Recommendations

I am currently making notes for consideration for next year.  I am looking for recommendations of books to help illustrate elements of literature.  For example I love to use "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs" to do point of view, as it is told from the wolfs point of view in first person. 

I also like using "The Lorax"to show value mapping or theme from an author.

If anyone use a book or has read on that would nicely blend with a mini-lesson please post it.

Gratitude

Events of the weekend struck me and caused me to think. I spoke to a friend who spent the conversation complaining that she had nothing to be happy about, detailing how everything was wrong . She was having a hard time finding anything good at all.  I tried to point out some of the good things in her life, but she did not want to hear it.  Later that day as I grocery shopped and watched the elderly couple one in the electric cart on oxygen I was glad to be healthy.  Later on during the same trip, at the check-out I was behind the mom who was having to decide what would go back because there was not enough money.  This made me thankful for having enough.  It seems so easy to get caught in the lows of life, to not look at all that we have and find the gifts we have no matter how small.  Melody Beattie said it well when she said:
 "Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast. a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates vision for tomorrow."

They grow up too fast

The baby crying

Soccer moms are carpooling

Graduation day