Mice and Beans - Pam Munoz Ryan

In doing research for my final paper on Esperanza Rising (which, in case you couldn't tell, was my favorite book I read this month), I started looking into other books that Pam Muñoz Ryan had written and realized she'd written many children's books. Those books range from Mice and Beans to When Marian Sang. Although I also read When Marian Sang, I chose to blog about Mice and Beans because it was much different than many of the picturebooks I had read throughout these 5 weeks of classes.

Mice and Beans tells the story of a grandmother named Rosa María who is preparing her tiny house and tiny yard for the seventh birthday of her youngest grandchild named Catalina. She is paranoid of mice and in order to keep them away, constantly sets mouse traps and cleans fervently. Because she is so busy in the days leading up to Catalina's birthday, she forgets if she has set mouse traps or not and ends up re-setting them every day. Suspicious things also begin to happen - like missing napkins, candywrappers on the floor, vanishing mousetraps, and vanishing spoons. She continues to re-set the traps, and finally, after Catalina's birthday, she realizes that her motto of "When there's room in the heart, there's room in the house...except for a mouse" has been memorized incorrectly. It's actually "When there's room in the heart, there's room in the house...even for a mouse." She realizes that there's nothing to worry over if a few mice are in her house, especially if they are helpful ones.

I didn't like Pam Muñoz Ryan's writing style in this book nearly as much as I did in Esperanza Rising, and I think it's because I thought that this book had substantially less substance to it. I liked the book, but didn't love it. I liked the integration of Mexican culture, the glossary of Spanish words at the back, and the silly illustrations, but I didn't feel as if I necessarily gained much out of reading the book. However, I could see how children might find the story silly and how it could even be helpful in teaching them how to predict future events or infer information from page to page. I almost felt a little as if because my inference skills and prediction skills are at an adult level that I couldn't appreciate this book as much as a child because I found it relatively pointless. I knew, the entire book, that there were mice in the house. I knew that they were the ones stealing the spoon and eating the candy and stealing the traps. Honestly, it frustrated me that it took her Rosa María so long to determine this on her own! I think that Pam Muñoz Ryan's style of writing is much more effective in a historical fiction setting, because it doesn't limit her to a specific amount of pages in which she has to cram all of her information.
Despite not being a big fan of this book, I don't think it would be a bad thing to have in a classroom library. The illustrations are sweet, the writing is solid, and there is cultural authenticity, particularly enhanced by the glossary at the end of the book. I just have to come realize that not all books are my cup of tea and that simply because I don't like a book doesn't mean I should keep it from my children in the classroom.

I enjoyed seeing these lesson application of the book which made me more open to integrating it into an actual lesson (see those here).

The Wild Christmas Reindeer - Jan Brett

When you type in the search "Children's Christmas Books" on Amazon.com, more than 31,000 results come up, ranging from books about Santa Claus to traditional religious stories about Baby Jesus. My favorite Christmas book was easily The Wild Christmas Reindeer by Jan Brett. The beautiful illustrations and intricacies of each and every page drew me in every Christmas and even during the year as well.

Jan Brett (well-known author and illustrator of books like The Mitten) takes us through a beautiful story of a girl named Teeka, who is one of Santa's elves. She is put in charge of getting all of the reindeer ready to fly on Christmas Eve, despite the fact that she's never worked with reindeer before. She ventures out into the tundra to go find them, and herds them together (not without making her work for it), and takes Bramble, Heather, Windswept, Lichen, Snowball, Crag, Twilight, and Tundra back to the barn, which she refers to as Winterfarm. The book chronicles her journey with the reindeer and the struggles that she goes through in trying to get them ready for Christmas Eve with Santa. She learns that she cannot yell at them and demand them, but rather, has to be calm and patient with them, which works much more effectively. In the end, Teeka watches the reindeer fly away with Santa and carry the sleigh into the dark night.

