A Sick Day for Amos McGee

Stead, P. (2010). A Sick Day for Amos McGee. Illus. Erin Stead. New York, NY: Roaring Book Press.

Brief Annotation: Amos McGee is accustomed to taking care of the animals at the zoo. He plays chess with the elephant, helps the rhinoceros blow his nose, reads to the owl, and sits companionably besides the quiet penguin. When Amos McGee wakes up sick one morning and does not show up for work, the animals decide to leave the zoo and help him out in the same ways that he helps all of them.

Genre: Fantasy

Grade Level: K-3

Readers who will like this: Readers who like animals, can relate to staying home sick, and like humorous stories.

Response/Rating (1-4): 4. This book is heartwarming and has nice illustrations.

One question you would ask before a read aloud: How would you help out a friend who is sick?

Reading Strategies Connection: Interactive Read-Alouds (Tompkins, 2009). In an Interactive Read-Aloud, a teacher will plan to pause and ask questions to students throughout the book in order to strengthen comprehension and content knowledge of the book. This would be a great strategy to use with this book because it has many areas where the teacher could pause and ask students to predict what is going to happen next, pages where there are few or no words where the students and teacher can discuss what is happening, and vocabulary words to explore, like ambled and perched, that are present within the text.