3321, Blog #3: Evaluating books for children

I believe evaluating books for children is one of the most difficult things we are going to have to deal with. Not only are we going to face this at home, but also in our classrooms. When doing this we need to look beyond our values. As hard as this may sound, I believe we should all think about this. Not all our students are going to be taught the exact same values. We must take everybody into consideration and teach them all something about each other. I do believe that evaluating books is value-based, but I also believe that other things should be taken into consideration. Another thing we should always remember is that children are very curious and they will always ask questions about new things. We should pick books that we can always explain to that particular age group.

Character and setting analysis are very important. It is what makes the story for the children. This will either make you a part of the story or make you not want to continue reading the story. This allows us to use activities to get the students involved in this reading. We can do activities like making a web about our favorite character, drawing a picture of our favorite character on the favorite setting, or even group discussions about the story.