The Other Side

The Other Side by Istvan Banyai

This is an interesting book that was hard for me to follow at first, but when I read it the second time I understood what the author was doing. Every page on the front and back has different perspectives on the same situation. For example, a little boy looks out the window of an airplane onto the world, but on the other side, in the plane, a couple examines a travel brochure of where they are going. The following pages take us inside of that very brochure and to the very destination in the picture, and the people in the brochure are looking up at the plane at the same time. Each page has a clue that leads into the next page. It reminds me of a combination of the book Zoom, which was also a wordless picture book, and QUICK! Turn the Page. Zoom is a book that uses just pictures and continues to "zoom" out to show the bigger picture as a whole, and QUICK! Turn the Page is a book that directs readers to turn the page as quick as possible before something bad happens in the book. However whatever happens on the previous page is resolved on the following page, showing a little bit of perspective as well. The Other Side is a sort of combination of these two books, with a unique twist, and just a really interesting book that teaches the concept of perspective and shows the power of illustrations.

Bow Wow Bugs a Bug

Bow Wow Bugs a Bug by Mark Newgarden

This is the clever story of a puppy who chases a bug around town, while running into a few minor issues along the way which only continue to become bigger issues. The story begins with a small black dot on one page, and Bow Wow snoozing away on the other. He wakes up in the morning, goes down to his food bowl for breakfast, when the little black bug bounds over to his bowl and intrigues Bow Wow. Bow Wow follows his little bugger around town, until he runs into a dog with all kinds of black dots on him. He loses his bug friend on this dog, but then realizes that all of the black dots on thew new dog are actually bugs. Bow Wow finds his bug of interest again and continues to stalk him around town. Eventually, Bow Wow runs into a dog that looks exactly like him, who also has a bug to bother. The two dogs realize that they look so similar so they begin to mirror one another on the sidewalk. When they part ways, Bow Wow follows his bug until he bumps into an ENORMOUS dog that looks just like him. The large dog chases Bow Wow around the block, when suddenly Bow Wow sees that all the dogs in the city have their own bugs to bug too. When he quickly turns and runs in the opposite direction, he finds something quite ODD -- ENORMOUS BUGS bugging small dogs! As the dogs bug the bugs, and the large bugs bug the small dogs, Bow Wow hides out until his little bugger comes around the corner and leads him home. He gets home, and the bug and him go right to sleep.

I love this book. The detailed, quick changes from illustration to illustration in this story will provide children and adults alike an opportunity to pay close attention to the differences and patterns in the story. I think that children will like the irony of the story, with the big bugs bugging little dogs. This would be a fun introduction for an extension activity, where children could create their own stories where the patterns seem to reflect off of one another as the story goes on. I love this book!

Rain

Rain by Peter Spier

Rain is a story that I selected because the title was similar to Rain Makes Applesauce. It also goes into the next type of storybook I chose to blog about for this week; wordless picture books.

When the reader first opens the book, they see a storm brewing in the left hand corner of the illustration, and two children playing outside in their sandbox. The following page has the title of the book and other information about it and the author, however now it has begun to rain. The pages following this one have a hard rain storm coming down, and the two children rush inside to get their proper gear on for the weather. These pages are another title page with the vital information about the book including publishers and the cities where this book has been published. I thought it was cool how it didn't start the storm over after the series of title pages and instead went right into the excited children getting ready to go have an adventure in the rain.

This book was interesting in that it was so detailed in showing us the curiosity of two children as they explored a huge rain storm, and all of it's effects on things in the outside world. They observe intense details, such as the mushy sand filled with puddles of water in their once dry sandbox, the way the drops form ripples on the pavement, and the beads of water that get caught on a very large spider web. They continue to play in the storm until it is time to come in for dinner and dry off. They look at the storm which was once friendly in the daylight in it's dark and harsh state as cars and people brave it while the children go to bed. The next day, the children have a whole new world to discover, as they look around to see what the storm has left behind in their backyard. An extremely detailed story with a lot of potential use in the classroom, however my next set of books will help me determine how to read wordless picture books aloud to children, or alternatives to how to use them.

Rain Makes Applesauce

Rain Makes Applesauce, by Julian Scheer with pictures by Marvin Bileck

My mother informed me that I used to LOVE having her read this book to me as a little girl, however since I did not recall this memory at all, I decided to revisit it to see what I must have loved about it so much. And I cannot believe I don't remember loving it so much, it is an absolutely BEAUTIFUL story! When I read it recently, I got this feeling of happiness, and all of my worries seemed to disappear =). Who knew that could happen from reading a children's book from 1965? Every page has gorgeous illustrations with words tangled in them somehow, and the pages always end with "Rain Makes Applesauce." All of the actions in the story are imaginative and impossible, but that's what makes this book a perfect read for children and adults alike. It reminds us to just relax and live a fun, free spirited life. That it's okay to be a grown up and still think like a child. The things that this book teaches us remind us to just let go of everything stressful and frustrating and just laugh sometimes at the good things in life. I love this book. I think everyone should read it and own a copy somewhere in their home.

