Must Read Monday: Friendship Books

I have found ANOTHER amazing Monday link up! This one is hosted by Kindergarten Planet and The Kindergarten Connection, and is one of my favorite things to talk about, children's literature!! I am a book addict, I collect books like some people collect decorative spoons or shot glasses. I have accounts with Scholastic, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble (my dealers) and I spend way too much money every year on new books! No lie y'all, other teachers in my school will come to me if they can't find the book they need in the school library!! Last year I decided to organize my books by category, and I needed over 30 bins to sort them all! I may have a problem folks, but that sure doesn't stop me from adding to my collection!!

Imagine my delight when I stumbled across this amazing linky party! Must Read Monday is a weekly summer linky party where teachers link up and share their favorite children's literature books! Each week we are given a new topic to focus on, and this is an incredible way for me to learn about new gems of literature that I must add to my Must Have Book Lists!! I already have quite the cart full of books at Amazon, and I'm so excited to learn about even more!! This week's focus is on Friendship Books. There are SO MANY great books out there about friendship, classics like Frog and Toad  and The Fox and The Hound, that it was really hard for me to choose just a few to share with you! Eventually I whittled it down to three Friendship Books that you may or may not have heard of, but that you'll definitely want to check out! Here are my picks for this week!! <click on the title of each of these books to head over to Amazon to check it out, though I am in no way affiliated with Amazon and receive no compensation from them for advertising their site.>

Don't Fidget a Feather! by Erica Silverman is one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE books! I fell in love with this book in college. I created my very first 'observed' lesson around this book, and my professor didn't have enough good things to say about it. There are oh so many ways you can use this book as a focus lesson in your class. The illustrations are incredible and very unique, they seem to be done in colored pencil as well as pastels. I love all the details in the illustrations, right down to the last feather! You could use this book as a science lesson to compare and contrast the attributes of ducks and geese. However, my favorite way to use this book is when we're learning about friendship. Duck and Gander are good friends, albeit competitive ones. The two get into an argument about which one is the greatest of all time, and have various competitions to try and determine who is the best of the two. They finally settle on a 'stay frozen in one spot' contest, and nothing seems to phase them. Not buzzing bees, hopping bunnies, or gusting winds. The two friends don't even stop playing when they are birdnapped by a hungry fox and brought home for dinner. Finally, Duck unfreezes himself to stop Gander from going into the cook pot and the two work together to scare Fox away. I use this book to talk to my kinders about what good friends do for each other, and that to be a good friend sometimes you have to speak up loudly even if your friend has asked you not to. We talk about ways we can help our friends when they're in trouble and what to do if your friend doesn't want you to say anything. This book is a gateway to so many great discussions! I really just love this book!!

Duck & Goose by Tad Hills is another incredibly adorable book about friendship. In the beginning of the book, there isn't much about Goose that Duck likes and Goose can't find much about Duck that he enjoys either. There is some arguing and each bird turns up his beak at the other. However, things begin to change when the two of them find a very unusual polka-dot egg. They definitely don't care for each other in the beginning of the book and each claims that the egg belongs to him. As they begin to care for the egg (after all, they each came from an egg so they know how important eggs are), each of them finds traits in the other that they really like. Duck and Goose begin to give each other compliments and work together to do the best they can to keep their 'egg' warm, safe, and dry so that it will hatch. They begin to look towards what the future will bring and they begin to recognize and appreciate each other's strengths. Even after Bluebird informs them that their egg is actually a polka-dot ball, the two new friends don't get discouraged or disappointed. After all, it really is a fine ball!! I love using this book because it's a great example for how the character's change from the beginning of the book till the end. In the beginning the two birds really don't like each other and spend a lot of time arguing. However, once they begin to care for their egg they recognize that they each have special strengths and character traits and they begin to admire one another. As the story goes on, they find out more about each other and what they have in common. By the time the book is over, they are friends who play together with the ball they found. My kiddos love to share stories about when they first met their BFF and how they didn't get along but now they do and are friends forever. Young children can relate to the story and that makes it so much fun to read! There are many different versions of Duck & Goose, but this is the first one and definitely worth the read!!

Chick 'n' Pug by Jennifer Sattler is the last book I'm sharing today. This is another great book to have in your collection, and it teaches several great lessons. In the beginning of the story Chick has a favorite book about his hero, Super Pug. Super Pug is not afraid of anything and flies around solving problems and saving people. Chick heads out into the world to find his hero, and instead stumbles upon Pug. Chick is absolutely certain that Pug is his hero, just in disguise. Pug is absolutely certain that all he wants to do is be left lone and sleep the day away. However, Chick will have none of that! Chick constantly attempts to get Pug up and moving so that the two of them can save the world! Every once in a while Pug will roll over or open one eye to peer sleepily at Chick. Chick begins to get very discouraged that his hero is really just a lazy dog, and then the villain appears. She is tall and wears red high heels and calls Pug by some silly fluffy name, and then proceeds to trap him inside a cute little outfit! Chick can't believe Pug would just lie around and let this happen, so Chick takes it upon himself to help his hero out. Not only is this story incredibly cute, but it is a great book when talking about how our expectations aren't always reality. Chick was SURE the dog he found was actually the famous Super Hero Pug, when in reality the dog he found was just a typically lazy pug that would rather sleep than go out on world-saving adventures. This book helps my kinders learn that sometimes the images they have of people are not really who they are, and that it is okay to be friends with them anyway. My kinders learn that they can be kind to whoever they meet and that friends can be found anywhere.

I am so in love with this linky held by Kindergarten Planet and The Kindergarten Connection! I could talk for hours and hours about my favorite books, and still have hours and hours left to talk about! I'm so excited to have found this linky! If you want to go read about some other awesome friendship books, head on over and see who else linked up! If you have great books to share, I'd love for you to link up too and tell us all about them!!

Don't forget that you can still link up with me for Spotlight Saturday and showcase your favorite products, resources, activities, or ideas! This week I Spotlighted some Facebook freebies and an AMAZING deal for blog T-shirts through A+ Images, Inc.! Come on over and check it out!!