The Alexander Hamilton Library!
Library Life with Mrs. Murphy
There are only nine more library classes after spring break!
How will we fill our time?
Third grade is taking a second look at folktales. With Disney’s Princess and the Frog movie just out on DVD, we thought it might be fun to look at other versions of the classic frog prince tale. We’ve glanced at Jon Scieszka’s The Frog Prince and continued where we are looking beyond the end of the traditional tale asking: did the prince and princess really live happily-ever-after? We looked at Alix Berenzy’s A Frog Prince that has the frog rejected by the first princess making it necessary for him to undertake a journey to search for a true princess of a different mind. Now we are reading The Prince of the Pond by Donna Jo Napoli. We know the prince was turned into a frog. We know some time later the frog was kissed by the princess and returned to human form. But what was life like for the prince while he was a frog? How did he survive? Donna Jo Napoli wondered and created a wonderful frog world for us to enjoy.
Fourth grade is on a round-the-world sailing experience with the book Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. The students have been learning about grabbing their reading audience with powerful openings in their writing. Michael Morpurgo does this with his first paragraph:
“I disappeared on the night before my twelfth birthday, July 28, 1988. Only now can I at last tell the whole extraordinary story, the true story. Kensuke made me promise that I would say nothing, nothing at all, until at least ten years had passed. It was almost the last thing he said to me. I promised, and because of that I have had to live out a lie. I could let sleeping lies sleep on, but more than ten years have passed now. I have done school, done college, and had time to think. I owe it to my family and to my friends, all of whom I have deceived for so long, to tell the truth about my long disappearance, about how I lived to come back from the dead.”
This tale of survival and self-discovery not only has us sailing around the world but seeing how silver linings can sometimes be found within bad events.
Fifth grade has traveled to the Wild West with the book The Legend of Bass Reeves by Gary Paulsen. None of us had ever heard of this African-American but now know that "[i]n his day, Bass Reeves was the most successful federal marshal in the United States." Gary Paulsen takes us through Bass's life - from being born a slave in Texas to becoming a legend himself. In our most recent reading, life has changed for Bass Reeves. He had a chance to win freedom for himself and his mother. When he was cheated out of that freedom the wolf-dog's prediction of change came true. We are learning quite a bit about American history - Native American, African-American, and the Indian Territory (what is now known as Oklahoma).
Alexander Hamilton OPAC: ahs.scoolaid.net
Encyclopedia Britannica Online: school.eb.com
Keep on reading!
Mrs. Murphy
