Realistic Fiction (with a measure of Fantasy thrown in...)

Told from three points of view, these are the stories of Henry, who desperately wants a dog, Charlie, who's brother has just died, and the dogs have played parts in their lives.

Themes: Dogs, family, death, grief,
Writer's Craft: Point of view, verb tense

Recommended for grade 5. One of the voices in this book is that of Bone, a stray (hence the measure of fantasy.) This is a partner book to A Dog's Life which tells the story of Bone's litter mate Squirrel.  You may shed a few tears while reading this, but it's not as sad as some other books with dogs as a theme.  When I first started reading it I was confused by the changing voices and verb tenses, but again the ends justify the means.

Realistic Fiction

Young Neftalí Reyes is a dreamer and a poet.  He collects beautiful and fascinating objects and keeps interesting words on slips of paper in his drawer.  His demanding father has little patience for his imagination but his step mother and uncle help nurture his passion for writing.  This story is a fictionalized biography of the childhood of Chilean poet and writer Pablo Neruda who won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in the 1970's.

Themes: Pablo Neruda, poetry, shyness, fathers, writing, dreams, imagination, family, Mapuche, justice, words, Chile, nature
Writes Craft: Figurative language (especially onomatopoeia, and personification)

Recommended for grade 5 or up.  This is an absolutely beautifully written book and one that I would recommend to anyone with even the slightest interest in poetry.  The story is illustrated by Peter Sis who uses black and white pointillism to create drawings that perfectly complement the text.  The end of the story briefly goes into the political unrest surrounding the indigenous Mapuche in Chile during the time period. Selected woks of Neruda are included at the end. There are all kinds of curricular ties in this one.