1. Snowflake Bentley, Author- Martin, Jacqueline B., Illustrator- Azarian, Mary, Biography, Caldecott Award, Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998, ISBN:0-395-86162-4, Reading level: 4.1, Interest level:K-2.
This book starts out when Wilson (Willie) Bentley was a young boy. He loved snow more than anything else in the entire world. When Willie got old enough his mother gave him a microscope to use to look at snowflakes and other things in nature. While the other children played in the snow Willie studied snowflakes. He tried to draw what he saw under the microscope but the snowflakes always melted before he could finish his drawing. When Willie was 16 years old his parents bought his a camera that would take pictures of snowflakes and he was overjoyed. The camera made pictures on large glass negatives and could magnify small crystals from 64 to 3,600 times it actual size. This camera cost as much as all 10 of Willie’s dad’s cows. Even though it took him many tries to get the photographs of the snow crystals just right he never gave up. Many people laughed at him but he didn’t let that get to him or discouraged him. Willie would give his crystal pictures to people on for their birthdays and set up a projector in the yard to show his slides. When Willie was 66 years old he published a book with his pictures in it and after his death a monument was built in his town in his memory.
I really enjoyed this book and think that it is a great way to present a biography to children. It is great the way the information is laid out in picture book form with side notes that have more in-depth information about Wilson Bentley’s life and his interest in snow crystals. This book is very inspiring because even though people thought he was a little odd for taking pictures of snow crystals he never gave up what he loved to do. This could be used as an encouragement to the children in my classroom. He made the great discover that no two snowflakes are exactly the same and if he would have let other people stop him from pursuing his dream he would have never come to this discovery.
During the winter months I could use this book in my classroom to talk with my students about weather and the water cycle. In the Essential Standards for Science in North Carolina Standard # 2.E.1 is for students to understand patterns of weather and factors that affect weather. This ties in very well with this story. I could then let the children in my class create snowflakes out of paper and we could talk about in the same way that no two snowflakes in nature are the same none of our paper snowflakes are the same.
2. Blackbeard: Eighteenth- Century Pirate of the Spanish Main and Carolina Coast, Author/Illustrator- Weintraub, Aileen , Biography, Published by Power Kids Press, 2002, ISBN:0-8239-5794-2, Reading level- 4.8.
This biography is about the life of Edward Teach better known as “Blackbeard” who was born in Bristol, England around 1680. He started out his career as a privateer working for the government legally plundering enemy ships. The early 1700s was known as that Golden Age of Piracy and this is the time period when Blackbeard sailed that sea as a pirate. Blackbeard grew tired of being a privateer so he took command of the Concord a French slave ship that they captured and changed its name to the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Blackbeard’s crew quickly grew to have three ships and over 400 men on his crew. Between 1716 and 1718 Blackbeard tortured the high sea and captured many ships along the North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia coast. Blackbeard had long black hair and a long black beard. This is where the nickname Blackbeard came from. He was known for tying pieces of slow-burning fuse into his beard to make it look like his head was smoking. In 1718 Blackbeard and his crew set up a blockade along the port and Charleston and would not let any ship in or out until a ransom had been paid. Blackbeard took the treasure that he had gained at Charleston and put it on one of his smaller ships without telling his crew so that he could have all of it. He then ran the Queen Anne’s Revenge aground and made it look like an accident. Blackbeard took a few of his closest men and escaped on the smaller boat. He was found and captured by Lieutenant Robert Maynard who tricked him into coming aboard his ship. Maynard and Blackbeard then fought until Maynard finally shot and killed Blackbeard.
This book was very informative. The way that the information is presented lays it out so that children can easily read the text and learn a lot about Blackbeard and his life. This book would be good to use as a paired assignment with the book Pirate Diary: The Journal of Jake Carpenter. I really enjoyed this book and feel that I learned a lot more truthful information about Blackbeard than I knew before.
In my classroom I could use this book to tie into the social studies curriculum. If I teach 3rd grade the standard I can relate this biography to standard 3.H.2.2: Explain how multiple perspectives are portrayed through historical narratives. I could use different text to compare and contrast the stories that they tell with my students.
3.Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, Author/Illustrator- Hoose, Phillip, Biographical, Novel, Newberry Honor Book, Multicultural, Published by Square Fish, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-312-66105-2, Reading Level- 8.5, Interest Level 6-8.
3.Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, Author/Illustrator- Hoose, Phillip, Biographical, Novel, Newberry Honor Book, Multicultural, Published by Square Fish, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-312-66105-2, Reading Level- 8.5, Interest Level 6-8.
This novel is about the life of a young girl named Claudette Colvin. As a young girl she was sent to live with her great aunt and uncle who raised her like she was their own daughter. Throughout Claudette’s childhood she noticed how poorly blacks were treated in comparison to their white counterparts. As she grew and became more knowledgeable Claudette didn’t understand why the adults around her would not stand up against the system and try to change things so that both blacks and whites could enjoy the same rights. When Claudette was thirteen years old she decided that she would take a stand and try to start some kind of change on her own. As she was riding the public bus home from school she and three other girls were told to move so that a white lady could sit down. Claudette knew that the law stated that she only had to move if there were no other sees left but the bus driver was trying to make her move when three of her friends had already given up their seats to this white lady. Claudette was charged and taken to jail over this incident. As things worsened in Montgomery, Alabama others started to do the same thing and these bus arrests finally ended with Rosa Parks and the bus boycott. A court case was taken to the Alabama Supreme Court and then appealed to the federal Supreme Court which stated that public buses couldn’t be segregated. This was a step forward for blacks in Alabama but they still faced may more hardships ahead of them.
I really liked this book. The fact that in school I was always just taught about Rosa Parks being the one who wouldn’t give up her seat to a white person is fascinating to me thought because you would thing that since Claudette Colvin was really the first person to do this we would also learn about her. This book is very historically accurate and it shows how poorly African Americans in the south were treated throughout the 1950s and 60s. This book reminds me a lot of To Kill a Mockingbird and the way that the African American characters in that book are portrayed and treated by the white members of society.
I think that if I was teaching older grade levels such as middle school this would be a good book to use to show my students how blacks truly were treated during this time period. I would be great to pair a fiction text with this book and have students to compare and contrast the things that are going on according to the text. Essential Standard 8.H.2.2: Summarize how leadership and citizen actions (e.g. the founding fathers, the Regulators, the Greensboro Four, and participants of the Wilmington Race Riots, 1898) influenced the outcome of key conflicts in North Carolina and United States, for eight grade social studies would be a great standard to use when teaching about these people and incidents in history.
