Thursday Book Talk ~ The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore

It is time again for another book review!  Oh, how I love to read, and this week's is no different!  Every Thursday I will feature a new book that you can use to help with your classroom instruction.  Remember, if you have any good books you would like to recommend, please let me know!  I am always looking for new books to read or old ones to reread!

This week, I am reviewing the book I won from A Year of Reading.  {If you do not follow this blog, you must!  There is always a great deal of information on this blog that helps with reading instruction.}  About a month ago, I won the book The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore .  I was so excited when I received it and read the book.  It has such a wonderful lesson!  Click below to see it on Amazon.

 
The book is about a young boy who has lost his passion for writing.  He meets a young girl floating away with books who leaves him with a book. The book leads him to a building, which resembles a library, where he lives away his days reading and writing.  The story follows him as he grows older, until his book "ends".  The book ends with an interesting twist that will make you yearn for more.

The book says it is geared towards K-2 students, but I feel the book has more depth than they would understand.  I used it with the third graders while their teacher completed the district reading assessments.  The students pulled the theme from the book right away:  no matter what, everyone can find something they can enjoy to read.  And when they do, books will take you to new places.  The students also realized that authors have different purposes for writing books.  This book was to not only entertain, but it had a twinge of persuasion in it.  It actually persuaded some students to go out and find good books.  Wow!

The students also watched the Academy Award Winning Short Film one day when I was in a meeting.  They said they enjoyed the book better because it explained so much more!


Throughout the week, we read other books and did activities that revolved around author's purpose.  We used the anchor charts that we had made in our small groups to help everyone understand each purpose for books.
Here are some of the author's purpose activities we did throughout the week.

The students used book orders to choose three BOOKS they would like to read, no matter the price.  They then had to write about what they think the book is going to be about and why they want to read it.  Most of the books they chose were to entertain them.


For informative text, we looked at books and found features of them that helped us better understand the parts of the books.  The students copied my circle map with the parts of informative text in it and then looked for those parts.  If that was there, they did nothing or checked it off.  If the feature was not present, they crossed it out.  This was quick and easy and allowed the students to really think about the parts of the book.



For persuasion, the students wrote letters to the teacher to try to get her to change something in the classroom.  They came up with some pretty convincing arguments.

The Fantastic Flying Books of  Mr. Morris Lessmore is a great book for a springboard for discussion with students about reading.  Students will find reasons to read and hopefully be inspired to find what interests them.  I will use this book each year to help students find the right books for them to read and to help with author's purpose.



 Tune in next Thursday for another "Book Talk".  What do you think of the name?  I am not sold on it and am open to new ideas!  Any suggestions would be wonderful!

Until next time!

5 comments

  1. This sounds like a great book! I'm going to have to pick up a copy myself :) Thanks for the recommendation! Love the author's purpose chart. I'm going to have to use that with my kiddos :)

    Amelia
    wherethewildthingslearn

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  2. I just read that book the other day at Barnes and Noble! I love William Joyce! I didn't get it that day, but it's on my wishlist at Amazon!
    Hilary
    Second Grade is Out of This World!

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  3. Your author's purpose anchor charts look great and love the idea of using scholastic book orders. Brilliant! I just posted what we did for author's purpose yesterday on my blog. It is a fun skill to teach. Thanks for the ideas!

    Amanda Bryant
    A Traveled Teacher

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  4. Love the theme of this book. Can't wait to check it out. Thanks for the lesson ideas too!

    Celebrate Second Grade

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  5. Loved this book! Wanted to make sure you knew about the video here

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vftMo1-cfWE&feature=share&list=FLyy62lcrPXE9NZ5XRZ72Q3g

    It was awesome! My kiddos loved it.
    Teresa
    Confessions of a Teaching Junkie

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