For Thinking and Creativity Just for Laughs and/or FUN
For Writing Picture Book Mysteries
For Writing: Memoir Fractured Fairy Tales
For Writing: Poetry Biographies
For Grammar Families with Gay Parents
For Bookmaking Ideas About Immigrants & Immigration
Wonderful Words Arizona
Alphabets/ABC For Science
Celebrating Books & Reading Ecology & the Environment
For Holidays & Happenings For Bedtime
For Owning Up Aesop
Just Because:
anything by Patricia Polacco
A Year of Borrowed Men by Michelle Barker
For Thinking and Creativity
America The Beautiful, Together We Stand (Bates & many artists) Famous Quotes
If.... (Perry)
Some Things Are Scary (Heide/Feiffer) Use this!
When I Grow Up (Yankovic)
For Writing:
Birds (Henkes/Dronzek) Writing description
Book, A (Gerstein) genre study
Boy Who Loved Words, The (Schotter/Potter) lots of great words & ideas - website, too
Bravest Woman in America, The (Moss/U'ren) FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE, DESCRIPTION, VERBS
Bubble Trouble (Mahy/Dunbar) Tongue-Twister, Alliteration, Snazzy Verbs, Rich language, Rhyming & Rhythm
Charlie the Ranch Dog (Grummond/deGroat) lst person p-o-v is the dog, clever writing
Cloud Dance (Locker) Word Choice/Verbs especially
Crazy Hair (Gaiman/McKean) rhyme & Rhythm, put it to music, wonderful words
First Year Letters (Danneberg/Love)
Hair of Zoe Fleefenbacher Goes to School, The (Anderson/Hoyt) elipses (& funny)
Hinky Pink, The (McDonald/Floca) Needs more details, transitioning - great model for kids - includes lots of rich language...similes & metaphors
Imogene's Last Stand (Fleming/Carpenter) sprinkling quotes and research throughout a piece of fiction
Jungle Grapevine, The (Beard) alliteration, great words
Matchbox Diariy, The (Fleischman/Ibatouline) Oral Histories
Migrant (Trottier/Arsenault) FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
New Old Shoes (Blessing/Phillips) Needs work on transitions AND non-human p---v
Odious Ogre, The (Lester/Feiffer) Super-Snazzy words, Moral
Passing the Music Down (Sullivan/Root) Eloquent Writing & Figurative Language
Poem-Mobiles (Lewis & Florian)
Reading Makes You Feel Good (Parr) model, kids come up with more ideas, elipses
Robin Makes a Laughing Sound, The (Wolf) journal, observations, sketches
Ruby's Birds (Thompson) Write a better ending
Seven for a Secret (Anholt/Coplestone) Entire book is letters back & forth
Sloppy Joe (Keane/Brunkus) character development
Spider Weaver, The (Musgrove/Cairns) similes,word choice, beginning a sentence with a prepositional phrase
Ten Rowdy Ravens (Ewing/Zerbetz)alliteration and great words
Theolonius Monster's Sky-High Pie (Sierra/Koren) wonderful words and illustrations to "copy"/model
Too Much Kissing (Katz/Catrow) models of songs (about parents) the tune of amiliar songs
Thea's Tree (Jackson/Pederson) Letter-writing, Fractured Fairy Tales
Travel Game, The (Grandits/Alley) Something to try in the classroom; geography, research, writing...
