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An Orange for Frankie by Patricia Polacco

Book : An Orange for Frankie. |. Author : Patricia Polacco |. Age : 4 plus | Book that celebrates the true spirit of Christmas .



 



A true story according to the author and it is about her grandmother's ( Stella) youngest brother Frankie .


Story line :


Frankie stowell was youngest among stowell  boys , he had 3 elder sisters , 2 elder brothers and 3 younger sisters . They all lived in a farmhouse in Michigan , and their property was opposite to a railway line . 


Every day a freight train halts at a station near to their property , and the engineer comes to their farmhouse just to have some coffee and refreshments , and on that particular winter day , Mr. Dunkle  the engineer visited their home as usual along with four shabby hobos ( homeless persons)  . Mrs Stowell who was very kind , served them with some refreshments even though they are not that wealthy to afford .She also provided hot water to the hobos to wash themselves . 


One of the four men was shivering in cold as he had only a coat to wear and not even a shirt inside, frankie provides him his new sweater gifted by his eldest sister , but without others consent, no one knows this act of him even his mom . 


Every year during Christmas the entire family will decorate the fireplace mantle with bough of greens , nuts, apples , cookies and also above all Juicy Oranges . Every kid in stowell family gets an orange .Frankie was always excited and dreamt  to taste the orange .He loved its smell.


Christmas was nearing and their father went to Lansing a nearest city , to pick Oranges for all the 9 children's , but he has not reached back home until the eve of Christmas , due to a snow storm.All the members in stowell family were sad and upset.

Whether their father reached home back? Whether the stowell family regained their happiness  ?whether the family came to know about frankie's act? What happened to frankie's dream? This is the rest of the story . 



Review 


The true spirit of Christmas is not only making wishes and waiting for them become true , but also , giving to others , in any form , particularly those who are needy , without any expectation to get it back .This is one such story which makes the readers understand what does the true spirit of Christmas mean..Expressive illustrations serve as a backbone to the story. 

Also there is a beautiful afterword at the end of the book , which describes a miracle that still happens in the entire stowell family during Christmas . 


There are various explanations as to why Orange is considered  as a great gift those days , some people say it was expensive and was in scarce , some others say that the segments of orange represent the our ability to share what we have with others .


Whatever may be the reason, this is a beautiful and moving story that has to be shared with all your family and friends this Christmas Season.




The smartest giant in town by Julia Donaldson

The smartest giant in town

Author : Julia Donaldson

Illustrator : Axel scheffler

Age : 2 year plus 


 


Storyline


George was the scruffiest giant in a town who usually wears same old clothes and sandals which are untidy . He doesn't want to be the scruffiest giant .


One day george came to know about a new shop in the town which hoards smart dresses , he picks everything new from a smart new shirt to shiny shoes, leaving his old clothes back in the shop ,he starts back  to home with all new outfits . 


On the way he meets a giraffe who is sniffing , as he is feeling very cold , his wish was to have a scarf to cover his neck , George gives his tie to cover giraffes neck and leaves home happily singing a song . 


It doesn't end here , again on the way he meets lots of animals , a goat in a boat whose sail was flown away in a storm , a mouse and his baby mice who lost their house due to fire , a fox who mistakenly dropped his sleeping bag in water , a dog who is unable to cross a mud puddle, George was kind enough to help them , How did he helped them  was the rest of the story . 


A book which helps in teaching kindness , how to be satisfied with what we have and help others .With beautiful and expressive illustrations this book also convey an important message of how to care and help for others.  


Activities :

  Every page in the book has beautiful illustration of an animal, have a discussion with your kid about the various animals , their little one, shelter etc . 

    Vocabulary wall,make a vocabulary wall  of all words learnt in the story , for ex animal names,  clothes.

  Everytime when the giant meets an animal , stop reading and ask the kid to predict what will happen next , this will help in enhancing their creativity .

Hanuman's Ramayan retold by Devdutt Patnaik

Book : Hanuman's Ramayan

Author : Devdutt patnaik

Illustrator : Nancy Raj

Age : 4 plus


  A book about  Ramayan the epic .  Raavan the king  of Lanka  kidnaps Sita , the wife of Ram (prince  of ayodhya) and how ram rescues her with the help of hanuman is the story or to be precise the version  that we have always heard and is said to be written by Valmiki.


 But there are more than 300 versions as per google and this story is one such version where the author tries to convey a gentle story with peculiar illustrations.


