Title: The Emperor’s Egg

Author: Martin Jenkins

Genre: Informational

Summary: The amazing story covers the life style of emperor penguins. They discuss how they live in this extreme cold environment and how the Papa Penguins cares for the egg and keeps it warm. There are many unusual habitats and the phenomenons of the arctic.

Review: Amazing illustrations and interesting facts about the emperor penguin are present in this book. Creating an easy way to understand this topic and read about a friendly penguin truly makes this story amazing and useful in the classroom.

Content Area Connection:

• Art: Discussing the amazing habitats and structure of each can be learned through many artistic mediums. Creating an in depth project with the home, egg and even the entire penguin itself can help the students understand more of the details displayed in this story, by creating their own examples!
• Social Studies: The historical aspect to this book can be looked at in a few ways. Using the history of the arctic and comparing that to its current state can create a deep discussion relating the global warming topic. Also the history of the penguin itself and going into its previous ancestors and ways of life can help us understand their current adaptions.

Title: The Helpful Shoelace

Author: Michael Twinn

Genre: Informational

Summary: Beginning with the basic of tying shoe laces and having a fun interactive picture, this story really intrigues children on all the different ways to learn how to tie shoes! Going into many different aspects and ways of tying knots, this book goes deeper into why its useful for everyone to tie their shoes!

Review: The book has amazing illustrations and interesting concepts when it comes to tying shoe laces. It involves many different ways and uses which is helpful for younger children to  understand why everyone must accomplish this simple task!

Content Area Connection:

• Math: Tying your shoes can be made into a fun mathematical game which incorporates numbers and patterns. Creating a certain pattern and loop cycle is important to learn tying shoes, and using math to help this task could be fun!
• Art: Using this story to create art pieces can also be fun! The design of the shoe laces can be different and using art to teach  this topic can be helpful and very informative. Using different art mediums to create a shoe and laces can also be fun and exciting for the young children.

Title: Telling Time: How to Tell Time on Digital and Analog Clocks

Author: Jules Older

Genre: Informational

Summary: This book will cover the amazing discovery of telling time and how important it is in our daily lives. After defining the basics of telling time, the author uses several examples of digital and analog clocks, with rewarding smiley faces and bright illustrations, by the end of the story children will begin telling time for fun!

Review: After review the importance of telling time and keeping a schedule, the fact of involving both digital and analog clocks are very important for young children’s understanding. The concept of telling time is made extremely fun in this book and i would absolutely recommend!

Content Area Connection:

• Art: The concept of the clock can be looked at in many artistic ways, we have seen this with famous painters and interesting clock designs. Using this basic template of numbers and space we can create many different mediums and activities, creating beautiful yet informational artwork.
• Math: Using the clock to study math can be helpful as well. Simple addition and subtraction can be done with time differences and the structure of the clocks symmetry can be looked at in geometrical ways as well.

Title: Bug Detective

Author: Maggie Li

Genre: Informational

Summary: While giving an initial overview of bugs, this book then goes on to look in depth and even uses magnifying glasses. Many missions and activities are also provided in the book.

Review: This book gives many great examples of bugs and truly shows how in depth scientists must study! The illustrations are beautiful and will make students want to study more and create projects on the topic.

Content Area Connection:

• Social Studies: Using primitive animals and aspects to history which involve insects and such will be very helpful with this content.
• Art: The anatomy of bugs and structure of their homes can be created in many different ways. Using many artistic mediums can help understand the complexity of certain insects or habitat structures.

Title: Caterpillar

Author: Christina Rossetti

Genre: Poetry

Summary: A caterpillar chooses a spot to make its cocoon and become a beautiful butterfly!

Review: This poem is short and to the point. Very adorable for young children and interesting to start a lesson about insects!

Content Area Connection:

• Art: Drawing a butterfly and the actual cocoon can help demonstrate the overall differences of each stage. Maybe even creating a worksheet with each stage and having them illustrate will be helpful.
• Science: Reviewing the scientific aspect butterflies and the difference of each stage, also all types of insects can be introduced following the lesson through this poem.

Title: The Boy who Loved Math: The Improbable life of Paul Edros                    

                                                                                                                    Author: Deborah Heiligman

Genre: Literary Non-Fiction

Summary: Mathematician Paul Erdos was not the average boy, by age four he could calculate how many seconds you’ve been alive by your age. He grew up in Hungary during World War 1, he tried to go to school but could not follow the rules and convinced his mother to be home schooled. He was always fascinated by numbers and by the end of the story we find out that by the time he was 20 he was known as the Magician from Budapest. He could not complete common tasks like cooking or driving because he spent his entire life studying math with other mathematicians. They worked together and

Review: The amazing illustrations in this book show how Paul does not see the world in a normal way, he sees it numerically. Paul Erdos is truly an extraordinary human and his uses of mathematics will inspire many children to practice and study math just as Paul did and become very successful.

