Half a World Away
Gleeson, L.

This book is about two friends named Amy and Louie. Amy and Louie would do everything together including building towers high in the sky, digging holes, and watching clouds. When they wanted to play they would call each other over with “Coo-ee, Lou-ee” or “Coo-ee, Am-ee.” One day Amy and her family moved a long way away to the other side of the world. Amy and Louie both stopped doing the activities that they normally did. They both missed each other very much. Louie asked everyone in his family if he called Amy really loud would she be able to hear him. His family explained to Louie that Amy was too far away. One day Louie called for Amy really loud when she was sleeping. When Amy had woken she described that she had a dream that Louie had called for her. This book is about true friends who care about each other greatly.

Strategy connection:
This book is great for inferring readers. The reader is able to relate to how the characters in the book are feeling when they miss each other. The reader is able to read the characters face, body language and expressions to understand what the characters are experiencing. The reader is able to use the cover and pictures to infer what is going on in the story. The cover shows Amy and Louie standing on different sides of a tree, which Louie’s side being night time and Amy’s side being daytime. The reader is able to infer that two characters are far away from each other. The pictures in the story help the reader visualize what is going on and able to infer meaning of the story. The reader is able to create movies in the mind by creating their own personal mental images that only belong to the reader. Some readers may be able to make a personal connection with the reading if they have had a friend move away from them. This book is great for the students to be able to visualize and infer how Amy and Louie are feeling.

What Do You See?
Domanska, J.

This book is describing how different animals view the world. It is giving details of a variety of animal’s perspectives of details how they see the world. This book has a lot of pictures that do not have words on them for the reader to visualize how the animal sees the world. Some animals are describing the world they see as dark, wet, dry, clear and green. The story ends with the lark that is flying above all the animals, sees that all the animals are all partially correct with what they see.

Strategy connection:
This book is wonderful for students to visualize how each animal is viewing the world. This reading can support how the reader understands the text. The reader is able to visualize each animals world which strengthens the reader’s inferential thinking. The reader is able to infer what the words mean by the pictures in the story. The reader is viewing expressions of the animals and understanding the tone of the text as well. This is helping the reader relate to how the animals are feeling in the story. The reader is able to use word clues to uncover what is going on in the story. For example, the frog says “the world is wet.” There is then a picture of frogs dancing in the water with an umbrella. The reader is able to uncover how the frog views the world from it’s perspective. This book is very beneficial for both visualizing and inferring when a reader is reading this story.

Spot A Dog
Micklethwait, L.

This book has the reader visualize different types of dogs on each page. On each page there is a sentence about a dog and than an art picture on the next page about that specific dog. The reader is asked to find the dog on each page, in some pictures the dog is very difficult to find and forces the reader to look hard for the dog. There are a lot of descriptive words describing different types of dogs. There are a variety of different pictures that depict many different unique types of art.

Strategy connection:

This is a great book for the reader to visualize the art pictures to find a dog. It increases the attention of the reader when they are looking for the dog. The reader is able to learn many different adjectives that are describing dogs and then are able to visualize what the specific dog looks like in the picture. This book also has the reader do a lot of inferring while reading the book. The reader has to read more than just words when looking for the dog. They have to infer from the picture where they think the dog would be. This book helps the reader find meaning of unfamiliar words when they read the descriptive word of the dog and then look for the dog in the picture. This book also allows the reader to use word clues to uncover what is going on in the picture. All of these strategies in this book will help the reader with visualizing and inferring when reading.

Devon Mundy