The Legend of the Bluebonnet- children's folklore

The Legend of the Bluebonnet 

Children’s folklore

 

 

Let me just start off by saying how much I love reading this book to my students.  The first time I ever read this book, I cried.  The message is so beautiful and pure and tells a lovely story about how the gorgeous Bluebonnet flower came to be.  If you are from Texas or Southern Oklahoma, you are more than likely familiar with these Spring time wildflowers and the affinity to take family portraits among them.  They also happen to be the state flower of Texas.  This favorite legend is based on Comanche Indian lore.  She-who-is-alone is a little girl who loved her Native American tribe so much.  Her people were suffering from a drought, so this unselfish little girl did what she thought would help end the drought to help her people.  She had lost her entire family to the drought that was plaguing the entire Comanche nation.  The only thing she had to remember her parents by was a special doll they had made for her.  She sacrificed her most beloved possession, her baby doll, in hopes that it would end the drought.  

The Shaman said the great spirits were angry at the selfishness of the people and would not end the drought until they sacrificed their most precious possessions.  She-who-is-alone was the only one who made an unselfish sacrifice in an attempt to help her people and end the drought.  She snuck away and built a fire and sacrificed her beloved doll.  The ashes blew into the wind.  In the morning, she woke up to a beautiful countryside full of beautiful blue flowers.  Her tribe was so thankful and that they changed her name to One-Who-Loved-Her-People.  

 

When I read this book to my students, I have them discuss the sacrifice the young girl made and how they would feel if they had to sacrifice their most prized possession to help others.  What is that item?  Could they make the sacrifice?  How would it make them feel?  

Here is a read aloud version your students will love to listen to:

 

https://youtu.be/TMA7bNsYp5g

The Story of My Life Helen Keller- Young Adult biography

          

The Story of My Life: Helen Keller

Biography- Young Adult

 

This biography of the remarkable Helen Keller was first published in 1903.  It is the true story of Helen Keller who was both deaf and blind from a young age.  She was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama in 1880. When she was just 19 months old, she came down with a fever that would take her ability to hear and her vision.  This triumphant tale chronicles this brave young lady and her challenges as an individual with disabilities.

Helen was an extremely intelligent child who tried to understand her surroundings through touch, smell, and taste.  By the time Helen was 7, she had developed nearly 60 different hand gestures to communicate with her parents.  Helen was often frustrated because of her inability to express herself.  Her teacher Anne Sullivan helped Helen learn the alphabet manual, and she started communicating by finger spelling.  Anne also taught Helen to read Braille and raised type and print block letters.  At the age of 9, she was able to speak and read lips.  

For four years, Anne attended Perkins School for the Blind.  After that, she attended the Cambridge School for Young Ladies to prepare for Radcliffe College.  She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904 with honors and become the first blind and deaf person to earn a Bachelor of Arts Degree.  

We all could learn a lot from Helen Keller and her determination, gumption, and courage.  

 

I would use this young adult tale about Helen Keller’s life with middle school and high school students.  I would set up tasks at tables and have the students rotate through the different stations.  At one station, the students would have to complete the task with a blind fold on.  At another station, I would have ear plugs for the students to complete the task.  At the third station, students would have to complete the task with both ear plugs and a blind fold.  This would provide a hands-on opportunity for students to experience the difficulties and obstacles Helen Keller faced on a daily basis.  The students could then write a journal entry about their experiences and how losing sight or hearing could make their life different.  

 

This video link is a nice updated summary on the life of Helen Keller.  

https://youtu.be/OZfDV6-3qA4

ALMA and How She Got Her Name

 

“What's in a name? For one little girl, her very long name tells the vibrant story of where she came from -- and who she may one day be.”