The Z Was Zapped

The Z Was Zapped, by Chris Van Allsburg

I read another book similar to this one which I also posted about; The Graphic Alphabet, and decided to compare the two since they are both about the alphabet. This one was a lot different than the other selection, in that the focus here wasn't on individual words that began with each letter, but more so on alliteration in writing. The author wrote about each letter of the alphabet, and something that happened to each letter. For example, the E was slowly Evaporating, the D was nearly Drowned, and my favorite, the K was quietly Kidnapped. While I liked the pictures more in the other story, I loved the concept of this one far more. I love the simple torture of each letter, and the creativity that the author used to describe what happened to each letter was so interesting. They are both great books to use to teach the alphabet, however I realize that comparing them is like comparing apples to oranges. I would certainly use both of them with earlier grades, and for completely different purposes, but they are great books to teach about the alphabet.

The Graphic Alphabet

The Graphic Alphabet, by David Pelletier

This week, I wanted to read some books that either were similar in the actual story aspect, or in the title as well, and compare them. I chose to read this one and compare it to a book that I will discuss in a different post about the book The Z Was Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg. I wanted to see how the authors in these books taught or represented the concept of the alphabet in each of their books. This author did something kind of cool; since he is a graphic designer, he had a typed word at the bottom corner of ever picture that began with the letter of the alphabet that went with that page. In some pictures, the letter that was the focus was obvious to find, however on other pages the letter was difficult to locate in the pictures. I think that this is a REALLY cool book, especially in terms of what he did with the letters in the pictures to still show the actual letter itself. I think that a cool thing to do with this book would be covering up the words in the corners and having students try to guess what letter of the alphabet was on that page. This would be a good activity for younger children to review the entire alphabet after they learned it throughout the year. It's definitely a cool book, and a little different than The Z Was Zapped, in that the letters have different actions placed upon them while they are on a stage. Both books teach the alphabet in different but similar ways, and also teach different aspects of language. This book, The Graphic Alphabet, taught simple words that start with each letter of the alphabet, whereas The Z Was Zapped taught basic alliteration and verb usage.

The Stranger

The Stranger, by Chris Van Allsburg

It is well known by readers everywhere that Chris Van Allsburg writes generally unconventional, twisted stories for children. I have maybe read two of his books before I picked this one off the shelf while looking for something else, and from the cover, it seemed as though the man pictured on the cover illustration was being fed by whoever the Stranger in the book was. However, when I read the book, the Stranger is the man eating in the picture. He falls upon a family in a countryside when he is hit by the man who lives there. The Stranger struggles when he tries to get up off the road, and the owner of the home assists him to the car where he ends up staying with the family for a while. During his stay, the Stranger realizes that even though he has gotten used to how the family lives and loves living there, he is the reason why the weather has gone from fall to summery in the matter of only a few weeks. He hasn't spoken since he began his stay at the family's house, but it clicks with him that he is the reason for the leaves on the trees changing to springtime green instead of autumn oranges and browns, and decides that he must leave the family because those pretty colors were what made the trees beautiful, and he wanted them all to look like that. As soon as the Stranger hugs the family and runs out the door, the weather goes back to how it was before the Stranger came upon the family. However, every time fall comes around, the leaves on the trees turn back to green for a week and then overnight they are back to their normal fall colors. An eerie ending; after the trees change back, the frosty windows of the farmhouse say "See you next fall."

I didn't really "read" the pictures when I read the book; I was too drawn into the mystery of the story! I had so many questions; who was this strange man? Where did he come from? And perhaps the biggest question, HOW did he control the changes in the weather?? I went back and looked at the pictures a second time through, scanning for clues that might indicate why the Stranger had control over the changes of the weather, and if maybe he wasn't able to speak because he was always alone and stayed away from others because of his effect on the weather... I was definitely left wanting answers!! But maybe someday my students and I will read this book and look for our own answers. I believe that many of his other books are like this, filled with suspense and mystery, and I think that working with his books would be a great way to introduce predictions and forming our own ideas about the direction in which open endings can go in. I can't wait to read more from him, and maybe find the answers that I am looking for from this book!!