Book Talk 11: Chrysanthemum

 

 Chrysanthemum

 Author: Kevin Henkes

Reading level: Ages 4 and up

Chrysanthemum loves the name her parents picked out for her, it is beautiful! Until one day when she starts kindergarten and all of the kids start making fun of her name. “A chrysanthemum is a flower. It lives in a garden with worms and other dirty things” they would tease. Chrysanthemum would get really upset, and although her parents tried to cheer her up it wasn’t enough. Chrysanthemum wanted a new name. Then the children meet their music teacher Mrs. Twinkle, they loved her. Mrs. Twinkle was pregnant and she announced to the class that she was going to name her baby the prettiest name she had ever heard, and that name was Chrysanthemum. After that all the kids wished they had flower names too. 

I love this book because it talks about a difficult childhood drama that happens all the time in a cute little story. I remember as a kid my teachers would always pronounce my name wrong. The kids would then laugh and make fun of my name and that would hurt my feelings.

I would read this book to my class and talk about what they learned from the book. Hopefully they learned that it is not nice to make fun of other people’s names. After I would have each student do some research on their name and what it means. 

Book Talk 10: Olive And The Big Secret

 

 Olive And The Big Secret

Author & Illustrator: Tor Freeman



Reading level: Ages 4 and up

This is a fantastic book to read to younger children. Olive And The Big Secret is about a girl named Molly who shares a big secret to her friend Olive. Molly asks Olive not to tell anybody, but Olive is just so tempted to let everybody know the big secret. Olive ends up telling her friend Joe who tells Matt who tells Lola who then goes and tells Molly. Molly is pretty upset because her secret was out. 

In this book Olive learns that keeping secrets is very hard and that if you tell other people’s secrets you can get in trouble. 

I decided to do this book for my second read aloud as well because I really enjoyed the moral of the story about keeping secrets. The secret in this book is that Molly has a crush on somebody. I know t hat in elementary school kids sometimes get teased and get made fun of for having a boyfriend/ girlfriend or for having a crush on someone. So this book would be a good way to talk to the kids about how teasing hurts others feelings. You could also go more into depth and  talk to the students about what secrets you should keep to yourself and which ones you should tell an adult.