Night Flight: Amelia Earhart Crosses the Atlantic--A Book by Robert Burleigh & Wendell Minor

If you’re looking for an excellent nonfiction picture book about one of America’s most daring and courageous women to share with children during Women in History month, I highly recommend Night Flight: Amelia Earhart Crosses the Atlantic. The book was written by Robert Burleigh and illustrated by Wendell Minor. It is an outstanding package of text and art that provides a gripping account of Earhart’s historic transatlantic flight from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to a pasture in Northern Ireland in May 1932.


Burleigh’s text is lively and lyrical. Here is how he describes the takeoff of Earhart’s Vega—her Little Red Bus:

The plane swoops like a swallow
Over dark puddles and patches of tundra.

The shore gleams in waning light.
The waves are curls of cream-colored froth.

As the pilot flies east into the darkness, Burleigh describes how the sky appears to her:

The moon peeks between wisps of shimmering clouds.
Distant stars flicker and fade. Her mind soars.


Earhart’s flight appears to be off to an auspicious start—but around midnight it becomes an adventure fraught with danger. That’s when her plane is pummeled by rain during a thunderstorm. About an hour later, her altimeter breaks. Earhart tries to climb above the storm. Her plane becomes sluggish because ice has formed on its wings. It begins to pitch and spin. Then the plane starts to nose-dive downward. Earhart finally gains control of it after it bursts through the lowest clouds. She manages to level her Vega just ten feet above the surface of the Atlantic Ocean!

Earhart isn’t out of danger yet. She still has many miles to go before she’ll reach land. Alone in the cockpit, she sniffs salts and sips juice from a can. Around three o’clock, flames stream out of the cracked exhaust pipe. By 6:00 a.m., Amelia’s eyes burn and her stomach “churns from the smell of leaking gas.”

Then…

Black turns to a watery silt. The gloomy sky pales.

Splinters of sunlight stab down through cloud slits
And brace themselves on the vault of the open sea.

Earhart looks out of her cockpit and sees: a boat…a drifting gull…an emerging coastline...train tracks. She finds a smooth pasture where she lands her plane safely.

Two thousand and twenty-six miles. Fourteen
Hours and fifty-six minutes.
Alone.

A great peace wells up.
She knows she has crossed something more than an ocean.

Amelia Earhart had crossed over an ocean and entered into the halls of history. She was the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic—and the very first woman. She was indeed a true American heroine--a brave woman who broke down barriers and pushed the envelope.

Night Flight would be an excellent book to read aloud to children. Burleigh’s text is a concise and dramatic account of Amelia Earhart’s compelling and historic adventure. Wendell Minor’s paintings add to the tension and excitement of the story. He uses two-page spreads with no borders, changing perspectives, close-ups of the Vega and of Amelia in her cockpit, and a dark and foreboding color palette in a number of the illustrations. Minor draw us up into the wide-open sky with Amelia…into the ominous gloom of that stormy and eventful night. He takes us along with a fearless protagonist on her treacherous--and successful--fifteen-hour solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

The back matter of Night Flight includes the following:
- An afterword by the author
- A technical note by the illustrator
- A bibliography
- A list of Internet resources
- A selection of Amelia Earhart quotes.

Book Trailer


Amelia Earhart Last flight video


Amelia Earhart Audio Slideshow: Part 1


Amelia Earhart Audio Slideshow: Part 2


Amelia Earhart Tribute


Amelia Earhart Rare Interview


Amelia Earhart & Her Lockheed Vega (Smithsonian)

Learn More About Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart's Biography

Amelia Earhart's Achievements

Amelia Earhart Quotes

Under the Snow: A Nonfiction Picture Book Review

Under the Snow
Written by Melissa Stewart
Illustrated by Constance R. Bergum
Peachtree, 2009

When it’s cold outside and snow blankets the ground, it may appear that there’s little animal life around. But appearances can be deceiving! Just because we can’t see something, it's not proof that “something” isn’t there. Because…under the snow—tucked into gaps in stone walls and in underground burrows and inside rotting logs and beneath layers of fallen leaves and buried in the mud at the bottoms of ponds—many animals spend the winter unseen by human eyes.

