Two Children's Books

Click, Clack, Quackity- Quack- Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin

Type: Children’s Picture Book-Watercolors

Intended for children ages 6-9

Rating: 4 Stars

                Click, Clack, Quackity-Quack is an alphabet story that follows around a duck on a farm while they discover all the different things going on. On every page there is a different letter of the alphabet that starts a sentence bout something that is happening on the farm.

                I thought this book was very cute and would work really well for early readers because of its format. Every sentence starts with a letter of the alphabet, and every proceeding sentence starts with the next corresponding letter of the alphabet. This structure ensures that the reader will have some idea of how to start the sentence, because they will know what letter the sentence is supposed to start with. The pictures in this book are also really helpful for the reader to look at, because they give direct clues as to what the sentence is saying. If the reader gets tripped up on a word like watermelon, for example, they would be able to use context clues within the pictures to determine just what that word is that starts with the W.

                For use within a classroom setting, I think that this book would be really useful. I am actually thinking about using it during a lesson with my current reading buddy, because she gets really tricked up right now with multi syllabic words, and I think this book would be really helpful for her because of all the little clues that she can look for within the pictures to help her out. This is a reading trick that she needs to begin to use when she is reading her picture books, and this would be the perfect gateway book for starting to get her to use that trick. This book I could see working well with either silent sustained reading, or as a read aloud book for the entire class to participate in together.  The repetition in it could be a fun thing for the class to participate in saying together as a group, and the repetition of language and use of picture context clues would make it a good book for a student to read on their own.

Click, Clack, Moo; Cows That Type – Doreen Cronin

Illustrations by  Betsy Lewin

Type: Children’s picture book- watercolor paintings

 intended for children ages 7-10

Rating: 4 Stars

                Click, Clack, Moo’ Cows That Type is a story about a group of cows on a farm who decide that they want better living conditions and amenities if they are going to be giving the farmer their milk. They leave the farmer little notes on the barn door to let him know that there will be no milk unless they get what they want.

                I thought this book was pretty cute. I enjoyed the water color pictures, as well as the connections that I could make between this book and Click, Clack, Quackity- Quack seeing as they were done by the same author and illustrator. This book, however, was not an alphabet story where each sentence starts with a specific letter of the alphabet. This book was a typical story book starring cows as the main characters. I thought that the story line was really cute and clever in the way that it gave human characteristics to the cows and showed the cows taking control of their living situation by asking the farmer for special amenities. It is a fun twist on the typical owner/pet structure that most kids are used to seeing at home where the owner is the one in control and the pet listens to the owner.

                Using this book in a classroom setting would work well, just like the other book by this author and illustrator. There is a certain amount of repetition within the book, which would help beginning readers out with word predictions; it also has different formats of writing within it, which I really liked. For example, you have the regular text of the story which can be found on either the top or the bottom of the pages, but then you also that the little notes that the cows keep leaving for the farmer which can be found in the middle of the page. These little notes look a lot like post it notes, and they are posted in the middle of the picture of the barn door. This would be really good for students to see, so that they see all the different types of things there are out there to read, aside from classically structured children’s books. Just as with the other book by this author, I can see it working well as a silent sustained read or as a group read on a circle rug. Students could participate in saying the repetition out together, and seeing the note form of writing is going to be good for them to see and discover together.