Waking Up Wendell

Waking Up Wendell

Author: April Stevens

Illustrated by: Tad Hills

Books for the younger generation involve them to use his or her imagination as much as possible; which is not a bad thing. The book Waking Up Wendell by April Stevens and illustrated by Tad Hills lets children use his or her imagination because of the talking animals. Which means that this book is a fantasy book. If children don't know what a fantasy book is, well it is simply "imaginative literature distinguished by characters, places, or events that could not happen in the real world." (Literature and the child pg 12) This book is appropriate for any children from k-5th grade.

This book also represents good visual pictures that go along with the text. For example, as you see the picture above is on page five and six. The text explains how the dog does the same routine every morning. The text and picture show exactly what the dog is doing in the book. It can make the reader feel like he or she is there with the dog. An example on what the dog does is "He trots over to his favorite pear tree, makes his morning wee-wee, then does what he always does first thing." (Waking Up Wendell pg 5) The quote tells the reader what the dog is doing and the picture gives the reader a fully understanding on what the text means. 

What I like about the book is that it keeps the readers attention because when I was reading it, it kept my attention and made me laugh a little bit. If a student is having trouble reading this book, this is a website that can help the student with words that he or she is having trouble pronoucing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7DtjtZUzkk (audio-version) Some motivational activities that student's can do with this book are: acting out the character's, having one student be the narrator, or come up with their own version of this book. They can talk about how he or she has done something that has disturbed other people around them and how it ended. Reader Response Questions:

1) Which character do you like best? Why?

2) What was the purpose of this story?

References:

Google Images

Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7DtjtZUzkk

Galda, L., Cullinan, B. E., & Sipe, L. R. (2010). Literature and the child. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning. pg. 12 Print.

Stevens, A., & Hills, T. (2007). Waking up Wendell. New York: Schwartz & Wade Books. pg 5,6 Print.