Review for Jasper John Dooley by Caroline Adderson

Guided Reading Level M

I read Book One in the series: Star of the Week. This is a great introduction to the quirky main character, Jasper John. He is the Star of the Week and this presents some challenges. To start his show and tell is a bit unusual. He collects lint, even of the belly variety. As you can imagine his classmate don´t quite get it. To make matters more complicated his best friend Ori´s baby sister has arrived and the announcement of that news derails his show and tell presentation.  

Speaking of Ori, he is an interesting character as well. He has a unique speech quirk. Ori starts most things he says with ¨The thing is¨.  There are plenty of opportunities to infer what is going on in Ori´s life in the wake of a new baby. For a children´s book, the character have pretty deep personality traits. This would be an excellent pick for character analysis projects.  

One small hiccup for me with the book is the fact that Jasper decided he wants a baby. Its quite cute the way it plays out as far as where babies come from. However in class I´m not sure that is a can of worms I would want to open. 

Another theme worth exploring in this chapter book is lying. As Ori makes it through the week he creatively solves problems as they come. One such problem leads to a fib about having a brother. He recovers from his lie with the creation of a wooden brother. It takes an interesting turn as Jasper Jacob´s imagination gets the best of him and his wooden brother turns out to be a bit of a trouble maker. 

Over all, I think this book makes an excellent read aloud with caution around the whole ¨where do babies come from¨ thing. Or a great addition to a summer reading list. :)             

Review for Franny K. Stein

As you may already know, I am now the Creative Literacy teacher at Mountain Way. Part of my job description is library book circulation, so I feel like keeping up with children's book is important when recommending books to teachers and students. I also like to keep the books I read to students current and fresh.

*Spoilers Included* 

Franny K. Stein Mad Scientist: Lunch Walks Among Us 

I love a good series! I like that you can get a student hooked, and then they have a list of books to read. I thoroughly enjoyed this chapter book. Franny is not your usual little girl. She likes all things gruesome, but not too gruesome! It´s a children's book. She starts a new school and quickly realizes that she is very different from the other kids. It portrays different in a fun spooky way. For example, the other little girls play with dolls while Franny prefers bats and ooze.  

In an effort to be more like the other kids, Franny changes everything about herself until she is unrecognizable. Everything seems to be going according to plan until a ¨lunch garbage can¨ mishap creates a monster that kidnaps the teacher. Franny has to go back to her spooky self in order to save the day. 

Saving everyone comes with a price the kids seem to be afraid of Fanny, and that makes her sad. Feeling like pretending to be something she isn't is a lost cause, she returns to school the next day back to Spooky Odd Franny. And to her surprise the other kids are excited and happy to see her. 

This book is great for themes like friendship and being yourself. I could see a bunch of great conversations coming from this as a Read Aloud. I will be using it as part of a unit I do before summer to get students thinking about summer reading. I read the first few chapters of a books in a series as a taste of many options for summer reading.