Blog 4

My book I chose was Hello Universe, by Erin Estrada Kelly. A general overview you could say about this book, is that it’s a book for children to help with the problem of bullying. The center of this book is around Virgil, an 11-year-old Filipino American whose grandmother, Lola, helps him to come out of his shell and face the world. When Virgil and his pet guinea pig, Gulliver, end up trapped in a well in the woods at the hands of a bully, Chet, they have to find a way out before it’s too late ! Throughout the book, unlikely friends who would have never glanced twice at eachother help one-another to overcome the horrible CHET.

 

In the classroom, I would use this book as a learning tool to help explain what exactly bullying is, and how even the littlest things could be considered “bullying”. I would use this book at the beginning of the year, to get kids excited to start a journal they would keep through the year, and hopefully this book will help them speak up in their private journals about anything that may be going on with them. And with that, hopefully they feel comfortable opening up to me as a teacher so I could help them have the best year possible.