Book Title: Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors
Author: Joyce Sidman
Illustrator: Pamela Zagarenski
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Books
Copyright Date: 2009
Genre: Picturebook – Poetry
Brief Annotation: This beautiful book invites readers to experience the feel, sound, and joy of color. Color is given life as the author and illustrator truly capture the essence of each of the four seasons in a new and unexpected way.
Your Rating (1-5) and why: 5 – This is a lovely book – truly lovely. From the very first page you get a sense that there is going to be something special about this book. Each illustration is a piece of art that is gift to your eyes and imagination. And the words, its as if you can feel the poetry soaking into and filling up your heart. I was surprised by (and thankful for) the strong emotional connection I felt with this book.
Readers who will like this book: Children who aren’t too young, but closer to 5-9 years old, will enjoy this book. This will be most enjoyed and appreciated by children who sometimes like a quieter, more peaceful book experience. Also, adults will love experiencing this book and sharing its beauty with children. This is a book that you will want to return to over and over again.
Teaching Strategy from Yopp & Yopp: Quickwrites (p. 51-52); Quickwrites, before reading the text, can help promote personal connections between the student and the text and stimulate thinking on a topic before reading. This book is about color, experiencing color through all your senses, and using wonderfully imaginative descriptions to describe color – this may be a new experience for students with color. You could ask students to think about summer (or any of the seasons) and put up a list of colors such as yellow, blue and green. Then ask them to pick a color and describe that color thinking about summer – what does that color look like, feel like, sound like, and smell like? Tell them that there are no right or wrong answers – they should write down whatever comes to their mind. Give them a few minutes to write, and then you could have some share in the whole group or break into small groups and share briefly.
Question to ask about this book before a read aloud: See above – and then... Do you have a favorite color? Keep that color in mind as we read through the book. Notice if the author mentions your color and how she has chosen to describe it.
Interest Level (age): 5-7
Grade Level Equivalent (grade): 3.2
List awards: 2010 Caldecott Honor Award, Claudia Lewis Poetry Award, Minnesota Book Award, Cybils Poetry Award, Horn Book Fanfare, Bulletin Blue Ribbon, Booklist Editor's Choice, CCBC Choices 2010, New York Public Library's "100 Titles for Reading and Sharing," ABC "Indie" Best Book, Junior Library Guild Selection
I'm excited to read this book thanks to your enthusiastic review. The fact that you're an artist yourself, and you appreciate the artistic quality of this book, is high praise. I'm glad to know about it.
ReplyDeleteThe idea to do a quick write is smart for getting kids thinking about color and the connections they make seasonally to different palettes. I wonder if instead of a quick write, you could call it a quick draw--not like the old gunfighters, but like sketching an idea quickly: -)