Melissa Stewart’s nonfiction picture book is about the animals that are resting/sleeping/living somewhere “under the snow” hidden from view during the coldest months of the year.

This large format book with spare text and realistic watercolor illustrations is lovely in its simplicity. It is an excellent book to read to young children as an introduction to hibernation.

Here’s how Stewart begins the book:

You spend your days sledding and skating
and having snowball fights.

But under the snow lies a hidden world.

Then author Stewart takes us on a tour of a field, the forest, a pond, a wetland, and tells us what animals are hidden there “under the snow” in those four different habitats. And illustrator Bergum shows us those animals, which include the following:

• Ladybugs clustered together in a gap in an old stone wall
• A vole tunneling through the snow
• A centipede and bumblebee queen inside a rotting log
• A wood frog nestled beneath a layer of fallen leaves
• Bluegills swimming slowly in chilly pond water
• A turtle buried in mud at the bottom of a pond
• A beaver family huddles together in their cozy lodge
  
  

Art and text work perfectly together to “show-and-tell” young readers about the many forms of animal life that lie in a hidden world “under the snow.”

Under the Snow was designated an NSTA/CBC Outstanding Science Trade Book for 2010 and a Bank Street College Best Book of the Year. It was cited by the 2010 Charlotte Zolotow Award Committee as a highly commended book. It was also a Massachusetts Book Award Finalist and a Junior Library Guild Selection.



Book Extension Resources

Under the Snow: Curriculum Guide
Under the Snow: Readers Theater

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The Nonfiction Monday Roundup is at Great Kid Books.

Book Bunch: It's All about the Weather

On the Same Day in March: A Tour of the World’s Weather
Written by Marilyn Singer
Illustrated by Frane Lessac
HarperCollins, 2000

On the Same Day in March is a fine nonfiction picture book that could be used to introduce a unit on weather in the early elementary grades. It’s also an excellent book for connecting science and geography. Both the author and illustrator take readers to various locales around the world on one day of one particular month of the year to show how people living in different places don’t all experience the same kind of weather at the same time.

Singer takes us on a tour of cities, areas of countries, and continents situated in all the hemispheres of the globe. Readers travel to the Arctic; Alberta, Canada; Paris, France; New York City; the Texas Panhandle; the Nile Valley; a Louisiana bayou; Xian, China; Darjeeling, India; Central Thailand; Dakar, Senegal; Barbados; Northern Kenya, the Amazon Basin in Brazil; Darwin, Australia; Patagonia, Argentina; and Antarctica. Lessac’s endpapers label these locales on a hand-painted map of the world.

Here’s a partial weather report for this “same day in March”:

• There’s a tiny twister in Texas.
• “Fog threads through the temples” in the Nile Valley.
• Hailstones fall on a hillside in Darjeeling.
• In Thailand, it’s hot…hot…hot.
• The rains leave behind a river in Kenya.
• It’s raining, too, in the Amazon Basin.
• While in Patagonia, autumn “shears the clouds like a flock of sheep.”

The text printed on each page of the book is brief—usually just a sentence or two. The illustrations extend the text. They show how animals and people in different habitats experience this particular weather day in March where they reside. Folks in Paris sit outside a café or sell produce in an open market. People swim in the ocean and play cricket at the beach in Barbados. A family in Darwin pulls their boat out of the water and boards up their windows before the willy-willies (cyclones) arrive.

Singer includes A Note from the Author in the back matter of the book.

Click here to read an excerpt from the book. http://www.marilynsinger.net/march.htm

From Open Wide, Look Inside
Teaching Geography with Children’s Literature: On the Same Day in March
http://blog.richmond.edu/openwidelookinside/archives/2246

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Here are two books of poems that could be used to integrate poetry with a unit on weather:

Weather: Poems for All Seasons
Selected by Lee Bennett Hopkins
Illustrated by Melanie Hall
HarperCollins, 1994

This is a Level 3 I Can Read Book. It’s excellent for using in primary grades. The twenty-nine poems are organized in five sections: Sun, Wind and Clouds, Rain and Fog, Snow and Ice, Weather Together. It contains works by some of our finest children’s poets—including David McCord, Lilian Moore, Valerie Worth, J. Patrick Lewis, Barbara Juster Esbensen—as well as poems by Carl Sandburg and Langston Hughes.