 

This children’s fiction book is about a young girl named Alma and her curiosity about how she got her name.  You see, her name is not just Alma, it is Alma Sofia Esperanza Jose Pura Candela.  How did such a little person end up with such a big name? She is very concerned about her name long not fitting on the paper and approaches her father with. This concern.  He assures her that her name does fit on the paper and how each part of her name is connected to her family members and history.  Sofia comes from her grandmother who loved books and flowers.  Esperanza is after her great grandmother who longed to travel.  Jose is her grandfather the artist.  As she learns about her namesakes, she realizes that her name is the perfect name for her after all.  When she doesn’t hear an explanation for Alma, she questions her father where the name Alma comes from.  Her daddy explains that Alma is her own name and only belongs to her.   This beautiful book will encourage young readers to embark on their own journey of self-discovery and family discovery.

This would be a wonderful book to teach early childhood students about their name and how everyone’s name is unique and special.  This would be a great book companion to Chrysanthemum or The Name Jar.  Students could compare and contrast the books using a Venn diagram.  Students could be assigned a family project to research the meaning of their name and they could share it with the class.  

Click on this link for more lessons and activities to use with this book

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Alma-and-How-She-Got-Her-Name-Lesson-Plan-Google-Slides-and-Docs-Activities-4714622?st=a46d0b4818d0196a1c0f1e4e676e65b2

Check out this read aloud of “Alma and how she got her name”

 

https://youtu.be/Py7_9ATJDkk

An Elephant in the Garden- Young Adult historical fiction

An Elephant in the Garden: Inspired by a true story

Young Adult Historical Fiction 

 

 

“This elephant in our garden was changing to change my life forever, change all of our lives”..

            

This tale is told by an old frail woman living in the nursing, named Lizzie.  She recounts her time as a young lady during World War II.  She tells Karl, a young man brought to visit her in the nursing home about Marlene. 

Marlene is an orphaned elephant.  Lizzie (Elizabeth) and Karl have become quite attached to her at the Dresden Zoo where their mother is a zookeeper.  The book is set in Germany during World War II.  Elizabeth’s father is fighting with the German army on the front.  When Elizabeth’s mother is told by her director that they must shoot and kill all the dangerous animals, so they do not run wild if the city gets bombed, she takes matters into her own hands and moves Marlene into the back garden to save her.  Bombs begin to fall, and Elizabeth’s family home is destroyed.  It is during the middle of winter, and they must flee their city and avoid the Russian troops that are quickly approaching.  Oh yea, they must complete this covert mission with a giant elephant tagging along.  The family walks with other refugees left to travel through the woods on their own.  They almost freeze to death, but they make it to Aunt Lotti’s and Uncle Manfred’s home.  Their family is not there, but they are met with a stranger in the barn whose aircraft has been shot down.  What will happen next when they are face to face with the enemy?

This novel is based loosely on the dual true stories of zookeepers who saved their charges during the war and the Feb 1945 devastating fire bombing of Dresden, Germany by Allied Forces.  

 

I would suggest this book for grades 4^th-7^th grade.  I would suggest as an activity to write a journal as the main character Lizzie, her mom or the elephant Marlene.  The students would write in the journal as the character’s point of view after reading sections in the book.  How would they feel? What would they do? What do they predict will happen? 

 

Click this link for a short clip of the theater adaptation of this children’s story

https://youtu.be/8F_mSIMQGdA

We are Water Protectors- Native American Children's Literature

We are Water Protectors

Written by Carole Windstorm

Illustrated by Michaela Goade

Winner of the 2021 Caldecott Medal and #1 New York Times Best Seller

Water is the first medicine.
It affects and connects us all . . .

        This beautifully illustrated children's book is an urgent cry and rally to protect the Earth's most precious resource ...water.  We come from water; it nourishes us provides for us. The young girl says her people warn of a black snake that threatens to destroy the Earth and poison the water.  The black snack comes and begins destroying all the water and makes it unfit to drink.  The young girl is determined to be courageous and save her people by keeping the black snake away from her village.  She and her people stand together as one to defend their land and people from the black snake.  They fight for the ones who cannot fight for themselves: the winged ones, the crawling ones, the four legged ones, the plants, the lakes, and the Earth. Nokomis tells the young girl that the water is alive.  It remembers their ancestors and those that came before them.  

We stand 

With our songs

And our drums

We are still here https://youtu.be/jqWTouyaQ-8We are stewards of the Earth.

