Books About Point of View: A Tale of Two Beasts

Like Do You Believe in Unicorns, Fiona Roberton's book, A Tale of Two Beasts, is a book about point of view. Unlike ...Unicorns, and this is in no way a criticism of Murgula's fabulous book, A Tale of Two Beasts is not subtle about the message at all.

This is going to be difficult but again I am going to tip toe through this as not to spoil anything for you...but buy this book.

The story is basically about a little girl who finds and an animal in the forest in distress. She jumps to the rescue and cares for this poor unfortunate creature as anyone would. You'd expect the adorable little creature to be grateful. I mean, wouldn't you?

The book is written in a way that throws a white hot light on how two folks can see the same event in totally different ways. The fact that it deals specifically in ones physical well being is a perfect since people's points of view can get very concrete and emotional when their physical well being is at the center of the debate.

It is a lesson that every child should be exposed to (and most politicians and policy makers these days as well).

The pictures are wonderful and help tell the story perfectly (and that's all I can say without ruining it for you).

Buy this book too.

Author: Fiona Roberton
Illustrator: by the author
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 32
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1444916726
ISBN-13: 978-1444916720
Date: 2015
Publisher: Hodder Children's Books
Price: $13.87 (as of the time of this post)
Where to buy: Amazon

Books About Point of View: Do You Believe in Unicorns

There is a lot of educating going on in the my school district and, one would hope, the rest of the country as well, around "point of view". 

This is the first of two books that I've had the opportunity to hear read to first and second graders in the past seven days on the topic. Both are wonderful but offer two different approaches to the subject.

Buy this book and buy it right now.

This first is this brilliantly written and illustrated  Do You Believe in Unicorns by Bethanie Deeney Murgula and I'm going to be very careful here because I don't want  to spoil a single thing for you. 

The book is written in a very creative way that both asks the reader if they believe in unicorns and offers explanations for what the spot-on perfect illustrations are showing (or not showing) the reader. I watched a second grade class of 21 students go full on debate club discussing the book from their individual points of view.  Boys and girls alike were completely engaged in the debate. They were actively making predictions, offering alternate or additional explanations and thinking deeply about what they were seeing/hearing. There were a lot of, "but it could also be this..." moments in the room. Time was spent on each page as additional information, predictions and explanations were offered by a fully engaged class of seven and eight year olds attacking this book, its pictures and text.

In a world were we are moving rapidly towards an "if I'm right you have to be wrong" state of affairs what better than to teach students how wrong that can be.

I'm not sure if I said it before but....BUY THIS BOOK!

Author: Bethanie Deeney Murgula
Illustrator: by the author
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 32
Language: English

ISBN-10: 0763694681
ISBN-13: 978-0763694685
Date: 2018
Publisher: Candlewick
Price: $8.79 (as of the time of this post)
Where to buy: Amazon