When I Grow Up (Yankovic)
Who Stole Mona Lisa? (Knapp/McElmurry) Mona Lisa's 1st person p-o-v
Wonder Book, The (Rosenthal/Schmid) funny writing models to use that kids would LOVE
For Writing: Memoir
All the Places to Love (Machlachlan/Wimmer) place, memoir
Aunt Mary's Rose (Wood/Pham) dialogue, memoir
Billy's Booger (Joyce) memoir, book within and book (actual book he wrote in 4th grade)
Crow Call (Lowry/Ibatoullline) memoir
Ghost Wings (Joosse/Potter) 1st person/memory
Ma Dear's Old Green House (Patrick/Sadler)
Rocks In His Head (Hurst/Stevenson)
Testing the Ice (Robinson/Nelson) memoir
Uncle Andy's Cats (Warhola)
For Writing Poetry:
Alphabet Bird Collection (Ogilvy) COUPLETS
Creaky Old House (Ashman/Chesworth) couplets
I Call My Grandma Nana (Wolff) QUATRAINS
King Hugo's Huge Ego (VanDusen) Rhyming ABCB, Alliteration
Ling Cho and His Three Friends (Pacilio/Cook) COUPLETS, Alliteration, great words
Silver Seeds (Paolili & Brewer/Johnson & Fancher) ACROSTICS
Visit, The (Lindbergh/Halpern) four line stanza where ALL the lines rhyme!
Wing-Nuts (Janeczko & Lewis/Tusa) HAIKU
Won Ton: A Cat Tale Told in Haiku (Wardlaw/Yelchin) HAIKU
Me and You and the Red Canoe (Pendqiwol/Phil) Free Verse - Lovely free verse!
For Grammar:
Girl's Like Spaghetti, The (Truss/Simmons) apostrophes
Matchbox Diaries, The (Fleischman,Ibatouline) Dialogue (other ideas below)
Rock 'N' Roll Mole (Crimi/Munsinger) Snazzy VERBS
Sky of Afghanistan, The (de Eulate) ELIPSES
For Bookmaking Ideas:
All In a Day (Rylant/McClure) USE THIS BOOK TO CREAT A EHOLE-CLASS BOOK!!0
An Artist's America (Albert) Love it & want to do it!
Bookshop Dog (Rylant) nicely visually-accented pages
In the Land of Words, (Greenvield/Gilchrist) illustrations with stitching, great model for kids
Little Owl's Night (Srinivasan) White font on black pages
Open this Little Book (Klausmeier/Lee) Different sized pages making different books
Twelve Days of Springtime, The (Rose/Armstrong-Ellis) Model for a beginning of school book, or anything that you could come up with 12 different ideas for (based on the 1st day of Christmas song)
Wonderful Words
Blueberry Girl (Gaiman/Vess)
Boy Who Loved Words, The (Schotter/Potter)
C
omposer is Dead, The (Gaiman/Snicket)
Crazy Hair (Gaiman/McKean)
Fancy Nancy's Favorite Fancy Words (O'Connor/Glaser)
King Hugo's Huge Ego (VanDusen)
Little Owl's Night (Srinivasan)
Nest, Nook & Cranny (Blackaby/Hogan)
Pippa the Fool ((Fern/Estrada)
Water Can Be (Salas/Dabija)
When I Grow Up (Yankovic/Hargis)
Alphabets/ABC - Particularly for Older Kids
Alphabet Bird Collection (Ogilvy)
Amelia to Zora: 26 Women Who Changed the World (Chin-Lee/Haley & Addy)
Compost Stew: an A to Z Recipe for the Earth (Siddals/Wolff)
Fancy Nancy's Favorite Fancy Words(O'Connor/Glaser)
Just in Case (Morales)
Odious Ogre, The (Lester/Feiffer)
Ox, House, Stick; The History of Our Alphabet (Robb/Smith)
Read Anything Good Lately? (Allen & Lindaman/Enright)
Celebrating Books & Reading
Best Book to Read, The (Bertram & Bloom)
Book, A (Gerstein)
Book Fiesta (Mora/Lopez)
Bookshop Dog (Rylant)
Dog Loves Books (Yates)
Fire Up With Reading (Buzzeo/Yoshikawa)
Library Mouse (Kirk)
Magic in the Margins (Nikola-Nish/Christensen)
Miss Brooks Loves Books (and I Don't) (Bottner/Emberley)
Our Library (Bunting/Smith)
Perfect Gift, The (DePalma)
Read Anything Good Lately? (Allen & Lindaman/Enright)
Reading Makes You Feel Good (Parr)
Red Book, The (Lehman)
