A Couple of My New Favorites

Fifth grade teacher Amy Becker (Ridge Lawn Elementary, Ridge Lawn, IL) recently raved about a new book by Orland Park, Il author Esther Hershenhorn entitled S is for Story. I love this book, too, because it’s partially a picture book and partially a nonfiction how-to guide for aspiring writers. Appropriate for elementary and middle school students, this book is great for introducing story elements, the writing process, writing genres, and more. Each page has large, eye-catching illustrations, along with at least one writer’s tip.

Another one of my new favorites is entitled The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. The book consists of fourteen black-and-white drawings, each accompanied by a title and a caption, allowing readers to make up their own stories to complement the pictures. It’s written by the award-winning author/illustrator Chris Van Allsburg, also known for “The Polar Express.”

This is a fabulous book for two totally different skills. It contains great writing prompts for creative writing, and it’s also a valuable resource for targeting the questioning strategy in reading comprehension. To practice questioning strategies for comprehension, teachers could have kids look at the illustration, read the line of text, and then develop their own questions. What do they wonder, what do they want to know, what do they predict? Bottom line, this is is a terrific tool for getting kids to just practice sincere reader questioning.