The biggest part of chapter five that resonated with me was tips on recommending books to students. I especially liked how Miller described in detail all about nonfiction and how to make nonfiction seem less boring. I agree with what Miller said about series books and how students can connect really well with them. In a future classroom I would like to have a lot of series books and make sure to have all of them because when I was younger if a teacher was missing one or two books out of the series I would be sad that I was missing it. This chapter showed me that I was more of a series reader, that I like reading book after book and having the plot continue on. I am also definitely a re-reader of my favorite books especially books from when I was a young kid.

The most interesting character from Eleanor and Park so far is Eleanor. She has big red curly hair and freckles. Physically she stands out, but she really like to have a wall up and has defenses for good reason. Since her stepdad so far seems like a violent and abusive man I think that Eleanor has been through a lot and is constantly living in caution around her home. Making sure that she doesn’t draw attention to herself at home. It also definitely makes her a strong person at school, she can be a bit snarky but also very selfless. You can tell she thinks of others before herself also by seeing how she looks out for her younger siblings. Throughout the book you see that she feels more worthy of being loved as the book goes on. Her confidence in a way is boosted and the love that her and Park have is beautiful. I would recommend this book to anybody, it’s a great book!

Smile is about a girl named Raina Telgemeier who is your average middle school student that lives in San Fransisco. She goes to school, has a group of girl friends and is in the Girl Scouts. She gets the talk that we all do from our dentist that it’s time for braces, but before that can happen she has an accident while racing on foot with a friend. After getting up from her fall she realizes that her two front teeth are gone, completely fell out of her mouth. Not only does Raina have major dental appointments in her future but also typical teenage issues with family, friends and boys. She goes through bad crushes and bad friends but she always manages to get through it. This graphic novel is such a wholesome tale of a young girl and the cool thing about it is the author wrote it about herself. I’ve never seen somebody write and autobiographical graphic novel. What attracted me to this book was the fact that my sister read it when she got her braces on for the first time and she loved the book. I would have never thought that I would be able to use a graphic novel in a classroom setting, but from the graphic novel resource guide came tons of classroom activity ideas.

Mostly throughout the whole novel each sequence is a different week and the author does put in sequences to show time passing like during Raina’s summers and just gives a brief description and image of what the majority of her summer was. The other long sequence I noticed, probably the longest was when Nicole and Karin “pants” her in the middle of lunch in front of the whole school because she has to recover and also has an important moment where she stands up for herself. This sequence is slower than the others because Raina talks to herself in the bathroom and it shows the whole entire scene where the girls giggle and then run up behind her. It also includes where Raina then has to face the girls that she was “pantsed” by and tell herself not to cry. I think it could also be considered the climax of the novel because after that Raina’s life starts to go up.

A) The book that I picked Inside Out and Back Again I chose because my mom also was a Vietnam War refugee so I was hoping to maybe get a better understanding about what it was like. My mom has told me stories but not a lot of information. Hà is a ten year old girl who takes off from Vietnam with her family. They arrive in the United States and the book talks about all the hardships that they go through both on the boat and after the boat. I love Hà because she’s spunky and young and really likes papaya. I would recommend this book to anyone. I think in the classroom this book would be a great way to teach poetry and be able to let the kids see how someone might feel as a refugee, since you might have some kids in your classroom could be from another country. I really liked how the story is written in poem form I think it gave the story more beauty, you could say.

B) Poem:

 

So much depends

upon

 

water in the

ocean

 

surrounded with living

creatures

 

 

 

 

For this weeks make, I made a trophy out of origami paper. The reason I picked the trophy was because it was a part my favorite scene from Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper. Before I talk about the scene here’s some background: Melody has cerebral palsy but she also has a photographic memory, which to sum it up means she is extremely smart. She ends up getting a Medi-Talker so that she can communicate with others. She then ends up joining the trivia team and people really underestimate her. Basically her class ends up getting to fly out to Washington DC to compete in a trivia competition, but on the day to fly out the teacher and all the other kids in her class get to the airport early and have breakfast without her. They’re flight gets canceled because of a snowstorm and everyone else gets on an earlier flight without Melody because they went to breakfast without her. When Melody returns to school and confronts her teammates, they apologize and give her their 9th place trophy to do it. We’re not really sure how but she drops the trophy, could’ve been on accident or on purpose. She definitely doesn’t want it and she leaves the classroom laughing after she drops the trophy. I think that it’s the best moment of the entire book. The teacher was my least favorite person trying to act all innocent and said that they did the best that they could. I like to think of this as her way of doing a mic drop after calling everyone out on why they went to Washington DC without her, and that is what inspired this make.