Toon Books

Library lessons in first and second grade usually involve some kind of read-aloud. Especially now that we're working on reading the books nominated for the Monarch Award, the Illinois Readers Choice Award for grades K-3. We have a poster of the 20 Monarch nominees by the reading chair in the library, and students love to see what we've already read and what we'll read soon. Check the library catalog to see which books are nominated this year!

One Monarch nominee this year is a graphic novel, or comic book, called Little Mouse Gets Ready by Jeff Smith. We have the physical book in the library, but I decided to share this story with students by using the online reader at Professor Garfield's website (shown below). Here you can read the book yourself or you can have the author read it to you. Of course we wanted to hear Jeff Smith read his story! 

What's great about the Toon Book reader on Professor Garfield's website is that it has 11 different books to choose from - and they're translated into 5 different languages! In one especially excited second grade class, we read Little Mouse Gets Ready first in English, then in Chinese (with a couple of our students reading along), and finally in Spanish. What a rich cultural experience!