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.
Thats such a great idea to have the kids research their names! I love that! Its a great way to learn about themselves and its such a fun project! I looked mine up and it means Irish King haha not that cool but I think some of the kids will find some cool interesting facts.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Aubry! I think that would be a great for kids to also learn about their family members names. It's a great way for students to learn about their lineage.
ReplyDelete