Children's Literature

So I know that this post will be of 0 interest to...well...everyone. But I just had to write about my new class this semester.

I switched my major to Early Childhood Education and am taking a class called Children's Literature for Early Childhood.

It. Is. AWESOME!

I love everything about this class. My teacher is amazing and knows so much about quality literature for kids. The entire class revolves around reading different books for kids and learning about what makes children's literature quality material. I normally don't get excited about the work we do in my classes but this is such practical work for what I'm going to be doing. Every week we are required to read 2 books and write a review on them. Some weeks we have guidelines like "poetry" or "fantasy" but other weeks we are free to choose any books.

Today was my first class and my teacher read aloud to us from some really fun books. 2 I had never heard of and 1 a teacher from last semester had read also. Yes, I am in grad school and my teachers are reading us picture books. I love it!

The first book she read to us was First Day Jitters. I loved this book and think it would be an amazing book to read to students on the first day of school. It talks about how Sarah is so nervous and scared for her first day of school and her dad has to pry her out of bed to go. It goes through talking about how the principal has to pry her out of the car and then it turns out...Sarah is the teacher!

The next book she read was a book that she said her students loved and begged her to read again and again. It's about a bully on the playground named Mean Jean. Well it turns out all Jean really needed was to be included with the rest of the kids and then she wasn't the recess bully anymore! It would be a good book to talk about including everyone on the playground.

Finally, she read to us the book Ish. I love this book. It's about a kid who loves to draw but then his brother tells him his drawings are no good. He no longer wants to draw until he realizes his sister has been getting his pictures out of the garbage and hanging them in her room. He realized it was okay for everything to look "ish". It teaches kids that everything doesn't have to be perfect and somethings can just be "ish".

I can't wait to see what the rest of the semester brings!