A Handful of Stars

A Handful of Stars
By Cynthia Lord
Bluebonnet Award

This is the story about Tigerlily, or Lily as she prefers to be called.  She is a girl who lives in Maine and sees migrant workers every year who move up to Maine during the blueberry harvest.  Towards the beginning of the story Lily is chasing her dog Lucky who is blind and running through the blueberry fields.  She does everything she can to stop him but nothing works and when a migrant worker girl sees what is going on, decides to run and pull her sandwhich and chips out of her backpack.  Lucky automatically stops running away and insted runs towards her.  The girl's name is Salma Santiago.  Meeting Salma becomes a life-changing experience for Lily who is going through some difficult situation in her life.  When Lily's grandmother finds out that Lucky ate Sama's food decides to send Lily with some food for Salma to repay for what she did.  Littel byy little Lily an Salma become friends.  Lily tells Salma that Lucky is blind and she is trying ot raise money by painting bee houses to get him surgery.  Salma tells Lily that she had a dog but it ran away and she still hopes to find it.  Salma decides that she wants to help Lily paint bee houses and they both start working together at it. Little by litte Salma teaches Lily that life doesn't have to be full of sorrow or negativity.  She tells her that if you use your imagination, you can make the world be the way you think it should, a happy place rather than a sad or unfair place.  As the story goes on Slama decides to enter a blueberry pageant and a friend of Lily lets her borrow a dress so she can use  since she doesn't have one with her because Salma's family's home is in Florida and everytime they travel they only take the clothes and tools that they will need for raking blueberries.  Salma enters the pageant and wins second place.  Throughout the theth story, Lily deals with what seems like abandonment from her mother but as the story goes on she takes Slama to where her mom is burried at the cementery and that is where we find out that her mom died in a car accident.  The reason why Lily wants to get Lucky's eyes fixed is because he is the only thing that she has left from her mom since it was her mom who bought Lucky.  The day after the blueberry pageant, during the blueberry fair, Salma suggests that lily get a companion dog for Lucky to help him move around.  At first Lily gets mad and refuses to but when her grandad talks to her she ends up doing it, after her garndmother approves of course.

I think this is a great book for a read aloud.  I would definitely have it in me class and read it to the students because it is a well developed story and I believe that they would enjoy it. This book would be appropriate for a second trhough fifth grade class and would be helpful in teaching about being a good friend or making good things out unpleasant situations.

Hansel and Gretel

Hansel and Gretel
By James Marshall
Traditional Literature

In this story, a boy named Hansel and a girl named Gretel live with their dad and their step mother.  Their dad works hard but they still do not have enough to buy food for all so their stepmother convinces their dad to get rid of them.  Hansell overheard when the stepmother said that her and their dad would take them to the deep woods and leave them there.  Hansel told Greel not to worry and he went outside during the night to pick up stones that shone at night.  When their dad and stepmother took Hansel and Gretel to the deep woods, Hansel left a trail of stones on the ground as they walked out into the woods.  After Hansel and Gretel were left in the woods by their dad and stepmother, they waited until night and found their way back home.  After a little while the stepmother convinced their dad to do it again but this time she had locked the door of the house and Hansel could not get shiny stones. When they lef, Hansel left pieces of bread but the birds ate them.  This time the dad and stepmother took them further I to the woods and left them there.  Hansel and Gretel could not find their way home this time.  They wandered until they found a house  made of candy.  Inside was a witch who locked Hansel in a cage to fatten him up and eat him.  He gained weight but hoodwinked the witch into thinking he was still skinny since the witch could not see.  She finally told Gretel to see if the oven was hot enough to cook Hansel even if he was not yet fat.  Gretel said she could not reach and when the witch tried to show her, Gretel pushed her in the oven and the witch died.  After that Hansel and Gretel found the witches treasure and took all they could with them.  They found their way home and their dad was so, so happy.  Their stepmother had already died and they had enough of the treasure to live happy for the rest of their lives.

I would use this book in many classroom because it is a very good story and the children would enjoy it.  I would read this to the children as a read aloud book.  After the read aloud I would have them do an activity like building a gingerbread house to represent the house in the story.  This book is good for Kindergarten- 2nd grade.