This Little Piggy's Book of Manners- Concept Book 2

This Little Piggy’s Book of Manners

By: Kathryn Allen Illustrated by: Nancy Wolff

Genre: Concept Book

Award: N/A

Grade Level: I would utilize This Little Piggy’s Book of Manners in a kindergarten classroom because the concepts discussed in this book are about the manners students in kindergarten often forget, so the playful tone of the book should encourage students to be polite. The word choice and text of the book is at an appropriate level for kindergartners, and I believe the details of the illustrations will keep the students entertained and interested. The concepts in the book are more than appropriate for a school setting because the book reviews manners and behaviors that are ideal for students.

Summary: This Little Piggy’s Book of Manners is a concept book comparing the behaviors and mannerisms of two pigs throughout the story. The first pig will be shown demonstrating appropriate polite behavior, with the following page showing the second pig demonstrating the complete opposite behavior and the consequences. Specific manners taught in the book include saying please and thank you, cleaning up after yourself, sharing, and speaking kindly to others. The vibrant colors used in the illustrations, as well as the unique texture of each character gives the book a whimsical feel almost comparable to The Stinky Cheese Man. I believe that the illustrations are expressionistic art in that the exaggeration of certain details, and vibrant colors used allow the author express her message in both text and media. Through using expressionistic art, students can gain a deeper understanding of the context of the book.

Classroom Strategies:

During a classroom discussion, allow students to fill in a Venn diagram comparing the two pigs in the story by brainstorming ideas together. This activity will stress the importance of the concepts taught in the book because the outcomes for the polite pig were far more desirable than those of the ‘bad’ pig.

To build upon background experiences and to allow children to build their scaffolding instruct students to create a list of other stories that the book reminds them of. This could range from The Three Little Pigs since the main characters were pigs, or even the children’s nursery rhyme Row Row Row Your Boat, because the some illustrations include text on them, that nursery rhyme can be found on the chicken on page ten.

ESOL: The classroom strategies listed incorporate cooperative learning, identifying main ideas, showing patterns, Venn diagrams, use of student’s experiences, brainstorming, and graphic organizers.

Read Aloud: I would read pages 19-22 to a kindergarten class because the pages relate to each other and the illustrations are not as detailed as others throughout the story. I selected these pages specifically because when observing the illustrations throughout the rest of the book I believe students are going to want to know what all the text says, even the text utilized in the character illustrations. These pages have the least amount of unnecessary therefore the students will not feel as though they are missing a part of the plot. Additionally, the concept discussed on these pages is to speak kindly which I would continually want to encourage in my classroom.

Personal Opinion: I really enjoyed this book more than I expected to because of the colorful, playful, and inviting illustrations and text. The concepts being taught were well hidden in a joking manner so that students can recognize the benefits of appropriate behavior without being lectured to.