Here are some excerpts from the SUN section to give you a flavor of the book:

No-Sweater Sun, the first poem in the collection, captures the excitement children feel when spring has finally arrived.

No-Sweater Sun
by Beverly McLoughland

Your arms feel new as growing grass
The first No-Sweater sun,
Your legs feel light as rising air
You have to run—
And turn a thousand cartwheels round
And sing—
So dizzy with the giddy sun
Of spring.

J. Patrick Lewis personifies the “star” of our solar system in Mister Sun—who “puts his gold slippers on” at dawn. He also switches off the “globe lamplight” and pulls “down the shades of night.”

Isabel Joslin Glaser’s summer sun sports a “lion face” at noon and “shakes out/its orangy mane”—and its searing “tongue scorches leaves.” Valerie Worth’s sun “is a leaping fire” that can form “warm yellow squares/on the floor” where a cat can sun itself.

The SUN section is typical of the rest of the book. It includes short poems that are easy to read. Some poems are straightforward rhythmic, rhyming poems of a lighthearted nature; some poems are free verse and do not rhyme; some poems have lovely imagery.

Click here to browse inside this book. http://browseinside.harpercollins.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780064441919

Seed Sower, Hat Thrower: Poems about Weather
Written by Laura Purdie Salas
Illustrated with photographs
Capstone Press, 2008

Laura Salas wrote poems for this collection in a variety of forms: limerick, cinquain, haiku, concrete, and acrostic. The photographs included in the book served as Laura’s inspiration for her poems. For example: Laura was inspired to write a list poem for the picture of a child flying a kite across an expanse of a bright blue sky dotted with puffs of white clouds:

Wind Is An…

Expert blower
Seed sower
Sailboat go-er
Hat thrower
And, best of all, a
Kite tow-er

Seed Thrower, Hat Thrower: Poems about Weather was published by Capstone for the educational market. It contains poems about fog, arid lands, rain, icicles, lightning, wind, a tornado, and clouds. In the back matter of this book, the author includes a glossary—as well as recommendations for other poetry books about weather and the seasons. In addition, there’s a section titled The Language of Poetry in which the author defines poetic terms—such as alliteration, repetition, free verse, and cinquain.

Edited to Add:

Click here to read more poems from Laura’s book at her blog.

Click here to read another excerpt from the book and for links to a couple of classroom activities at Laura’s Web site.

Book Review: What's Inside? by Giles Laroche

What’s Inside?: Fascinating Structures Around the World
Written & illustrated by Giles Laroche
Houghton Mifflin, 2009

Recently, at an event sponsored by The Foundation for Children’s Books, I had an opportunity to speak with children’s author and illustrator Giles Laroche. Giles was there to talk about his newest publication, What’s Inside?, a book that takes a look at both the outsides and insides of different “fascinating” structures around the world. The structures Laroche writes about in his book include the Tomb of Tutankamun in Egypt, the Temple of Kukulcan on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, the Sakyamuni Pagoda in the Shanxi Province of China, the Alcazar Castle in Spain, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and the Sydney Opera House in Australia.

Giles with one of the illustrations from What's Inside?

Giles Laroche is well known for the intricate cut paper illustrations that he has created for his previously published children’s books: Down to the Sea in Ships, Bridges Are to Cross, What Do Wheels Do All Day?, Sacred Places, The Color Box, and Ragged Shadows—among others.

What readers will find between the covers of What’s Inside? is some of Giles’ most detailed and exceptional paper relief artwork that he has done to date. What’s Inside? is the kind of book one can savor…over and over again. It’s a nonfiction picture book for children in upper elementary grades, children who are interested in different types of buildings/architecture, and adults.

