Seven Blind Mice

Young, E. (1992). The Boxer and the Seven Blind Mice. New York, NY: Philomel Books.

Brief Annotation: Each of the seven blind mice take a turn guessing what it is that they think is new in their area. All of the mice disagree with the others, until finally the last mouse considers the entire object and figures out what it is. They discover together that each mouse could not identify the object because they were only considering one part of the object instead of the entire thing.

Genre: Fable/Picture book

Grade Level: k-2

Readers who will like this: Curious readers who would like puzzles would like this book. Children who like looking at pieces of things and think about what else they could be would like this book.

Response/Rating (1-4): 4, The story had a great moral, creativity and I liked the paper mache illustrations and colorful mice.

One question you would ask before a read aloud: What do you think it would be like to be blind?

Reading Strategies Connection: Since this book is a great concept book for children learning to read and write stories. I would like to use the part to whole model to help students create a story. I would give the students a bank of words that they can rearrange to create a story. “Block word composition.” The purpose of this activity would be to show the building blocks of a story. It would also help students be creative with guidance and encouragement to continue. Each student could share their stories and the students could see how many different ideas could be made from the same bank of words.