Put a Little Love in Your Curriculum
Barbara Auerbach, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 2/3/2009
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Valentine’s Day brings warm thoughts during the coldest time of year. Below are several recent titles for elementary school students that celebrate love, friendship, and other cozy sentiments. Cuddly pets, school romances, unlikely partnerships, overbearing relatives, and runaway kisses add to the seasonal fun.
Teachers in Love and Pets in Tutus
In Ann Whitehead Nagda’s easy chapter book The Valentine Cat (Holiday House, 2008), the class “smartypants” suggests a pet costume party for Valentine’s Day. Jenny is none too keen on this plan as she is about to lose her beloved cat, thanks to her little brother’s asthma. Then the girl comes up with a great idea—if Munchkin could live at school, she could see him all the time. Will the frisky feline make the grade? A convincing editorial for the class paper does the trick. Students can make valentines for their pets or create a class newspaper devoted to them after reading this winning story. Stephanie Roth’s charming illustrations and eye-catching cover, featuring “Supercat” and pet hamster with tutu, will draw reluctant readers.
Student teacher Danielle Parks finds the perfect pet and companion in another kitty in Patricia Polacco’s For the Love of Autumn (Philomel, 2008). When Ms. Parks gets a job, her new students can’t help but wonder if their teacher is married. They get to know the young woman better when her cat Autumn disappears during a storm and they help their heartbroken teacher search for the creature. In the springtime, the children visit their teacher’s home again, this time to plant a garden, and the missing kitten reappears wearing a new collar bearing a mysterious phone number. Children will enjoy reading how the little cat inadvertently brings true love to her owner. Polacco’s signature pencil and marker illustrations capture the humor and emotion of the story. Children can write and share their own stories and connections of how pets bring people together.
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"...and Mr. McCarthy was looking sharp." |
Predictable Pairs and Odd Couples
“We go together like chicken and eggs./We go together like pants and legs.” “Like piggy banks and money…like bees and honey…like ice cream and cone…like dog and bone” this mom and daughter make a perfect pair. Listeners will love completing the rhymes in Todd Dunn’s We Go Together (Sterling, 2007). This simple concept book celebrates love and friendship with delightful couplings. Miki Sakamoto’s humorous, childlike cartoons are as colorful as the matches they represent. Students can write and illustrate their own rhyming pairs of things that go together. For example, we go together like carrots and peas. We go together like chalk and cheese.
Never heard of chalk and cheese? This British expression describes an unlikely pair such as the best friends in Tim Warnes’s comic-style picture book Chalk & Cheese (S & S, 2008). Cheese is an English country mouse 
that decides to visit Chalk, his canine comrade in New York City. They go to a diner, on a subway, in a taxi, to the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, and ice skating at Rockefeller Center. Cheese is as wacky and impulsive as his friend is responsible and organized. The little mouse has trouble keeping up, is frightened of new places, and bemoans the wintry weather. “My nose is cold, my tail is cold, my ears are cold, my paws are cold, even my eyeballs are cold!!” The watercolor and pencil illustrations are hilarious; the frozen little rodent dons an upside-down “I Love New York” coffee cup to keep warm and adopts a pet cockroach to his friend’s dismay. Students can write about a friend or relative that they like or love despite—or because of—their differences.
A Kiss Gone Amiss
While Maurice Sendak’s cheek-pinching, slobbery-kissing relatives inspired Where the Wild Things Are (HarperCollins, 1963), Kyle Mewburn addresses the subject more literally in Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck! 
(Peachtree, 2008). Andy runs and hides whenever overly affectionate Auntie Elsie comes to visit. Be it under the bed, in the chicken house, or up a tree, his clever, determined relative always finds him. Yet, when she stops coming after a camel-riding accident, the tyke wonders, “Where’s Auntie Elsie?” After a month-long absence, she arrives by taxi with a cast and crutches. “‘Auntie Elsie!’ yelled Andy./He flew through the house, along the path and down to the gate! ‘Got you!’ he said.” The tables are turned as the usually reluctant boy embraces his much-missed aunt. Ali Teo and John O’Reilly’s digitalized pencil-and-collage cartoons capture the duo’s dynamic with hilarity; Auntie Elsie, with her purple cat-eye glasses, pillbox hat, and alligator purse, is a formidable, yet good-natured predator. Youngsters can write about a family friend or relative that reminds them of Auntie Elsie.
In Jane Yolen’s whimsical rhyming Mama’s Kiss (Chronicle, 2009), a mother’s kiss is likened to a baseball gone wild. She throws one to brother, but “Baby burps, the kiss goes 
wide,/Through the window and outside.” Outdoors it hits a dog on the nose, smacks a cat, bumps a bee, and sticks to a bear. When Baby Bear sneezes, the kiss lands on dad jogging by who brings it home where it slides off Mama’s head, and bounces off sister’s cheek before it is caught. She explains that, “A kiss can go the world around,/And come back where it should be found.” Daniel Baxter’s pen-and-ink illustrations portray the runaway kiss as a pair of lipsticked lips with cupid wings. In Else Holmelund Minarik’s classic story A Kiss for Little Bear (HarperCollins, 1968), another kiss/smooch goes awry when Bear draws a picture for Grandmother, which he asks Hen to deliver. Delighted, Grandmother then asks Hen to bring a kiss to her grandson. Hen passes the kiss to Frog, who passes it to Cat before Skunk receives it. He, in turn, passes it back and forth to a female skunk until Hen declares, “Too Much Kissing!” and takes the kiss directly to Little Bear. Maurice Sendak’s charming illustrations include Little Bear’s drawing, suspiciously reminiscent of a “Wild Thing.” This story makes a great holiday reader’s theater choice.
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