Strega Nona

Title: Strega Nona

Author: Tomie dePaola

Genre: Picture Book

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing

Copyright Date: 1979

Pages in Book: 32 pages

Reading Level: infants- 5 year

Summary: Strega Nona is a story about an elderly woman who hires a young boy named Anthony, to help her with the chores. One day, Anthony sees Strega Nona cooking in a pot that wind up being magic and makes endless amounts of pasta. He remembers the spell that she uses, but unfortunately he doesn’t see her blow three kisses to stop the pot from producing more pasta. Strega Nona goes to visit a friend, and before she leaves she tells Anthony to stay away from the pasta pot. He ignores her advice, and invites the entire town over for some pasta. The towns’ people begin to get full, so Anthony stops feeding them, and that’s when disaster strikes. The pot keeps making pasta. More and more keep coming out, and soon the town begins to fill with pasta. Strega Nona comes home in the nick of time, and blows three kisses. She tells Anthony that he needs to start eating, because she wants to sleep in her bed. So he begins eating and eating.

Reaction: I thought this was a cute book. It actually made me laugh a bit, and I thought that it was funny how cocky Anthony was during the middle of the book. I feel that this book just goes show you that you shouldn’t do things that you don’t know the response or reaction to it.

Recommendation: I’d recommend this book to children of all ages. Even I thought that it was a cute book, and I’m 22. I especially think children who want to be cooks would really enjoy this book.

Potential Problems/Conflicts: I didn’t have any problems with this story. I thought it was a good story, and one that I would feel comfortable with my children reading and/or checking out from the library. 

The Giving Tree

Title: The Giving Tree

Author: Shel Silverstein

Genre: Picture Book

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Copyright Date: 1986

Pages in Book: 64 pages

Reading Level: 6-8 years

Summary: This is a cute little story about a young boy and his friendship between him and a tree. The tree is always there for the boy, giving him whatever he wants. The boy swings on his branches, sits in his shade, uses branches to build himself a home, and in the end, provides a stump for the now old man to sit upon. The tree loves the boy and gave him the ultimate sacrifice. His stump. It didn’t matter that the tree didn’t have anything to offer him in the end, because all that mattered was that they had a friendship to hold them together.

Reaction: I thought this was a very cute book, and it’s one that has a good message learned. I love how no matter what, the tree is there for him, and that’s what true friendship is. Being there and always going out of your way to help your best friend. This book makes me appreciate the friends that I do have, and the strength of each relationship. No matter who it is, I’m glad that all my friends know that I’m there for them no matter what.

Recommendation: I’d recommend this book to anyone. And if the children are too young to read, then I recommend that their parents read to them. I think it’s a great book, and like I said earlier, there is a great message that is learned from it, and that message is that friendship is always strong, and willing to give all.

Potential Problems/Conflicts: I didn’t have a single problem with this book. It brought me to slight tears, and if a book can do that, then I doubt there’s any way that I could find anything wrong with it.  

A Single Shard

Title: A Single Shard

Author: Linda Sue Park

Genre: Historical Novel

Publisher: Random House Audio

Copyright Date: 2004

Pages in Book: 152 pages

Reading Level: 12 and up

Summary: This is about a twelve year old boy named Tree-ear, who lives under a bridge in Korea. He loves watching Min make pottery, and one day he sneaks into the potters house to look at all the creations. Tree-ear accidently breaks a box, and in order to pay the potter back, he must work off this debt for nine days. Tree-ear then attempts to make his own pot, but never gets the chance. In the end of the story, Min (the potter)’s son dies.

Reaction: It was really hard for me to get into this book. I didn’t find it very entertaining, and a lot of the time, I would get caught up in the fact that I couldn’t pronounce the character’s names. It was just a difficult book for me to read, and I didn’t find it very interesting.  

Recommendation: I’m not so sure I’d recommend this book to many people. But on the other hand, I know a lot of people in the classroom thought it was an amazing book. I think I’d leave this as an option for my future students to read.

Potential Problems/Conflicts: I just didn’t’ like the book. I didn’t think it was written very well, and I wasn’t impressed with the creativity. 

Anne of Green Gables

Title: Anne of Green Gables

Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery

Genre: Novel

Publisher: Random House Children’s Books

Copyright Date: 1982

Pages in Book: 308 pages

Reading Level: 12 and up

Summary: Anne Shirley is adopted (by accident) by Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. The brother and sister need help on their farm Green Gables, and Anne is more than willing to help. She’s very quick, talkative, and has an imagination like no one can believe. She would’ve loved to go by the name of Cordelia, because she thinks it’s a beautiful name, and although she doesn’t consider herself as beautiful, she still loves the name. She quickly wins over Marilla and Matthew, because of how open and talkative she is. She has a best friend named Diana and together they hate Gilbert Blythe. After a while, Anne realizes that she no longer hates Gilbert, and they become the best of friends. She has several fun adventures with Diana, Jane and Ruby. Anne grows up and soon leaves Green Gables to go to college. Matthew dies of a heart attack, and after the funeral, Marilla learns of a bank failure. Her eyesight is failing, and because of this, Anne returns to the farm, turning down a scholarship and helps Marilla out on the farm.

