George Shrinks

Joyce, W. (1985). George Shrinks. Illus. William Joyce. New York, New York: HarperCollins Children’s Books.

Brief Annotation: George had a dream that he shrank and when he woke up, it was true. He read a note written by his mom and dad about chores he had to throughout the day and he had to do them in his small shrunken size. After he was done with his chores, he became his regular size again, just in time for when his parents came home.

Genre: Picture Book

Grade Level: Pre-K-1

Readers who will like this: Young readers who like to use their imagination to see what life would be like as a smaller version. Young readers will like this book because

Response/Rating (1-4):*** This book provided great insight into what life would be like if we shrank. George goes throughout his day being small and it is fun and imaginative for children to visualize how different and perhaps difficult life could be.

One question you would ask before a read aloud: If you could shrink to a smaller size, what would you do with your day?

Reading Strategies Connection: Interactive Writing

In this activity, students will engage in an interactive writing project either with the entire class or in small groups. Students will create a sentence and together the students will sound out each word (with the help of the teacher) and write the words on a dry erase board or chart paper. Once they have a sentence to write, the teacher will guide the students word by word, and students will take turns writing known letters and familiar words, adding punctuation marks and marking spaces between words. Teachers will have the students write with one colored pen, then write the parts of the word they don’t know in a different colored pen, this way teachers can keep track of what students know and don’t know. Teachers then can display the sentences students came up with.

This would be a great activity for writing responses after reading George Shrinks. The students can create a sentence about what they would do if they shrank or how they think the world would like around them. This helps students think about how words are constructed and think of sound-symbol relationships, and spelling patters. It is a fun activity to engage students in after reading a fun book.