One of my first jobs as a preschool teacher years ago, was in a bilingual classroom in central Phoenix. I have a vivid memory of holding up a book for my class to see and then giving them a quick sneak peak of the next page before I turned the page completely. In unified chorus the class would sing out the words written on the next page. Could all these 3 and 4 year old kiddos read already? Or was it possible they had all memorized an entire book? Well, no they could not quite read yet. And yes, they had memorized it. But that was because there was a pattern to the book that was very easy to uncover and the children had quickly deciphered it. At pick-up time that day, one of my Spanish speaking students bolted to her mom and said, “Mami, hoy lei un libro en ingles!” (Mommy, I read a book in English today!) As a teacher I live for the connections made. The fact that this one still sticks with me all these years later shows the impact this book’s easy-to-follow pattern, its catchy repetitiveness, and its colorful words and illustrations had on the child. I had been using the book since my first classroom and it’s on my lesson plan for next week in my current classroom. I know you’ve heard of it too!
I met with an author last week who talked about the laborious task of writing, rewriting, editing, and finally landing on the finished and polished version of his book that is finally ready to go to print. It took him two years. As a published author myself, I get it! Writing a successful book can seem endless. Sometimes, however, the unbelievable happens, and a book simply comes together. Brown Bear Brown What Do You See? was one such amazing example. I read an interview given by the author, Bill Martin Jr. and James Preller and here is a portion:
<The words seemed to flow easily and exactly right from the beginning. Bill tells the story of being on the train one day in the early 1970’s when he heard the words “brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?” He didn’t have a notebook with him so he wrote it down on his newspaper. Then next to that phrase he wrote, “red bird, yellow duck, blue horse, green frog, et cetera. Within 15 minutes the story was complete. >
Who would think that a book some of my generation, most of our children’s generation and probably most of the generations to come recognize and have had in their home and/or classroom libraries would have come together from 15 minutes on a train and some overheard words?
The interview goes on to say:
<He typed up the words for his book and knew he needed to find an illustrator. At the time, Eric Carle had never illustrated a children’s book. Martin had seen his work however in a magazine add for a pharmaceutical company. He liked what he saw and the rest is history. Eric Carle became an extremely well-known children’s book author and illustrator and he owes his start to Bill Martin Jr.
About his children’s books, Bill is quoted having said, “I started writing the kinds of things that I thought children needed. I wanted children to become page-turners. I wanted them to be able to read a book in five minutes so they could proudly say, ‘I read a book.’ Children love to have power over books. When a frail reader finds a book that he or she can read, it’s such a triumph, that the reader will read it again and again and again.” >
What Martin Jr, wanted from his books and for his readers has certainly been achieved the world over. But many years ago in a central Phoenix preschool one Spanish speaking 4 year old student was convinced she had read an English book. And all the credit for that goes to Bill Martin Jr. and his brown bear.
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