Smokey Night

Bunting, Eve. (1994). Smoky Night. Illus. David Diaz. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt, Inc.

Annotation: This book is about a riot that happens in Los Angeles. With all of the chaos happening outside of a young boy's and mother's apartment, in the end everyone comes together to find solace where they stand.

Genre: Children's picture book

Readers who like this: This would be a great book for a teacher and their students to introduce topics like violence and differences amongst people.

Rating: I give this book a 4. I loved the collage illustration as well as the message behind it. This would be a great book for discussion in the classroom.

Question: Have you ever experienced violence and in what way?

Reading Strategy: The reading strategy I would use would be quilts and K-W-L charts. Quilts are a way for children to illustrate the main ideas of the story. The K-W-L charts are what the student knows about the subject, wants to know, and what they learned. The K-W-L charts would be a good idea to use with the main idea of the story of conflict/hate and resolution. It is something that many of us experience and live everyday in our life. It would be an easy correlation and transition into the book and how students feel about the subject. The students can then use quilts to not only re-create the book, but to display their thoughts and ideas and maybe their experiences with conflict/hate and resolution. These are easy ice-breakers to a subject that can be very controversial and hard to discuss.