Reader Beware!

One of the best tips I could give anyone looking for a read aloud is to read the book yourself before you read it to your students.  In following my own advice I have found some books that I just couldn't bring myself to read to my students.  They are actually great books, just not right in my opinion.  I did want to share them with you all because you may want to stay away from them or you may want to read them yourself and decide!

The first is The Deadlies: Felix Takes the Stage by Kathryn Lasky.  This book is about a family of brown recluse spiders and how they need to find a new home after Felix causes an accident in the philharmonic hall where they live.  They go on to meet many new spider friends and end up in the perfect place to live.  This book was wonderful and it would be great to have students make a web (pun intended!) of what they learn about spiders while listening to it.  There is so much information and I think students would really enjoy learning about spiders through this fun story.  The reason I chose not to read it is only because of a swear word that appears when a spider is yelling at her husband on page 84.  I could have easily skipped over it and read the book anyway but my students have been really interested in checking out my read aloud books after I've read them.  I just didn't feel comfortable with it.  If you are interested, I would suggest reading the book.  I did enjoy it.

The other book I'd like to warn you about is Nightmare at the Book Fair by Dan Gutman.  It is about a boy who helps out in his school book fair and gets knocked out by a crate of books.  He then has exciting dreams weaving in and out of every genre of stories you can think of: horror, science fiction, humor, mystery, historical fiction, fantasy, etc.  I was so excited while reading this book.  I couldn't wait to read this and discuss all the genres with my students...until I came to the fantasy chapter.  It talked about mead a little, which I could have been ok with, but then the main character meets a transgendered person who turns out to be his mother.  I just felt this was too much for my third graders to hear about.  I was thinking that maybe some middle school children would enjoy reading this book for fun.  If you are a fifth grade teacher, you may want to read it and decide if it could be appropriate for you.  As I said, the genre examples are amazing!