17th January New School Year List 3: Goal Setting

The teachers will say "I want a book to start a discussion about goals and goal setting. What do you recommend?"

Hard, because as always there isn't one picture book that does that. There is quite a lot of overlap with books that I would recommend for Growth Mindset because goal setting is an important component of classroom communities that focus on it. If students get to set their own goals and take ownership of them, perseverance will be evident.

Teaching using mentor texts helps learners to see how people (characters) who set and achieve  goals demonstrate perseverance and grit to succeed. For this reason many picture book biographies make wonderful mentor texts. 

Here are some books that I suggest teachers use as discussion starters for thinking about goals for the year.

• Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andreae and Guy Parker Rees

• The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper

• After the Fall by Dan Santat

• Ruby’s Wish by Shirin Yim Bridges and Sophie Blackall

• Whistle for Willie by Ezra Jack Keats

• Someday by Eileen Spinelli and Rosie Winsted

• Rosie Revere Engineer by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts

• Thanks for the Feedback by Julia Cook and Kelsey De Weerd

• Because  by Mo Willems & Amber Ren

• Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman & Caroline Binch

• Salt in His Shoes by Deloris Jackson and Kadir Nelson

• The Oldest Student by Rita Lorraine Hubbard and Oge Mora

• My Strong Mind III I Set Goals and Work Hard to Deliver Them by Niels Van Hove

31st January Bryan Collier (1967)

Bryan Collier is an American children's picture book illustrator whose work is not well known in Australia, but those that I have seen are particularly memorable. His better-known books are biographies of very famous black Americans such as Martin Luther King, Barack Obama, Rosa Parks and Mohammed Ali.

I like telling my students about how Collier became interested in art at a very early age and  was inspired by the picture books of Ezra Jack Keats such as  The Snowy Day  and Crockett Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon.

Look for these in the library:

11th March Wanda Gag (1893 - 1946) Ezra Jack Keats (1916 -1983) Jonathan London (1947) Ronda Armitage (1943)

It would seem that if you want to make it in the world of children's books, then the 11th March is a good day to be born! There are four birthdays today, starting with Wanda Gag whose books were among the first picture books that were specifically designed for children. Millions of Cats with its repetitive, rhythmic refrain "hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats" and fancy curly font is a classic, and still in print! If the Caldecott Medal had existed in 1929 it surely would have won, instead of receiving a Newbery Honour Award.

Secondly, someone who also has an enduring reputation, Ezra Jack Keats. He won the Caldecott in 1963 for The Snowy Day. Peter, the main character in this story appears in many of Keats' books, growing older in each one. Peter is an African American child with such endearing physical features and the books depict the simple routines of family life and a multicultural urban setting with great warmth. See A Letter For Amy; Goggles! and Peter's Chair.

Next, another American, Jonathan London. As well as all his Froggy titles he has a series of picture books about animals in the wild which are beautifully illustrated by Jon Van Zyle. My favourites are The Eyes of Gray Wolf and Honey Paw and Lightfoot, perhaps because being about wolves and bears, animals that I have no experience of, I find them fascinating.

The other author, Ronda Armitage was born in New Zealand but now lives in Britain. She is probably best known for The Lighthouse Keeper series of books which are illustrated by her husband, David Armitage. My favourite is still the first book, The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch. I use this series of books with Kindergarten to teach problem/solution. Mr Grinling always seems to have a problem and Mrs Grinling always manages to solve his problems. The vocabulary is rich and the children remember words like 'catastrophe', 'varmints' and 'lackaday'. More recently she has written two books about Small Knight and George which have illustrations by Arthur Robins.