What makes a good book?
When I think of a good book, I think of a book that is relatable to me. A book that I can read and say "oh yeah, I know what you mean". A book that I visually see in my head, playing like a movie as I read. (That is how my seventh grade teacher, described it, and that is when reading finally clicked for me.) A book that makes you wonder what is going to happen next and allows you to draw your own conclusions before a dead giveaway. Overall, a good book should be a book that you do not want to put down because you want to just keep reading.
My Two Reads for the Week:
The Wild Robot by Peter Brown
The Girl and the Wolf by Katherena Vermette
The Girl and the Wolf is about a little girl who is in the woods picking berries with her mother. Her mother keeps warning her to be cautious and not run away too far. Before the girl realizes it, she is lost. She looks around and cannot figure out where she is. Suddenly, a wolf appears. It startles her at first but he helps her use her own reasoning skills to get her back to her mother.
After reading the book, I wondered, was the wolf real or was it a figure of her imagination? When she got back to her mother, she did not see the wolf again. And when she told her mother about the wolf, he mother stated, "Real wolves can hurt people, but I've heard old stories about wolves who help lost children too". This made me wonder if the wolf really was there? She implied that it was not when she said "real wolves" and referenced "old stories".
The second book was The Wild Robot. It was about a robot named Roz that gets washed up onto an island. At first, she is rejected by the other animals and called a monster. Later, she finds her place. She becomes a mother to a gosling and helps the other animals on the island. The end of the story is heart wrenching and left me wondering what was next for Roz? What was next for the gosling? And what was next for the other animals on the island?
Throughout the reading I noticed that the author was talking to the audience. He would used phrasing like "our robot" and "I should remind you". This allowed the reader, or at least me, to feel more connected and involved in the story. The author also used a lot of sound words, onomatopoeia, throughout the text. There was a ton of science references, like senses, what badgers really eat, opossums defense mechanisms, survival of the fittest, global warming, and so much more. The author used dialogue throughout the text. I appreciated that the book was written in short chapters and simple sentence structures. The vocabulary was challenging, so I assumed this book would be used for upper elementary school students like fourth or fifth graders. Some of the larger vocabulary or low frequency words I noted were: heap, resin, rigorous, peculiar, twig, scudded, spun intricate, beckoned, stalked, hares, leaf litter, hunched carcasses, shimmied, splintered, pulverized, carnage, plummeting, madam, marsupial, demeanor, and acquaintance.
As a teacher, I would have a hard time not stopping to explore the science within the book or dissect the complex vocabulary. The short chapters would make it easy for students to keep reading because its not as exhausting as having to read chapters with ten or more pages. The pictures are easy to comprehend and follow the story line.
The Connection Between the Two
Both books reference monsters but then breaks the stereotype of what a monster really is or what they do.
In The Girl and the Wolf, the wolf would be the typical monster but in this case, the wolf helped the girl get home.
In The Wild Robot, the robot was seen as a monster but proved herself to be otherwise.
In my opinion, both books are worth reading and take two whole different approaches since one is a picture book and one is a novel. Both are enjoyable texts and have some fundamental learning experiences for all to explore, from textual features to content specific.
References:
Brown, P. (2016). The wild robot. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
Short, K. G. (2012). Story as World Making. Language Arts, 90(1), 9–17. Retrieved
from http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy006.nclive.org/login.aspx?
direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ996858&site=eds-live&scope=site
Vermette, K., & Flett, J. (2019). The girl and the wolf. Penticton, British Columbia: Theytus Books.