picture book Archives - Page 684 of 687

The Legend of the Beaver’s Tail
by Stephanie Shaw (Author) and Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Long ago Beaver did not look like he does now. Yes, he had two very large front teeth, but his tail was not wide and flat. It was thick with silky fur and vain Beaver was inordinately proud of his glorious tail. (Based on an Ojibwe legend.)

Snippet:
“This tail is the tail to end all tails!” Beaver said to Deer. “I’ll bet you wish you had one like this.”

Deer said, “Beaver, it is a fine tail, but what I truly wish is for some tender grass for my family to eat.”

Six Traits Mini Lesson

Trait: Conventions Using dialogue adds more to the story–more insight into the characters and more punctuation! The dialogue itself is punctuated and the dialogue tags are punctuated, too.

The punctuation for the dialogue goes inside the quotation marks. The punctuation for the dialogue tag goes outside the quotation marks.

“This tail is the tail to end all tails!” Beaver said to Deer. “I’ll bet you wish you had one like this.”

When the dialogue tag comes before the dialogue, the punctuation for the dialogue tag is added before the quotation marks, too.

Deer said, “Beaver, it is a fine tail, but what I truly wish is for some tender grass for my family to eat.”

Wherever the punctuation goes, there is only a single space after it. (Double spacing after a sentence is a carryover from the days of the manual typewriter!)

Doyli to the Rescue: Saving Baby Monkeys in the Amazon
by Cathleen Burnham (Author)

Booktalk: With the help of her family, ten-year-old Doyli rescues endangered, orphaned monkeys from the perils of native hunters and the black market. At her island home in the Peruvian Amazon, she nurtures the little monkey orphans until they are old enough and strong enough to be released them back to their natural habitat: the Amazon rainforest.

Snippet:
As Doyli swept, she spied a dugout canoe paddling toward shore. Steering the canoe was the Yagua Indian hunter from the day before. Doyli ran down to greet him just as his canoe scraped ashore. Without saying a word, he handed her a limp, red howler baby. She took the monkey, nodded thanks to the Indian, and watched him paddle away.

Six Traits Mini Lesson

Trait: Word Choice An entire scene takes place in these five sentences. The word choices make the scene come alive.

What was happening as this scene opened?

Doyli was sweeping. She saw a canoe coming.

That is a simple way to describe what happened in the first line. For children just learning to read, this very simple explanation would work best. For older fluent readers we can add more words. Let’s look again at what the first line really said.

As Doyli swept, she spied a dugout canoe paddling toward shore.

With word choice, simple verbs are replaced with descriptive ones:

saw changes to spied

coming is now paddling

Adding specific details lets the reader “see” the scene more clearly:

a canoe becomes a dugout canoe

coming turns into paddling toward shore.

The action is still the same. Doyli was still sweeping as she saw a canoe coming. Adding small details with a word choice edit made the writing much more vivid.

It’s Nonfiction Monday!