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| Image Retrieved From: When a Line Bends...A Shape Begins — Rhonda Gowler Greene |
Happy Women's History Month! This month, I will be highlighting all female authors.
Summary
This book is a playful and fun way to introduce kids to different kinds of shapes and how they are made. The book is a poem explaining squares, rectangles, triangles, circles, ovals, hearts, stars, and rhombuses/diamonds. The book also includes beautiful and whimsical illustrations showing examples of each kind of shape on every page!
My Impressions and How I Would Use This Book:
I think this book is a wonderful way to integrate reading and math; the poetry and illustrations create access points for students who aren't overly interested in geometry. I would love to use this book in a pre-k or kindergarten setting to introduce students to different types of shapes. I would spend time on each page letting students identify the different shapes they see, and then after reading the book we would go on a walk either through the halls or outside where students should document the different shapes they see in their academic journals (of course, they'd likely draw what they see rather than write it out and that's perfectly wonderful and developmentally appropriate). However, I am a little concerned that this book might lead to some misconceptions, as it refers to three-dimensional shapes as two-dimensional and I know most curriculums are trying to move away from that. We would have to talk about how each side of the pyramid is a triangle (and the bottom a square), but the whole pyramid is a pyramid which is its own shape. I also think it's important to teach students academic language as soon as possible, so I don't like that this book refers to rhombuses as diamonds. I think I would simply make a comment that a diamond is also called a rhombus, and then on our anchor chart we make letter I would only put rhombus. Overall though, I think this is a super fun book to get kids excited about geometric concepts!
Professional Review:
Cataloging several examples for each of ten regular shapes, Greene develops in an ever-changing rhyme scheme the premise that all shapes are made from bent lines. It's an eye-opening insight for readers, but confusing when blocks are considered square, a bubble, marble, and ``curled kitten'' are included in the list of circles, and ``star'' is defined as ``the shape of a fish.'' Readers may also falter at the triangle spread, since the three blocks of text are placed so that it's hard to tell in what order they're to be read; the ``tent built just for you'' has a triangular opening, but what children will notice is the diamond- shaped side. Kaczman's picture-book debut features a set of stylized, evenly colored, very simply drawn scenes, sometimes viewed from playfully skewed angles or featuring sight gags--a police officer chowing down on a doughnut, a kilted man playing hopscotch. Still, an instructional intent hangs heavy over this, and the examples are not always on target; a better book on the topic is Dayle Ann Dodds's The Shape of Things (1994). (Picture book. 4-6)
Audience: Children's
ISBN: 0-395-78606-1
Author: Greene, Rhonda Gowler
Retrieved From: WHEN A LINE BENDS...A SHAPE BEGINS. (1997). Kirkus Reviews, (13) https://login.ezproxy.jbu.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/when-line-bends-shape-begins/docview/917362520/se-2
APA Citation:
Greene, R. G. (1999). When a line bends--a shape begins. Scholastic Incorporated.
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