; ;

Work and Play

To be honest, I’m not particularly a fan of the Rookie Ready to Learn series in general:  I find the activities in the back of each are often formulaic and only tenuously related to the story; each one ends by telling you someone’s version of what you just learned by reading this story (besides being patronizing, they often don’t hit the mark).  But if you do like this kind of thing, or you’re willing to ignore the extra features that don’t enhance them, the central stories are often good little stories, with redeeming qualities of their own.  This one uses repetitive, rhyming text, and a pattern of opposites, with illustrations that support the text, to suggest different types of work that people do.  One inconsistency in the artwork, not explained in the text, could provide opportunities for discussion as to possible explanations:  the ending illustrations depict the narrator of the story in a wheelchair, but earlier in the book, the page that states, “People work below my feet,” shows the narrator’s feet standing at the edge of an archeological dig.  It allows for speculation as to what might have happened to put the girl in the wheelchair, and whether or not she will need it permanently.