3 Picture Books

Math Curse by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith
Although I am not studying to be a math teacher, I often hear many educators complain about the lack of math-related literature. Similarly, I often hear many students complain about math--especially higher level math--because they don't believe they use it on a regular basis. This book addresses both issues of complaint because it simultaneously employs literacy skills while demonstrating how everything in life can be viewed as a math problem. I enjoyed how the illustrations reflected the narrator's thought process; when he was overwhelmed, the pictures also became overwhelming. The narrator's frantic and scrambled thought process is finally put to ease when he makes sense of fractions--the hardest aspect of math. While he is finally content with understanding the endless amount of math problems around him, the book concludes with the science teacher explaining that everything in life can be viewed as a science experiment. I thought this was a clever way to end the book because it challenges the readers to observe and understand life as a science experiment. Although this is a math-related picture book, it encourages its readers to employ all content areas in their every day lives.

Hoops by Robert Burleigh
 I really enjoyed this picture book because it read like a poem, containing multiple rhetorical devices that ranged from onomatopoeia to alliteration to personification. While the pictures helped tell the story, I enjoyed how the words alone painted an illustration of a basketball game. I think students often have trouble reading, understanding, and interpreting poetry because they feel that the ideas can be too abstract. I thought this book did a good job of incorporating both abstract and defined ideas with a colorful range of rhetorical devices.

Bad Day at Riverbend by Chris Van Allsburg
This book is unique on all different levels. At first glance, I was convinced that it had gotten in the hands of a young child because the illustrations are scribbled with the colors of crayons, as if it were meant to be a coloring book. But when I touched the pages, I realized that these illustrations looked this way on purpose, an aspect that definitely captivated my interest. The picture book tells of a story set place in the small western town of Riverbend. One day, the a bright light appears and the world around them gradually becomes covered in this mysterious slime. Ned Hardy, the sheriff of Riverbend, goes on a mission to find this light in hopes that it explains the origins and spreading of the slime. As the story develops, each page has more and more crayon scribbles on it. Just as the sheriff and other residents of Riverbend are about to reach the once distance light, the story flips to a realistic illustration of a boy coloring in the book's pages. Suddenly, the story ends with the coloring book closed and a line that says "And then the light went out." While the story initially seemed to contain elementary content, it definitely required some higher level thinking once I finished reading it. I could see middle school students engaging in thoughtful and analytical discussions regarding multiple aspects of the internal and external stories.