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The Day You Begin

Genre: Contemporary Realistic Fiction/Multicultural

Title: The Day You Begin

Author: Jacqueline Woodson

Illustrator: Rafael Lopez

Awards: N/A

Age Range: 5-8 Years old


Summary: The story gives insight into what students may face when they attend a new place such as school. It talks about how some children may feel out of place because they appear to be different on the outside when compared to others. The food they ate may seem strange, so they get embarrassed sometimes when people ask them what they are eating. The girl in the story, Angelina, feels out of place because she does not look like the other students. However, she soon discovers that once she begins to talk about herself she finds things in common with her peers. Even though everyone may look different on the outside, talk differently, and eat different types of food there is something similar that makes others like you. 


Evaluation: I really think this grade can be read to students in elementary, middle school, or high school because feeling out of place is something all students feel. I think there is a lot that can be taught and learned from reading this one book. I would want to include this in my classroom and would want to use it in a read-aloud the first week of school. I would use the book to teach students the importance of being kind and accepting of others that are different from themselves. In addition, I would use it to show students that even if someone may seem very different from them that they can still relate to each other. An activity that I would do with younger students is to have them draw a portrait of themselves so we could hang it in the classroom. For older students, I would pair them up with someone they do not know very well and have them interview each other to find some things they have in common. 



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