Noah Webster and His Words

Noah Webster and His Words

by Jeri Chase Ferris; illus. by Vincent X. Kirsch

32 pages; ages 4 – 8

HMH Books for Young Readers, 2013

This is a fun picture book bi-og-ra-phy [noun: a written history of a person's life]. While authentic – it’s based on lots of research – the dialogue adds a touch of fictionalization.* But a great story about a guy who loved language and wanted to document American English as a separate language from the King’s English.
(* the dialog adds literary life to the nonfiction. Jeri isn't writing fiction - she's using the same tools fiction writers use to bring her nonfiction story to life. see her comment below. )

Noah does not want to be a farmer like his father and his father’s father. Instead, he wants to be a schol-ar [noun: one who goes to school; a person who knows a lot]. The most controversial thing Noah did was to push the idea of standardized spellings and word usage. Prior to his spellers and dictionary, people wrote words the way they sounded. That meant a single word might be spelled three or for/four/fower/fore ways. Webster also decided that since this was a new country, we needed new and simplified spellings. Instead of “plough” he wrote “plow”.

The story is interspersed with dictionary-like definitions, and the back pages are a treasure trove for word lovers and nonfiction aficionados. There’s a detailed timeline in which “facts are explained”. Highlights include: the Boston Massacre, Tea Party, fighting in the Militia against the Brits and, always, working on his ultimate word book. There is an Author’s note with even more facts, including Webster’s opposition to slavery and his advocacy for the first copyright law. We learn that Webster was a teacher, lawyer, County court judge and founder of Amherst College… not just the guy who wrote the book we have to memorize before the SAT’s. The author includes a list of primary sources and some websites for kids (and their parents) who want to learn more.

Although this book is aimed at the 4- to 8-year old crowd, I think kids in 4th & 5th grade will get a kick out of it – especially if you pair it with Frindle, by Andrew Clements. Frindle, you might recall, is a story about a boy who makes up a word and then tries to get it included in the dictionary. 

If you’re looking for some activities to get kids involved with words, try these:

Find some old dictionaries at a used book sale and let kids cut out (or tear out) a favorite word to incorporate into a drawing/painting/collage.

Collect words in a can – words that are neat, unusual, or just sound cool. Use the words to write poetry, as story-starters, or just to share and listen to the cool words.

Play Text Twist, Boggle, Scrabble Slam or other games.

 

Check out more Nonfiction reads today over at Jean LittleLibrary. Review copy provided by local library.

Thanksgiving Reading

Today's Theme: Holidays! Especially Thanksgiving.
Next week we gather together to share food and stories. If you're looking for some good tales, try these... I headed down to the local library for a couple old favorites. Nothing better than reading a story (or listening to one) while waiting for pie.

The Legend of the Cranberry: A Paleo-Indian Tale

by Ellin Greene

This is a retelling of a Delaware Indian legend in which the Great Spirit created Mastadon-like “Yah-qua-whee” to be the People’s helpers and friends.  “For many years they carried the people’s belongings on their long journey to the sea, helped them to clear the forests, provided meat to eat, hides for clothing, and bones for tent frames, beads and musical instruments.”

But when they come to the place where the land ends and the sea begins, the Yah-qua-whee go on a rampage, trampling and destroying everything. The People, the smaller animals and the Great Spirit join together to fight the huge giants. There is a huge battle and the ground is churned up into a muddy bog with much blood spilled.  In the spring, the bogs where the mastodons were buried bloomed pink with blossoms that ripened into bitter-tasting blood red berries. The people discovered that the berries could be crushed and mixed with dried meat and fat to make pemmican. Poultices from the berries helped heal wounds, and the juice of the berries made a rich dye for clothing. Thousands of years later, descendants of those People offered berries to hungry Pilgrims.

If you are looking for a different sort of holiday book, check out An Outlaw Thanksgiving by Emily McCully.  It's based on a true incident in the 1890's Wild West, when Butch Cassidy and his gang threw a Thanksgiving banquet for the ranching community that was their favorite "hideout". McCully imagines this feast through the eyes of a young girl traveling from New York state to California. A blizzard stops the train and Clara ends up sharing dinner with Butch and the gang. Puts a different twist on the whole idea of cooking up a turkey and "inviting the gang over".

Activities ~ Make some Cranberry Ink! When soldiers in the Civil War ran out of ink to send home letters to their loved ones, they smooshed up some berries and used the juice as ink. You can use cranberries - the recipe's over at Archimedes Notebook.

Today's review is part of PPBF (perfect picture book Friday), an event in which bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's site. She keeps an ever-growing list of Perfect Picture Books. Review copies obtained from a library.

A Kite, A Waterfall, A Bridge

The Kite that Bridged Two Nations
by Alexis O'Neill; illustrated by Terry Widener
40 pages; ages 8 - 11
Calkins Creek, 2013

In 1848 an ordinary boy flew a kite across Niagara Falls and helped build a bridge. His name was Homan Walsh and he was 16 years old. He built the kite for a contest - a contest sponsored by the US and Canadian bridge-building companies to generate publicity for their endeavor of building a bridge to span the falls and connect two nations.

There were news articles, and later the event was included in history books. But author Alexis O'Neill wanted to tell the tale from the Homan's point of view - a kid who was caught up in the (air) currents of history.

Homan loves to build kites. What seems like play to his father ("Apply yourself, Your studies must come first.") is filled with learning: "reading the wind, calculating lift, gauging line length...". We see Homan building his kite from the spars up, cutting the sail from calico in Mother's sewing basket, adding tails and finally twine - more than a thousand feet to reach across the gorge that separates Canada from the US.

There's adventure, too. After determining that the best wind comes from the Canadian side, Homan rides across on the ferry. Like any good adventure story, his first attempt fails, and he is trapped across the gorge by ice that halts ferry traffic for days. But does Homan give up? No - when he finally gets home his first order of business is to repair his kite and try again. There's a lot at stake in his venture: prize money and a chance to go down in history.

This is a true story. But, says O'Neill, the dialogue is created to "express emotions that are not obvious in the straight narrative accounts of this event." In her back matter she outlines what is known about the facts of the event, and what is not known. For example, in her story she mentions a handbill advertising the kite contest. While there was a contest, no one has found evidence of how the contest was promoted. Handbills - like the flyers of today tacked to telephone poles - were a common way to announce things.

O'Neill includes a timeline of the bridge construction, adds sources and websites for further exploration, and even provides a link on how to build your own barn door kite - the kind that was popular when Homan would have built his kite.

Which leads to this question: While a true story, is this nonfiction? Dianne White asked O'Neill about this very issue in a recent interview posted at ReaderKidZ.  O'Neill's resoponse: "... if a writer makes up even one teeny, tiny thing that can’t be verified (a piece of dialogue, a neighbor’s name, an emotional reaction), the piece becomes fiction. Nonfiction means that everything is verifiable." She calls her story "historical fiction". But since it is about a real person, and is factual, other people would consider it a "fictionalized biography" - meaning that the story is pretty much true except for some dialogue.

Check out more Nonfiction reads today over at NC Teacher Stuff. Review copy provided by publisher.