It's All About ME!

One of the activities that the children have been doing in order to learn to compare and contrast characters in a story is using Venn diagrams. To make it more interesting for the children, they have compared a Kevin Henkes character to themselves.Dazha notes in her comparison that she and Lilly (from Kevin Henkes' Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse) are alike because they both have purple purses, love school, want to be a teacher, get very angry and both like to draw pictures and eat cheese puffs. They are different because Lilly likes to write books but Dazha likes to color in books. Lilly writes mean letters to the teacher but Dazha writes good letters to the teacher. Lilly goes to school by herself but Dazha goes with her grandma. Lilly likes to dance but Dazha likes to watch people dance.

Dede compares herself to Kevin Henkes' Chrysanthemum. They both play, smile, dress, like to go to school and like macaroni and cheese with ketchup! They are different because Chrysanthemum is a mouse and Dede is human. Chrysanthemum is shy and Dede is outgoing. Chrysanthmum runs to school but Dede drives a car to school.

While some of these first comparisons are somewhat shallow and not the kind of connections that are really going to help the students understand the range of emotions and mood of the characters, they are a beginning step in comparing at a deeper level - and they are fun!