[Mentor Text Monday] Shhhhh....

Last week I visited our newly-built San Diego Public Library. I had been once before, but hadn't gotten to wander around. My favorite places are the main elevator, the blue chairs in the reading room, and the 9th floor views:

The elevator--because it is a visual shindig:

The blue furniture because it looks like a cartoon and I want to sit on a cartoon and read:

The bookstore because they had fabulous books and booky things that I loved:

Like the book I bought that is my new favorite and should be read in that blue sofa.

The Quiet Book by Deborah Underwood illustrated by Renata Liwska

I am not usually a fan of picture books with "cute " pictures. So often that seems to be the bulk of the content--the act of being cute. I love this book because of the text, and cute-picture lovers will also like the illustrations. As a mentor text, the illustrations definitely add to the content, and for this I can forgive their cuteness.

The story is a list of kinds of quiet. The types of quiet listed have nuance and depth--

First one awake quiet.. Jelly side down quiet... Last one to get picked up from school quiet...Lollipop quiet... Best friends don’t need to talk quiet...Bedtime kiss quiet...”What flashlight?” quiet... Sound asleep quiet....

As a whole, they follow a full day from wake-up to sleepy time. Each type of quiet allows room for a vignette or scene as well. 

Two of my favorites are:

First look at your new haircut quiet

and

Thinking of a good reason you were drawing on the wall quiet

I could tell a whole story just about those two kinds of quiet.

I like the idea of using this book with the book A Quiet Place by Douglas Wood--even just the first page of the book:

Sometimes a person needs a quiet place.
 A place to rest your ears from
Bells ringing and
whistles shrieking and
grown-ups talking and
engines roaring and
horns blaring and
grown-ups talking and
radios playing and
grown-ups…
Well, even grown-ups need a quiet place sometimes.
 But it can be hard to find one.
You have to know where to look.

Separately or together, these books can spring board a conversation, writing time, or an inquiry into nuance and juxtaposition. There are also language structures and word choice in both books that would be great for mentor sentences or phrases--parallelism, repetition for effect, use of the ellipse, run on sentences as a poetic structure--so many possibilities!

In my searching for images of these books I came across this website that provides a moment of quiet for each of us. Warning--there is one adult word used. I still very much enjoyed the site and want to share. If you choose to try a moment of quiet at the Quiet Place Project, maybe you can use it to set the scene for who you will use these titles in your classroom?

The Quiet Place Project

Happy Mentor Text Monday!