The Format of the Book: On the right-hand page, there is a large framed picture of a structure and a short paragraph of information—below which is printed the words WHAT’s INSIDE? or WHO’S INSIDE?. Turn the page and you will see an illustration of “what” or “who” is inside the structure. There is information about the "inside" of the structure in text below the picture. In a sidebar to the left of the illustration, there is additional information that provides the name of the structure; the structure’s location, size, and the materials from which it was made; the date of the construction; the structure today; and a little known fact about the structure. This is how Laroche begins his book:


At the end of a long underground passageway an archaeologist opens this sealed door. Leading to a series of hidden chambers, the door has not been opened in nearly three thousand years. (The illustration shows Howard Carter unsealing the entrance to King Tut’s tomb while two onlookers watch expectantly.)

WHAT”S INSIDE?

In 1922, the archaeologist Howard Carter discovered King Tutankamun’s tomb, placed in underground vaults to survive the ages, its sole entry hidden from robbers.

Laroche goes on to tell about the treasures found inside the tomb, the Egyptians’ belief in the afterlife, and King Tutankamun’s ascent to the throne when he was just nine years old. In the sidebar, we read that the tomb was buried 25 feet underground, had four rooms that were 8-10 feet high—and that sealed boxes found in the tomb contained raisins, dates, nuts, watermelon seeds, cakes, bread, cereals, onions, and meat.

NOTE: In some cases, Laroche used double-page spreads because of the size of particular structures. For example, inside the Puerta del Sol (Gate of the Sun) or Blacksmith’s Gate in Spain, there lies the entire city of Toledo. He also created a two-page panoramic spread of Kuala Lampur to show how the Petronas Twin Towers “tower” above the other structures in the city.

Toledo, Castilla La Mancha, Spain

I found some of the most interesting information in the “Little Known Facts” sections. In these, I learned that the Parthenon was originally painted in shades of blue, ocher, and gold; that the Alcazar Castle in Spain served as the model for the castle at Disneyland; and that the design for the Petronas Towers was based on an Islamic geometric pattern symbolizing unity, harmony, stability, and rationality.

The Parthenon

In the back matter of the book, there is a Glossary of Architectural Terms. A tiny square illustration accompanies each term—which, I think, is a wonderful added feature. In this section, the author included brief descriptions of 26 terms, including acropolis, cupola, moat, pagoda, pediment, pentelic marble, sanctuary.

A red throne in the shape of a jaguar

is "what's inside" the Temple of Kukulcan

Giles Laroche’s newest book is a visual stunner. I suggest you get yourself a copy and find out what’s inside!

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Interview with Giles Laroche

Elaine: What inspired you to write and illustrate this book?

Giles: My interest in and curiosity of places and structures is what inspired my work for this book. In turn I wanted to inspire and share those same interests with young readers, future builders, and travelers.

Elaine: What kind of research did you undertake and what types of resources did you use when gathering information for this book project?

Giles: I used a wide variety of sources for my research, mostly books of which I have thousands. I frequent three local libraries and have access to a vast library of books on architecture. My own journals, photos, sketches from my travels come into use and I do some research on the Internet as well. Feed back from architects I know and from people who have traveled to some of these places is very helpful too. In many cases I contacted the actual place to get additional information.

Elaine: How did you decide on the subjects you wrote about in the book?

Giles: I wanted to include culturally significant structures as well as those less well known all of which had an "inside” readers would be curious about. They are sometimes predictable, such as the barn or circus tent, or a surprise; the jaguar throne, or city of Toledo. I also kept in mind a variety of geographical locations and cultures. They are presented chronologically. I chose places I have been too, have yet to see, or perhaps will never see.

Elaine: How long did the book project take from inception to completion?

Giles: The entire project took three years. The first year on the text and sketches, the second year on the art and some text revision.

Elaine: Are there any new projects you have in mind or are working on at the present time?

Giles: I am currently at work on a new book that is also about places and buildings. More later.

Giles' studio in New Hampshire is part of a 230-year-old barn.

