Literature Collection Blog

This fantasy story by  Kelly Barnhill is a about a sweet girl named Luna who had magical powers. When Luna turned 5 years old, Xan that witch that lived in the forest noticed that Luna's magic was becoming very dangerous. Xan thought Luna was too young to be taught how to control it so she cast a spell on Luna that kept her magic dormant until she was 13 years old. Once Luna reached the age of 13 she had to realize what magic really was in order to save people that she loved the most.    This story's  theme is being different, and how being different makes you specal. All of the characters within this story has a very special quality within them. For instance, Luna had a moon shaped crescent on her forehead, and every one that she was around believe that her birth mark was lucky and that she was very special.  We know that this book is fantasy because there are no such things as witches with magical powers, swamp monsters, or pocket sized dragons so t...

This award wining book written by Andrew Clements and pictures by Brian Selznick, is about a fifth grader named Nick Allen who constantly gets in trouble. His  language art  teacher Mrs.Granger is very strict. During the story she introduces Nick and his classmates on how words are created.  But because Nick has the repuatation of disrupting class and testing teachers, he decides to create his own word, and start calling his pen "fridle".  Nick then gets all of his friends to start using the word too. Nick's new words makes such cause such a frenzy until everyone in town is talking about, even journalists and this instantly makes Nick famous.  The genre of this book is realistic fiction. Realistic fiction tells a story of events that could really happen in life. I think "Fridle" fits in perfectlt because children can relate so easily to Nick Allen as well as the other characters.  The main theme is this book is "anything is possible" becau...

Through My Eyes by Ruby Brides is a detailed and inspirational memoir about her life from the beginning. Her memoir mainly focuses on her experience of being this 6 year old black little girl who entering a school in the 1960's during segregation when black and white children were not allowed to be in the same school together, and having a lot of people who were white not wanting her there.  Federal Marshalls walking Ruby Bridges out of school.  In 1960, Ruby Bridges experienced the hateful and harsh thing called racisim at the age of 6 years old. Her story is such an inspirational story, it shows how brave she was, and how much courage she had to walk into a school that she deserved to go, despite how much anger it was causing to people who did not know any better. Ruby accomplished such a great accomplishment for African American people and made history letting people now that with courage and determination you can overcome anything. Throughout this book i...

The Missing Mummy by Ron Roy and illustrated by John Steven Gurneuy is a part of the greatA to Z mysteries Scholastic book collection.  This book is such a fun read filled with mystery and entertainment.  It's Mummy Monday in the museum and the main characters Dink, Josh, and Ruth are going to see a new Egyptian Exhibit that features a child mummy and treasure in the tomb. But when they get to the exhibit, the find that the mummy has been stolen from the tomb and it is up to them to solve the mystery of who stole the mummy from the tomb.  The genre of this book is not surprising you can just look at the title and tell that it is mystery.  The illustrations by John Steven Gurney is of black ink, each picture throughout the book is colorless and its drawn with ink.  Classroom Activities: 1. Students will use a characterization chart to tell the differneces between Ruth, Dink, and Josh. 2. Since this story is about finding a missin...

Author: Yona Zeldis McDonough Illustrator: Stephen Marchesi Who Was Rosa Parks? by  Yona Zeldis McDonough and illustrated by Stephen Marchesi is the life story of Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks was one the important people in history who played a huge role in the Civil Rights Movement . In 1955, on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama she refused to give up her seat to a white person and she was then arrested .  This small act by her then started the bus boycott and civil rights protest around America.   The illustration by is Stephen Marchesi is in black and white throughout the entire book. The genre of this book is biography, it tells the story of the life of someone. Its a careful biograohy to be exact. " Careful biographies find a balance between telling everything and telling just enough to portray a person's life accurately, in an interesting manner." (Galda,Cullinan,&Sipe,2010) Some of  themes in "Who is Rosa Parks?" is fighting against human injus...