Category — Great Read-Alouds

Scared Witless: Thirteen Eerie Tales to Tell, is by far the best read-aloud I’ve done in my career as a librarian. I found it because I knew I wanted to do scary stories the week before Halloween, and I didn’t want to do stories from the books we already had in the library since so many of the kids had already read them..over and over and over again. So I scoured the Internet for scary stories and this book was recommended – and for very good reason! Every story in the book has a “gotcha” moment – some scary, some silly – and they all worked wonderfully to scare the pants off the kids I read them to!

I really liked the silly stories in the book. “The Ghost with the Bloody Fingers” is a classic, of course, and I ended up telling it to all the kids, from pre-k to 5th grade, but “The Graveyard Voice” got gasps and screams, then groans and giggles, from the upper grades, as did “The Mysterious Rapping Noise.”

A few of the stories were of the plain old scary “BOO!” variety, like “Lost in the Dark,” one of my favorites. I really, really enjoyed reading this book to my kids, and while the stories weren’t great literature, they were great read-alouds!

The author and her husband, professional storytellers who have teamed up for other books, have a great little website: Beauty and the Beast Storytellers.

The only bad thing about this book is that all the kids wanted it after I read it! So now I’ll need another book to read next year…Any suggestions?

I know I’m a week late for the Day of the Dead (El Dia de los Muertos), but at my school we’ve been celebrating all week long, and I probably will do some mini-celebrations this coming week as well. The school in which I work is 87% Hispanic, and the majority of our kids’ families come from Mexico or Central America, so studying Day of the Dead, while presented to the kids as studying the holidays of “other cultures” (that’s the curricular link), is actually putting a little time and energy into a holiday most of them are very familiar with. They LOVE telling me what they do in their families. They LOVE that I care what they think. And they also love reading books about it, because no matter what they might do in their family, the truth is that we are not in Mexico or Honduras or El Salvador, so we all can learn a little something about how it’s done in other places.

Day of the Dead, by Tony Johnston, is a great little (and I do mean little: it measures 5×5″) book in which a large Mexican family readies itself for the holiday. They cook, they shop, they prepare…all the while telling the childrenEspérense! Wait! Finally, the day comes and the family gathers up all the food and decorations and heads to the graveyard where they build an altar to their loved ones and finally have a feast.

It’s a beautifully illustrated book, and while small, can be used in an intimate setting or with a document camera, if you have one available. It’s not non-fiction, but it comes pretty close, since the plot is essentially festival preparations and then the holiday itself.

After we read this book we made masks of Senor Calavera, or, as some of the kids called him, Mister Eskeleto. You could also do some papel picado, since the cover and some of the interior illustrations are reminiscent of the traditional paper cutting craft. We topped off our Day of the Dead festivities with a great little music video called “Viva Calaca,” which the kids told me means living skeleton or living bones. Two warnings about this video: first, while highly entertaining, it’s also pretty violent (hey, we’re talking about the Day of the DEAD here) and even has a “sexy” moment; and two, the song will stick in your head AND NEVER LEAVE if you listen to it over and over again, as I did last week.

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Another excellent book for The Day of the Dead is Yuyi Morales’ book, Just a Minute. This book features Senor Calaveras (this is the Day of the Dead connection), who comes knocking on Grandma Beetle’s door, ready for her to come with him…but Grandma Beetle is too busy to come with him just then. She has way too much to do! Just a Minute’s subtitle is “A Trickster Tale and Counting Book,” and the fun part of the book is for kids to realize WHO is the trickster in the tale. They always guess that it’s Senor Calveras, but of course, it’s Grandma Beetle.

This book got a Pura Belpre medal for its illustrations. My favorite is Senor Calaveras having a temper tantrum when he realizes that he may never get Grandma Beetle to come with him.

This is a very fun book to read aloud because, in addition to the marvelous illustrations and Grandma Beetle’s innocent (?) trickiness, there is also a natural call-and-answer sequence to the book. I have the kids practice Grandma Beetle’s responses to Senor Calveras – “Just a minute!” a few times before we start, and they love yelling it out to him as he slowly loses his patience with the not-so-naive Grandmother.

To top off this book, you could do a Senor Calavera mask or a skeleton puppet or eat some of the delicious feista foods Grandma Beetle prepares, but I have a sequencing activity that the kids and I do together using our interactive whiteboard.

Martina

Catalina

Josephina

Cucaracha…

Beautiful muchacha!

Won’t you be my wife?

So say Martina’s suitors in this wonderful retold tale of Old Havana, written by Carmen Agra Deedy and illustrated by Michael Austin. The best thing aboutMartina, the Beautiful Cockroach: A Cuban Folktale is how wonderful it is to read aloud. Reading it out loud is so fun, you can almost hear Tito Puente in the background.

Martina the Beautiful Cockroach starts with Martina, the most beautiful cockroach in all of Old Havana, readying herself to meet potential suitors. She worries that she won’t know how to pick from all the eligible bachelors who want to woo her, but her grandmother tells her the secret to finding out who will make the best husband. Martina is to offer them a cup of coffee, and then “accidentally” spill it on their shoes. How the beaus react to this accident will show her at their worst, and she’ll know their true temperament.

One by one, the suitors come to visit: the overblown Rooster, the piggish Pig, the slimy lizard…and one by one, they fail abuela’s coffee test. Will Martina ever find true love? Maybe…Perez the mouse is quietly waiting for his audience with Martina, and he has a Cuban grandmother too!

This book is a Pura Belpré honor book for 2008, and it’s easy to see why. Fun to read, full of quirky cultural references, this book teaches that beauty is as beauty does…and Cuban grandmothers always know best.

The Spanish version is also available: Martina, una Cucracha Muy Linda: Un Cuento Cubano