Read Aloud Recommendations

Inch and Miles The Journey to Success

by Coach John Wooden with Steve Jamison and Peanut Louie Harper

Illustrated by: Susan Cornelison

Published in 2003 by Perfection Learning Corporation

Summary

During Inch and Miles' last day of school, their teacher Mr. Wooden attempts to teach them one final lesson: the true meaning of success.  Along this journey, Inch and Miles use a magic whistle to join their friends in the animal kingdom, where they try to build pyramid of success.  Like a pyramid, they find that each block or attribute is essential  to completing the pyramid.   Inch and Miles encounter frogs that ribbit about determination and bees that buzz about cooperation and twelve other animal companions that guide them on their expedition.  Using colorful illustrations, catchy rhymes and a captivating narrative, Coach Wooden guides our children on an adventure to discover the true meaning of success.

Recommendation
Inch and Miles is a wonderful resource that defuses our children's faulty ideas about what success means.  By discussing what success really means in a colorful manner, we can model positive school and life lessons.  Inch and Miles can enlighten our children about their own unproductive behaviors and turn them into constructive ones.  The simple act of reading aloud creates a relationship between teachers and students, and amongst  students themselves (9).  By identifying these helpful attributes, Inch and Miles can further solidify the sense of community. Not only does the reading engage our readers, but Inch and Miles is also visually pleasing complimenting the already fascinating story (19).  The wonderfully drawn pictures incoporate the text, making each page look like a unified whole.  The pictures also aid English language learners by using vivid pictures that help children understand any complicated texts.
Guiding Student's Experience and Response Strategies Inch and Miles can be easily used to draw on our children's prior experiences with group work in the classroom or team work in extracurricular sports.  Discussions can be generated using children's experiences with success and failure.  Serafini and Giorgis claim that effective read aloud discussion should "help students notice things in the text and in their own lives that they wouldn't notice on their own" (58).  By asking students to recall their memories, we can help our students match their literary experiences with Inch and Miles to their own lives. Personal Note I love this book because it not only tackles many misconceptions children have about success, but also introduces positive behaviors that would result in the true meaning of success.  As a huge basketball fan, I value the wise words that such a highly esteemed coach like John Wooden would have to say. Goldilocks and the Three Martians by: Stu Smith illustrated by: Michael Garland Published in 2004 by Dutton's Children's Books Summary A take-off from Goldilocks and the Three Bears, this book is about a little girl named Goldilocks who lives with her extremely strict mother who constantly reminds her of the do's and do not's of life.  Fed up with the never-ending rules, she builds a spaceship and takes off with her dog and cat into outer space.  During her cosmic adventure she leaves every planet disappointed because she finds something wrong with each of them.  At her final destination, she enters a Martian family's house, where she tries out their food and bed.  Before she could settle in the aliens come home and attempt to eat her.  Before they can do so, her heroic dog and cat save her and bring her home, where everything is...JUST RIGHT!!!!

Recommendation

This book grabs the reader's attention by using simple yet colorful illustrations and rhyming narrative.  The vivid pictures compliment the text by clarifying complicating words for English language learners (18).  Like Serafini and Giorgis state, "Illustrations don't simply retell what is offered in the text.  Rather, they enhance or contradict the text and bring unique perspectives to the story being told" (20).  The sing-a-long style of the text allows teachers to demonstrate to their students quality writing (11).  Along with the rhyming narrative, the text also introduces rarely used vocabulary words.  By exposing our students to these new words, they will then develop the potential to become a better writer (11).

Guiding Student's Experience and Response Strategies

This take-off from an old favorite provides our students with a sense of familiarity.  They can connect this literary experience with the classic Goldilocks and the Three Bears (56).  By connecting the two experiences, I could conduct a discussion asking student to compare the similiarities and differences between the traditional and cosmic versions of this story (51).  Although this book lend itself to creating other lesson extensions in science and language arts, the humor in this book allow children to see that reading is simply a pleasurable process, where they can laugh with or at the characters and sympathize with their challenges (9).

Personal Note

I absolutely love this story because of its humorous content and its potential to build further lessons in other academic areas.

References

Serafini, F & Giorgis, C. Read Aloud and Beyond: Fostering the Intellectual Life Older Readers.  Heinemann.  Portsmouth, NH: 2003.:

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