Tales of Winter

Owl Moon
By Jane Yolen
Illustrated by John Schoenherr
Jane Yolen chose the words carefully for Owl Moon to evoke the sensations of being in the winter woods at night.  If you read slowly and thoughtfully, you can smell the crisp winter air, feel the cold in your cheeks, hear the sounds of boots breaking through the crust of snow. The dark silhouettes of tree branches visually contrast with the bright moon and blanket of snow.The story of a young girl, finally old enough to accompany her father into the woods at night to look for a great horned owl, is both warm and enthralling. When they return home after "owling", her wonder of nature and pride of having grown up stay with you. This book is a fine example for young writers of description and word choice in writing.The Audubon great horned owl toy below makes a hooting sound just like in Owl Moon.

The Snowy Day
By Ezra Jack Keats
Children who have experienced snow will be able to make a strong connection to Ezra Jack Keats' Caldecott winner "The Snowy Day". It is written from a young boy's perspective as he wakes up to a snowy world and proceeds to enjoy it as children everywhere do. The story simply relates the boy's experiences as he discovers the joys of snow when he makes footprints and snow angels, knocks it off tree branches and slides downhill on it. You can feel the comfort of a hot bath after a day in the snow and share in his thrill when he wakes up the next day to find that the snow is still there. No real snow? You can actually buy faux snow, shown below, that is water activated and can be reused!

Stranger in the Woods: A Photographic Fantasy (Nature)
By Carl R. Sams and Jean Stoick
 Two children build a snowman in the woods, and curious animals come, one after another, to check out the stranger. Edible features make him attractive to the wildlife, and each encounter is captured on film. This book has won many awards, and would be a wonderful inspiration for children to write about how it would feel to be either one of the animals or the snowman "stranger".




Story Props for "Owl Moon", "The Snowy Day" and "Stranger in the Woods"

Best Spirit of Christmas Books

 Although I love the Grinch story as much as the next person, I really appreciate Christmas books that express genuine human feelings and frailties and lack the glitz of the commercialized holiday season. I look also for gratitude over greed, family and friends over worldly expectations. Both of the following Christmas stories are set in the past and take place in Appalachia. Teachers may use these books to teach the reading comprehension strategies of making text-to-text connections or visualization.

The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree: An Appalachian Story
by Gloria Houston
Pictures by Barbara Cooney
Ruthie waits for her father to come home from war in time for Christmas as promised. It is their family's turn to provide the church its Christmas tree that she and her father picked out months before.  In the meantime, the school prepares to put on the Christmas play, and since her family is providing the tree, the little girl gets the part of the heavenly angel. Her mother also waits and worries because there is no money for cloth for the angel dress until her husband returns. The night before Christmas eve finds them still alone, so in the night they take their old horse and bring back the tree. Ruthie's mother then cuts apart her wedding dress to make an angel costume and an angel doll for a special gift for Ruthie. The family honor is preserved, and the play goes off beautifully without Ruthie's father. Just as everyone leaves the church, Ruthie's father arrives and envelopes her in his arms, his love and protection the finest gift of all. An angel doll who looks just like Ruthie is placed at the top of the church Christmas tree from that year forward. Barbara Cooney's illustrations are at the same time understated and warmly evocative, and the prose enables the reader to smell the balsam, feel the angel's satin dress, and hear the singing in the cold night air. An angel doll makes a perfect story prop for this moving tale.

Silver Packages
by Cynthia Rylant
Paintings by Chris K. Soentpiet
There was once a "Santa train" that brought gifts to poor children in remote parts of West Virginia every year at Christmas time. Cynthia Rylant wrote this book based on stories of that train. In return for his own good fortune, every Christmas a rich man brings silver wrapped packages and tosses them out to the children waiting along the railroad. A young boy is always there to catch his silver package, and every year he wishes for a doctor's kit so he can pretend to be a doctor. Each year, the package contains warm boots, woolen mittens, or a winter hat, but no doctor's kit, leaving him disappointed. As he grows up, he learns to appreciate the value of those gifts and credits them for helping him to make it and become what he always wanted to be, a doctor.A black doctor's bag is shown in the last pages of the book, indicating his success.

