Looking for new Canadian books for your literacy program? The Ontario Library Association has the Forest of Reading program which lists their top ten books published every year in Canada. Students vote for their favourite book and they make great choices! Each age grouping is named after a tree found in Ontario. This blog features some of my favourite winners from the Blue Spruce program. Many schools run the program and you can find the books in your school library or your local public library.
Are You a Cheeseburger? By Monica Arnaldo Blue Spruce Winner of 2022
It’s easy to bring Science, Art, Drama, and Writing to life with plenty of laughs as Grub the raccoon finds a seed named Seed in the trash and they become friends. Grub hopes that Seed will grow cheeseburgers so he plants and tends Seed with care. The pair become friends as they see the world from different angles above and below ground, giving us a chance to talk about different viewpoints.
Before reading this book I like to check students’ background knowledge and show photos of raccoons. We can all share what we already know about these “trash pandas” and find answers to our questions. I also like to have seeds on hand for students to examine. This story gives an opportunity for outdoor experiential education where we can look for seeds on plants growing outside and learn about the various ways seeds travel.
The idea of growing a cheeseburger is also a wonderful jumping off point for creating art. Students could draw cartoon style trees that can grow pizza, fries, chocolate cake or whatever they can imagine. There is a nice music tie-in with the song, “On Top of Spaghetti”, which has a meatball that gets accidentally planted and grows into a meatball tree.
Give this book a try, your students will be very happy!
Harley the Hero by Peggy Collins
Blue Spruce Winner 2023
Any story about a heroic dog will be a class favourite. Harley is an exceptional service dog who works with an elementary teacher. Harley saves the day in more ways than one by making the classroom a very special place every day and taking care of the teacher and a frightened student when the fire alarm goes off.
Based on a real dog named Stanley and an Ontario elementary teacher, this book gives us the opportunity to understand more about invisible disabilities like PTSD and how helpful service dogs are. Students will benefit from learning the protocols for how to treat a working service dog as they are becoming more and more common and students may be able to share experiences they have had with service dog encounters in public.
A natural extension of this story is to research and write about pets and to collect stories of the benefits that pets have on people’s lives. On the flip side, students also enjoy sharing ideas about animals that would not make good pets. Once their imaginations are engaged it’s time to have them demonstrate their thinking by creating an ideal pet. They can write, draw, build or dramatize their ideas. This kind of open-ended task gives students a chance to express themselves in their preferred format and they can have the freedom to explain what makes their ideal pet in writing or by sharing orally with the class.
Happy Reading!
Brenda
