A New Beginning

May I just begin this post by saying how much I love being a librarian?  I began my teaching career almost three years ago and started out teaching second grade.  This year I switched to the library and have enjoyed it so much.  I like seeing different grade levels, teaching one subject, and having different groups of students come through my door every 50 minutes. 

I feel like I keep learning constantly throughout this year.  Since there is no library curriculum, I have had to create my own and it is one of the hardest things about my new job.  As a result of my short time frame with the students I end up teaching a lot of mini-lessons.  As I keep creating more and more I realized my time could help benefit others.  So I decided to create this blog to help out all my fellow librarians and teachers!  I'll be posting lesson ideas and book reviews to help you out with all those tricky concepts and give you great mentor texts to fill your library.

To start out I thought I'd review a book that I've read within the past semester.  So here we go!

Enemy Pie

by Derek Munson

illustrated by Tara Calahan King



A young boy begins to have trouble when a new neighbor, Jeremy, makes it onto his enemy list.  Luckily his dad has the solution - spend the whole day with Jeremy (being nice to him) while dad makes an enemy pie.  By the end of the day, the protagonist learns that maybe his enemy is not an enemy after all.  But will he let his enemy-turned-friend eat the Enemy Pie at the end of the day?

This book is so cute!  Anyone that teaches knows how hard it is for little humans to deal with relationships.  We've all had those kids that can't be together in the classroom or playground because they just can't seem to get along.  Young students can definitely relate to the feelings of our young protagonist as he describes his desire to put disgusting items such as worms and weeds in the Enemy Pie.  Your students will love this story!

Another great thing about this book?  It is on Storyline Online!  If you haven't discovered this website you are missing out!  The Screen Actor's Guild has created this site where famous actors and actresses read aloud stories.  There is fun music in the background and some stories even have the illustrations animated.  It is a great option for when you need to fill in a few minutes between lunch and recess, when your voice is hoarse from yelling all day, or when you want to mix it up and use your SmartBoard instead of getting an ab workout by showing the book to the whole class on every single page.  They have tons of titles, so check it out when you get a chance!  (To get to the video for Enemy Pie, click here.)

Now I know we're all about practicing skills while reading aloud, so let's break it down here.  This is a great book to practice predictions since there are some surprises and your kids' imaginations will fly.  You can also use it to teach students to find the moral or theme of a story.  And let's be honest, it's a great one to read aloud to that class that just can't seem to get along most of the time.  We've all had them.  And they need this book.

If you use the book make sure to comment below and let us know how you used it!  Until next time, happy reading.