Fox, Mem. 1988. Koala Lou. Illustrated by Pamela Lofts. San Diego, CA: Gulliver Books. ISBN 0152005021.
Plot Summary
Koala Lou is loved by everyone, especially her mother who always says, "Koala Lou, I DO love you!" Koala Lou's mother has more children and no longer has time to always tell Koala Lou she loves her. Koala Lou joins the Bush Olympics with the hope of regaining her mother's attention and love. Although Koala Lou does not win the gum tree climbing event she learns that her mother still loves her and always will.
Critical Analysis
Koala Lou takes place in Australia and this is evident by the animals and plants present in the story. The story mainly takes place in and around gum trees, the true homes of koalas. Other animals present in the story are the emu, platypus, and kookaburra, in addition to many others. Many aspects of the story and illustrations are accurate. The koalas look realistic. Even small aspects that might not be noticed are drawn correctly. One of these aspects is the koala's hands having two thumbs and three fingers. The jealousy of Koala Lou is based on a true occurrence of koalas giving birth to a new baby each year. A koala is weened after one year and will stay near its mother for another year, but is mature and able to live on its own after two years of age.
Many aspects of the book are also unrealistic, but fit the plot of the story. The animals are personified and engage in human activities, like the Olympics. In one picture Koala Lou is shown wearing sneakers, doing push-ups, and lifting weights in preparation for the Olympics. Although these portions of the story would never really occur with animals they could with humans. Children will relate to the events in the book, understanding Koala Lou's yearning for her mother's attention and will be happy with the realization that Koala Lou's mother really never stopped loving her.
Review Excerpts
"A first-rate choice for bedtime, story hour, or reading aloud." -The Horn Book, November/December 1989
"Fox brings out the best in her characters, and also conveys an important message about competition without being strident or didactic. Lofts' illustrations are realistic, whimsical, and almost textured; she gives an additional depth to the animal characters by making their faces (especially the eyes) so expressive." -School Library Journal, January 1990
Connections
Share other books by Mem Fox:
Hunwick's Egg
Shoes From Grandpa
Boo to a Goose
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge
Share information about real koalas. Have children complete a koala craft by coloring precut mother and baby koalas and gluing the baby koala onto the mother's back or into her pouch.
Showing posts with label Module 1. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Module 1. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Module 1: Run, Boy, Run
Orlev, Uri. 2003. Run, Boy, Run. Translated by Hillel Halkin. New York: Walter Lorraine Books. ISBN 0618164650.
Plot Summary
Eight year old Srulik is searching the garbage for food when his mom goes missing, leaving him unable to find his way home. Srulik joins a gang of homeless kids, but when a roundup occurs in the Jewish ghetto he flees to Poland. A group of orphaned Jewish kids who live in the forest teach Srulik how to steal, hunt, cook, and survive on his own. After he is separated from the group Srulik uses the name Jurek Staniak and makes his way from village to village looking for work. Jurek moves on when he is mistreated or when it is discovered that he is Jewish. He manages to survive despite the loss of an arm and many other challenges. In the end he has a difficult time letting go of his fake identity, but he eventually remembers his past and decides to stay in a Jewish children's home and go to school.
Critical Analysis
The power of this story is in the reader's knowledge that it is based on true events. In the epilogue Orlev states that Jurek "told the story of his years in wartime Poland to many people, all of whom thought he was exaggerating." It may indeed seem unbelievable that a young boy would be able to survive such conditions, especially after losing an arm, but knowing that it really did occur helps to draw the reader into the story.
"Although the novel has the pace of a picaresque adventure tale, the life-and-death stakes are always foregrounded in unmistakably straightforward terms: from his immediate family of seven, only Srulik and his older sister, who escaped to Russia before the war, survive. This is one of the better examples of Holocaust fiction in depicting the vagaries of human nature as villainous and heroic acts emerge unexpectedly, even causally, from a shifting wartime population threatened with catastrophe."
Read Run, Boy, Run with other fiction and nonfiction books that take place in and around Poland during World War II. Use a map to try to locate the places mentioned in the books.
Fiction Young Adult Titles:
Along the Tracks by Tamar Bergman
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: a Fable by John Boyne
The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen
Malka by Mirjam Pressler
Torn Thread by Anne Isaacs
Nonfiction Titles:
All but My Life by Gerda Weissmann Klein
The Cage by Ruth Minsky Sender
In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Gut Opdyke
Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps by Andrea Warren
Plot Summary
Eight year old Srulik is searching the garbage for food when his mom goes missing, leaving him unable to find his way home. Srulik joins a gang of homeless kids, but when a roundup occurs in the Jewish ghetto he flees to Poland. A group of orphaned Jewish kids who live in the forest teach Srulik how to steal, hunt, cook, and survive on his own. After he is separated from the group Srulik uses the name Jurek Staniak and makes his way from village to village looking for work. Jurek moves on when he is mistreated or when it is discovered that he is Jewish. He manages to survive despite the loss of an arm and many other challenges. In the end he has a difficult time letting go of his fake identity, but he eventually remembers his past and decides to stay in a Jewish children's home and go to school.
