picture book Archives - Page 685 of 688

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.

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!)