Content Area Connection:

• Math: Obviously math can be easily connected and taught through this story. The many illustrations can be examples of problems and we can even create our own problems using the story itself.
• Art: The use of numbers and organization can be art related in some ways. The numbers and connection between the numbers creates a sort of organized picture we can illustrate in many different modes, including objects and drawings.

Title: The Invisible Boy

Author: Trudy Ludwig

Genre: Science Fiction

Summary: The invisible boy Brian is never noticed, even by the teacher!  He eats lunch alone, plays alone and is never picked for anything. One day there’s a new boy in class, who Brian immediately becomes friends with and they attempt to gain acceptance in the class. Eventually the rest of the class realizes Brain exists and they all play together, real and imaginary!

Review: This book is very intriguing give that while Brian is unnoticed by the class he is drawn in back and white, representing his isolation. After Brian becomes friends with the new boy and the rest of class starts to notice him, the color slowly seeps in. I find this very interesting and an amazing concept to teach the children to be accepting of everyone or else the world will be dull and sad.

Content Area Connection:

• Social Studies: The concept of community and acceptance can be taught through social studies as well as this story. Diversity and acceptance has been a huge problem in our country throughout history and using these studies to discuss previous excluded groups can relate to Brian’s excluded feeling.
• Science: Studying the actuality of being invisible and how this can be modeled scientifically will be interesting for the students. Creating an experiment and seeing what can or cannot actually disappear, such as ice which actually melts, but tends to look like its disappearing.

Title: Dash

Author: Kirby Larson

Genre: Historical Fiction

Summary: After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Mitsi Kashino and her family are taken over by the ant-Japanese movement. She loses everything she loved, including her dog dash. After being placed in the terrible incarceration camps, she holds onto hope and stays connected to her life at home and her dog dash through a friendly neighbor. Mitsi is eventually reunited with her dog, however it is in a pet-friendly camp.

Review: This story is quite sad, however it shows the hope and love between family members, even if it’s a dog member of the family. Creating a sense of community support and staying strong during this hard times is important, and that’s the true meaning of this story.

Content Area Connection:

• Math: Using the mathematical aspect of these camps the actuality of the amount of people in these camps can be in a lesson. Also the number of issues found within these camps can be counted and used as important marks in the story.
• Art: Although it may sound horrible, but reenacting the stress and difficulties the bombing caused can be roll played by the students and even the dog can be included.

Title: Cinderella

Author: Charles Perrault

Genre: Traditional Folktale

Summary: Once upon a time, Cinderella had an evil step mother and step sisters who completely mistreated her. While she was ashy from the cinders in the fireplace, given her name, her step family dressed beautifully and mocked her. When she finally got the opportunity escape to the ball, she had to leave the prince and run at midnight and lost her glass shoes which were given to her by her fairy god mother. The prince searched everywhere for the girl who would fit into the glass slipper, and finally he found her and they lived happily ever after.

Review: This classic fairy tale is beautiful and teaches quite an important lesson to young students. Retelling this story over and over again understanding the concepts of morality and just basic kindness overall is portrayed in this story.

Content Area Connection:

• Art: Illustrating all the amazing scenes in this fairy tale will be beautiful and exciting for the students to create. We can recreate almost the entire story with just a few pictures, this will be a fun activity for the kids and also review the story and meaning as well.
• Social Studies:  The study of families and these relationships are important in early lessons of social studies, we can relate this in many ways to the classic Cinderella given the amount of family issues and concepts in this story.

Title:  Peter’s Chair

Author: Ezra Jack Keats

Genre: Realistic fiction

Summary: When Peter has a baby sister, his parents first paint his crib pink. Then when they try to paint his favorite chair pink he gets very upset. He plans with his dog to run away, however he eventually realizes he is growing up and he paints the chair with his father.

Review: This story is an amazing story about sibling rivalry and becoming independent. When peter finally learns he needs to help with the baby sister, it really shows his maturity and i believe that is that main idea of this story.

Content Area Connection:

• Art: While reading this book we could discuss the fact of painting, and how to paint furniture specifically.  This could intrigue the students to start new projects and explore different artist matierals.
• Social Studies:  The first lesson about family and siblings should be crucial in the beginning lessons of history and our ancestors. Learning about each other and how we are related is important to understand certain concepts in social studies and even some sciences.