#5 - Children's Books

The first book I chose was entitled Now Hiring: White House Dog by Gina Bazer and Renanah Lehner.  It is a fictionalized version of how the Obama family chose the First Dog without ever outright naming the family.  The book starts off with the sentence, “One spring day in the most important house in the land, two sisters pressed their noses to a window and waited for a dog”.  The picture shows the White House.  As the book goes on, it’s never specifically mentioned that this is where the president of the United States lives or that these two girls are meant to represent the daughters of the president.  The book assumes familiarity with both the White House and the current president throughout.  This is something that can be easily dealt with my preteaching these concepts.  The book also has the girls posting a help wanted sign and having dogs show up for “interviews” – children may be unfamiliar with this process.  In addition, the unnamed parents mention world figures who are arriving for a party hosted by them.  At the end of the book, the children end up choosing one dog and having the rest of the dog serve as a “canine cabinent”, a concept that may be unfamiliar.  However, it could also be said that even children familiar with American culture may not know the positions listed (secretary of state, chief of staff, secretary of commerce, etc).  This book could be a good way of introducing certain governmental concepts and familiarizing children with them, so it would be useful to be ELL students and native speakers.  To help cement the concepts for ELL students, it could be helpful to create word or concept maps of each new concept introduced.

The second book I picked was Dusty Locks and the Three Bears by Susan Lowell.  This book assumes a familiarity with the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”.  It depends on that familiarity because it shifts the language and makes the vocabulary more challenging by making it more “Western”.  For example, Papa Bear doesn’t just shout that someone’s been eating his porridge or sitting in his chair – He “got really riled. ‘BEAN RUSTLER!’ he roared. ‘CHAIR BUSTER!’  That sort of vernacular could be difficult for a student who is just learning English because it is an entirely different way of speaking.  Word webs again would be helpful here.  A teacher could even do them using dialects – Papa Bear calls Dusty Locks a rustler, someone more formal might call her a thief, another person a robber and still another a pilferer, etc.  The repetitious nature of the story is helpful, of course, but the vocabulary and setting of the story could be very difficult for an ELL student because they reflect one very specific aspect of culture.  Reading a more traditional or telling students a traditional version of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” could help students be better prepared for this story.  They will have to focus less on making sense of the events and can look more at the unusual language and syntax coming their way.