I would like to thank Giles Laroche for taking time to answer my questions and for allowing me to post images from his new book.


The Nonfiction Monday Roundup is at Charlotte’s Library this week.

Chinese New Year: Picture Books & Activities

Chinese New Year 2009: The Celebration begins on January 26th!

The Year of the Ox

THE PET DRAGON
A Story about Adventure, Friendship, and Chinese Characters
Written & Illustrated by Christoph Nieman
Greenwillow, 2008

NOTE: The Pet Dragon is not a tale about Chinese New Year. It’s a picture book with a story in which readers are introduced to characters in the written Chinese language.

The Pet Dragon is a tale about Lin, a young Chinese girl, and her new pet dragon. Lin loves her baby dragon. They do everything together—play hide-and-seek and ping pong and soccer, make friends with other animals, tell each other funny stories. One day, when they are playing soccer in the house, they break an old vase, which shatters into hundreds of pieces. Lin’s father is so angry that he locks the little dragon in a cage. The next morning, Lin finds the cage empty. She is distraught. She must find her dragon.

Lin sets off in search of her pet—through the city, over mountains, along the Great Wall. But there is no sign of her beloved pet. Then Lin comes upon a wide river. She sees a strange little woman standing at the water’s edge. The old woman tells Lin that she cannot swim and asks her to carry her across the river. Lin complies with the woman’s request.

As fortune would have it, the old woman is a witch who feels that she should return Lin’s favor in kind. The witch pops a magic bean into her mouth and chews it slowly. She begins to grow and grow and grow…until she’s as tall as a mountain. Then she lifts Lin up through the clouds. And, there in the sky, Lin finds her pet dragon—“all grown and beautiful.” The dragon flies Lin home. Father is so happy at the return of his child that he thanks the dragon and promises to let the two friends play together whenever they want.

There, that’s a summary of Niemann’s story about friendship and an adventure. Now let me explain what makes this picture book special: It’s a clever introduction to characters in the Chinese written language—including the characters for person, tree, woods, dog, woman, warrior, eye, ear, father, prisoner, mouth, speak/words, river, above, and below. I’m not a big fan of computerized art—but Niemann uses Adobe illustrator to its best advantage in this picture book. His bold, uncluttered illustrations are striking and perfectly suited to the purpose of teaching about Chinese pictographs and ideographs. Not only does Niemann include one or more Chinese characters with its/their English translation(s) at the bottom of each page, he also incorporates these Chinese characters (in bold black print) into the illustrations. By so doing, Niemann helps readers visualize and remember the Chinese and English words that the characters stand for.

Here is a two-page spread from the book:

Click here to view more two-page spreads from The Pet Dragon.

Click here to browse inside The Pet Dragon.

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THE YEAR OF THE DOG
Written by Grace Lin
Little, Brown, 2006

This fine first novel is based on Grace Lin’s childhood. Lin takes us along with her through the "Year of the Dog" as she meets her soon-to-be best friend Melody, competes in a science fair, gets a crush on a classmate, celebrates her newest cousin’s Red Egg Day, has an outing in New York City’s Chinatown with her family, and wins a prize in a national writing contest. The author also touches on feelings she experienced as one of the only Asian-American students in her elementary school in upstate New York. Skillfully interwoven in the story are family anecdotes and references to Taiwanese cultural traditions and foods. Filled with gentle humor and warmth, this is a wonderful story about family, friendship, and finding one’s self.

Adding to the appeal of Lin's heartwarming story are her black are white spot illustrations.

NOTE: The beginning chapters of Lin’s novel are replete with talk about Lunar New Year traditions and mouthwatering descriptions of the foods typically prepared for this special holiday.

Click here for The Year of the Dog activities.

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Two Nonfiction Books about Chinese New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR: KUNG-HIS FA-TS’AI!
Written & illustrated by Demi
Dragonfly/Crown, 1997

Each double-page spread in Happy New Year provides information about some aspect, tradition, or foods associated with the celebration and observance of Chinese New Year. The holiday topics Demi writes about include: the animal zodiac, decorating with poems, special foods and their symbolic meanings, firecrackers, heavenly beings, gift giving, lion dances, and lantern festival. Most sections include just a brief paragraph or two of text. Demi’s book is a good introduction to Chinese New Year for children and adults alike.

