Uptown, written and illustrated by Bryan Collier (Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2000) is a great book. A boy shows the reader his home in Harlem and the amazing things that are in it. The readability lexile is ages 4-8.Each page of the book starts, "Uptown is..." and explains something about the area. The writing is simple, but says so much. For example, one spread is dedicated to The Apollo Theater. It says, "Uptown is a stage. The apollo Theater has showcased the greatest entertainers in the world. I hope we can get good seats."
The pictures add so much to the book. Collier is a fantastic and unique artist that painted and created collages for the story. One spread is about brownstones. It says, "Uptown is a row of brownstones. I like the way they come together when you look at them down the block. They look like they're made of chocolate." The picture is a Hershey's chocolate bar behind the doors and windows. It helps the children understand what a brownstone is and to use their imagination to see things differently.
Some of the sentences have movement. The words, "Uptown is a caterpillar" are squiggly like a caterpillar could be.
Students in New York would enjoy this book because these places would look and feel familiar to them. I think that students outside of New York would be interested because the book does such a good job of showing and describing the places. It really captures the feeling of the places that make the home of the boy in the story. He is sharing his home with the readers and I get a strong feeling of self-reflection and pride.
Mini-lesson:
It is important for students to be reflective about where they live and the world they can see. We could do an activity where we share our home with people that don't live here. The students could each come up with a page in our story: "Minneapolis is... " We could describe what we see and reflect on some similarities and differences from other places. If possible, we could share our story with children in another city or state and they could share their story.
This sounds like a great book! To the students I work with, Harlem would be a far-off exotic place, very different from rural Minnesota. This book can present that part of New York City as a very real place, where people live and work, just like they and their families do here in mid-central Minnesota. The illustrations are vibrant and really animate the book.
ReplyDeleteKathleen Brockway
I recently checked out a book about Martin Luther King that had illustrations by Collier (one of the artists profiled in the Show and Tell book).
ReplyDeleteOften when I see a book like this, I'm transported to a place or time that I have never been involved in, but I can get a feel for it. It's hard to describe, but I often have the same feelings when I listen to music that is so representative of a time, genre or place.
Collier pictures no doubt evoke these environmental feelings in the book.