Quebecois Joseph Ernest Nephthali DuFault's Creates the American Cowboy, Will James

Nonfiction Monday (sort of)

I just read an amazing article at Second Look Books (June 1, 2015 entry) about one of my favorite horse stories. The article begins this way:
"In 1927, Will James won the Newbery Medal for his novel Smokey: The Cow-horse.  The story was based on James's real life, and on James's real horse, a blue roan named Smokey. James worked as a cowboy, ranch hand, and rodeo performer for horse and cattle ranches in the Western Canadian provinces and in the American Dakotas, Montana, New Mexico and California. It was James's third novel, and like all those previous and all those yet to come, it was self illustrated…. Three years later he published his autobiography, Lone Cowboy: My Life Story…. It's a great story and it's a complete lie."

After talking about the book itself, the article goes on to explain that Will James was NOT his name and he wasn't an American cowboy. (although he did work as a cowboy in the midwestern United States.)  He was Canadian. French-Canadian in fact.
Which is why the title of this blog post (and the blog post on Second Look Books) says Quebecois (a person from Quebec, Canada) Joseph Ernest Nephthali DuFault….

A teacher, perhaps a middle school teacher, could match Smokey with Will James's autobiography and  the information in Second Look Book's essay about the book. The three bits of information make a complete common core lesson.

More books recommended for Nonfiction Monday can be found at the Nonfiction Monday blog.

Nonfiction Monday - Locomotive

Floca, Brian. Locomotive. New York, Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2013.

            2014 Caldecott Medal / Sibert Honor Book

                        A lyrical description of a train trip by two children (boy and girl) and their mother across the Great Plains to San Francisco (to meet their father who is pictured, but not mentioned in the text) during the summer of 1869, soon after the Union Pacific joined with the Central Pacific which connected eastern trains to the Pacific ocean.
 Extensive notes at the end of the book explain the background of train travel at this time period.  Floca, who illustrated as well as wrote this book, takes advantage of his complete control by playing with the typeface to give even more emphasis to certain parts of the tale – especially the sound effects.

                        CLANK CLANK CLANK!

                        Men came from far away

                        to build from the East,

                        to build from the West,

                        to meet in the middle.

                  It’s not poetry, but it is rhythm. “…the passengers, have packed and shipped and sold their things, all their things, everything.” (I love this repetition, this interior rhyme pattern.) Unfortunately, there is no information about the people’s responses to this mode of travel, even though the illustrations feature this family. The text focuses on facts about the train and the illustrations show this trip across America. (I would love to know what created the land formation called the Devil’s Slide.) Even the endpapers will fascinate the train aficionado illustrating the route and showing how fire and steam propel the engine. A good example of illustrations being part of the story and extending it.

Common Core State Standards Explained

Confused about the Common Core?
Having trouble reading the Standards?  Not surprisingly, these were written by educators for educators.

Here's a translation by writer, Barbara Kerley, explaining on the I.N.K blog (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids) just what this is all about.
There are ten big standards, The Anchor Standards for Reading.

How nice to discover that we writers are already fulfilling most of these standards in our books.

Nonfiction Monday

More information about the new Common Core standards:  At Bookends this morning, Cindy and Lynn share what they are doing to supporting Common Core implementations and they list some helpful resources from Booklist magazine.

Links to other Nonfiction Monday book reviews are being gathered at A Teaching Life blog today.  Click on over and see what's there.