What makes a family? This was the subject of a quick write that served as my first homework assignment of graduate school. I could probably write an entire book on this subject, but I kept my response to a page. To sum up my thoughts on this topic, and the truths within my heart, for you:
Blood doesn’t make a family- love does.
Summary
The Wild Robot is a novel that epitomizes my above statement. Peter Brown’s work tells the story of what happens when the main character, Roz, finds an unexpected family for herself on her new island home. Initially, the inhabitants of the island are afraid of Roz because she is so different from them, but after she adopts an orphaned gosling as her son, the animals quickly learn that this strange robot is no monster. Rather, she is a valuable piece of the puzzle to their own survival- just are they are to hers.
What special meaning does this book convey to you? Do you think this is a worthwhile theme for elementary children? Explain.
I love the central message of this book. The idea that every individual is an essential part of a given community is so powerful- whether those individuals be on an island or in a classroom. I also love the gentle way this book reminds us that families, like people, come in all different shapes and sizes. Roz herself is quoted saying, “There are many different types of mothers,” (Brown, 2016, p. 125) as she seeks to explain to Brightbill why their family is different from those of his friends.
Both themes, community and family, are critically important to consider and promote in the elementary classroom. The reality that students come to school with vastly different experiences and realities is beautiful and so often taken for granted. In her article “Story as World Making”, Kathy G. Short explains that “The challenge of teachers is not to judge students by what they are lacking, but instead to evaluate their strengths” (2012, p. 11). While she is referring directly to the stories that students will bring into the classroom and share, I would argue that students themselves cannot be separated from their stories because our stories make us who we are as people. Whether we share them with others or not, those stories have an impact on those around us because they influence how we interact with our community and the world beyond.
Classroom Connections
It is so easy for us to recognize the ways in which we are different from other people, but it is sometimes far more difficult to recognize the ways that we are the same. For me, this book could naturally lends itself to a “Who are you? Who are we?” project. For this, I would ask students to create a mini-presentation about themselves telling us anything about them that they want us to know. This could be about their family, their hobbies, their likes and dislikes. Then, I would break them into small groups to form a collective biography where they would seek to find similarities between themselves and their classmates. Finally, we would come together, as a whole group, to create a collective biography for our class. Through this process, students should come to realize that while we are all individual people, we, like the inhabitants of the island that Roz lives on, have things in common.
Summary
Jess Keating’s What Makes a Monster? is an informational text that provides readers with an inside look at some of the world’s scariest creatures. With photographs, fun facts, and an engaging structure, the pages of this book are filled to the brim with information about some of the weirdest, and most misunderstood, “monsters” on our planet today.
What factual information did you learn? Did anything surprise you? How do you know if this information is accurate?
I learned so much new information about a variety of animals while reading What Makes a Monster? including the fact that there is an animal called a goblin shark that not only looks fearsome but uses its powerful jaws as a vacuum to suck up their prey. According the Keating, the goblin shark is considered a living fossil which means that it can provide us with clues about the history of life on earth (2017, p. 26). I was surprised to learn about the assassin bug in this book. Apparently, this bug’s diet consists entirely of ants, but instead of “discarding the exoskeletons of its victims, the assassin bug uses a sticky substance to glue them onto its back” (Keating, 2017, p. 20). Why would it do this you might wonder? Keating explains that there are many reasons these bugs make use of the bodies of their prey. For one thing, the ant bodies provide a sturdy armor that protects the bugs from predators, but the exoskeletons also mask the assassin bug’s natural scent which allows them confuse their own prey (2017, p.20). I know that the information in this book is accurate because the author, Jess Keating, has a Masters of Science in Zoology. Her background as a zoologist has well equipped her to write books in her “World of Weird Animals” series.
Classroom Connections
On Keating’s website (or her Twitter profile depending your preference), she provides fun facts about animals all around the world. She even links these facts to articles that tell readers more about the animal. In my own classroom, I would love to have students use these fun facts to become an animal expert themselves. We could conduct our own “Zoologist Convention” where students presented their animal research to one another as well as to members of our school community. This activity could be especially fun because students would have the opportunity to explore an animal from anywhere in the world that interests them.
So what do these books have in common?
The obvious connection between these books is the wild and the animals that live there. Both books focus on this setting and these characters, but they do so in very different ways. Peter Brown’s The Wild Robot provides a fictional narrative of what he imagines living in the wild to be like from the perspective of an outsider (Roz the robot). Jess Keating’s What Makes a Monster? provides an in depth look at real animals and information about them given her own knowledge and experience in the field.
Beyond that, these books are connected through their central ideas about monsters. In The Wild Robot, the island inhabitants refer to Roz as a monster due to her differences from themselves. They aren’t sure what she is or why she is there, but they interpret her differences to mean danger. The book What Makes a Monster? ponders this idea as well. Does different mean bad? Does different mean scary? Because of these commonalities, these books could easily be paired together in a text set within the elementary classroom.
Final Thoughts
What makes a good book? As I turned this question over in my mind this week, I continue to come back to one single answer. A good book is one with which students can relate. This can occur as a result of the students’ interest in a given topic or because a single element, event, or character reminds the students of something in their own lives. A good book allows readers to connect to their text in a variety of ways that are meaningful to them. In the article “Story as World Making”, Kathy Short claims that stories are “the way our minds make sense of our lives and the world” (2012, p. 9). I would also add that a good book is one that prompts a reader to read more because it intrigues them and allows them to view themselves as an active member in a community of readers. We can see this in Colby Sharp’s “Readers Can Do Anything” as he recounts the story of a struggling reader in his own fifth grade classroom who comes to love books given the proper support and resources. In the article, Sharp states that, “If reading brings us joy, we will read more” (2018, p. 41), and this is evident in his story about Travis. As teachers, I think many of us are familiar with the reality of student frustration with reading, but by promoting students lives as stories themselves, and providing them with appropriate resources, I think that anyone can be a reader and, like Sharp, “I believe that readers can do anything” (2018, p. 41).
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