An Emotional Menagerie: Feelings from A to Z

Happy National Poetry Month!

I always loved calling attention to Poetry Month in both the public and school libraries because there's no much potential for sharing poems and interacting with an often-overlooked form of literature. I had fun choosing lesson plans relating to poetry for different ages, and An Emotional Menagerie: Feelings from A to Z is brimming with wonderful potential lessons.

Before sharing my lesson ideas, it's important to establish the quality of this book just as a read-aloud. Even if you don't tie lessons into it, these poems are meant to be read to a classroom of students. The book is listed as being for ages 5+, but coming from a Montessori background had me envisioning reading these poems to Early Childhood students (as young as 3).

The book has an emotion assigned to each letter of the alphabet, and each emotion is described with animal qualities. These animals are amazing choices for each emotion; even as an adult reading it on my own, I was impressed with how the animal qualities truly described each emotion. A monkey is naughty, a chameleon changing its colors is uncertain, just for a teaser.

Each poem is six stanzas long, but each emotion gets its own spread, so you can hold the book up as you're reading and the children can take in the vivid illustrations. (I love that each emotion gets its own spread because there's no reading ahead to the next emotion!)

When you use this book with younger students, you can show them the picture of the animal, have them name it, and ask students to share what they know about the animal. After reading the poem aloud, you can ask the students to share what they know about the emotion, or if they've felt it. Then you can discuss how the emotion and the animal relate to each other.

I think this book would be great to use when discussing emotions with younger children. It could also be incorporated into lesson plans if you have a letter of the week since there's an emotion for every letter of the alphabet. The book could also be used as a tie-in when you're studying animals since the emotions and animals match so well.

With older elementary students, I feel like there are several ways to approach this book. You could plan lessons and storytime based on the letter, emotion, or animal. A, for example, is Anger, with a roaring lion. You could read the A poem with Lion Lessons by Jon Agee and compare and contrast the lions. Or you could read it with My No No No Day by Rebecca Patterson and talk about anger.

You could also open the floor up for discussion about emotions before you even open the book. Go through the letters and see what emotions students can name for each letter. Once they guess the emotion that is used in the book, you can then have them brainstorm what animal they think would be associated with that emotion and why. 

I also had a creative writing club with older elementary and middle school students, and I think this book provides great jumping-off points even for that age. You could ask students to think of an emotion for a certain letter and have them write a poem about it. After reading some of the examples from this book aloud, you could ask them to think of an animal, and write a poem about emotions they associate with the animal. For an extra challenge, you could ask them to choose an emotion and write a poem using only words that express that emotion, or only words that start with the same letter as that emotion!

This book is one of those gems that not only gives you a great read-aloud for the classroom or storytime, but also is full of potential lessons for a variety of ages. It's enjoyable to read and will be even more fun to share with students to help activation their imaginations while cultivating emotional awareness.

Back to School Books

It's back to school season, and we've actually been in session for four weeks now! I started library classes by reading several different back to school books to students aging from 18 months to 5th grade.

The biggest hit this year was We Don't Eat Our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins. Toddlers, Early Childhood, and Kindergarten students all loved the silliness of this one. It naturally lends itself to discussing how to make friends, be kind, and consider others' feelings, so it's not only a great read-aloud, but also a great jumping off point for lessons that need to be gone over at the beginning of the year.

School's First Day of School, written by Adam Rex and illustrated by Christian Robinson, was a close second. I read this one to Early Childhood last year so some students remembered it, but you can never read a great book too many times. This book also led to some great conversations about others' feelings - the concept of a school building being nervous is silly, of course, but it loosened students up and helped them think about how others might feel even if you don't know them well or don't think they would feel certain ways based on their actions.

First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg, illustrated by Judy Love, is actually the first book I read to the Early Childhood classes. The twist ending is delightful for both students and teachers, so it was fun to have a teacher in the library (as they are for the first session) to enjoy this book and help the students realize that the twist ending is actually true!

Back to School with Bigfoot by Samantha Berger and Martha Brockenbrough, illustrated by Dave Pressler, was a silly read-aloud. I used this one to talk about how students got ready for the first day of school, but mostly we inspected each page of illustration. This book is vibrant and gorgeous, and there are a lot of hidden gems in the pictures that are worth taking a closer look.

For toddlers alone, we enjoyed It's Your First Day of School, Busy Bus! by Jody Jensen Shaffer, illustrated by Claire Messer. The story is about Busy Bus being nervous as he prepares for his first day of school, but on a simpler level than some of those I read the older students. This book also gives the opportunity for some engagement and movement, for example when Busy Bus tries out his new stop sign, wipers, and horn. I used some of the motions from Wheels on the Bus for those parts.

The Pigeon HAS to Go to School by Mo Willems was, obviously, another hit. Everyone loves the Pigeon, and the endpapers provide a great discussion beyond the book. The front endpapers show empty desks, and the back endpapers have birds sitting in each desk. You can ask students to find each bird (such as an owl, toucan, etc), or have them point to and name each bird.

Family Book Clubs

I'm posting this well after the fact, considering I hosted these book clubs for School Library Month in April, but I've just started thinking about my next round of book clubs and was excited to share these.

April was National School Library Month, with the theme of Everyone Belongs @ Your School Library. To welcome "everyone" (of course just the extended school community, with safety and privacy concerns), I hosted Family Book Clubs for each age level.

Early Childhood students (3-6 years old) read The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat. Families read this book at home, and I sent home two emails of talking points, articles of interest, and discussion questions. 

Parents and children were invited to share their answers at the book club meeting. We also made a craft - a Beekle crown out of metallic gold paper! I created bookmarks of other books written and/or illustrated by Santat. This age group is the largest population in our school, so having a more informal book club meeting with a few questions/talking points, a craft, and of course snacks(!) was perfect.

Lower Elementary students (1st-3rd grade) read The Enormous Crocodile by Roald Dahl. Just like for the younger students, families read the book at home. For this age group I wanted to pick a book that was more challenging than a picture book, but wasn't so long it seemed daunting. I also wanted the book to be one that parents and children could read together, or independently. I sent emails out with talking points and discussion questions.

There are fewer students in these grades than in Early Childhood, so their questions asked more of the students - more imagination, more room to talk and draw. I knew our club time would be a little more structured and that they would be able to explain themselves more... let's say concisely than the younger ones. 

We had snacks at the meeting, of course - books and snacks just go hand-in-hand! We also made a craft - an Enormous Crocodile magnet clip!

Upper Elementary students (4th-6th grade) read Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman. This is the smallest group of students in our school, and of course the oldest. I sent out two emails (in code), challenging them to code secret messages and create their own codes. I was blown away by this group! I had reports from parents and teachers that all they were doing at home and on the playground were creating codes! We had so much fun at our book club meeting, cracking either others' codes and answering each others' secret questions. I also had a scavenger hunt based on trivia questions from the book. I hid clues around the library and let them loose with the first clue, coded of course. The hunt branched off from there, and the winner got a hardback copy of the second book in the series, The Unbreakable Code!

I had so much fun planning these book clubs and sharing the stories with students and their families. I'm already planning another set of book clubs for the fall, with the hopes of holding them every fall and spring, instead of just during School Library Month!