Author of the Month

I love doing author studies with my kids. Sometimes we go more in depth with the author's work than others. But one thing is for sure. If you introduce your students to a fabulous author, all of his or her books will disappear off your book shelves! 

I've decided each month to highlight one of my favorite authors and some of the different ways we use their books in our classroom!

To start us off in January...

Over the last year I have fallen in love with everything by Oliver Jeffers. He is such a fabulous author and illustrator. Most people know him by his illustrations in:

but if that is all you have read you are MISSING OUT!!

As we were reviewing our comprehension skills after we came back from break, I decided that we would read a bunch of Oliver Jeffers' books to help us out!

Our bulletin board kind of summarizes some of the things we have done with his books so far...

We started off with his four books about the boy and we used those to help us go deep with a character.

First we put the books in order by publication date...

Then each day we read one and analyzed what kind of person the boy was. I love how my kids kept noticing lots of the learner profile!

{it's sticking!}

I also love how easy the boy was to draw! (My artistic talents are quite limited!)

Next up we read STUCK! 

That is definitely in my top 10 favorite books! It is hilarious! I was excited to find some videos to go along with it. {See here, here, and here} They helped explain some of this thought process and his style of drawing. So interesting for the kids as they work to think like authors! We made our own version as a writing activity, and used a similar thought process for putting our items in order by size! That helped us the think about telling a story in a logical order.

Of course we added our items to the tree. 

Then we read

That was a great way to practice retelling a story.

We are reading through his newest book right now! 

I am contemplating having the kids work on an story for a different letter too, I may make it a workshop station. Or maybe using it to build a dictionary of ideas of things to write about.

Now, after reading quite a few of his books at home, I had come to see Oliver Jeffers as a really humorous author...

and then I read

I was reading it aloud to my boys at home. 

I read until about half way through,

and then I flipped back a couple pages, 

and then I read it again, and I couldn't read it out loud anymore 

...

I'm like the world's worst person for crying while I am reading a book 

(cannot read Stellaluna or Thank You Mr. Falkner out loud without getting weepy.)

It is such a beautiful book. Beautiful.

But what a great way to show kids how authors can bring about a variety of emotions from their readers. I really need to find out more details about the background of that book.

There are lots of interesting interviews I found with him.

One for teachers to check out--here. It includes a video of his book making process, but the whole interview is not appropriate for kids. ;)

The other is an interview by a group of third graders found here.

He has so many great books! Be sure to check him out!