Ron's Big Mission (Blue & Naden/Tate)
For Holidays & Happenings
September 11
14 Cows for America (Deedy/Gonzalez)
September Roses (Winter)
MLK/Civil Rights/BlackHistory
Belle, the Last Mule at Gee's Bend (Ramsey & Stroud/Holyfield)
Busing Brewster (Michelson/Roth)
Finding Lincoln (Malaspina/Bootman)
Henry's Freedom Box (Levine/Nelson)
I Want to Be Free (Slate/Lewis)
January's Sparrow (Polacco)
Listeners, The (Whelan/Benny) slavery
Our Children Can Soar (Cook/many illustrators)
Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom (Stroud/Bennett)
Sit-In; How Four Friends Stood Up By Sitting Down (A Pinkney/B. Pinkney)
Stitchin' and Pullin' a Gee's Bend Quilt (McKissack/Cabrara)
Groundhog's Day
Groundhog Weather School (Holub/Sorra)
P
resident's Day
America the Beautiful, Together We Stand (Bates/Numerous Artists)
First Dog (Lewis & Zappitello/'Bowers)
First Dog's White House Christmas (Lewis & Zaappitello/Bowers)
First Family (Hopkinson/Ford) The OBAMAS
First Pup, The (Staake)
St Patrick's Day
Finn McCool and the Great Fish (Bunting/Pullen)
Earth Day
See Also ECOLOGY & THE ENVIRONMENT (below)
Space Landing/s
Moon Over Star, The (Aston/Pinkney) Great historical storytelling
Many Different Holidays
Holiday Stew (Whitehead)
For Owning Up
Albert The Fix-It Man (Lord/Paschkis) what goes around comes around
B
eatarice's Goat (McBrier/Lohstoeter) Heifer Project
Because of You (Hennessy/Nakata) simple acts of kindness make a GREAT difference in the world
Big Little Book of Happy Sadness (Thompson) Loneliness
Black Dog (Pinfold) stress and nervousness can sometimes make matters LOTS bigger than they really are
Call the Horse Lucky (Havill/Lane) animal abuse (having a cause)
Can Man, The (Williams/Orback) Homelessness and helping others
Can You Say Peace? (Katz)
Captain Cat (Moore) if you have a love of something, don't let others dissuade you
Color of Us, The (Katz) diversity (use in conjunction with
Tan to Tamarind, Poems about the Color Brown
Dare to Dream ... Change the World (Corcoran) famous people who have made a difference
Earth Book, The (Parr) doing our part as a citizen of the world
Giant Steps to Change the World (Lee & Lee) would need work ahead of time or with it....wouldn't stand alone.
It's Okay to be Different (Parr)
Junkyard Wonders, The (Polacco) Kids with disabilities
Let There Be Peace on Earth (Jackson & Miller/Diaz) includes 12 different symbols of peace
Lissy's Friends (Lin/) making friends, making paper cranes
My Brother Charlie (Peete & Peete/Evans) autistic sibling
New Old Shoes (Blessing/Phillips) Changing the world, one pair (of shoes) at a time
No! (McPhail) bullies, allegory, wordless & powerful
Olivia's Birds: Saving the Gulf (Bouler) 1-year old writes & illustrates a book to make a difference
One Green Apple (Bunting/Lewin) Tolerance
One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia (PaulZunon) Making a Difference, Recycling/Getting involved
One Hen (Milway/Fernandes) Getting Involved/Making a Difference
Rosie Sprout's Time to Shine (Wortche) subtle bullies
Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch (Spinelli/Yalowitz) 1991 Brighten up someone's day - It's easy and important.
Somewhere Today (Thomas/Futran PHOTOS) Ten simple ways to make the world a better place
Just for Laughs and/or FUN
Art and Max (Wiesner)
Basil's Birds (Reed)
Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to be Kosher (Snyder/Goldin)
Billy's Booger (Joyce) older boys!!!
