Professional development activity: Write a book review

Title of book: Stone Soup by Marcia Brown
extend read： You are not my friend, but I miss you by Daniel Kirk

Book review

Topic: Young people’s book awards

Description of the activity

For this professional development event, writing a book review, I chose Marcia Brown’s Stone Soup as my target.  Marcia Brown’s Stone Soup won the Silver Medal from The Caldecott Medal in 1948.

 I chose this story because it is not only inspiring for children but also worthy of reading and reflection by adults.  This story teaches us to help and love each other by sharing.  Another reason why this story is recommended is that it will be translated into another inedible object as the subject of the article in different cultural regions, which helps to integrate into other communities, such as in northern Europe called nail soup, the protagonist is also by  Three soldiers turned bum; Eastern Europe called it Axe Soup.  Although their themes are different, the message it brings out is for people to learn to share.

In addition, I found another book in the book review that teaches children the joy of sharing and the importance of sharing like Stone Soup.  The book is You are not my friend, but I miss you by Daniel Kirk.  Although this book did not win an award, I think it can be recommended to children as an extended reading. This book can be said to be a negative teaching material. Stone Soup is the protagonist who persuades people to share food subconsciously. You are not my friend, but I miss you.  Because of excessive selfishness, I finally realized the importance of sharing when I lost all my friends.  So I think this book is a good reminder of the consequences of not sharing with friends while emphasizing the importance of sharing.

The Caldecott Medal

The Caldecott Medal was founded in 1938 by the American Library Association as an award for children’s picture books. The purpose is to reward the most outstanding children’s picture book in the United States published in the previous year, and the awards are divided into three categories, one gold medal and two to five silver honorable mentions. Eligibility for the award is for picture books by American citizen painters and authors published in the United States in English. In the selection process, children’s comprehension will be the premise to determine whether the pictures can correctly express the concept and theme of the story. In addition, the design of other parts such as the text of the book and the design of the decoration will also be considered(Randolph Caldecott Medal, 2022).

Reflection

In this professional development activity, I learned how to choose books suitable for children, and I also got to know about The Caldecott Medal’s English picture book award for children. This award is very suitable for me to use in my work. Most of the middle school library students I work with are from China. New immigrant students in the Mainland, so their English level is very poor, so the common middle school English storybooks are not attractive and unsuitable for them to read, so we often worry about purchasing English books, but the winning books of this award helped me. The selected books are interesting and easy to understand, thus attracting students’ attention. After this activity, I realized that my understanding of English books is not enough. I often use cover design to attract students, and I don’t care whether the content is suitable for students to understand. Therefore, I will refer to The Caldecott Medal’s award-winning books and understand students’ reading ability. , so as to learn to find books that are suitable for students.

References

Brown, M. (1997). Stone Soup (Aladdin Picture Books) (Reprint ed.). Aladdin.

Kirk, D. (2014). You Are Not My Friend, But I Miss You (Illustrated ed.). Harry N. Abrams.

Randolph Caldecott Medal. (2022). Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC). https://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/caldecott