My 9 year old son and I just finished reading Crispin: A Cross of Lead, by Avi. I read it to him at bedtime, and I think if you’re going to introduce any 9 year old to this book that is the way to do it. I was able to explain it to him as I read. I doubt most 9-year-olds have the background knowledge of pre-Reformation England to really understand it.

It’s interesting to me that this book won the Newbery award in 2003. There’s been a lot of discussion on the library lists and blogs about the relevance of the Newbery in the past few years and I think this book is a good example of the problems with the award. I’ve read about half of the Newbery award winners (and more than half of the honor books) and in many cases I don’t agree with the selection. Not that I think the choices aren’t deserving, but in many cases I feel the books that were given an honor (as opposed to the top award) are more appealing to kids, faster-moving, and more universal than the actual winner. Now that I’ve read Crispin: The Cross of Lead, I feel the same way about the 2003 winners. I loved both Hoot and The House of the Scorpion and I usually have no problem booktalking either book or suggesting them on the fly to my 4th and 5th graders - but I don’t feel the same way about this book. That’s probably not the only criteria the Newbery folks use to give the awards - but that’s my #1 criteria: can I sell this book to the kids in my library. And this book, for me, is a hard sell. The same goes for the winners of the last few years - I happened to love The Higher Power of Lucky - but how to get my kids to want to read it? And forget Good Masters, Sweet Ladies! My kids lack the background knowledge to understand this book. When I read it, it’ll be out loud to my son.

That said, I did enjoy this book and we were both on the edge of our proverbial seats during the final confrontation. I did have a bit of a hard time buying the character change from Crispin - he got a lot of confidence awfully fast for a kid who didn’t even have a name until the past couple weeks of his life. But I guess that’s the power of love!

Some resources for using Crispin: The Cross of Lead in the classroom:

• A study guide for Crispin: The Cross of Lead
• Video interviewing Avi, from Reading Rockets, where he talks about the struggle of writing - as a writer myself I love what he says about having trouble deciding what to say next a hundred times a day. From such a prolific author this means a lot! He also talks about his dyslexia. This could be really inspirational for kids who struggle with writing. 
• A great page of suggested booktalks for Crispin: The Cross of Lead.

Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, is a wonderful picture-book biography about Wilson Bentley, the man who first photographed snow crystals. It’s a wonderful story of perseverence and focus and perfectly relevant, too: even though the events in this book took place well over a hundred years ago, who doesn’t see the wonder in that first falling snowflake?

The pictures are gorgeous, and in fact, the illustrator, Mary Azarian, won a Caldecott medal for the woodcuts she uses to portray Bentley’s life. The text is pretty fantastic, too. It’s a longish book, for a picture book, but when I’ve read it to 6 and 7 year-olds they stay riveted to every word. Part of it is Martin’s wonderful, descriptive text: Bentley thought “snow was as beautiful as butterflies, or apple blossoms,” and part of it is the detailed illustration.

Snowflake” Bentley was a truly inspirational man, and even small children can recognize that his life illustrates a life with purpose and meaning, and his devotion to finding a way to photograph snow personifies the idea of keeping a dream alive.

I know I’m a week late for the Day of the Dead (El Dia de los Muertos), but at my school we’ve been celebrating all week long, and I probably will do some mini-celebrations this coming week as well. The school in which I work is 87% Hispanic, and the majority of our kids’ families come from Mexico or Central America, so studying Day of the Dead, while presented to the kids as studying the holidays of “other cultures” (that’s the curricular link), is actually putting a little time and energy into a holiday most of them are very familiar with. They LOVE telling me what they do in their families. They LOVE that I care what they think. And they also love reading books about it, because no matter what they might do in their family, the truth is that we are not in Mexico or Honduras or El Salvador, so we all can learn a little something about how it’s done in other places.

Day of the Dead, by Tony Johnston, is a great little (and I do mean little: it measures 5×5″) book in which a large Mexican family readies itself for the holiday. They cook, they shop, they prepare…all the while telling the children Espérense! Wait! Finally, the day comes and the family gathers up all the food and decorations and heads to the graveyard where they build an altar to their loved ones and finally have a feast.

It’s a beautifully illustrated book, and while small, can be used in an intimate setting or with a document camera, if you have one available. It’s not non-fiction, but it comes pretty close, since the plot is essentially festival preparations and then the holiday itself.

After we read this book we made masks of Senor Calavera, or, as some of the kids called him, Mister Eskeleto. You could also do some papel picado, since the cover and some of the interior illustrations are reminiscent of the traditional paper cutting craft. We topped off our Day of the Dead festivities with a great little music video called “Viva Calaca,” which the kids told me means living skeleton or living bones. Two warnings about this video: first, while highly entertaining, it’s also pretty violent (hey, we’re talking about the Day of the DEAD here) and even has a “sexy” moment; and two, the song will stick in your head AND NEVER LEAVE if you listen to it over and over again, as I did last week.

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Another excellent book for The Day of the Dead is Yuyi Morales’ book, Just a Minute. This book features Senor Calaveras (this is the Day of the Dead connection), who comes knocking on Grandma Beetle’s door, ready for her to come with him…but Grandma Beetle is too busy to come with him just then. She has way too much to do! Just a Minute’s subtitle is “A Trickster Tale and Counting Book,” and the fun part of the book is for kids to realize WHO is the trickster in the tale. They always guess that it’s Senor Calveras, but of course, it’s Grandma Beetle.

This book got a Pura Belpre medal for its illustrations. My favorite is Senor Calaveras having a temper tantrum when he realizes that he may never get Grandma Beetle to come with him.

This is a very fun book to read aloud because, in addition to the marvelous illustrations and Grandma Beetle’s innocent (?) trickiness, there is also a natural call-and-answer sequence to the book. I have the kids practice Grandma Beetle’s responses to Senor Calveras - “Just a minute!” a few times before we start, and they love yelling it out to him as he slowly loses his patience with the not-so-naive Grandmother.

To top off this book, you could do a Senor Calavera mask or a skeleton puppet or eat some of the delicious feista foods Grandma Beetle prepares, but I have a sequencing activity that the kids and I do together using our interactive whiteboard.

Martina

Catalina

Josephina

Cucaracha…

Beautiful muchacha!

Won’t you be my wife?

So say Martina’s suitors in this wonderful retold tale of Old Havana, written by Carmen Agra Deedy and illustrated by Michael Austin. The best thing about Martina, the Beautiful Cockroach: A Cuban Folktale is how wonderful it is to read aloud. Reading it out loud is so fun, you can almost hear Tito Puente in the background.

Martina the Beautiful Cockroach starts with Martina, the most beautiful cockroach in all of Old Havana, readying herself to meet potential suitors. She worries that she won’t know how to pick from all the eligible bachelors who want to woo her, but her grandmother tells her the secret to finding out who will make the best husband. Martina is to offer them a cup of coffee, and then “accidentally” spill it on their shoes. How the beaus react to this accident will show her at their worst, and she’ll know their true temperament.

One by one, the suitors come to visit: the overblown Rooster, the piggish Pig, the slimy lizard…and one by one, they fail abuela’s coffee test. Will Martina ever find true love? Maybe…Perez the mouse is quietly waiting for his audience with Martina, and he has a Cuban grandmother too!

This book is a Pura Belpré honor book for 2008, and it’s easy to see why. Fun to read, full of quirky cultural references, this book teaches that beauty is as beauty does…and Cuban grandmothers always know best.

The Spanish version is also available: Martina, una Cucracha Muy Linda: Un Cuento Cubano