Reaction: I thought that this book was incredible. It was a very sweet story, and a lot of what happened to Anne, reminded me of my childhood. She was such a happy child, and I love that she was able to make a strong relationship with her adopted parents. The author did an incredible job on this book, and kept my attention the entire time.

Recommendation: I’d recommend this story to every single child, preferably girls. But the boys might not like it as much. It was very well written, but I think I’d recommend this book to older girls, because there are some words that the children wouldn’t know or understand.

Potential Problems/Conflicts: Honestly, I don’t have a single problem with this book. It was full of adventure, emotions, imagination, etc. It was very well written, and I couldn’t find a problem with this book, even if I wanted to. 

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Title: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Author: Judith Viorst

Genre: Picture Book

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing

Copyright Date: 1987

Pages in Book: 32 pages

Reading Level: 5-9 years

Summary: Alexander is a young boy that just has an absolutely horrible day. The moment that he wakes up, he finds gum in his hair. He doesn’t find a treat in his cereal, doesn’t get a window seat on the way to school, gets yelled at during school, ditched by his best friend, and has no dessert for lunch. And that’s just the beginning. Everything continues to go wrong, and Alexander hopes that by going home, it would make the day just a little bit better. But he’s wrong. He gets home and has food (lima beans) which he hates, can’t find anything good on TV., and goes to bed wearing his railroad pajama’s (ones that he hates). All he wants to do is move to Australia and get away from a place where he has horrible days.

Reaction: I thought the book was good, but slightly depressing. I doubt that even people in real life have days like this, where not a single thing goes right. It was well written, but I didn’t like the illustrations very much, and just overall wasn’t very impressed with the book.

Recommendation: Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend this book to many children. Maybe if the child was having a bad day, I’d read it to them, to let them know that their life isn’t that bad, but other than that reasoning, I doubt that I would recommend it to anyone.

Potential Problems/Conflicts: I just didn’t like how everything was going wrong, and how his result for solving all his problems was to run away. That’s not the answer, and I don’t want other readers to think that that’s the way to get away from your problems, or how to solve them. Because that’s just not how it works. 

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Title: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Author: J K Rowlings

Genre: Fantasy/Fiction

Publisher: Scholastic

Copyright Date: 2003

Pages in Book: 766 pages

Reading Level: 9-12 years

Summary: This is the fifth of the Harry Potter series. In this book, Harry’s cousin is attacked by Dementors. He is forced to use magic to fight them off, and because of this it gets Harry in trouble. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Magic refuses to admit that Voldemort has returned. Professor Umbridge comes to Hogwarts and begins teaching the new Defense Against the Dark Arts. She single handedly begins taking down the school. Rules after rules are created, and it comes to a point where pretty much everything is against the rules. Harry, Hermione, and Ron find a secret room that allows them to practice their magic. Harry begins teaching his followers magic tricks, because it’s at the point now where they need it to survive. Harry goes into the Ministry of Magic’s building to find the record of prophecy. They are caught, and Harry and Voldemort begin fighting. His uncle Sirius Black dies in the attempt to save his godson.

Reaction: Honestly, this was my least favorite book of all the Harry Potter series. I thought that the entire book was very dreary, and boring. There wasn’t a happy part in the entire thing, and it seems like everything just went downhill from that point on. Harry lost his only last family member that was alive, and it almost seems as if that was his last chance at help. Overall, I wasn’t very impressed with this book.

Recommendation: I’d only recommend this book, because after reading the following two books, you need to know what goes on in this book to understand the following ones. If you’re really into these types of books, then I think those people would enjoy the books more than I did.

Potential Problems/Conflicts: I just thought that the books were very dreary and boring. Nothing that happened was happy, and it seems that everything went from bad to worse. I just wasn’t impressed with the book. There was a lot of death, and it just got sadder and sadder as you continued reading. 

Tuesday

Title: Tuesday

Author: David Wiesner

Genre: Picture Book

Publisher: Clarion Books

Copyright Date: 1991

Pages in Book: 30 pages

Reading Level: infant – 5 years

Summary: This is a straight up picture book. There are very few words in this book. So the story line can pretty much be anything that you make it to be. But to me, once eight o’clock hits, the frogs begin flying around the city. They fly into people’s houses, through clothes lines, at dogs, etc. Once the sun comes up, the powers fade, and they quickly hop back to their ponds, leaving the people of the city to figure out what happened during that night. Then a week later, about the same time, the pigs start flying…

Reaction: I liked this book. I thought the illustrations were good, and I like that the author left a lot of the story up to the readers’ imagination.

Recommendation: I’d recommend this book to children about the ages of the reading level. I think it’s one that the children would get a giggle out of, because on what planet do frogs or pigs fly?

Potential Problems/Conflicts: The only thing that bothered me was that the frogs eyes looked rather creepy from time to time.