Authors

	Authors

In my Kindergarten class, I like to introduce the students to books using Author Studies. Each week or two, we do a different author study that goes with our science or social studies units. To see more about an author study, click on a book, or scroll down the page.


Dr. Seuss	Lois Ehlert	Eric Carle	James Marshall


Kevin Henkes	Margaret and H. A. Rey	William Steig	Dav Pilkey


Mo Willems	Karma Wilson	Tomie DePaola	Laura Numeroff



	Dr. Seuss			http://www.seussville.com

Some of the Dr. Seuss books we will be reading (there are many, many more):
	The Cat in the Hat Horton Hears a Who Horton Hatches an Egg One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish The Sneetches Green Eggs and Ham	Our first author study of the year is on Dr. Seuss. We will be reading books by Dr. Seuss and learning a little bit about him. Some things to ask your child at the end of the week: What is special about Dr. Seuss's name? (That it is a made-up name.) What are some of the books that Dr. Seuss wrote? Which Dr. Seuss book is your favorite? We will be using the seussville.com website in class this week, so after your child has played some of the games in class, you might want to check it out! (The link is next to the hat, or you can just click on the hat itself.)



	Lois Ehlert			Interview with Lois Elhert
Some of the Lois Ehlert books we will be reading (there are many, many more):		For our Lois Ehlert author study, we will be talking a lot about colors. Ms. Ehlert uses a lot of bright colors and interesting textures in her illustrations and the children will be learning to identify colors during this unit. The link above is to an interview with Ms. Ehlert. The students will be watching the interview in class, but you may find it interesting as well.
	Eating the Alphabet Color Zoo Planting a Rainbow Waiting for Wings


Activities that go with this author study:
Planting a Rainbow After reading, students make their own rainbow garden and write a simple sentence about their picture.
Waiting for Wings After reading the book Waiting for Wings, the students play this game: Butterfly, butterfly, fly away. Butterfly, butterfly, don't delay. Butterfly, butterfly, fly so high. Butterfly, butterfly, touch the sky. Butterfly, butterfly, turn around. Butterfly, butterfly, touch the ground. Butterfly, butterfly, quick as a wink. Find a (color) flower and stop to drink. Students follow the actions in the rhyme and then at the end, find that color flower in the room.* *This activity comes from another teacher, you can see more about her lessons at: http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/i_like_bugs_.html
Color Zoo After reading Color Zoo, students make their own shape animals. This is a good chance to start talking about shapes as well as colors. Some students will choose to copy Ms. Ehlert's animals, and others will try to make their own.						(The pictures on the left are from Ms. Elhert's book. The ones on the right are done by my students. The top one is an ox, the bottom one is a deer.)




	Eric Carle		Eric Carle's Home Page
Some of the Eric Carle books we will be reading (there are many, many more):			Interview with Eric Carle
	A House for Hermit Crab The Mixed-Up Chameleon "Slowly, Slowly, Slowly," said the Sloth The Very Hungry Caterpillar	One of the first things we noticed about Eric Carle is his use of collages. On his website, you can find more information about how exactly he paints his tissue paper and uses it to make his books. We also noticed that like Lois Elhert, Eric Carle's books often have strangely sized pages.



Our main project for the Eric Carle unit is to make a very hungry caterpillar of our own. Each student decorated a plate with the sentence "I like to eat _______" and then we use the student plates as the body and make a red plate with eyes for the head.



	James Marshall	A Biography of James Marshall
Some of the James Marshall books we will be reading (there are many, many more):
	The Three Little Pigs Little Red Riding Hood Goldilocks and the Three Bears Cinderella Hansel and Gretel	James Marshall illustrated many fairy tales, so during our James Marshall unit, we will take the opportunity to talk about fairy tales and some of the elements of a fairy tale. We will also look at James Marshall's illustrations which often hide funny little details that add to the story told with the words.



	Kevin Henkes		Click on Lilly to go to Kevin Henkes's home page.
Some of the Kevin Henkes books we will be reading (there are many more):			Click on Weberly to go to a special Wemberly site by Harper Collins
	Chrysanthemum Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse Julian, Baby of the World Sheila Rae, the Brave Wemberly Worried	Kevin Henkes writes and illustrates his own books. Most of his books use mice as the main characters and he now has several books out with the main character, Lily. All of his mouse books are about little boy and girl mice who are having problems that would be very familiar to a pre-school to Kindergarten age child. Some of his mice worry too much, some are being made fun of, some get in trouble at school, and some are jealous of a new brother, but all of them are very easy for children to relate to. During this author study, we will focus on making connections between the characters in the books, and the students' lives (text to self connections).



