Meet Kate DiCamillo

Meet the author Kate DiCamillo!  She is a great Children's Literature author, and some of her well-known books include The Tale of Despereaux, The Magician's Elephant, Louise: The Adventures of a Chicken, and Mercy Watson.  I chose this author as my author study project to learn more about her books, so that I can use reading recommendations and strategies along with her books in my classroom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyJJ1XnNy0U&feature=player_detailpage

This is a true story about the original puppeteer of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.  It involves learning about pulleys and connections can be made in Science to this book.  Tony Sarg, the inventor of balloon puppets kept working to modify the balloons and was a creative inventor who became curious about how things moved at a young age.


There are great resources to use from this book from the following website: http://www.hmhbooks.com/kids/resources/BalloonsOverBroadway_ActivityKit.pdf.  You can find activities to make your own stick puppets, finger puppets, and marionettes.

This is a great book to use that overlaps in connection with Science and Social Studies.  When studying about plants in Science, this book can be used as a read aloud extension, and during Social Studies, students can learn about the geographic location of the African country of Eritrea, where the story takes place. 

      The students can also look up the websites that go with the book and write a report about what they learned from the sites as a Social Studies and Language Arts connection: http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/manzanar/default.htm and

  http://themanzanarproject.com

A mystery takes place when a former rescue dog, J.J. Tully, is convinved by chicks to help them rescue their missing siblings.  The whole story was a ploy to trick the rescue dog into going in the neighbor's house.

This is a very witty and engaging story for younger readers.  A great activity as a read aloud would be to have students work on making predictions at the end of each chpater and draw illustrations as to what they visualize from hearing the story.

 

 

 

 

This is a hilarious story about a duck helping to hide an alligator in his house for escaping from the zoo and being wanted for eating an owner's pet.  I really enjoyed this book as part of my annotated bibliography, and this book would be great to use when having your students identify examples of onomatopoeia.

I really enjoyed reading this early primary picture book as part of my annotated bibliography. 

An extension activity to go along with this story would be to identify different illustrations and discussing reality/fantasy events from the story.

This is the story about a hare that does not understand the purpose of his large feet.  Learning from his granddad, the young hare realizes that his feet can take him anywhere he wants to go in life.  Although this is a picture book for younger students, the illustrations and message in the story are underlying.  Through careful interpretation of the pictures, students can learn the importance of viewing flaws about themselves as opportunities for success.

This is a biography about Harriet Tubman escaping slavery and finding the strength through God to guide her to freedom, as well as making many trips back to the South to rescue her family and other slaves. 

A recommended reading sight for finding other books and videos about slavery and Black history: http://www.blackhistoryreview.com/book/Moses.php

I am currently reading the book "Dead End in Norvelt."  This book is definitely quircky and would appeal mostly to young adolescent boys.  It's the story about a 12 year old boy, Jack, who spends his summer grounded after getting in trouble with his parents.  He's only allowed out of the house to help out his neighbor, Miss Volker.  His job is to help her write obituaties in the town of Norvelt.  Jack starts to develop a close realtionship with Miss Volker, and his summer is not turning out so bad afterall.