Critical Analysis
The power of this story is in the reader's knowledge that it is based on true events. In the epilogue Orlev states that Jurek "told the story of his years in wartime Poland to many people, all of whom thought he was exaggerating." It may indeed seem unbelievable that a young boy would be able to survive such conditions, especially after losing an arm, but knowing that it really did occur helps to draw the reader into the story.
Other aspects of the story also help to make it seem realistic. Jurek's hair is dyed blond by the sun, he wears a religious medal around his neck, and knows Catholic prayers but he cannot hide the fact that he is circumcised, and this gives him away on more than one occasion. Jurek is able to speak Hebrew, Polish (without a Jewish accent), some German, and learns Russian, and this helps him get to know others throughout the story. The book was originally written in Hebrew and all that remains untranslated are the names of individuals and the use of Pan and Pani with names.
Jurek is always hungry and a lot of attention is given to what he eats. There are berries and mushrooms that can be found in the forest. Many different individuals had bread and sugar cubes. Some families gave him potatoes mashed with lard and fried onions. When a bird was caught it was beheaded, gutted, coated with mud, and cooked. When Jurek was really hungry he even ate raw meat. Jurek was able to catch animals with rocks, a sling shot, and traps made of hair. He learned how to make fires for cooking with matches and with a magnifying glass.
Attention was also given to Jurek's physical state. Shoes wore out quickly so Jurek walked barefoot when it was warm and wore any shoes available during the winter. He was always covered with lice and the people he stayed with would make him bath while they burned his old clothes. His hair was shaved on more than one occasion. At one point Jurek had chiggers and needed a salve. Another incident left him with a splinter that infected his heel and required him to seek help from a priest. When Jurek hurt his arm a doctor refused to treat him and the gangrene arm had to be amputated. Jurek had to learn how to function on his own with only one arm. This made life difficult, but he never gave up.
Review Excerpts"Although the novel has the pace of a picaresque adventure tale, the life-and-death stakes are always foregrounded in unmistakably straightforward terms: from his immediate family of seven, only Srulik and his older sister, who escaped to Russia before the war, survive. This is one of the better examples of Holocaust fiction in depicting the vagaries of human nature as villainous and heroic acts emerge unexpectedly, even causally, from a shifting wartime population threatened with catastrophe."
Hearne, B. 2003. Run, Boy, Run. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 57 (4): 162-63. Wilson Web (accessed June 11, 2007).
ConnectionsRead Run, Boy, Run with other fiction and nonfiction books that take place in and around Poland during World War II. Use a map to try to locate the places mentioned in the books.
Fiction Young Adult Titles:
Along the Tracks by Tamar Bergman
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: a Fable by John Boyne
The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen
Malka by Mirjam Pressler
Torn Thread by Anne Isaacs
Nonfiction Titles:
All but My Life by Gerda Weissmann Klein
The Cage by Ruth Minsky Sender
In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Gut Opdyke
Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps by Andrea Warren
Module 1: The Pull of the Ocean
Mourlevat, Jean-Claude. 2006. The Pull of the Ocean. Translated by Y. Maudet. New York: Delacorte Press. ISBN 0385733488.
Plot Summary
Yann is a smart ten year old boy, but he stands out among his six older brothers since he can only communicate with facial expressions and hand gestures and is only about two and a half feet tall. He wakes up his brothers one night and tells them that they have to leave immediately since he overheard his parents say they are going to hurt the boys. All of the brothers set off on a journey to the ocean. They endure many hardships along the way, only to be locked into a house when they do make it to the ocean. In the end the older brothers are reunited with their parents, who were never going to harm their children. Yann goes missing, but it becomes apparent that this was his plan all along.
Critical Analysis
The Pull of the Ocean is an interesting book since it is told from the point of view of multiple characters. Readers are allowed to experience the story from the angle of the brothers, their parents, and the different people they encounter along their journey to the ocean. Another interesting factor is that the individuals telling the story are reflecting back on what already happened after learning of Yann's disappearance. The reader begins to expect the worst, thinking that Yann has somehow died. Hope reappears in the end when Yann is discovered on a ship.
The boys come from a poor, rural household. They are expected to help out on the farm, but Yann would rather concentrate on his school work. Yann's parents seem to despise him for this, and his mother speaks as though Yann deserved to be hit and mistreated. It is a relief to learn that the parents were going to kill the kittens, not the children, but the accounts of the parents make it clear that life for Yann would have been difficult had he remained at home.