CELEBRATING CHINESE NEW YEAR
Written by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith
Photographs by Lawrence Migdale
Holiday House, 1998

This nonfiction book gives readers a glimpse of a contemporary Chinese boy named Ryan and his family preparing for and celebrating Chinese New Year in San Francisco. It provides an historical perspective of the holiday, touches on the immigration of Chinese people to America in the 1850s, shows Ryan and other children learning about calligraphy at a Chinese school, and talks about many of the holiday traditions that have been handed down through the years. The book also talks about one of the most important parts of Chinese New Year—honoring one’s ancestors.
In the photographs, we observe Ryan and his father shopping in the open markets of Chinatown, visiting the cemetery where his grandparents are buried, and preparing special holiday dishes. We also see Ryan and his extended family partaking of the New Year’s feast, Ryan preparing the family altar, and scenes from the lion dance and New Year’s parade in Chinatown.

Celebrating Chinese New Year provides readers a more personal look at this holiday and its traditions as we see it observed and celebrated by an actual Chinese American family—Raymond and Karen Leong, their children, and other relatives.

The book includes a glossary and an index


Book Lists

• From Apples 4 the Teacher: Chinese New Years Recommended Reading—Kids Books for Chinese New Year



• From Scholastic: Books about Chinese New Year and Chinese Culture



• From AsianAmericanBooks.com: Happy Lunar New Year
  
  

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Reviews of Children’s Books from Wild Rose Reader

• Picture Book Review: Bringing In the New Year



• Two Books for Chinese New Year (This Next New Year & My Chinatown)

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Crafts, Activities, & Resources

• From Kaboose.com: Chinese New Year Crafts



• From Scholastic: Chinese New Year Celebration



• From Scholastic: Chinese Inventions and the Chinese New Year



• From Scholastic/Instructor: Chinese New Year



• From the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco: Celebration of the Chinese New Year (Traditional & American)



• From Kiddyhouse.com: Chinese New Year Resources



• From Enchanted Learning: Crafts and Activities for Chinese New Year

A Pumpkin Year

It's that pumpkin time of year! I have reviews of two picture books and links to pumpkin crafts and activities for you.

PUMPKIN CIRCLE: THE STORY OF A GARDEN
Story by George Levenson
Photographs by Shmuel Thaler
Tricycle Press, 1999

Pumpkin Circle is a fine nonfiction book to read aloud to children in kindergarten through the early elementary grades. This book clearly conveys information about the life cycle of a pumpkin from seed into a fully matured fruit to decaying jack-o’-lantern to seedling through photography. Thaler’s close-up photographs of pumpkin seeds, seedlings, roots, leaves, tendrils, buds, flowers, and rind are exceptional. The spare text is at the same time factual and lyrical. Although the book may have read better had the author not tried to rhyme the text, there is still much to commend in Levenson’s writing.

The first page of the book:

Deep
within
each
pumpkin
the air
is damp
and cool.
The walls
are
lined
with
teardrop seeds,
each one
a slippery jewel.


From a description of the plant’s leaves:

Huge green leaves grow toward the sky,
prickly,
lush,
and
wide.


The plant’s “flower buds appear/with pointy little collars and gleaming silver hair.”

Pumpkin Circle isn’t a typical nonfiction book. The text reads like a book-length poem, albeit with imperfect rhymes. Still, I think, it lends itself well to reading aloud to young children--and to introducing them to figurative language. For sure, even the youngest non-readers could learn much about the life cycle of a pumpkin just from browsing through the book and looking at Thaler’s photographs.

PUMPKIN JACK
Written & illustrated by Will Hubbell
Albert Whitman, 2000

Pumpkin Jack is a title that I would describe as a “realistic fiction” picture book. The book’s story explains the life cycle of a pumpkin--but this tale starts with the decomposition of a jack-o’-lantern named Jack--one carved by a young boy named Tim.

