LAE 4424: Fantasy Books

Abuela

By Arthur Dorros

Illustrated by Elisa Kleven

Abuela is a fantasy picture book about a girl and her grandmother. The story is told from the perspective of the grandaughter. Throughout the story, she is talks about her day to day activities with her grandma, but there’s a different twist to it. They are flying. The story is a mix of English and Spanish. The Spanish is quickly translated and only used when the grandmother is speaking because she is monolingual Spanish.

The main theme of this book is family. This book shows the importance of different familial relationships. In this case, her relationship with her grandmother. Her relationship with her grandmother is important to her in such a way that she imagines amazing adventures in fantasy form with her things such as flying.

Bilingual Hispanic children would relate the most to this book. In Hispanic culture, family is a very important concept. In some families, they all live near each other so that they’ll never part. The back and forth between Spanish and English gives bilingual as well as monolingual Spanish children the opportunity to relate to a piece of literature in their classroom. This book could relate to other cultures, but specifically relates to Hispanic children.

Bridge to Terabithia

By Katherine Paterson

Bridge to Terabithia is a young child-preteen fantasy novel. The story follows two young friends, Jesse and Leslie, who create an imaginary world all of their own with all sorts of different magical creatures. Unfortunately, one of the main characters encounters a tragedy and has to gain the strength to rebuild and find comfort once more in their imaginary world.

Two main themes that can be garnered from this books is the feeling of childhood and friendship. The two main protagonists in the story shy away from the typical gender roles and find comfort in one another to bring out the best in one another. Both use the imaginary world “Terabithia” as an escape of all the problems and pressures of the real world.

Many young children could relate to these two characters because lots of children don’t know how to deal with problems in their lives. What students can learn from this is that through friendship or sometime of stress outlet like playing with friends, drawing, or playing sports can help relieve some of the burdens that we face such as poverty, parental absence, abuse, and etc.

The Giver

By Lois Lowry

The Giver is a story about an 11 year old boy named Jonas. Jonas lives in a futuristic society where there is very little diversity, no apparent social issues, little competition and very little choice. At a certain age, children are assigned the jobs that they will be carrying out later in life. Jonas is chosen to be mentored by ‘The Giver’ and is led to explore a new world that he never imagined would be possible.

The language of this story is very engaging for students because it exposes them to a concept that is completely different from the society we live in today. Students can make comparisons between the world they know and the world that is presented in the story.

One prevalent theme in The Giver is of rules and order. The world that Jonas lives in is a utopian society so rules tend to be shed in a negative light. Students could discuss:

• When do rules and order become overbearing?

• Are rules and order necessary?

Another theme in this story is of the importance of memory. Jonas is handed down years and years of memories which leads him to wanting to learn more about what is truly out there in the world. Memories help make us who we are.

References

Lowry, L. (1993). The giver. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Dorros, A., & Kleven, E. (1997). Abuela. New York: Puffin Books.

Paterson, K. (1997). Bridge to Terabithia. New York: Harper Collins.