    This beautiful lyrical children's book is about a young Obijwe girl and her people who are fighting "the black snake" that threatens to destroy their land.  The "black snake" represents the oil pipelines threatening their way of life.  

In the classroom, I would use. Venn diagram to compare and contrast this novel to Disney's Moana.  The stories are both about young female heroins who are ready to help and protect their people and land prosper.  

Click this link for a read aloud of this novel.  https://youtu.be/jqWTouyaQ-8

Code Talkers- Native American Young Adult

Code Talkers: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two 

Native American Literature

Young Adult 

    

     This novel was written by Joseph Bruchac. It is based on historical events, but it is a historical fiction story. Ned Begay, a Navajo man, narrates the story. He refers to the readers as his grandchildren. During the War, Navajo speakers were recruited by the United States military to help Allied forces by using their unique language skills. The main character of the novel, Ned Begay, recounts his childhood where he attended a boarding school for Native American children. The children were taught to abandon their culture and ways of their people and embrace the English language and ways. They are punished if they make a mistake and accidentally speak in their Navajo tongue. He was only six years old when he was taken 100 miles away from his family and taken to the boarding school in New Mexico. They are forced to change and even have their hair cut, which is very important in Native American culture. They are also given English names. The narrator’s given name is Kii Yazhi, but he is given the English name Ned Begay. 

     Ned is small, so he doesn’t excel at sports; however, he is very smart and excels at academics, especially English. When Ned is a teenager, the War is escalating, and the United States military starts looking to recruit Navajos in 1942. Ned joins the United States marines when he is only 16 years old. After he completes basic training, he is finally told that he and other Navajo recruits will be enlisted to be code talkers. Due to difficulty of the Navajo language, the recruits are told that they will be using the Navajo language to create a indecipherable code to use between the Allied forces. Ned and his fellow code talkers are shipped to Hawaii for training. From there, they are sent to the Solomon Islands where they have their first combat. They experience many other battles, but they finally end up in Iwo Jim and Okinawa. The United States forces drop bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which causes the Japanese Emperor to surrender and officially ends World War II. Ned returns home where he furthers his education using his GI Bill to become a Navajo educator. He tells about the racism he and his other Navajo soldiers experienced in their own country. The code talkers involvement in the war was not made public until 1969. Their skills were integral to winning the war. 

    Windtalkers is a 2002 movie about the Code talkers of World War II.  After completing the novel, I would show this movie to my class.  Due to the content of the movie and novel, which includes the harsh realities of War, I would recommend this novel for high school students.  The movie was released three years prior to the novel, but they are both based off the same Navajo soldiers used as code talkers during World War II. Comparison of the main characters in the novel versus their portrayal in the movie would be an excellent activity to complete.  

 

El Deafo- Children's graphic Novel

 

El Deafo -Children’s Literature- Graphic Novel

                                            Written and illustrated by CeCe Bell

 

This graphic novel is a loose autobiographical story about the author’s childhood growing up deaf.  CeCe Bell wore hearing aids and often felt she wasn’t accepted by other children; she felt she was different.  CeCe is frustrated and depressed because of how she is treated, but too scared to say anything because she doesn’t want to lose the few ‘friends’ she does have.  The characters are represented as bunnies, and she uses her hearing aid as a superpower.  Sometimes her teachers forget to turn off their tiny microphones that allow her to hear them in her hearing aid, and she is privy to conversations and information she probably is not supposed to hear.  She adopts the secret nickname “El Deafo”.  As she gets older, she becomes more confident about her impediment and even confronts those people who treat her differently.  She discovers that many of those individuals do not realize how hurtful their actions can be.  She even gains a new friend and sidekick after she reveals her secret persona, “El Deafo” to her new friend.  With age, comes confidence and CeCe realizes that she doesn’t have to hide or be ashamed of her disability, rather she has a different ability and can proudly share her superpower with others. 

 

This link has a read aloud by the author herself, as well as the inside scoop of the story.

https://youtu.be/q5vx-V8SFL4

An extension activity with this book would to be for the class to do a research project on the deaf community.  The students could also learn sign language to learn how some individuals with a hearing impediment communicate.