 

Storyline:

     Valmiki was the happiest person in the world after finishing his write up about the life of ram , which he called as Valmiki Ramayan.Everyone was impressed , right from Indra the rain god , vayu , Agni, Varuna and the river goddesses .

     But Narad the sage was not impressed reason being he had read a better version of Ramayana .An upset  Valmiki , became impatient and was unable to accept the fact that there was a better version,because as per Narad it was written by Hanuman the monkey and a true devotee of Ram .

     Anxious Valmiki went on searching hanuman to foothills of himalayas.whether he meets hanuman, was he able to read the version which is best according to narad is the rest of the story.


Review 

  

   Story that teaches devotion and ,a monkeys devotion towards his master . A great book to start with , before introducing the epic to the kids .Beautiful Mithila folk paintings were very expressive and it speaks the story . After reading this one hope everyone goes on searching the various versions of Ramayan , like we are doing right now .

 

Library lion by Michelle Knudsen




  The most loved book in our personal library ,unlike the other books in our collection , we have bought this book after hearing the entire story on a children's literacy website . 


 



Storyline


    There was a library , with a head librarian who is very strict in rules , and an assistant . One day a lion enters the library and gets disappeared between the bookshelves.

    

    Mr, McBee, the  assistant librarian runs to the office of the head librarian ( Miss. Merriweather ) to convey the same . She replies by saying that "The lion is allowed to enter the library unless he is not breaking any rules".

 

   After sniffing and rubbing his head against the books , the lion settles itself comfortably in the story corner . sleepy  lion wakes up after hearing the story from the story lady ,stories makes the lion happy and excited , but once the session gets over , worried lion shows his protest by roaring loudly 

     

    As it is against the rule of the library that not to make any noise , the lion was given a strict warning by the head librarian and is allowed to visit the library with a condition that he should not break any rules.


  Being a lion he becomes friendly with  the library members , he serves as a backrest to all the kids during storytime .  The lion was very helpful to the head librarian, but when something terrible happens to her, how he saves her through the only way he knows ( by breaking the rules ) is the rest of the story .


Review :


A story that teaches kindness particularly towards animals , a lesson to kids about following the rules and also breaking the rules is not an offense, if it is done for a valid reason .The illustrations speaks the story , the expressions of the characters explains the feelings Happiness , Sorrow, kindness, excitement, comedy , jealousy etc.


Activities:


Teach about different feelings to the younger kids with the help of the story , particularly illustrations , like happy, sad, excited , angry etc.


Learning adjectives , the story covers lot of adjectives , make a list of the same and discuss with the kids about the various sentences where it can be used .


An open ended discussion with the kids about how to take care of their books . ( like how the lion takes care of the books in the library ) 

The Boy Who Loved math by Deborah Heiligman

This book is the first and the only child friendly biography we have read till now about a mathematician . Book was recommended by a dear friend for my daughter , since dd is a hater of maths , she had a fear that maths is the toughest of all things in the world and this one  came  as a rescue .


The story goes like this....


Paul Erdos lived in Budapest , Hungary with his mama. His mother was a maths teacher, one of the reason why he loved maths ,when she goes for work she used to leave  Paul  with fraulein , fraulein is a rule maker , she keeps rules for everything when to eat, when to read , sleep etc , Paul hated rules.


So Paul started counting how many days are there for summer vacation , so that mama could be with him all day and he can escape from fraulein , that is how all started , he loved counting , he loved numbers , he loved to make new discovery with numbers , at 4 years started asking people their date of birth and time ,with that he can calculate and say how many seconds they are alive in the world from the moment they were born .


He loved prime numbers , when he was 20 he was a famous mathematician and people called him a Magician from Budapest, but even at that age he doesn't know to butter his bread, tie his shoes etc .He can't follow rules so he invented his own way of living . 


How he travelled around the world and how he managed to do things on his own and the discoveries he made along with fellow mathematicians and what is Erdos number and how it is still popular between the mathematicians is the rest of the story .


This is not a book about math, this is about a boy and his passion , it teaches about ones dedication towards his passion ,We learnt a lot of new Words from the book for ex . Epsilon , this is what Paul refers to the kids of mathematicians he visit ( Epsilon means very small amount in math) 


Every page in the book is illustrated with a prime number , In the last page there is a note from the illustrator about various types of prime numbers he used in illustrations on every single page . Doesn't heard of those types and not even about Paul unless we read this book . 


This book will be a definite visual treat for all ,those beautiful and informational illustrations make this a great gift for all those who love numbers . 

 

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