Bread Comes to Life AND Why the Brown Bean was Blue (2 Books)

By George Levenson
Photography by Shmuel Thaler

Bread Comes to Life: A Garden of Wheat and a Loaf to Eat was a generous gift from Agriculture in the Classroom. This Richmond based organization bases its philosophy on educating students in Virginia about where the food on their lunch plate comes from. Agriculture, commerce, and natural resources are just several of the primary teaching objectives of Ag in the Class. In this book, the children are first introduced to the different types of bread that potentially show up at their home or in their school lunches. White, black, small, tall, thin, twin, dinner, and hard day-old bread a listed with photographs. The next several pages provide photographs that detail the process of wheat cultivation accompanied by words. "This baker makes his bread from scratch by sowing wheat in his backyard patch." The use of rhyme is continued throughout the text to include younger students. The beautiful pictures provide specific documentation of the wheat process. I must admit as a 24 year old man with a passion for food, I have never seen the process in its entirety. The process includes grinding the seeds after they have been differentiated from the chaff. At the close of the picture book, bread is made from yeast, honey, water, and flour. The last pages include several recipes to try at home with adult supervision. There is even a recipe for old-fashioned farmers gum (made from hard red winter wheat).

I believe that the value of such literature is imperative for our student's health. Many students are unaware of the processes responsible for the food that they eat everyday. By introducing students to these events, they become aware of their food surroundings. The classroom that I student teach in would be curious about the various techniques involved in bread making. I look forward to sharing this book in the spring.

Why the Brown Bean was Blue, written by Susan M. Pankey another book received from the Agriculture in the Classroom conference. This book begins much like Bread Comes to Life, yet this book documents the cultivation of soy from start to finish.

"A soybean is a seed, you know,
that farmers plant down in the ground....
But first they must prepare the soil.
And make rows in the fields up and down. "

Like in the other text, photography is used by the author to capture the process of growing soybeans. After the seeds are planted, they flourish into small green plants. From the plants, soy pods are picked. According to the author, the journey of the soil bean just begins after cultivation. Next, a two-page spread appears with an image containing several cosmetic and food products. Through the rest of the book, the author displays images of other products made from soy. In the back, a glossary and "fun-facts" section provides an opportunity for formative assessment of student comprehension. Like the book on bread, these informative non-fiction texts are important tools for the classroom. Awareness of these practices may contribute to increased student health. There is a potential that by introducing these materials to a classroom, students may begin to question some of the foods that they eat at home based upon the nutritional facts learned about soy beans and whole wheat bread.

Agriculture in the classroom offers many resources to Virginia educators, many of which contain materials to enrich students' understanding of natural resources.
http://www.agintheclass.org/Pages/default.aspx

If the World Were a Village

Written by David J. Smith
Illustrated by Shelagh Armstrong

If the World Were a Village takes the entire world and compresses the population to a size of 100 "global citizens." This number is used as a way for students to conceptualize the statistical data compiled by global researchers to determine the inequality of resources and the makeup of our global society. The first page gives a breakdown of nationalities, with 61 people from Asia. Language is discussed next, where readers can see that 22 citizens speak a Chinese dialect. The largest group of ages is 10-19 year olds, with 19 global citizens. Religions are next, with 32 Christians. For food consumption, there are 189 chickens, as compared to the 31 sheep and goats. 32 people breathe unhealthy air, only 31 attend school, 20 people live on less than a dollar a day, and 24 do not have electricity. The book is designed to teach "world-mindedness." This book is very successful at bringing the large population numbers and translating them to a scale that students can comprehend. The scope and sequence of the social sciences places importance in early elementary students on "self." This egocentric world that many students live in is not conducive to a natural understanding of such large numbers. 100 students could easily be represented as the number of kindergarteners in total. I feel that this number is so critical to model explicitly, that this book may serve a greater purpose by assembling the classes together. That way, the students can participate in an active lesson where some are asked to stand up, while the others remain seated.

In the back of the book, the author offers guidance for teaching children about the global village. First, students should have access to a map of the world. An up to date map displayed on a wall will help students to locate "self in the world." A wonderful strategy offered by the author is to ask some questions to which no known answers can be provided.

"If there's really enough food in the world, why do some people still go hungry?"

"What forms of government do different countries have? Why are they so many forms of government? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

The interdisciplinary value of If the World Were a Village is seminal to the book's purpose in the classroom. This text offers mathematical concepts, social studies of humanities, science, and reading. Portions of these interdisciplinary approaches could be adapted to any lesson plan. 

The animated version is also worth viewing in the classroom.

