The+Rainbow+Fish



1. **Author/Illustrator** – Author and Illustrator: Marcus Pfister

2. **Title and date of publication** – __The Rainbow Fish__ Published: 1992 New South Books

3. **Genre** – Modern Fantasy (According to the lady at the library)

4. **Format** – Picture Book

5. **Award** – Christopher Award, Bologna Book Fair Critici in Erba, Abby Award and the IRA-CBC Children’s Choice

6. **Summary of book** – This book is about a fish that is beautiful and all the other fish want his shiny scales. He is nasty to them and refuses the scales. He then finds that he has no friends. He gets very upset and goes to ask for advice. The advice was to give them away. So he did and found that even though he had given up his most prized possessions, he was very happy.

7. **Strategies to use with the book** – We would “swim” our way to circle/story. Once settled in to story, I would put on my many shiny jeweled necklaces. Then once all my jewels were on, I would read the book. When I came to point that the rainbow fish began giving his jewels away, I would each child a necklace until we all had one necklace on. We would talk about how it is not nice to brag and how we need to be friends and share our things with others.

After reading the book, we would match some pre-selected picture vocabulary words on the felt board (If I had a smartboard like the rest of my school, we would use that, but I do not.) In order to do our vocabulary, we sing the “Surprise Bag” song and each child pulls out a vocabulary word. They then run it through the smart talk device, it reads the word to them and then they match it to the same picture on the felt board.

I would then pull out the mystery box which would have my rainbow fish puppet inside. The children would ask for clues to figure out what was in the box. Once we are finished with the mystery box, we would move to the art table to make a rainbow fish out of CD’s and jewels.