Ally-saurus & the First Day of School
by Richard Torrey (Author,Illustrator)
Booktalk: You can call her Ally-SAURUS! When Ally roars off to her first day at school, she hopes she’ll meet lots of other dinosaur-mad kids in class. Instead, she’s the only one chomping her food with fierce dino teeth and drawing dinosaurs on her nameplate. Even worse, a group of would-be “princesses” snubs her! Will Ally ever make new friends?
Snippet: Feeling much better, Ally-saurus began to chomp her sandwich with fierce teeth.
“ROAR! This is how dinosaurs eat!”
ROARRRRRRRRRR!
Soon the whole table was roaring and chomping.
Six Traits Mini Lesson
Trait: Ideas Where do book ideas come from? On his blog, Torrey shares this:
Two years ago I scribbled the first draft of the story….
Notice that the character is a boy at first? Ideas are always evolving… The main character of this story became a girl who loves dinosaurs. And her name is a clever twist of the name of an actual dinosaur, the Allosaurus.
Throughout the book, Ally acts like a dinosaur.
Ally-saurus began to chomp her sandwich with fierce teeth.
True to character, the “Ally-saurus” talks like a dinosaur too.
“ROAR! This is how dinosaurs eat!”
On the page before this, the children seated at the table talk about their favorite things: dinosaurs, dragons, lions, and a new lunchbox. Three of the four children like creatures that roar, so the idea builds as the pages turn and Ally makes new friends with vivid imaginations just like hers on (as it says in the book title) the First Day of School.
Copyright © 2015 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.