After Halloween, Tim takes Jack outside and leaves him in the garden. After a time, Tim notices that Jack is beginning to shrivel. Then he sees that mold has spread over Jack's “bright orange skin.” Jack grows flatter and flatter…and then is cloaked beneath a layer of snow. Winter passes, March arrives, and the snow melts. Tim observes that there is little left of the pumpkin--just crumpled skin, a stem, and a few seeds. Tim scrapes a layer of dirt over Jack.

But when spring turns “barefoot warm, a tiny seedling appeared where Jack had been.” Sure enough, one of the pumpkin’s seeds has sprouted. Tim weeds and waters the plant and watches it grow from a sprout to a “web of vines.” Days grow warmer still--and flowers appear on the pumpkin plant: “Flowers opened on the plant each morning, yellow stars that twisted shut forever in the afternoon.”

In time, Tim finds “a little green ball growing behind a crumpled blossom.” He’s excited. The pumpkin plant continues to grow. Then, one October morning, Tim awakes to see frost coating plants in the garden. Upon his return from school that day, Tim searches through “the withered leaves for the unripe pumpkins.” He picks them and puts them on his front porch. By the end of October, the pumpkins have ripened. Tim gives all but one of them away. He carves the one he keeps…another pumpkin he calls Jack. A year has come full circle.

Hubbell’s illustrations done in colored pencil with solvent washes are colorful, effective, and strongly support the realistic tone of this nature-themed story about decomposition and rebirth.

Pumpkin Crafts & Activities

From Scholastic: Observing the Pumpkin Cycle

From Kaboose: Pumpkin Crafts.

From About.com: Free Pumpkin Carving Patterns

From Scholastic: Pumpkin Seed Estimation & Pumpkin Science Photograph Book

From Education World: Pump Up the Curriculum with Pumpkins!

From Enchanted Learning:

• Pumpkins at Enchanted Learning (Nursery Rhyme and Crafts)
• Jack-O’-Lantern Mask
• Papier-Mâché Jack-O'-Lantern Craft
• String of Jack-O'-Lanterns or Ghosts

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Anastasia Suen has the Nonfiction Monday Round-up at Picture Book of the Day.

Look What I Did with a Leaf!

Today I have a review of a children’s nonfiction book about leaves that is great to use across the curriculum in science and art. This book is also an excellent book to share with children to encourage them to become more careful observers of nature.

Background: I was a second grade teacher for many years--and for many of those years I taught a science unit on trees, forests, and soil. Every September, I would take my students for a walk in the woods. We would look at the different kinds of trees and leaves, turn over rotting logs and find salamanders, observe decaying vegetation and detritus on the ground, study lichens growing on rocks and plants, look for fungi on the forest floor. We’d take another trip a few weeks later to an Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary where we’d look at different trees, make soil salad, and talk about photosynthesis and the chain of life. I found such experiences outside of school helped my students to become more attuned to the wonder of nature and the science all around them.

Back at school, I would give my students a special folder with directions and special materials for assignments and activities that they would complete at home over the course of a week. My students would select a tree in their yards or near their houses to observe for a few days. They would do bark rubbings of their selected trees and make leaf prints. They would also do detailed pencil sketches and artistic interpretations of their trees and spend time on three different days sitting outside looking at their trees and writing down their observations. Teaching my students how to become more careful observers was one of my main reasons for taking my students on the field trips and assigning these activities for homework.


Look What I Did with a Leaf! was a nonfiction book I used in conjunction with our science unit. It encouraged my students' powers of observation and provided me with an idea for an exceptional project to do at school in collaboration with our art teacher.

