Carle, Eric. (1990). The Very Quiet Cricket. Illustrated by
Eric Carle. New York :
Philomel Books
The Very Quiet Cricket
begins with a baby cricket hatching out of its shell. The first creature he
meets is another cricket who communicates with him by rubbing his wings together.
The baby cricket tries to communicate back, but nothing happens when he rubs
his wings together. As the story progresses, the baby cricket meets more bugs
who say kind things to him, but he is still not able to say anything back to
them. With each passing page, the reader can see that the cricket is growing
bigger and bigger until the very last pages. Finally, after seeming to meet the
entire bug community, the cricket happens upon another cricket that also seems
to be very quiet. He starts rubbing his wings together and they make sound!
This specific book is wired to make cricket noises when the last page is turned
to reveal the cricket talking to the new cricket he meets.
Eric Carle is an amazing illustrator and I love his books! He
uses a collage style with painted tissue paper and finger painting to create a
believable look into a bug’s life as he meets the other bugs around him. Each
bug is multicolored and has different textures to really make the reader look
at the details of the picture. Eric Carle also uses predictable text to help
younger readers along with the story and facilitate the reading process. I saw
this book being used in action with a class of three-year-olds and they were
reading along with the teacher because the same words were being said over and
over again. The kids absolutely love the pictures and are always interrupting
the reading to point out something they like or notice in the picture, like how
the suns and moons almost always have faces or how long the antennae are on the
bugs.
Because I love Eric Carle books so much, I would definitely
do an Eric Carle unit in a younger classroom like kindergarten or first grade. It
may be a little childish for me to read any and every Eric Carle book I see,
but I know kids really respond to his work. So much could be done with Eric
Carle pieces like collage artwork, creative writing assignments, and so much
more!
An literature response activity that might be fun to do with students would be to take materials that Eric Carle was well known for using such as tissue paper, paints, paint brushes with different textures, and his hands and allow the children to make their own version of the very quiet cricked collage. Let the students make their collages and then have them explain why they used the materials they did, also what they were trying to portray with their techniques.
ReplyDelete-Hope I did this right :)