kiddieliter

It is sometimes hard to move to a new town and make new friends! Opal and her dad do just that, they move too Floridak. Opal meets a crazy dog running through the local  Winn-Dixie supermarket and makes her first friend. Her new friend, the dog she names Winn-Dixie, helps Opal makes a variety of new, interesting friends and togther they spend the summer listening to some great stories. Opals mother is not in the picture anymore. It is a summer of larning and growing on many levels.

The traditional occupation of shrimping as practiced by the Vietnamese is the inspiration for this story which features an immigrant and his American-born son.  The father tells his son about his own father whom he left behind when he came to America during the Vietnam War.   He expresses his desire to return to his homeland to see him.  The scenic illustrations portray the past as the father reminisces, and the present as the father instills in his son the values of his people and teaches him his occupation as his father had taught him on the South China Sea in Vietnam. 

As he is later drifting off to sleep, the son imagines that he, his father, and grandfather (whom he has never seen) are all together in his father’s boat out on the lonely sea.

This book, which is of the contemporary realistic fiction genre because the father (like many other immigrants) has made America his home, also fits in the multicultural literature genre because it presents some of the values and traditions of the Vietnamese people.

“A Chair For My Mother”, is a picture book about a family who loses everything in a fireand have to make sacrifices to get back on their feet.  The family consist of a grandmother, mother, and a daugther.  Several neighbors helped out by replacing some of the things the family lost but something just wasn’t right.   They all decide to save all their money and put it in a jar.  When they had saved enough money, the family went out and bought a chair because comfortable one they had was damaged in the house fire.  With this chair the family felt as if all worries were gone away. 

Karen Hesse tells the story of Tessie, a little girl anxiously awaiting a storm on a hot summer day. As the storm approaches, she gathers her friends together in their bathing suits so that they can go out and enjoy the wonderful rain. This is a excellent story that portrays a positive image of friendship and mother-daughter relationships in an urban setting. The illustrations are beautiful and colorful and it’s a great read.

Faced with the difficulties of growing up and choosing a religion, Margaret talks over her problems with her own private God.

Amazing Grace is a book about a little girl named Grace. She is a very energetic girl who loves to act out stories when they are read to her. When she finds out that her class is performing the play “Peter Pan”, she wants to try out for the main character, Peter Pan. Her classmates disapprove of her because she is a girl and the part of Peter Pan is a boy, and also because she is black. Despite her classmates disapproval, Grace is reminded by her grandmother that she can do anything she puts her mind to. With that said, Grace tries out for the part, and wows her classmates and teacher. Because of her awesome performance, she gets the role of Peter Pan.

The book is a tell of a young boy trying to save his families lively hood.  By using his pet dog to try to win a race to earn money for his family.  The dog however is not accustomed to the rigorous task of running a race in such conditions. This tell is very heart felt and remarkable. 

Through a student’s eyes his teacher is the perfect candidate for the next president.  She obtains each quality necessary for the job and works under similar conditions everyday.  She also holds all of the personality traits that each candidate should display.  Why shouldn’t his teacher be the next president?