Teachers, it is so important to expose your students to all different kinds of books. There are so many wonderful fictional books that a month might go by before you realize you haven't read anything but fiction! We are excited to share this picture book biography with you, Planting Stories: The Life of a Librarian and Storyteller Pera Belpre. It can be hard to find biographies that are appropriate for our young readers, but we love this one! - Jodi and the Starts With a Story Team
SUMMARY
Pura Belpre was the first Puerto Rican Librarian in New York City. When she started working the library, she realized that there weren’t any of the stories and folktales that she was familiar with in Puerto Rico. She decides to share her stories during story hour and through puppet shows, and eventually publishes a book.
Pura travels across the country and from classroom to classroom planting her story seeds and educating about her homeland. When she returns to the library, she sees that her story seeds have bloomed and everyone is telling her stories.
Students will love learning about Pura and how she shared her stories with children everywhere.
USE THIS BOOK TO TEACH:
In addition to exposing students to a different kind of literature, this book can be used to teach a variety of skills.
- Discuss the characteristics of this genre of books.
- Examine the figurative language throughout the story.
- Ask students to write about their personal connections to the story.
- Integrate informational writing by having students write about their favorite book or story.
- Teach students about proper nouns.
- Practice making nouns plural.
- Introduce students to goal setting and have them set goals for themselves.
NO-PREP PRINTABLE ACTIVITIES:
If you are looking for “ready to go” activities for the first day of school, be sure to check out the book companion. With it you’ll receive all of the following resources to align with this specific book:
- comprehension questions
- 30 writing prompts with themed paper
- vocabulary activities
- word study print & go activities
- ideas for grammar lessons with focus sentence printables
- social emotional learning discussion topics
- graphic organizers to target specific comprehension skills and strategies
PASTE last sentence here.
GET THE PRINTABLE ACTIVITIES
ADDITIONAL BOOK SUGGESTIONS
You and your students will also love these similar books:
- Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen
- Madeline Finn and the Library Dog by Lisa Papp
- My Papi Has a Motorcycle by Isabel Quintero
- Just Ask by Sonia Sotomayor
TRY OUT A SAMPLE COMPANION
It's hard to explain how amazing the Starts with a Story book companions are because there is just so much goodness included in each one. It's best if you experience using one for yourself. Sign up below & we'll send you an entire book companion to try out for FREE!