My favorite part of this entire book is the side illustrations. If you notice, each page counts from December 1st all the way until December 24th. The illustration for December 24th is pictured to the right. Jan Brett really shows her strengths here as an illustrator, which I definitely think is her ability to pay attention to minute details. In each picture to the side of a page (and in the frames of the pages themselves), there are extremely detailed and ornate dolls, stained glass, toys, elves, blocks, and so much more. We get to feel like we're peering in Santa's workshop and are seeing how work is progressing day by day. Certain Christmases I remember my parents only allowing us to read a page of this story a day, the page that correlated with the day that it currently was. That made us incredibly excited and nervous about the plot of the book.
Even though the illustrations are beautiful, I've always thought it interesting that Jan Brett didn't choose to use stereotypical Santa Christmas things, and seemed to be a little more inspired by Scandinavian sorts of traditions than the specific names of reindeer that we have popularized in America. The reindeer aren't named Dancer and Prancer and Vixen. They're named more earthy names, like Lichen and Twilight and Bramble. She is known in her work to have different cultures represented, ranging from Africa to Scandinavia. I loved that she was able to integrate this culture into a well-known tradition of Christmas that tends to be extremely "Americanized" in its exposure in the world.
I thought about ways to integrate this into a classroom and found this extremely interesting variety of lesson plans on how to integrate The Wild Christmas Reindeer in the classroom and to almost turn it into an entire unit for first and/or second graders. There are tons of great ideas in here that range from math to reading units, which is awesome! I will definitely consider adding this to my classroom in Holiday time, but also making sure I include various holiday traditions and not simply Christmas to expose students to a variety of cultural knowledge.

The Quilt Story - Tony Johnston and Tomie dePaola

So her mother rocked her as mothers do. 

Then tucked her in. 

And she felt at home again under the quilt.

I know I've said, time and time again, "I remember this book because it was so integral in my childhood" or "because my mom and dad read it to me before bed" or another reason. But this book really and truly defined my bedtime (and naptime, too!) during childhood. My mom would come, book in hand, to my room, wrap me up in my quilt (that was pink and red and embroidered with all of my birth information - weight, date, name, parents, etc. - a special gift from a family friend at birth), and read The Quilt Story to me. I desperately wanted my name to be Abigail, and although I didn't want to ever move from my house in Franklin, I wanted to find a magical quilt in my attic and wrap it around me. The book has an inscription on the front of it from our best family friends that reads -

To - Kylee

Happy Valentine's Day 1991!

Love - Russ, Sheila, Edward + Logan

This book clearly has many memories for me. 

Tony Johnston and Tomie dePaola tell readers the story of a little girl named Abigail, who receives a quilt from her mother with her named stitched in it. She plays with her quilt, cuddles in her quilt, wears her quilt as a gown, sleeps under her quilt when she's sick, and much more. Her family moves far across the country (in what seems to be a conestoga wagon) and she uses the quilt to wrap her up and remind her of her home. One day, she puts the quilt in her attic and left it there. Then, a new girl moves into the house (much later on - in modern times). She stumbles in the attic to chase her cat, sees the quilt, and wraps herself up in it. Johnston and dePaola show the parallels between Abigail and the little girl in modern times and then close this beautiful and beloved story with the line at the beginning of the blog, which I adore.
Although the text is beautiful in this book, like many other picturebooks, its real strength is the illustrations of Tomie dePaola. Tomie dePaola has written many infamous children's picturebooks (over 200 picturebooks in total), including the Caldecott book Streganona and the Newbery Honor book 26 Fairmount Avenue. His illustration style is easily recognizable, and often works well with his choice to write fairytales or folktales (see his list of books in his Wikipedia biography here). His illustrations work extremely well with The Quilt Story because it almost seems as if the illustrations are pieces of quilts themselves. The framing used makes the illustrations seem like individual quilt squares (or rectangles!).
My mother often came and did Terrific Tuesdays (enrichment afternoon days twice a year for the entire school) to my elementary school and talked about quilting. She often brought this book as well as The Patchwork Quilt by Valerie Flourny and read them to students, while bringing many of my family's quilts and collected quilts with her. We even sat together when I was home on Saturday night, thumbing through the book, and reminiscing about all of the memories that we had surrounding this book together. I tried to think of a more applicable way to integrate this into the classroom, and found a sample teaching plan with multiple lesson ideas for the book. Be sure to check that out here. I definitely think that the suggested ideas would be applicable to a variety of classroom ages, but best suited for early elementary grades.
This book will always hold a special place in my heart, and as cheesy as it sounds, I hope that I can sit with my daughter one day, wrap her in her special quilt, and share this story with her just as my mom shared it with me.