News from the Curriculum Resource Center

Lindgren, Barbo.  Oink, Oink Benny.  Illustrated by Olof Landstrom and translated by Elisabeth Kallick Dyssegaard.  New York:  R & S Books, 2008.  ISBN:  978-91-29-66855-1.

Popular Swedish author Lindgren offers a third adventure for young piglet Benny and his little brother.  Benny has had it with playing inside with his potatoes and sticks and is ready to join the gang for some outside fun.  With only a warning to “stay out of the mudhole,” readers and listeners know where this story is headed.  Accompanying the uncomplicated text are the wonderfully muddy … Continue Reading

Giblin, James Cross.  Did Fleming Rescue Churchill?  A Research Puzzle. Illustrated by Erik Brooks.  Henry Holt and Company:  2008.  ISBN: 978-0-8050-8183-1.

This clever book reads like a middle-grade story, which it is, but it is also a how-to manual.  The narrator, Jason,  is assigned what he considers to be a terribly uninteresting topic to write his report on:  Sir Alexander Fleming.  Convinced he will never be able to write three whole pages on such a boring scientist, he pleads with his teacher to  switch to someone else.  She, of course, doesn’t budge, but rather … Continue Reading

Donaldson, Julia.  Where’s My Mom?  Illustrated by Axel Scheffler.  Dial Books for Young Readers:  2008.  ISBN:  978-0-8037-3228-5.

A little monkey, alone in the dark jungle, asks, “where’s my mom?”  A helpful butterfly offers to take the monkey to his mom, but first the little monkey must describe her.  Through description of separate attributes the butterfly mistakenly leads the little monkey to an elephant (big), snake (tail coils), spider ( legs) and so on.  After many false starts, little monkey is safely reunited with both of his parents, while learning that not all … Continue Reading

   Welcome to campus Summer Session students. Whether you are back after a two week break, or here to study for the summer, be sure to check out all the new resources recently added to the CRC.  Teaching aids, teacher print resources and juvenile books are all being added to the collection.

Plourde, Lynn.  Margaret Chase Smith:  A Woman for President.  Illustrated by David McPhail.  Watertown, MA:  Charlesbridge, 2008.  ISBN:  978-1-58089-234-6.

Margaret Chase Smith:  A Woman for President is a biography of the senator from Maine who ran for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1964.  Smith, a congresswoman who was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1948 when her husband died in that office, had a long and successful career as one of the few women to serve in the House and then Senate.  This book is a picture book biography that not only chronicles her life, but also … Continue Reading