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.
No comments:
Post a Comment