In Coal Country

By Judith Hendershot
Illustrated by Thomas B. Allen

"Christmas in the row was the best time of the year. The house smelled of Christmas tree and roast goose and all the good things that Mama had made. No whistle called Papa to the mine. Everything felt so special. And it was."

Judith Hendershot grew up in the family of a coal miner. She and her family lived on Company Row, containing many families whose fathers all worked for the local coal mine. Hendershot writes of her father with pride. She terms his work, "important." The descriptive language immediately enhances the story as the reader learns just how dark and dirty the environment was. Hendershot writes that she and the other children only received a bath once every Saturday, yet her father needed a bath every night. This black fog was so insidious that it peeled the paint away from the home. The process of coal transportation is then detailed from the mules to the trains. Each element of transportation is clouded with the black dust of coal. "The water than washed the coal ran back into the creek, and the dust from the coal turned it black as night." This theme of night is echoed in the next several pages. Hendershot describes her relationships with her friends who also lived in coal mining houses. Their antics occurred during the nighttime, while her father was at work. Washing clothes was especially hard for Hendershot's mother, who developed calloused and red hands from working with clothing in the washer. The only reprieve for the family occurred in sync with Christmas.

The imagery is incredibly powerful, as illustrated by Thomas B. Allen. Interestingly, Allen uses pastels to illustrate the story. Pastel, like charcoal, is very malleable. When a mark is made with pastels, a dust is created on the surface. This dust can then be manipulated with the artists finger to create a smudge of color. Pastels therefore resemble the dust of coal. When the color black appears on the pages, coal is indisputably referenced. Several two-paged spreads depict life during the nighttime. These pages are successful at truly arresting the viewer's perspective while hinting at the blackness of coal. The artists handling of color almost appears hyper stylized on page 24, when Allen depicts an image of the family garden. The green and bright blue imagery seems impossible in such a dark environment. Allen handles this by creating a layering effect with patterns of chromatic, intense colors with darker, subtle tones.

My mother and father were both born and raised in Norton Virginia, which is located in Southwest Virgina. When they grew up there, Norton was a coal-mining town. My father's first job after he graduated from UVA asked him to return home to manage a coal mining team. My mother has often described leaving church on a Sunday morning only to find a layer of dust on the car windowshield. This imagery was racing through my head was I was reading Hendershot's text. The intensity of coal production is further amplified by the wonderful illustrations by Allen. A wonderful read that ties coal production to early 20th century American identity, In Coal Country is an entertaining tale of blue collar society. 

A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Written by David A. Adler
Illustrated by Robert Casilla
1989

"Martin cried. He didn't understand why the color of his skin should matter to anyone." 

A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr. is just that. The book begins with the birth of young Martin and ends with his eventual assassination in 1968. On the last page of the book, a timeline is provided that includes each major date in his precious life. The story of Martin Luther King, Jr. is undeniably one of the most important tales in American history. David Adler provides interested readers with a "bare-bones" account of his life. Beginning at birth, Martin grew in the church. During childhood, he was denied the right to play football with his friends based on the color of his skin. This saddened Martin, and he cried into his mother's arms. Atlanta was consumed by racial discrimination as Martin was finishing his degree in divinity from Morehouse College in Atlanta. After he was wed, Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting in the "White Only" section of the bus. Next, King led a march in protest. After his house was bombed, King advocated for non-violence as he called down his supporters who were ready to fight for his safety. King's 1963 speech is one of the most important recordings in history, and he earned the Nobel Prize in 1964. The last page describes King's assassination. 

Unfortunately, I feel that this non-fiction picture book may be attributed to the cannon of children's literature that is dated and inauthentic. Writing a picture book about a world figure would be quite a difficult task, yet this author has chosen to depict King's story like the entry from an Enclyclopedia. The poorly rendered watercolor paintings that fill the pages of this text resemble the book series titles that are mass produced for student consumption for emerging literacy. There are virtually no redeemable qualities about this picture book, other than the beautiful story that the text completely mangles. Void of any emotional connection, the reader is strung along a brief history of Martin Luther King, Jr. just as a teacher would introduce the topic before reading a successful picture book. With perhaps the most sensitive subject matter, Adler fails to activate any emotional response from the reader. If the writing was to be edited to meet this emotional connection, the story may be better expressed. Instead, very little colorful language is used in the book. Most lines read like scientific journals: "Dr. King told his followers to protest peacefully. But there were some riots and some violence." If for some reason the author was intended to shield this emotional bombardment from students, why did he opt for a chilling image of Dr. King right after he was murdered? With a massive collection of children's literature that is successful at bringing this story to students, this text is the one to place back on the book shelf.

Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart by Candace Fleming

"To her father she wrote: 'Hooray for the last grand adventure. I wish I had won, but it was worthwhile anyway.' To her mother, she said: 'My life as really been very happy, and I didn't mind contemplating its end in the midst of it.'"

Amelia wrote these letters to her parents before a transatlantic flight. These words suggested that Amelia had contemplated her life and was satisfied with her accomplishments thus far. By the time these letters were penned, Amelia was already a national hero. Fleming uses a massive collection of interviews, letters, and media clippings to detail the life of Amelia Earhart from birth to disappearance. Intermittent with this prescribed biographical approach, Fleming includes several pages that write of the recovery effort for Earhart's plane. These beautifully written and fascinating stories create a refreshing pace to the tale of Earhart's journey. At the beginning of the book, the rescue story begins with Earhart's failed attempt to refuel in the Pacific Ocean. As the life of Earhart progresses, the recovery effort is documented by actual accounts of radio transmissions received by ordinary citizens. Several American citizens may have interpreted the last words even spoken by Earhart as she was lost at sea with Fred Noonan. The majority of the text does contain information that could be accessed from any biographical source of Amelia Earhart. Fleming distinguishes her written tribute to Earhart by providing the varied textual elements and splicing the linear narrative with the failed search effort. Some readers will be able to immediately identify the story of Amelia Earhart, but Fleming includes these readers by enhancing the text with letters written by Earhart and interviews with family members and friends. The personal aspect of her writing brings the reader close to the heroine's actual life amidst celebrity.

Fleming purposefully provides the reader with images and captioned text boxes that activate essential knowledge to student understanding. I find this feature of the text to be extremely appropriate for young readers. Objects like radio transmitters and planes that existed almost a century ago are extremely difficult to imagine from only text. The pictures are framed like early twentieth century photographs, and thus authenticate the biographical account. On one spread, the Morse code is produced for the reader. The implications for this form of communication in the classroom are especially interesting. I found the book overall to be a successful at maintaining interest in a subject that I am familiar with. The magnificent and iconic status that Earhart reached in her lifetime is inspiring to anyone with a dream and an imagination. The gender roles that Earhart battled are motivational to the next generation of girls who will succeed and shape the landscape of our future civilization.

The following video is from the Smithsonian Museum. Dorothy Cochrane, curator of the National Air and Space Museum, gives the introduction.

Woodsong by Gary Paulsen

Paulsen with his team.

Woodsong is Gary Paulsen's biographical collection of memories with his beloved sled dogs in the wildness and beauty of nature. The story opens with one of the book's themes, blood. Paulsen is a young man and a beginning trapper when the story unfolds, caught amidst the brutality of nature. With one his first teams of dogs, he witnesses a doe being eaten alive by several wolves. This experience serves as a eye opening experience for Paulsen, who has never witnessed such barbaric lust for blood. Such an ignorance towards the natural world is the foundation upon which Paulsen documents further experiences in the woods. A native of Minnesota, Paulsen turns to beaver trapping with sled dogs as a means to pay the bills. His career path shifts, however, when he realizes that all living creatures contain certain characteristics that humans can identify with, rather than just the dogs that he works with. Paulsen then decides to defer from the trapping and killing of game, but continues to ride with his dogs. The story includes many dogs with distinct personalities. After being brutally injured by a tree branch, his dogs recognize the loss of their master and turn around to assist him. One licks Paulsen's wound just as they would tend to their own. The relationships between Paulsen and his team only flourish as the book continues. His sled dogs teach him to further understand the working nature of dogs, meditate on the meaning of life, and comprehend death. At the end of the story, Paulsen writes of his journey in the Iditarod dog race challenge. The meaning of competition takes on a whole new form as Paulsen writes of this experience, detailing the true nature of his relationships with his dogs. At the close of the race, Paulsen wishes to turn around and continue his journey alone with his dogs in a "primitive" state of being. His wife and best friend beckons him to the finish line, without whom Paulsen may never have returned.

