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Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Book Detectives ~ Martha the Movie Mouse

mmm

For our third week of this round of Book Detectives, we read Martha the Movie Mouse, another charming picture book by Arnold Lobel. This one is a fun read-aloud due to the rhyming verse. (I try to select books most of the kids will not have read, but I like finding gems by familiar authors.)

This time we talked a little about protagonist, antagonist, and conflict—including how “man” can be any human or an animal/thing with human characteristics such as thought and emotion. Mice seem to be a popular choice for exposing man vs. society conflicts and themes of prejudice in children’s books. I wonder why that is? [ha!]

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2 comments:

Karen said...

do you have the kids read the book before they come or read it all together there??

Heidi said...

I read the book to them. That's partly why I like using picture books so much. The kids really enjoy the read-aloud, and the book is super fresh in their memory when we go to discuss it. We often re-read parts of it to aid in the discussion--or look at the pictures for more clues. That also means that I am able to use more obscure books and the families don't have to find or purchase books. (And we don't have to deal with kids not having read the books...)