Gifted Books, Gifted Readers: Literature Activities to Excite Young Minds($38.00Value)

Description

Stretch young minds to creative and productive thought with some of the best literature currently available. Polette shows you how to promote critical thinking, decision making, and problem solving through building excitement for the reading experience and increasing students' active participation in learning. She offers suggestions for creative reproduction, elaboration, rearrangements and transformations of text to help children connect reading content to their own experiences. A wonderful resource for elementary and middle school teachers of the gifted, these books and activities can be used in any classroom. Also an important read for college-level courses on curriculum for the gifted and children's literature. Aiming to help educators of children identified as "gifted," the prolific Polette matches plot summaries for more than 200 children's books (from Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel to the Midwife's Apprentice ) to activities designed to broaden readers' enjoyment and help them "peel the words off the page and get to the ideas underneath." The books are grouped by broad topics or themes: picture books that address perceived needs ("The Need for Beauty, Order, and Harmony," "The Need to Cope with Stress," etc); fantasy and fairy tales; books that explore human diversity; historical fiction; and "Heroines and Heroes." The chapter covering classics and poetry is the work of Joan Ebbesmeyer, reprinted from a 1995 publication. The exercises range from using the Venn diagram to compare titles to creating word puzzles and alternative versions to just pondering Big Questions ("What is the difference between reality and illusion? Give specific examples.") Titles don't appear in the table of contents, but they are listed, along with authors and subjects, in the index. Books published after 1998 are not included, and the controversies surrounding the character of Friday in Robinson Crusoe and the book Brother Eagle, Sister Sky aren't addressed. Still, as a source of ideas, research topics, and discussion starters, this will make a valuable companion to such books as Halsted's Some of My Best Friends Are Books (1994), and similar works. John Peters Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Nancy J. Polette is Professor Emerita and former Professor of Education, Lindenwood University, O'Fallon, Missouri. She is a national consultant and author specializing in reading, gifted education, library media, and children's literature.