Story Props for "The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree" and "Silver Packages"

Feasts

Thanksgiving and other holidays approach, but instead of examining stories about Thanksgiving, I looked for books about feasts and feasting. From the very short "The Beastly Feast" and "Mouse Mess" to the more involved "Stone Soup", let's turn our attention to FOOD! Another fine book that almost ends in a feast is "Heckedy Peg" described in an earlier post.

The Beastly Feast
By Bruce Goldstein

Illustrated by Blair Lent

"The beasts are having a feast!" begins a romping rhyme that describes a menu made up of each animal's contribution to the pot luck. Bears bring pears and parrots bring carrots, fleas bring peas and flies bring pies until everyone is full. At the end of this little story, the beasts all clap, then take a nap. For very young children, this book will be a fun read-aloud, and older children can use it to inspire writing their own rhyming pairs. What food (or other word) might rhyme with your name?

Stone Soup
By Heather Forest

There are several versions of the classic story "Stone Soup". This one stays close to the original tale, but has captivating illustrations and a simpler story. Two travelers stop in a mountain village hoping for a meal, but when the villagers refuse, the travelers tell them they can make soup out of  a stone. The villagers are fascinated, and are soon sucked in to help, first with a pot of water and a fire, then by bringing a few carrots, some onions, potatoes, and so on. Before long, all the ingredients of a fine soup have been provided by the villagers, and they marvel at the cleverness of the travelers. The illustrations are vibrant, and a cute feature pictures each vegetable offered by a villager in a speech bubble on the page. A recipe for Stone Soup is included. This book provides opportunities for writing lists of vegetables, recipes for favorite foods, procedural writing,and stories about sharing, as well as cooking activities in the classroom.

Mouse Mess

By Linnea Asplind Riley
"Mouse Mess" is a delightfully light story portraying a mouse in a human kitchen at night foraging for food. The pictures are boldly colorful and the rhyming words just as vivid. The mouse happily crunches and crackles through a feast of delectables, blissfully dropping pieces and crumbs everywhere as he goes. When the mouse is finally full, he heads for a bath in a teacup but leaves an enormous mess behind. Kids love this story about a feast of food that is a feast for the eyes and ears as well. This is a great book to introduce onomatopoeia (remember? words that sound like the sounds they describe), to make lists categories of foods, or to inspire writing about favorite foods, a topic near and dear to the hearts of children everywhere. It is also one of my favorite books to teach rhyming words.

Story Props for "The Beastly Feast", "Stone Soup", and "Mouse Mess"

The first group of play vegetables can be cut apart and put back together thanks to the miracle of Velcro. The second group comes in a basket and these vegetables are one-piece. The first cooking set shown has pots, pans and utencils only. When looking for dish sets to play "Stone Soup", make sure there are bowls for soup in the set like those below.

Kevin Henkes' Lilly

Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse
by Kevin Henkes
Lilly's character was introduced ten years ago in this popular story by a prolific author, Kevin Henkes. Lilly is a lovably fallible mouse and the story of how her exciting new purse distracts her at school is real and familiar. Its resolution is satisfying and reassuring. The comprehension strategy of making text-to-self connections and literary element of characterization will be easy to encourage with this story. Wording used to tell the story is richly descriptive (squeaky, pointy, crispy, curly, crunchy, glittery, jingly) and offers an opportunity to expand vocabulary with words likely to be new to many children (jaunty, deluxe, amused, uncooperative, sampled, unique.)

Lilly's Big Day
by Kevin Henkes
In "Lilly's Big Day", Lilly's teacher Mr. Slinger shares his big news with his class: he's getting married! Lilly is very excited about being a flower girl in the wedding although she has not been asked. She practices and pretends, but Mr. Slinger 's niece, Ginger, has been chosen for the job. This story has fewer descriptive words than its predecessor, but offers uncommon nouns (reception, ceremony, assistant, corsage, aisle) and wonderful verbs (considered, exist, swelled, motioned, scooped, noticed, exhausted) that can be used to teach vocabulary or to help enrich writing. The story can be used with "Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse" to help children make text-to-text connections.


Story Props for Lilly books



Some IKEA stores have a soft toy that looks
very much like Lilly for under $5.00, as of this posting.