Many characters in the book comment on the way the brothers look. The first description of Yann comes from the social worker. She says, "I can still remember him...his funny little baby hands, red and plump. Dressed in a suit jacket and gray cotton pants, he seemed to have come from another century. Who would dare dress a child this way, if not to humiliate him?" A student who encounters one of the brothers at the train station comments on his bad scent then adds, "it was sad to see how he was dressed: a brown parka that no longer closed, threads of wool hanging from the sleeves of a sweater. The only acceptable item was a cap with earflaps that made him look like an airplane pilot of the past."
The Pull of the Ocean was originally written in French, but the only indicators of France within the book are the names of characters and cities and the descriptions of the places. Yann's family sometimes uses phrases that seem to indicate their rural lifestyle. One of the brothers comments on Yann's missing book bag by saying, "It's the father threw it swimming." In the second chapter Yann's mother says, "If only stupid Corniaud had torn out a piece of her calf, but all he done is bark that yapper." Another interesting aspect of Yann's family is how they talk about each other. Yann and his brothers only refer to their parents as the parents, the mother, and the father. In the end they say that they are shocked when the parents call them children since they have never been called children before. This aspect appears to be more of a comment on the family's relationships rather than a cultural indicator.
Review Excerpts
"The details of the brothers' journey are plausible and realistic, yet Yann remains a deeply mysterious character. Genius? Victim? Manipulator? Saint? Equal parts "Tom Thumb" and Truffaut's The 400 Blows, this story/fable/fairy tale is a powerful portrait of poverty and sibling solidarity, at once tragic and oddly joyful." -The Horn Book, November/December 2006
Connections
Share Tom Thumb by Charles Perrault since The Pull of the Ocean is based on that story.
Plot Summary
Yann is a smart ten year old boy, but he stands out among his six older brothers since he can only communicate with facial expressions and hand gestures and is only about two and a half feet tall. He wakes up his brothers one night and tells them that they have to leave immediately since he overheard his parents say they are going to hurt the boys. All of the brothers set off on a journey to the ocean. They endure many hardships along the way, only to be locked into a house when they do make it to the ocean. In the end the older brothers are reunited with their parents, who were never going to harm their children. Yann goes missing, but it becomes apparent that this was his plan all along.
Critical Analysis
The Pull of the Ocean is an interesting book since it is told from the point of view of multiple characters. Readers are allowed to experience the story from the angle of the brothers, their parents, and the different people they encounter along their journey to the ocean. Another interesting factor is that the individuals telling the story are reflecting back on what already happened after learning of Yann's disappearance. The reader begins to expect the worst, thinking that Yann has somehow died. Hope reappears in the end when Yann is discovered on a ship.
The boys come from a poor, rural household. They are expected to help out on the farm, but Yann would rather concentrate on his school work. Yann's parents seem to despise him for this, and his mother speaks as though Yann deserved to be hit and mistreated. It is a relief to learn that the parents were going to kill the kittens, not the children, but the accounts of the parents make it clear that life for Yann would have been difficult had he remained at home.
Many characters in the book comment on the way the brothers look. The first description of Yann comes from the social worker. She says, "I can still remember him...his funny little baby hands, red and plump. Dressed in a suit jacket and gray cotton pants, he seemed to have come from another century. Who would dare dress a child this way, if not to humiliate him?" A student who encounters one of the brothers at the train station comments on his bad scent then adds, "it was sad to see how he was dressed: a brown parka that no longer closed, threads of wool hanging from the sleeves of a sweater. The only acceptable item was a cap with earflaps that made him look like an airplane pilot of the past."
The Pull of the Ocean was originally written in French, but the only indicators of France within the book are the names of characters and cities and the descriptions of the places. Yann's family sometimes uses phrases that seem to indicate their rural lifestyle. One of the brothers comments on Yann's missing book bag by saying, "It's the father threw it swimming." In the second chapter Yann's mother says, "If only stupid Corniaud had torn out a piece of her calf, but all he done is bark that yapper." Another interesting aspect of Yann's family is how they talk about each other. Yann and his brothers only refer to their parents as the parents, the mother, and the father. In the end they say that they are shocked when the parents call them children since they have never been called children before. This aspect appears to be more of a comment on the family's relationships rather than a cultural indicator.
Review Excerpts
"The details of the brothers' journey are plausible and realistic, yet Yann remains a deeply mysterious character. Genius? Victim? Manipulator? Saint? Equal parts "Tom Thumb" and Truffaut's The 400 Blows, this story/fable/fairy tale is a powerful portrait of poverty and sibling solidarity, at once tragic and oddly joyful." -The Horn Book, November/December 2006
Connections
Share Tom Thumb by Charles Perrault since The Pull of the Ocean is based on that story.
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