Picture books in the middle school

Teaching Pre K-8, Nov/Dec 1997 by Hurst, Carol Otis

Picture books are for readers of all ages - and that definitely includes kids (and teachers) in the middle school

Thank goodness it's no longer a rarity to see picture books in upper elementary classrooms, but we still don't see many of them in the middle school. Yet this very useful and often beautiful genre may be the very thing you're looking for to bring several disciplines and their teachers together.

Let's start with the obvious: art. But let's go right past the art of illustration and plunge into the fine arts. Before you do anything, however, invite the art teacher in for a visit. She or he will certainly have valuable things to say as you present picture books about paintings.

Many picture books can extend the study of great works of art. Bijou Le Tord's A Blue Butter,ly: A Sto about Claude Monet (Doubleday, 1995, ISBN 0-385-31102-8) is less a story about Monet than an exploration of the artist's palette and subjects.

Another picture book that provides a delightful introduction to Monet is Christina Bjork and Lena Anderson's Linnea in Monet's Garden (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1987, ISBN 91-29-583144). Here, a little girl and an older friend explore not only Monet's garden, but his world as well. After Linnea expresses interest in Monet's paintings, the friend takes her to Giverny to visit the artist's garden and house.

Background books. Don't leave Monet without introducing your students to What Makes a Monet a Monet? by Richard Muhlberger (Viking Penguin, 1993, ISBN 0-670-85200-7). This is one of a series of 12 books that provide background on painters' lives and works. Some students may want to use one of the books as an inspiration for developing their own picture books, perhaps based on the work of another artist.

The art teacher can't get away until you've at least opened Wendy Kesselman and Barbara Cooney's Emma (HarperCollins, 1993, ISBN 0440-40847-4) and Jon Agee's tongue-in-cheek Incredible Painting of Felix Clousseau (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990, ISBN 0-374430).

Stay with the fine arts, but switch the focus to classical music, and invite the music teacher in to lend a helping hand.

Barbara Nichol and Scott Cameron's picture book Beethoven Lives Upstairs (Orchard, 1994, ISBN 0-531-5) offers some insight into Beethoven's later years. In this fictional story, set in 1822, Beethoven becomes a tenant in Christoph's house. The boy writes exasperated letters to his uncle describing his irascible neighbor, who pounds the piano after he takes the legs off it, runs around naked and rages in anger. Christoph and the reader come to understand the reasons for the fury as the deaf composer works on his Ninth Symphony.

If the book does what I think it will, you'll want to try Esther Kalman and Laura Fernandez's Tchaikovsky Discovers America (Orchard, 1995, ISBN 0-53143) next.

While the music teacher is still around, present Dennis Haseley and Stephen Gammell's The Old Banjo (Aladdin, 1983, ISBN 0-68971380-0), which accents the magic found in many instruments, not just the banjo. You can also pull in some jazz through Rachel Isadora's mood piece, Ben's Trumpet (Mulberry, 1979, ISBN 0-688-10988-8).

Focus on science. Step away from the fine arts and call in the physical science teacher, the natural science teacher and the history teacher to join you in presenting Letting Swift River Go by Jane Yolen and Barbara Cooney (Little Brown, 1992, ISBN 0-316-96899-4).

This gem tells how a government project of the 1930s created a water supply for Boston (60 miles away) by damming the Swift River to make Quabbin Reservoir. To do this, they had to drown several quaint New England towns completely. The story is told from the point of view of a little girl living in one of those towns.

Here, in one picture book, we have a look at small town life in the thirties, the ethics involved in destroying the town, the mechanics it took to construct the reservoir and transport the water, the adjustments that had to be made and the profit that the construction achieved.

Don't let the history teacher get away without showing her or him these picture books that are big on history:

Cleopatra by Diane Stanley and Peter Vennema (Morrow, 1994, ISBN 0-10413-4), a biographical picture book with good, clear text and illustrations that bring ancient Egypt to life.

Katie's Trunk by Ann Turner and Ronald Himler (Simon & Schuster, 1992, ISBN 0-02789512-2), a book that shows the humanity on the part of the Tories and the Rebels in the Revolutionary War.

Pink & Say by Patricia Polacco (Putnam, 1994, ISBN (399-22671-0), which personalizes the awful price paid by the young, the old and the innocent during the Civil War.

Rose Blanche by Roberto Innocenti (Harcourt Brace, 1996, ISBN 0-15-200917-5), which lets us see a Nazi concentration camp through the eyes of a compassionate young German girl.

Hang on to those science teachers long enough to show your students Seymour Simons' wonderful photographic books that explore space, volcanoes, earthquakes and the human body. Then show them Lynne Cherry's A River Ran Wild: An Environmental History (Harcourt Brace, 1992, ISBN 0-15-2005420), which looks at the history of New England from the point of view of a river and the price paid for industrial progress.