Being a dog owner and lover is not necessarily a prerequisite for enjoying this book, but I would be lying if I wrote that it didn't help. My one year old Jack Russell Terrier and Pug mix (Guy) was by my side as I read the majority of this book. In the opening chapters of Paulsen's accounts, he recognizes a disconnect from his preconceived notions of dogs with their actual behavior. One grueling journey, Paulsen writes, provided this awakening. A dog in his team began to bleed from his rear. Fearing death, Paulsen pulled him from the team and placed him in the sled. Surely disliking this action, the dog pulled at Paulsen and begged to be rereleased to the team, even if it meant he would lose his life. This passion and devotion for work was misunderstood by Paulsen who projected his human emotions onto the animal. Paulsen failed to realize that the drive to work is inherit in the dog's personality - that even when facing death the dog will work until he is left with nothing. Projecting human emotions on to the natural world is completely expected when one treats an animal like a truly domesticated animal. Even my small dog resembles the character of a wolf during play at times. His tendencies are not as pronounced or aggressive as the breed of dog that Paulsen works with, yet it is still unwise to attribute too much human emotion to any animal that would be just find without our intervention. The loss of one particular dog in the book left me completely emptied of emotions after crying for some time! Woodsong examines the relationship of man to all of nature. Paulsen's interpretations of nature inform his decision to cease killing beavers, love his dogs, and become an aware adventurer. The ending of the book provides a seamless close to the core narrative of the text by suggesting that Paulsen does not at all identify with the concept of overbearing competitiveness. During the running of the Iditarod, Paulsen describes his experiences by using the same descriptive language that served to project the earlier story. The race portion of the book does not take the reader into a completely new terrain, but rather reinforces the true bonds between man and nature. I enjoyed this book whole-heartedly and would recommend it to anyone who has taken notice of the stillness of the outdoors. The events that Paulsen writes of are intended for mature audiences who can digest some of the violent but truthful realities of nature. Taken out of order, Woodsong provides a well documented narrative of visceral experience with the outdoors. Read as a complete work, Paulsen orchestrates a symphony from the still, cold, and quiet identity of the woods.

Before I provide a link containing a possible extension to this text, I MUST attach a photograph of my little sled dog. He is my teammate and best friend.

Guy leMonde

And now, for more information on the grueling events that entail the Iditarod race in Alaska....
http://www.iditarod.com/

The BFG by Roald Dahl

"The Big Friendly-Giant picked Sophie off the table and carried her to the cave entrance. He rolled the huge stone to one side and said, 'Peep out over there little girl, and tell me what you is seeing.'" 

The BFG's protagonist, Sophie, peered out of the window and discovered tall, dark, and gruesome beasts that prey upon the bones of peoples from all over the world. Roald Dahl created Sophie to be an eight-year-old orphaned girl who awakes one evening to giants scurrying through the night. Fortunately for Sophie, the giant that picks her from her slumber happens to be the one giant who desists from eating children. The BFG is the runt of the pack of giants, and immediately befriends the young girl. As soon as Sophie discovers the menacing traits of the other giants, she is appalled by their violence. The reader quickly discovers that the BFG captures dreams from children all over the world. He uses these dreams out of the kindness of his heart to promote his love for all creatures. The plot frantically evolves as Sophie plots to end the giants reign of terror on the world. The plan devised is to travel all the way to London and meet the Queen. After impregnating the Queen with a carefully concocted dream, she will awake to discover the plea of a young girl with her giant friend. The end of Dahl's tale closes as the Queen and the Royal Air Force take their battle to the sleeping giants, seeking peace amidst the global unrest. The infectious bond between the young girl and the gentle giant is persuasive to the Queen's wishes, and justice is finally serviced to the wrong-doers. 

A wonderfully written tale of an unimaginable friendship, The BFG documents the larger than life story of an orphaned girl with a beautiful heart. The beast of the tale, measuring 24 feet tall, is just as sweet as Sophie. Their partnership is at first a tense bond. The BFG tells Sophie that she will never be able to return to her home, for fear that the girl will expose him. Even more frightening, Sophie believes that she may be gobbled up at any moment by the larger giants that can hear the slightest murmur of a human heartbeat. I was very tense during the quiet moments in the giant's house when the larger giants were searching the space for the existence of human flesh. Dahl is not afraid of painting a gruesome picture of this fictional world for his reader. The world of the giants is far from a fairy-tale land with poppies and lush fields of green. I was taken aback by the nasty descriptions of the beasts that Dahl eloquently described as being a part of the giant community. I found the investigations of the dream jars to be one of my favorite scenes from the book. Dahl's imagination runs wild with vivid descriptions of dreams intended for boys. I identified immediately with the dream of turning invisible. I had many dreams as a child that involved this super ability. I also thoroughly enjoyed the description of the Queen's reception breakfast for the girl and giant. The humorously put together furniture intended to accommodate the giant was a fun picture. The business of the Queen's headquarters, along with the journey in London, is definitely written by an author who has spent some time in the English city. I think that The BFG is an appropriate story for any reader who is willing to take the plunge into a fantasy world. Although the characters of Dahl's story exist in an unreal setting, the humanistic characteristics of the protagonists are relatable to the conditions of all of our lives. The evils of the world need not remain hidden behind fear. Real life heroes, if they find the right courage, can bring attention to even the Queen of England for assistance. 

Check out the Dahl museum next time you are in England: http://www.roalddahlmuseum.org/