 pages. It is a quick read, but it is a boom that makes you keep thinking about it for days after, especially after the very special and fitting ending.
Based on Salva Dut’s real story, Linda Sue Park makes you think and think and think. I hope you read this incredible novel.
Linda Sue Park’s Website is here: www.lindasuepark.com. Ms. Park is a writer of a few different types of books, and you can view them all in the ‘books’ section of that website!