Boss Baby, The (Frazee)
Circus Ship, The (VanDuysen)
Creaky Old House (Ashman/Chesworth)great rhyme and rhythm
Guess Again (Barnett/Rex)
Hair of Zoe Fleefenbacher Goes to School, The (Anderson/Hoyt) elipses (& funny)
Hot Rod Hamster (Lord/Anderson)
Middle-Child Blues, The (Crow/Catrow)
Scaredy Squirrel (Watt)
Shark vs. Train (Barton/Lichtenheld) comparing & contrasting, higher order thinking skills
Strange Case of the Missing Sheep (Catusano)
Thanks a Lot, Emily Post! (Huget/Boiger)
That Cat Can't Stay (Krasnesky/Parkins)
Thea's Tree (Jackson/Pederson)
This Moose Belongs to Me (Jeffers)
Thumb Love (Primavera)
Toughest Cowboy, The (or How the West Was Tamed) (Frank/Pullen)
Tree Ring Circus (Rex)
Picture Book Mysteries
Grandpa's Teeth (Clement)
Great Paper Caper, The (Jeffers)
What REALLY Happened to Humpty?: From the Files of a Hard-Boiled Detective (Ransom)
Fractured Fairy Tales - no description below, click on the title to go to original post
3 Bears and Goldilocks (Willey/Solomon) (tiny bit fractrued)
Bubba the Cowboy Prince (Ketteman/Warhola)
Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs (Willems) GOLDILOCKS & THE THREE BEARS
Little Red Writing (Holub) LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD
Pied Piper's Magic, The (Kellogg) THE PIED PIPER
Three Little Dassies (Brett) THREE LITTLE PIGS
Three Pigs, The (Wiesner) THREE LITTLE PIGS
True Story of Little Red Riding Hood, The (Baruzzi & Natalini)
What REALLY Happened to Humpty?: From the Files of a Hard-Boiled Detective (Ransom) THREE LITTLE PIGS, Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet
Biographies - no description below, can click on the title to go to original post
All Star! Honus Wagner and the Most Famous Baseball Card Ever (Yolen/Burke)
Amelia to Zora: 26 Women Who Changed the World (Chin-Lee/Haley & Addy) Compilation
Americans Who Tell the Truth (Shetterly) Compilation
Anne Hutchinson's Way (Atkins/Dooling)
Boy of Fairfield Street, The (Krull/Johnson & Fancher) THEODORE GEISEL/ DR. SEUSS
Boys of Steel (Nobleman/MacDonald) THE CREATORS OF SUPERMAN)
Bravest Woman in America, The (Moss/U'Ren) IDA LEWIS Lighthouse Keeper in RI
Brothers Kennedy, The (Krull/Bates)
Boy Who Loved Math, The (Heiligman/Pham) PAUL ERDOS
Building on Nature (Rodriguez/Paschkis) Archiitect ANTONI GAuDI
Case for Loving, The (Alko/Qualls) Supreme Court/interacial marriage
Clara and Davie (Polacco) CLARA BARTON
Colorful Dreamer, The Story of Henri Matisse (Parker/Berry)
Coretta Scott (Shange/Nelson) CORETTA SCOTT KING
Dizzy (Winters/Qualls) DIZZY GILLESPIE
Emma's Poem (Glaser/Nivola) EMMA LAZARUS
Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau, The (Markel/Hall)
First Family (Hopkinson/Ford) The OBAMA
Georgia Rises (Lasky/Eitan) GEORGIA O'KEEFFE
Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude (Winter/Brown) GERTRUDE STEIN
Hallelujah Flight (Bildner/Holyfield) THOMAS ALLEN & JAMES BANNING (Black pilots- inter-continental flight)
