The Wise Old Woman By: Yoshiko Uchida

     This is a folktale from Japan retold by Uchida with compassion and grace.   Uchida is widely acclaimed for her stories about the Japanese-American experience.  Other stories written by Uchida include: Journey Home, A Jar of Dreams, The Best Bad Thing, The Happiest Ending, and The Magic Purse.
     Other than wonderful grandparents, children have a hard time relating to elderly people.  They live in two completely different worlds and have very little in common.  Very often children grow up under the impression that elderly people are useless.  This story explains to children through a magical story why we should cherish the elderly and listen to their wisdom.  If the son had left his mother to die in the mountains as he was instructed to do, he would have never known how to solve the three impossible tasks. But because of his mother's wisdom, the village was saved.

Caldecott Honor Book - Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad By: Ellen Levine

     I chose this book to read because we have an upcoming Civil War/Underground Railroad unit and I thought it would be a great addition.  Ellen Levine, author of this book along with Freedom's Children and Darkness Over Denmark, has always been drawn to stories of people who struggled for justice or just ordinary people who did extraordinary things.  She stumbled upon this story while reading a book published about the Underground Railroad.  She had an idea to take Henry "Box" Brown's story and tell it to children all over the world.

     I enjoyed reading this book and can not wait to share it with my students.  At first I thought it might be a bit scary for fourth graders because it is a true story and illustrates the horrors families in slavery faced.  Yet she also includes how these slave families longed to love and grow together just like our families do today, and in the end Henry finds his free life.  This book allows children to understand the horrific things slaves went through during their lives and closes with a message that all of us - red, yellow, black and white deserve to be free.

Caldecott Honor Book - What Do You Do WIth A Tail Like This? By: Steve Jenkins & Robin Page

     I absolutely love this book!  It was a great teaching tool to use in the classroom while we were learning about animal adaptions.  My students especially enjoyed taking the book back to their desks and reading the additional information in the last few pages of the book.  The illustrations were very colorful and the students were actually able to create a lasting visual memory in their head for later assessment.  This is definitely a book I plan to add to my personal classroom library.
     Other books written by Steve Jenkins include sisters & brothers, Living Color, Move!, I See a Kookaburra!, Next Stop Neptune, Prehistoric Actual Size, Actual Size, Biggest, Strongest, Fastest and Dogs and Cats.  The only other book by Jenkins that I have read is Biggest, Strongest, Fastest which I enjoyed and found educational, but it wasn't as wonderful as this selection.

Caldecott Honor - How I Learned Geography By: Uri Shulevitz

     


     This book is not only a Caldecott Honor Book, but has also earned the following awards: American Library Association Notable Children's Books, An Indie Next Kids' List Great Read, Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, Parents' Choice Honor Books, Charlotte Zolotow Award / Honor Book, NCSS-CBC Notable Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies, Publishers Weekly Best Children's Books of the Year, School Library Journal Best Books of the Year, and many more!
     I had considered reading the book to my fourth grade class, however I scanned through the pages and thought it best not to because I have several refugee students that would be able to relate too much to fleeing to a new country because of war and poverty.  Again, I believe it very important for people that experienced tragic events during their life to write about them and share with generations to come.  I would very gladly share this book with my own children, but do not find it appropriate to use in my current classroom setting.  
     At the end of the book the author included an autobiography that explains how this story is based on a true story.  It includes the only photograph he has of himself as a child, a map he drew after moving to Africa at the age of ten and a picture of the central marketplace in Turkestan that is actually included in the illustrations of the story.  
     Shulevitz is a very successful author and has written several other Caldecott Medal and Honor Books such as: The Moon in My Room, The Secret Room, Snow and so many others.  

Caldecott Honor - First The Egg By: Laura Vaccaro Seeger

    


     Seeger is an Emmy-winning artist and the author/illustrator of several other children's books such as: The Hidden Alphabet, Lemons Are Not Red, Walter Was Worried, and Black? White? Day? Night!  All of these books were named Child Magazine Best Books of the year and ALA Notable books.  Her most recent book is Dog and Bear.
     Seeger does an amazing job answering the age-old question- "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" with her illustrations and clever use of shapes and colors.  This book reminds me of the timeless classic The Hungry Little Caterpillar, because each page displays a bit of color and anticipation of what is going to be on the next page.

Julius Lester - Guardian

     The first few chapters of this book did not hold my attention. I believe it was because I had a hard time getting to know who each character was and what their role in the story would be.  I was unable to put the book down after the fifth chapter, and I'm still not sure if that was because I liked reading the book or if it was because the plot continued to thicken as the story went on.

     I did have a hard time relating to the story and found 99% of it very offensive and disgusting.  I'm not sure I would feel comfortable asking a teen to read this as part of a literature class.  However, Lester does an amazing job portraying the life of a white boy during a very difficult time in history.  The imagery within the story clearly gets across the point he is trying to make and leaves you breathless.  

     There is a bibliography at the very end of the book that describes his life and numerous lynchings he actually witnessed as a child.  It is very important for people such as Lester to write about these type of experiences so that future generations never forget the hate crimes that happen to destroy various groups of people.  This book left me pondering this question, "Would I have had the courage to speak up?"