The Big Orange Splot

It's been more than two decades since I first read this story and it still makes me smile whenever I see the neighborhood at the end of the story.

Mr. Plumbean lives in a "neat" neighborhood - not neat as in cool or awesome, but neat as in strictly regulated by a HOA. Every single house in the neighborhood looks EXACTLY the same.

Then one day, a seagull flies over the neighborhood with a can or orange paint in his beak (?!?) and spills some of it right on Mr. Plumbean's roof, leaving a big, orange splot.

The neighbors want him to get that mess cleaned up right away, but Mr. Plumbean takes a while to get it done. One night, he starts painting and when the neighbors wake up, they see:

You can imagine how they react and the word about the neighborhood is that Plumbean has "popped his cork, flipped his wig, blown his stack, and dropped his stopper." But he pays no attention and over the next few nights, he adds a clock tower, foliage (including two palm trees), a hammock (hence the palm trees), and an alligator.

Day after day, Mr. Plumbean lays in his hammock and drinks lemonade. Night after night, each neighbor takes a turn visiting him to plead with him to return his house to normal, so their street can once again be "neat." To each person, Mr. Plumbean calmly replies, "My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be and it looks like all my dreams."

Day by day, the neighbors awake to find one more home that looks like the owner's dreams until the entire neighborhood is filled with unique homes and happy owners who have all adopted Mr. Pumbean's mantra.

"Our street is us and we are it. Our street is where we like to be, and it looks like all our dreams."

Not only will children enjoy the humor, but this story is a great springboard for conversations about learning to be okay with your uniqueness, and of course, you've got to let each child draw their own dream house - they come up with amazing designs!

Take time to let them drink in the illustrations, you may need to explain a couple of them, and I would definitely discuss what each neighbor's dreams might look like based on the house they designed. This will result in a much richer product when the students design their own dream house.

Pinkwater illustrated the story himself using markers, which make it bright, child-friendly, and fun.

This link will take you to Amazon to purchase The Big Orange Splot.

Jennifer Veneracion reading aloud The Big Orange Splot

Giraffes Can't Dance

Poor Gerald the giraffe has a bad case of the wish-I-coulds. He's really good at doing the things that giraffes are supposed to do, but what he really wants to do is get down and boogie at the annual Jungle Dance.

He watches all the other animals waltz, rock 'n' roll, tango and cha-cha, but when Gerald walks onto the dance floor, the other animals sneer and jeer and he leaves the dance feeling utterly alone.

Luckily, a clever cricket gives him some good advice and Gerald discovers that "We can all dance...when we find music that we love."

Giraffe's Can't Dance, written by Giles Andreae is delightful. The rhyming text draws in young readers and immediately creates empathy for Gerald. My 1st and 2nd graders couldn't help themselves as Gerald was bullied out of the dance, I heard multiple whispers, "That's so sad," "Why are they doing that?" "That's mean." "Poor Gerald." But when Gerald starts grooving to the music of the violin-playing cricket, they were giddy - giggling, gasping, and cheering for his new moves.

Guy Parker-Rees' bright illustrations were created with watercolor, pen and ink. There are a couple of pages I particularly like - the scene by the bonfire at the dance, all the animals bathed in firelight takes me back to all our Dillon Beach campouts, and the scene with Gerald closing his eyes, listening to the world around him. I can just imagine the effort it took to shut out the voices in his head, the distant sounds of the Jungle Dance, and listen for his own kind of music.

Enjoy this little gem with your little ones!

How Emily Blair Got Her Fabulous Hair

Ever had Hair Envy?  First grader Emily Blair hates her hair.  It's just too darned straight!  She ties grapevines tendrils to to head, eats carrot curls, rubs heads with a poodle, makes a wish on the tail of a pig, and makes a wig our of macaroni, but nothing works. Even when she puts it in rollers, it won't hold a curl, so when she finds a new friend, Pamela Paine, "whose whole head rippled with golden waves," she is in pretend beauty parlor heaven.

Emily creates a whole set of gorgeous hairstyles for Pamela, each to match a different glamorous personality. But when Pamela asks for a braid, Emily can't quite make it work because Pamela's hair is TOO curly.  So Pamela offers to braid Emily's hair and they discover that Emily has perfect hair for braiding.

Emily learns to braid her own hair and creates intricate braids to match her many personas - and voila - Emily loves her very straight hair.

Little girls will love this story - the whimsical illustrations put the reader right in the center of the first grade beauty shop chaos.  Parents will appreciate the light lesson that the grass isn't always greener on the other side.

A Bad Case of Stripes

David Shannon is a children's lit rock star!  I got to hear him speak a few years ago at the BYU Symposium on Books for Young Readers.  He was entertaining and shared his how-I-became-an-author story, told us to look for his little Scotty hidden in his books, and revealed some illustrations from his soon-to-be-published (at the time) book, It's Christmas, David!

A Bad Case of Stripes (this link goes to an online reading of the book by Sean Astin) is a fun, colorful lesson in being yourself and resisting peer pressure.

Camilla loves lima beans, but refuses to eat them because she wants to fit in and all of her friends hate lima beans.  She wakes up on the first day of school and her entire body is covered in stripes.  The doctor can't figure it out, so off to school she goes.  Naturally, the other kids ridicule her and call her names.  Throughout the whole miserable day, her body art changes whenever someone makes a demand - polka dots, checkerboard, stars and stripes.

The situation grows worse and none of the medical experts hovering over her can diagnose the problem.  Reporters wait outside her home, hoping to catch a glimpse of the girl who is now covered with roots, berries, crystals, feathers, and a long, furry tail, all leftovers of other people's suggestions.

Finally, a friendly old lady knocks on the front door and solves the problem. Camilla decides that no matter what other people think, she's going to eat as many lima beans as she wants, whenever she wants.

The lesson might be lost on younger readers, but older readers should be able to infer quite easily that not being true to yourself results in misery.