The Red Book

Lehman, B. (2004). The Red Book. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Brief Annotation: This wordless book depicts the imagination of kids traveling through a storybook as they would in real life. The story is about a girl who finds a red book in the snow. She opens the book to see a boy sitting on the beach. The two can see each other, and the girl used balloons to fly to the boy. However, during her flight, she drops the book, and a boy on a bike passing by, picks it up.

Genre: Wordless Picture Book

Grade Level: k-3

Readers who will like this: Readers who enjoy using their own voice to tell a story. Readers who haven’t learned to read yet, but can use visual cues to tell a story.

Response/Rating (1-4): 4, fun story about imagination. I did feel sad at the end though, as if she was trapped on the island since someone else has the book. However, it also reminded me of book sharing, when your finished pass it on so that someone else can enjoy it.

One question you would ask before a read aloud: Have you ever imagined that you could travel into a photograph? Where would you go?

Reading Strategies Connection: Retelling the story (Yopp, Yopp Pg 140) either with making their own book or orally, remembering the sequences and feeling of the characters. Students could interpret their version of the voice behind the story. I would use the book as an introduction to writing to a free writing session in the classroom. I think this would be effective because students could see that a story is born from an idea and not words. I would want the students to learn that words are used as explanatory tools and should represent ideas. I hope that this exercise would help the students to think critically about what they are viewing and to build logical conclusions. (Also, I was sad at the end, because I felt the two kids were trapped on the beech. I don't believe that is what the author intended.)