picture book Archives - Page 707 of 712

The Mermaid’s Shoes
by Sanne te Loo (Author/Illustrator)

Booktalk: On the last day of vacation, Mia finds something special on the beach–a mermaid’s shoes!

When she puts them on her feet, she knows she has found her true identity. She’s really a mermaid! She makes her own mermaid’s tail and goes on a quest to find a place to fulfill her destiny. Is it the local aquarium? Maybe the river that runs through the town? In the end, this mermaid finds the perfect place to perch.

Snippet:
Mia still wore her mermaid shoes as she fell asleep. Her dreams flowed with friends from the sea. Fantastic fish with spots and stripes swam around her. One even looked like a horse.

Six Traits Mini Lesson

Trait: Sentence Fluency After Mia finds the swim fins at the beach, she puts them on and wears them throughout the story, even when she goes to sleep!

Mia still wore her mermaid shoes as she fell asleep.

After she falls asleep, we see her dreams–in the words–and in the art on the page.

Her dreams flowed with friends from the sea. Fantastic fish with spots and stripes swam around her. One even looked like a horse.

Trait: Word Choice The details of her dreams flow in the art and in the words. Notice the use of alliteration here. The two middle sentences use words that begin with f and then words that begin with with s, both sounds that the sea makes.

Her dreams flowed with friends from the sea. Fantastic fish with spots and stripes swam around her.

These alliterative words make the sentences pleasing to read aloud. Sentence fluency and word choice work together with a poet’s touch in this translation from the original Dutch.

Dinotrux Dig the Beach
by Chris Gall (Author/Illustrator)

Booktalk: Fed up with steamy summertime Jurassic jungles, the mighty monsters are getting hot and grumpy, and they need a vacation…. Time to roll on down to the beach! Tyrannosaurus Trux might be able to “hang ten” on his surfboard, but not all of the trux feel so at home near the water. Can they organize their skills to dig up the beach and build the best sandcastle ever?

Snippet: MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO
the summers were so hot they never seemed to end.
DINOTRUX ruled the earth!
The jungle was steamy, bugs flew everywhere,
and the Dinotrux were getting grumpy and overheated.
They needed a vacation.

Six Traits Mini Lesson

Trait: Organization The beginning of the story sets up how the story will end.

Art Note: The opening of this story is on the very FIRST page of the book. Starting the story before the title page is a decision that is made when the book is designed. This is an unusual set up, but it was done in service to the story. Pages 2 and 3 do show the book title, but they also show the characters arriving at the beach, so the story is moving forward visually. (All of the publishing information usually found on page 4 appears inside a wide tree branch on page 2, another book design decision.)

On the first page of the story, the setting is introduced first:

MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO
the summers were so hot they never seemed to end.

Then we meet the main characters:

DINOTRUX ruled the earth!

And now that we know WHO is in the story, we find out what the story problem is:

The jungle was steamy, bugs flew everywhere,
and the Dinotrux were getting grumpy and overheated.
They needed a vacation.

In the middle of the story, we see how their vacation went.

See a snippet in the book trailer.

On the very LAST page of the book, after the story problems are all solved, we see the final ending. Just like a movie, the final image is the OPPOSITE of the first image we see. The beginning of the story and the ending of the story are opposites. The change that occurred because of the main characters’ actions is there for all to see. Ahh…satisfaction!