Henry Aaron's Dream (Tavares) HANK AARON
Henry Knox: Bookseller, Soldier, Patriot (Silvey/Minor)
Heroes and She-roes (Lewis/Cooke) Poems on LOTS of People
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Dreams Taking Flight (Krull/Bates)
John Brown: His Fight for Freedom (Hendrix)
Librarian of Basra (Winter)
Lincoln Tells a Joke (Krull & Brewer/Innerst)
Look Up! Henrietta Leavitt, Pioneering Woman Astronomer (Burleigh/Colon)
Me...Jane (McDonnell) JANE GOODALL
Miss Moore Thought Otherwise: How Anne Carroll Moore Created Libraries for Children (Pinborough/Atwell)
Moses (Weatherford/Nelson) HARRIET TUBMAN
My Name is James Madison Hemings (Winters/Widener) SON OF THOS. JEFFERSON
My Uncle Emily (Yolen/Carpenter) EMILY DICKINSON
Nelson Mandela (Nelson) RON McNAIR
Noah Webster and His Words (Ferris/Kirsch)
Of Thee I Sing (Obama/Long) Many wonderful people
On a Road in Africa (Doner) CHRYSSEE PERRY MARTIN (saves Kenyan animals)
One Beetle Too Many, The Extraordinary Adventures of Charles Darwin (Lasky/Trueman)
Our Abe Lincoln (Aylesworth/McClintock)
Our Children Can Soar (Cook/many illustrators) Compilation - focus on black history/civil rights
Pippa the Fool ((Fern/Estrada) FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI Architect
Quest for Z: The True Story of Explorer Percy Fawcett and a Lost City in the Amazon,
The (Pizzoli) Percy Fawcett, Amazon explorer
Rachel: The Story of Rachel Carson (Ehrlich/Minor)
River of Words, A (Bryant/Sweet) WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Ron's Big Mission (Blue & Naden/Tate) RON McNAIR
Sonia Sotomayor, A Judge Grows in the Bronx (Winter/Rodriguez)
Splash of Red, A: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin (Bryant/Sweet)
Testing the Ice (Robinson/Nelson) JACKIE ROBINSON
Wangari's Trees of Peace (Winter) WANGARI MATTHAI
What Darwin Saw (Schanzer) CHARLES DARWIN
Who Says Women Can't Be Doctors? (Stone/Priceman) ELIZABETH BLACKWELL
Write On, Mercy! (Woelfle/Wallner) MERCY OTIS WARREN (Am Revolution)
Yankee at the Seder, The (Weber/Gustavson) TRUE STORY
Families with Gay Parents
In Our Mother's House (Polacco)
Tale of Two Daddies, A (Oelschlager/Blackwood & Blanc)
About Immigrants, Immigration, Refugees
Anna & Solomon (Snyder/Bliss)
Brothers in Hope (Williams/Christie)
Carmen Learns English (Cox/Dominguez)
Color of Home, The (Hoffman/Littlewood) from Somalia
Emma's Poem (Glaser/Nivola) Statue of Liberty
Four Feet, Two Sandals (Williams & Mohammed/Chayka)
I Pledge Allegiance (Mora & Martinez/Bargon)
Let's Go See Papa! (Schimel/Rivera)
Matchbox Diariy, The (Fleischman/Ibatouline)
My Name is Sangoel (Williams & Mohammed/Stock) refugee from Sudan
One Green Apple (Bunting/Lewin)
Pepe the Lamplighter (Bartone/Lewin) NYC setting
Arizona
Alphabet Bird Collection (Ogilvy) This is not ABOUT Arizona, but would be great to add AZ birds to its lineup!