LOOK WHAT I DID WITH A LEAF!
Written & illustrated by Morteza E. Sohi
Walker and Company, 1993

Look What I Did with a Leaf! is a science/craft book for children with suggestions and advice for helping them to create their own “leaf animal” collages. In this book, Sohi includes a Field Guide with pictures, descriptions, and sizes of leaves from different kinds of trees and plants and a section entitled The Life Cycle of a Leaf. He talks about training one’s eye in searching out leaves in a variety of colors, sizes, and shapes. He writes specifically about how saw-edged leaves may work best for capturing the texture of a rooster’s body, lobed leaves are excellent to use for frog’s feet, and long, narrow leaves work well for fox’s legs. Sohi includes his own collages of a rooster, a frog, and a fox to show readers how he used these specific types of leaves to create these three different leaf animals. Other collages in the book include those of a butterfly, elephant, parrot, owl, cougar, cow, mouse, lion, peacock, fish, cat, and turtle. Sohi also provides art notes for children and directions for preparing their collected leaves and assembling their animals.

Classroom Connection: Using Look What I Did with a Leaf!, our art teacher and I did a wonderful cross curricular science/art project that tied into the unit i was teaching. My students created their own leaf animal collages with leaves they had collected and prepared. I found it was extremely important for children to prepare their leaves well in advance of the art project. The leaves must be cleaned by soaking in warm water, blotted dry, and then placed between pages of a newspaper and pressed. This preparation process takes about a week. I used to send printed directions home with my students about two weeks prior to their beginning work on the animal leaf collages in art class.

Note: Our art teacher had my students create their collages on sturdy white poster board. When all the collages were completed, she laminated them and then we hung them in the classroom.

The Nonfiction Monday Roundup is at Picture Book of the Day.

Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds: The Story of an Olympic Champion Who Faced Discrimination

SIXTEEN YEARS IN SIXTEEN SECONDS:
THE SAMMY LEE STORY
Written by Paula Yoo
Illustrated by Dom Lee
Lee & Low Books, 2005

(This biography begins when Sammy Lee is twelve years old.)

Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds is a picture book biography about an Olympic champion who overcame personal challenges in his life to achieve his dream of winning a gold medal in diving. This is also a book about racial discrimination in the United States and about an individual who honored his father’s dream of his son becoming a doctor.

Sammy Lee, born in California in 1920, was the child of Korean immigrants. Sammy dreamed of becoming an Olympic diving champion. Unfortunately, the public pool in his city only allowed “people of color” to use the facility one day a week. Fortunately, when he was eighteen, Sammy met a man named Jim Ryan who saw the young man’s diving potential. “Coach” Ryan even dug a giant hole in his backyard and filled it with sand so Sammy could practice diving into the sandpit on the days when he was not allowed into the public pool. Sammy enrolled in gymnastics at school to help develop stronger leg muscles. He loved diving and felt it was “the only world” where he belonged.

Sammy worked hard--at diving practice, at school, and on his homework. He earned all A’s, was voted the student Most Likely to Succeed, became the first nonwhite student elected student body president, and was even offered a full scholarship to Occidental College. Still, he could not attend his own senior prom at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium--which “only white students were allowed to enter.”

Sammy’s father also had a dream for his only son. He wanted Sammy to study to become a doctor. He told him it would be the way for him to earn the respect that he deserved. Sammy and his father “struck a deal.” Sammy would be allowed to continue diving as long as his college grades were good enough for him to get into medical school.

In 1943, Sammy’s father died--but Sammy was determined not to let his father’s dream die. Sammy took a break from diving. He worked hard and got “accepted in a special United States Army medical training program. He discovered he did have a passion for medicine and became a doctor in 1946.” That same year, Sammy entered the national diving championship and won the high-platform dive. Despite all of Sammy’s achievements, there were times when he faced racial discrimination: Once, he was forbidden from entering a restaurant with friends after a diving exhibition. And he was still restricted from using certain “pools except on assigned days.”

Sammy didn’t let this unfair treatment get him down. Instead, he worked hard to prove himself in the 1948 Olympics. And, sixty years ago in the Olympics at the age of twenty-eight, Dr. Sammy Lee became the first Asian American to win an Olympic gold medal.


From Paula Yoo’s Blog: Me & Sammy Lee! Celebrate the Olympics! (Posted on 8-8-08)

From NPR: An Excerpt from Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds

Anastasia Suen has the Nonfiction Monday Round-up at Picture Book of the Day.