Captivating young minds through exciting and unusual experiences, adventure book are often a favorite genre for many. Readers are able to get wrapped up in the unique and often hazardous expedition their characters take, letting them explore obstacles like never before. As these books take readers through bold and hazardous experiences, it is important to make sure the events in the book are appropriate and encouraging for young readers. One major guideline when selecting adventure books would be to know your audience. Know who your readers are and what types of experiences they can handle in their readings. Questions to consider include:
- Are events/details too graphic?
- Is their enough detail? Too many details?
- Are the characters well developed? Is their too much action?
- Are the events believable?
- Are the events to violent?
- Are there any biases?
- Are there other books/resources that might help the student better understand what the characters are going through?
Examples of Quality
Far North (1997) by Will Hobbs
With consideration of Lexile measure and text complexity measure of CCSS, this books suggested appropriateness would be for the grade span 4-5. However, with consideration for content, I would suggest this book would be better suited for 5th-6th graders. However, if using this text as a read aloud, I would use it in 4th grade. With teacher and peer support, this book seems it would be an appropriate fit for this age range. With themes of culture, diversity, person vs. nature, and characters/values, this book is easy for all students to learn from and relate too. We all have situation in our lives where we must depend on the knowledge of others to get us through difficult times. With this in mind, it is evident that the author does a quality job of making the internal debates and frustrations of the main character easy to see. As previously mentioned, these struggles and internal conflicts can easily be related to authentic issues a local, national, and global levels. Students should be encouraged to discuss how and when they should trust and question others to make decisions for them. These discussions and other resources should be used in order to support student understanding of the text.
The Whipping Boy (1986) by Sid Fleischman
According to Lexile measure and the CCSS text complexity measure this book is deemed an appropriate read for 2nd-3rd graders. I would agree with this. Although some of the vocabulary may need support provided for understanding, students should be able to easily grasp onto the ideas of this text easily. If using this book as a read aloud, I would say it would be appropriate for 2nd graders. The themes in this book are often ones students at this age could relate to. A few of the themes brought to life in this book include: courage, reward, friendship, and building understandings of others. Overall, this book is very descriptive. The details shared in this book can help students really work on their ability to inference and visualize what they are reading. Overall, this book could have somewhat of a connection to authentic local issues for students such as friendship and building understandings for others. As the main characters face this challenge with one another, students could be encouraged to discuss how their perceptions of others change once they really get to know them. Overall, as suggested above, I believe this book would need vocabulary instruction and discussion in order to increase students understanding and growth from reading this text.
No comments:
Post a Comment