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Book Review cont'd

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Book Review: I Love Saturdays y domingos

I Love Saturdays y domingos by Alma Flor Ada
Award winning author, Alma Flor Ada, who also wrote My Name is Maria Isabel, has done an amazing job celebrating differences in culture in I Love Saturdays y domingos. This story starts off with a little girl telling about her weekends with her grandparents. She spends Saturdays with her father’s parents and domingos with her mother’s parents. She tells about what each grandmother serves her for breakfast. Her father’s mom gives her milk, scrambled eggs, and pancakes, while her mother’s mom gives her huevos rancheros. The little girl expresses her love for the differences in her grandparents’ cultures and speaks proudly of each grandparent and where they came from. This story shows how important a person’s culture is to themselves, as well as to the rest of their family. When this little girl grows up she will tell of these many different cultures that are all an important part of who she is. I think that this story is important to have in the classroom and would be great to do as a read aloud. I think that students would benefit greatly to read or have this book read to them because it will teach them that there are many different cultures and that people should be proud of their culture and who they are. I really feel like Alma Flor Ada does a wonde rful job sending a positive message to be proud of and to celebrate you culture. Children will benefit from hearing this message and hopefully they will remember it in the future.

Made You Look

I have not quite finished Made You Look, but so far I am really enjoying it. This book reminds me of when I was younger and getting ready to get out of school to go on a road trip with my family. I have five brothers and one sister, so a road trip in my family could be pretty hectic. I always had fun on these trips in the end and I am looking forward to finding out how the trip goes and whether he gets on the game show or not. Even though this book is for younger readers, I am finding it to be a fun read that does not bore me, but just reminds me of being young.

The Talented Clementine

I just finished The Talented Clementine and I really thought that it was a great story and that it would send a positive message to students reading it. I think that this story would show young students that everyone has something that they are good at, they just have to wait and find out what it is. I liked how Clementine always gave her opinion about everything throughout the story. I think that it is a good read for 3rd through 5th grade students. A craft lesson that might come from this story is having your students think of what they think is their best talent.

Upside Down and Backwards

There were many things that I thought were neat about this book of stories. I liked that there were six different short stories because there were short enough that a young student wouldn't start to feel like what they are reading is too long. They are long enough to tell a whole story but short enough to hold the students' attention. I also liked that half the book is in english and the other half is in spanish. The cover was done really creatively. Having the stories in each language is good because if there are students with spanish as there first language, they might enjoy reading the spanish versions of the stories more. I also think that this book might serve well in high schools for spanish classes because I think that it would help the students with reading spanish text.

when I heard the learn'd astronomer

I thought that this book was creative because Walt Whitman put a poem into a storybook form with many pictures for children to look at. Although I think that this book might be difficult for elementary students to understand because again, it is a poem and not a story. I think that it would be alright to read to elementary students as long as they get an explanation to help them understand the story better. I really did like the artwork though, I thought that it was really well done and that elementary students would probably enjoy looking at the different pictures. I liked the last page where it shows him holding his toy rocket and looking up at the beautiful stars in the sky. Overall, I really liked the book because it is not what you would normally expect and it has great illustrations.

Los Gatos Black on Halloween

I think that Los Gatos Black on Halloween would be great to read to 4th grade and up around the end of October. I know that some people might take offense to this book for one reason or another, but I think that it fits the mood of halloween. I always enjoyed doing fun things in class around halloween and I think this would be a fun book for a read-a-loud. I also really liked the art work in this book, the pictures are really great and they already have me excited for the month of October.

The Name Jar and I love Saturdays y domingos

I thought that The Name Jar was a great book to teach children about differences in culture. I also think that it shows how much getting the approval of their peers matters to children. This story would be good to read to students to show them the importnace of accepting each other without criticism. I thought that ending was really cute because the Unhei finally realized that she would not find a better name than she already had and she also realized that she truly had a new friend in class.
I Love Saturdays y domingos was really cool because I think that stories like this could be beneficial in teaching young children some of another language at a young age. I liked how on one page there would be a quote in english and then on the following page there would be a quote in spanish. I think that having that type of setup would make it easy to start teaching elementary students some foreign language. Of course I do not think that teachers should go overboard with teaching foreign language to elementary students but I don't think that teaching them simple things would be a bad thing. I also thought that the illustrations in this book were really good.

Maria Isabel

I have finished reading My Name is Maria Isabel this weekend and I really enjoyed the story. I was happy that at the end the teacher finally realized that she was hurting Maria's feelings by not calling her by her real name. It is important that children do not feel overlooked and ignored by their teachers. I think that I would have really liked this book when I was in elementary school because it is a quick read and I found it to be interesting the whole way through the story.