Follow Me

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Cowlick

Olive Art's Picture Book Parade introduces...  Cowlick                              1                                                                           

Published: 2007 Author: Christin Ditchfield Illustrator: Rosalind Beardshaw


Cowlick is a cute fictional story about how little boys get their cowlicks. The book tells the story of a sweet she cow coming into the rooms of little boys while they sleep and giving their flat hair a good lick, making it stand tall and un-correctable. She sneaks out before the sunrise leaving the little boys to wake to the silly standing swoop that so many boys are traumatized by.

I was immediately drawn to this book because of my Husband. I watch him morning after morning attempt to rub the cowlick from his head. It makes me laugh! So, now we know how it got there. 

This book is a good example of rhyming  and is almost poetic.  It goes along with the idea of fantasy and could be shared when relating to ideas of fictional beings like the tooth-fairy and the Easter bunny (shhhh....) Of course I wouldn’t want to ruin the imaginations of any little believers.

The books images make great use of foreground, middle-ground, background, show many facial expressions on the children and the animals (cow and dog), and is a good example of art techniques such as dry brush and shading.


This book could kick off a unit on writing fictional tales. Students could look for problems and write fiction about how they cam to be that way. For example maybe how the vase really fell on the floor v. a non-fiction - truth writing.

Students could write their own stories (both fiction &non-fiction) and illustrate them. 

*The Picture Book Parade!

This series of posts is designed to meet the needs of graduate class, I am currently enrolled in, titled Teaching Art & Literacy through picture books.
One of my assignments is to read, review, reflect, and be inspired by 20 picture books that are new to me and find a way to share them with my classmates, colleges, & PLN. 

 The Ideas shared will not be ideas I have tried and executed, simply sparks of inspiration derived from a short and colorful read. 

I am hoping that these ideas might develop over time, as I water them in my minds and let what's left of my summer vacation shine and pull out the greatness, that is a totally awesome new lesson for my students. One can hope!

So sit back and enjoy the series of posts I am calling the Picture Book Parade!

No comments:

Post a Comment