	Margaret and H. A. Rey		Click on George to go to the official PBS website, learn more about Curious George, and play some fun games!
Some of the Margaret and H.A. Rey books we will be reading (there are many more):			Click on the yellow hat to read more about H.A. Rey's life.
	Curious George Curious George Flies a Kite Curious George Goes to the Hospital Curious George Takes a Job	Did you know that Curious George had to run away from the Nazis? It's not a joke, or the plot of one of his books, it's the real story of Hans Augusto and Margaret Rey who escaped Paris just ahead of the invading German army. They fled on bicycles and of the few important things they could take with them, the manuscript for Curious George was one of them. (This information from the above biographical link.) You can also check out The Journey That Saved Curious George, a biography about the Reys.



	William Steig		Click on Shrek and Donkey to go to William Steig's homepage.
Some of the William Steig books we will be reading (there are many more):			Click on Brave Irene to go to BookPals and hear former Vice President Al Gore read this classic story. (You may have to click "more stories" to find this one.)
	Shrek! Sylvestor and the Magic Pebble Brave Irene Pete's Pizza	The very first William Steig book we read was Shrek! The children thought it was neat that a movie that so many of them were familiar with had started as a book. As we read other William Steig books, we focused on the problems in the books and how they were solved. Most books use a problem/solution model and getting used to looking for those elements helps with students' reading comprehension.



	Dav Pilkey		Click on Dog Breath to go to Dav's Web Site o' Fun!
Some of the Dav Pilkey books we will be reading (there are many more):
	The Hallo-Wiener Dog Breath Dragon's Halloween Kat Kong	Most famous for his "Captain Underpants" series of chapter books, Dav Pilkey writes books that appeal strongly to modern day children. Some of his plot lines are a little different -- a dog whose breath is so bad that it knocks two burglars unconscious, for example. But children tend to find him to be hilarious. As a child, Dav had a hard time in school (which you can read all about on his website), so he also serves as a role model for students who maybe don't feel as successful in the classroom as some of their peers. Dav is also still in the business of writing books for children, so students can look forward to his next project!



	Mo Willems		The Pigeon will be upset if you don't click on him!
Some of the Mo Willems books we will be reading (there are many more):
	Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! Knuffle Bunny My Friend is Sad	Mo Willems started out writing for Sesame Street and later got into writing picture books. His first picture book, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus was published in 2003. One of the nicest things about Mo Willems' work is that all of his main characters are figures that kindergarteners can draw themselves!



	Karma Wilson		Karma Wilson's website
Some of the Karma Wilson books we will be reading (there are many more):
	Bear Snores On Bear's New Friend Bear Feels Sick Bear Wants More	For our Karma Wilson unit, we will be studying her "Bear" series, which includes several books about a great brown bear who sleeps through the winter. The "Bear" books feature repetitive rhyming text that is fun to listen to and read aloud. We will look for rhyming words and talk about what parts of each book repeat. We will also study bears and other animals in winter and how they cope with the coming cold.


	Tomie DePaola		Tomie's website
Some of the Tomie DePaola books we will be reading (there are many more):
	Strega Nona Strega Nona Takes a Vacation The Art Lesson The Baby Sister Tom	Reading Tomie DePaola books is a great way to talk about reality verses fantasy. We read some of his more biographical works first (Tom, The Art Lesson, The Baby Sister) and then read some of his Strega Nona books. The children then had a chance to look through a large stack of DePaola books and decide (based mostly on pictures) whether the events of the story could have happened or not.


	Laura Numeroff		Laura Numeroff's website
Some of the Laura Numeroff books we will be reading (there are many more):
	If You Give a Mouse a Cookie If You Take a Mouse to School If You Give a Pig a Pancake If You Give a Moose a Muffin	In reading Laura Numeroff's If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and the many books she wrote using the same format, we discussed how stories are organized and how the same plan can be used to write many different books. The children were very excited to be able to predict that the ending would be the same as the beginning and to think about the entire story starting over again. After reading several of her books, we wrote our own "If You Give a..." story about a rabbit and a carrot.