Blog: #kidlit Book of the Day - Page 1338 of 1360

Goodnight Football
by Michael Dahl (Author) and Christina E. Forshay (Illustrator)

Booktalk: A celebration of football, friendship, and family from the opening kick off to the final whistle with rhyming text and a gentle ending for the youngest fans.

Snippet:
It’s the end of the week,
it’s the best of all sights–
beneath the night sky
lies a field of bright lights!

Watch the book trailer.

Six Traits Mini Lesson

Trait: Word Choice This picture book story is told in rhyme and one of the key elements in a rhyming story is word choice. Like prose, poetry is written in paragraphs. A poetry paragraph is called a stanza. The poetry stanza on the first page of the story is four lines long.

It’s the end of the week,
it’s the best of all sights–
beneath the night sky
lies a field of bright lights!

Notice the use of end rhyme in this stanza. The word at the end of the second line:

it’s the best of all sights–

rhymes with the word at the end of the fourth line:

lies a field of bright lights!

The words at the end of the second and fourth lines rhyme perfectly!

The website Literary Devices defines perfect rhyme this way:

“A perfect rhyme is a case in which two words rhyme in such a way that their final stressed vowel and all following sounds are identical e.g. sight and light, right and might, rose and dose etc.”

When the words rhyme perfectly they are a delight to read aloud. When the words are close but not quite the same, something doesn’t sound quite right. Finding just the right word is essential for writing in rhyme. As Mark Twain once said:

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by Today’s Little Ditty.

Tulip and Rex Write a Story
by Alyssa Satin Capucilli (Author) and Sarah Massini (Illustrator)

Booktalk: When a package arrives from Grandma with a notebook for Tulip and a new leash for Rex, these two friends gallop to the park for a very special kind of walk–a word walk!

Snippet: “What would you like to do today, Rex?” asked Tulip. “We could read our storybook, or play pretend . . .”

Rex scratched his ear. Those both sounded fun.

Six Traits Mini Lesson

Trait: Voice How do you bring a dog character to life in a story? You have to make a choice. Will the dog act like a real dog? Or will the dog be a human in disguise? How your dog “talks” in the story will let readers know who your dog really is.

This picture book page begins with a question. The human child in the story is talking to her dog:

“What would you like to do today, Rex?” asked Tulip.

Notice the use of quotation marks. These words are spoken aloud. This is dialogue.

After the initial question, the child offer some suggestions:

“We could read our storybook, or play pretend . . .”

The quotation marks in this sentence tell us that it is also spoken aloud. What will Rex’s answer be?

Rex scratched his ear. Those both sounded fun.

There aren’t any quotation marks here. Rex is NOT speaking aloud.

But we know what Rex is thinking:

Those both sounded fun.

The third person limited voice brings readers inside a character’s mind. This is the perfect voice for a dog character that acts like a real dog. This dog scratches, barks, and wags his tail throughout the story. On every page of the book, Rex acts like a real dog.

At the same time, the third person limited voice shows readers what Rex the dog is thinking. This allows the writer to fully develop Rex’s character while following the rules of the real world, a world where dogs don’t talk.

Throughout this story, the little girl speaks aloud and then readers see what the dog thinks. The third person limited voice is used on every page to bring this delightful story to life. (Read it to see how Tulip and Rex gallop to the park and use the new notebook to write a story with the words from their word walk. Yes, this story keeps the promise made in the book title!)