Quick note: My super editor at Millbrook, Carol Hinz, was featured on Keri Recommends for Poetry Friday. Hope you’ll check it out if you didn’t see it already!
A Secret Keeps
by?Marsha Wilson Chall
illus by Heather Solomon
Carolrhoda Books, 2012
[Find Part 1 here?and Part 2 here.]
Later, when they call the cows home, Chall switches to a metered verse with a perfect rhyme. [CCRA.R.4]
mode/Toad
me/see
I wonder why she chose to change the style at this point? I tend to like rhyming verse that is consistent, that stays the same throughout a piece. It’s not that one is right and the other is wrong. That’s just my preference, the same way I like chocolate brownies but vanilla ice cream.
From here out the story is told in quatrains (sets of 4 lines), and the 2nd and 4th lines rhyme. [CCRA.R.4] This rhymed writing seems to want to be read faster, so I wonder if that’s why Chall changed. Maybe she decided to do that because she wanted the pace to speed up and get more tense as it get’s closer to solving the mystery of the secret…
When we get to the page where Moonlight flood the farmyard, we get a clue about the secret. [CCRA.R.1]
I think I hear, mew.
What do you think the secret is? I think it’s a cat.
I’m right! I like how at the end, the kitten’s name is actually Secret! That takes me right back to the title of the book: A Secret Keeps. [CCRA.R.5]
And now that I know what the secret is, I look back through the book. Ever since the boy arrived at the farm, there’s a cat in almost every single spread. So the illustrator was giving me clues all along. [CCRA.R.7] I love the words most, so I wasn’t paying that much attention to the art, I guess!
What a lovely book. It’s making me think of all my favorite childhood pets: Sparkles, Calico, Trixie… This book brought back lots of happy memories for me.
In this blog feature, I share a picture book I really enjoy and externalize my process of reading it–and then I go back and add in the CCSS Anchor Standards that my reading thoughts relate to. I’m hoping this will be useful for those of you who are?educators sharing books with kids and perhaps give you ideas of some?elements you could include?in your book discussions.
What fun. And to think you had a pet named Calico – was he/she born in a corncrib?
Not that we know of:>) Though I’m actually not sure where our long stream of pets over my childhood years came from!
What fun. And to think you had a pet named Calico – was he/she born in a corncrib?
Not that we know of:>) Though I’m actually not sure where our long stream of pets over my childhood years came from!
I enjoyed every post, Laura, & your questioning of the author’s reasons for certain things. Thanks for sharing all your observations! Now I need to get this book!
Thanks, Linda. It’s interesting putting my reading process into words (probably too many words, in this case). It’s fun to celebrate pbs I love in this way, though.
I enjoyed every post, Laura, & your questioning of the author’s reasons for certain things. Thanks for sharing all your observations! Now I need to get this book!
Thanks, Linda. It’s interesting putting my reading process into words (probably too many words, in this case). It’s fun to celebrate pbs I love in this way, though.
I just picked this book up and read it for the first time this afternoon. It’s a lovely, quiet book and I’m looking forward to reading it again when my granddaughter comes over. Thanks for telling me about it.
It is! I don’t generally go for quiet books, but the language in this one really did captivate me. Thanks for giving it a read:>)
I just picked this book up and read it for the first time this afternoon. It’s a lovely, quiet book and I’m looking forward to reading it again when my granddaughter comes over. Thanks for telling me about it.
It is! I don’t generally go for quiet books, but the language in this one really did captivate me. Thanks for giving it a read:>)