Desert Night, Desert Day (Fredericks/Spengler)
Mule Train Mail (Brown)
Spanish Missions of Arizona, The (Lyon)
For Science:
Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem (Barnett/Rex)
City Dog, Country Frog (Willems/Muth) Cycle of Life/Life cycle
Dory Story (Pallotta) food chain, ocean life
Groundhog Weather School (Holub/Sorra) weather
Growing Frogs (French/ Life cycle of a frog
Me Oh My A Butterfly (Rabe/Ruiz & Mathieu
Robin Makes a Laughing Sound, The (Wolf) Deede/Gonzales)
Star Magic (Hopkins/Stawarski)
Stars! Stars! Stars! (Wallace)
Tsunami Quilt, The (Fredericks/Yee)
Who Will Plant a Tree? (Pallotta/Leonard)
Why Oh Why Are Deserts Dry? (Rabe/Ruiz & Mathieu)
Winston of Churchill (Okimoto/Trammell) Global Warming/Polar Bears
Ecology & the Environment
Compost Stew: an A to Z Recipe for the Earth (Siddals/Wolff)
Cool Cat (Hogrogian)
Curious Garden, The (Brown)
Earth Book, The (Parr)
Green Poems (Bennett/various artists)
Nest, Nook & Cranny (Blackaby/Hogan)
Olivia's Birds: Saving the Gulf (Bouler)
One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia (Paul/Zunon)
One Red Apple (Ziefert/Gudeon)
Rachel: The Story of Rachel Carson (Ehrlich/Minor)
Redwoods (Chin)
Regards to the Man on the Moon (Keats)
We Planted a Tree (Muldrow/Staake)
Winston of Churchill (Okimoto/Trammell) Global Warming/Polar Bears
For Bedtime (not necessarily for my fourth grade classroom!)
Bedtime at the Swamp (Crow/Paminutan)
Bedtime in the Southwest (Hodgson/Graef)
Ocean's Child (Ford & Holland/Diaz)
Sleepsong (Lyon/Catalanotto)
Sleepy ABC (Brown/Katz)
Stormy Weather (Gliori)
Weaver, The (Hurd/Kleven)
Aesop
Boy Who Cried Wolf, The (Hennessy/Kulikov)
But Who Will Bell the Cats? (vonBuhler)
Grasshopper's Song (Giovanni/Raschka)
Lion and the Mouse (Pinkney)
Lousy, Rotten, Stinkin' Grapes (Palatino/Moser)
Wolf Who Cried Boy, The (Hartman/Raglin)
Alphabetical Order by Title:
America the Beautiful, Together We Stand
Katherine Lee Bates
My Goodreads review: Everything about this book was special. The ten American artists and the illustrations they created. The ten chosen quotes from ten different presidents. The four pages of information at the end. As I teacher, the book SCREAMS mini-lessons. Art, history, language arts, social consciousness....I can even use some of these great quotes for handwriting assignments with meaning and verve. I splurged. I wonder whose brainstorm it was to put it together?
If...
Sarah Perry
Read the book aloud. Afterwards, suggest they "dream up some more," using art, writing, drama. Kids could work alone or in pairs.
Students could choose one of the "what ifs" to illustrate in their own way.
Here's a great
1 1/2 minute video on using the books to foster asking questions in order to better comprehend.
The Matchbox Diary
Paul Fleischman
Illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline
This book is about how we record memories when we can't read or write. Great premise. Good storytelling. Super book.
There's a wonderful
TEACHER'S GUIDE on the Candlewick site.
There are also a zillion ideas on
The Classroom Bookshelf site that have to do with oral histories and lots of other things.
Poem-Mobiles
Crazy Car Poems
Patrick Lewis & Douglas Florian
My comments: This book of crazy, wacky poems is just plain fun. I plan to use it as a writing starter/prompt with my fourth graders....read them a poem without sharing the illustration, get them to sketch what they see in their minds eye from the words alone, then share the illustration. I can see the writing continuing on from there...some of my clever kids will fly!
September Roses
Jeanette Winter
I used this in my classroom on 9/11/13. I read it aloud and gave the kids some background information. Then we watercolored a 3 x 3 painting of the flowers on the ground with only the front of a pair of shoes showing. It worked out really well. (This small size was so that it would fit in their 5 x 7 memory books. They wrote a couplet to go with it, sharing something of what they learned.
The
9/11 Memorial site has some ideas for lesson plans, including the use of September Roses.
When I Grow Up
Al Yankovic
Rhyming and rhythm and just-great-fun!
Margo Dill has a few ideas of ways to use this book - including looking at word choice and the ideas that kids might have for their OWN future, which could definitely be an art/writing lesson.
