January 2007 Children’s Books by the Month

This month we feature titles from Bloomsbury Children's Books, Walker Books for Young Readers, Henry Holt and Farrar, Straus & Giroux

The Five Lost Aunts of Harriet Bean and Harriet Bean and the League of Cheats
by Alexander McCall Smith, illustrated by Laura Rankin
BLOOMSBURY In Book One, Harriet Bean is a loveable young sleuth who skillfully deciphers clues to solve the mystery of her missing aunts. In Book Two, our young heroine goes undercover as a jockey to help her two detective aunts to uncover cheating in the horse-racing industry.

ACTIVITY
USING CLUES TO SOLVE A MYSTERY AND READ FOR DETAILS
Use the short chapters in these two mysteries to build reading for detail and comprehension skills. Divide the class into detective teams of two or three students and read aloud Chapter 1 of The Five Lost Aunts of Harriet Bean. Then ask students to meet with their teams and chart what they know about the missing five aunts (names, personality traits, activities). Chart the details as the first page of a team Detective Log (writing journal). Allow time for them to chart their clues and make predictions about the location of each aunt.

Using what they have learned about reading for details, use Harriet Bean and the League of Cheats as a class read aloud to challenge the teams to chart the details for clues about who is cheating in the horse-racing industry. Stop after each chapter to allow time for detective teams to analyze clues found in the chapter and make predictions in their Detective Log.

Miss Malarkey Leaves No Reader Behind
by Judy Finchler and Kevin O'Malley, illustrated by Kevin O'Malley
WALKER In a hunt for a book to entice everyone in the school to read, Miss Malarkey finds a book for even the most reluctant reader.

ACTIVITY
NEW YEAR BOOK HUNT
Do a survey of the students in your school to see what their interests are and what kinds of books they like to read. Challenge students to do a book hunt for their favorite book titles that will fit the different topics that appear on the school survey. Put up Book Topic posters in the hallways so all students can add their favorite titles to the lists. Use the posters in the book (October is Scare Up a Good Book Month or Fifty Nifty Books for November) as examples
to get students started. Hold a "If you like the same things I do" Reading Week.

The Cow Who Clucked
by Denise Fleming
HENRY HOLT Cow loses her "moo" and searches the farm to find her lost voice.

ACTIVITY
ANIMAL VOICES
Young children will enjoy making the animal sounds while the book is read aloud. Help the class create a farm scene on a bulletin board by drawing the animals and putting them where they can be found around a farm. Let students select an animal and find something to recreate the animal sounds, or use their own voice and record the sounds on the computer as an audio file. Scan the pictures they created for the bulletin board and add the sound files to make a class e-book about farm animals. The same storyline can be repeated with animals from different habitats. Assign groups of 3-4 students a habitat and let them write the script for the rainforest, the ocean, a forest, a desert or even the jungle.

Akimbo and the Elephants and Akimbo and the Lions
by Alexander McCall Smith, illustrated by LeUyen Pham
BLOOMSBURY Books about how one small boy makes a difference with his adventures in tracking down an ivory poacher and helping a lion cub abandoned by his mother.

ACTIVITY
AFRICAN ADVENTURE COMPARISONS
During his adventures, Akimbo learned a great deal about two powerful animals of the jungle – the elephant and the lion. In both stories the problems were caused by humans – poachers in Akimbo and the Elephants and the presence of human civilization in the lion habitat in Akimbo and the Lions. Do a Compare/Contrast in these two stories and include what Akimbo learned about each animal's habitat and characteristics. Extension: Use books and the Internet to compile a list of products that are made from ivory. Can ivory be obtained legally? Is there a way to "certify" any of these products as legal and not the product of poachers who have killed elephants for their tusks? Design a brochure that would inform the public about the endangered elephant.

The Revealers
by Doug Wilhelm
SUNBURST PAPERBACKS/FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX Tired of being bullied, three outcasts join forces and, using scientific methods and the power of a local area network (LAN), begin to create a new atmosphere at their school.

ACTIVITY
E-MAIL TO THE RESCUE
Students can choose a message from the story and role-play the content from the perspective of the victim and the bully. In the Writing Center, index cards can be used to list the victim/bully pair and the page number in the book for the incident. Students can gather details about the incident and write their solution for the situation. They might even want to write their own messages and put them into a box labeled "The Bully Lab" for a weekly class discussion.

www.bloomsburyusa.com;
www.walkeryoungreaders.com;
www.henryholtchildrensbooks.com;
www.fsgkidsbooks.com

Download a pdf version here! PDF 440KB

To see the December2006 Children's Books by the Month click here.

To see the November 2006 Children's Books by the Month click here.

To see the October 2006 Children's Books by the Month click here.

To see the September 2006 Children's Books by the Month click here.

To see the August 2006 Children's Books by the Month click here.