The Happy Hocky Family Moves to the Country

Just like the "Voice" tag in New Socks is kind of a stretch, the "Growth Mindset" tag in this one is a little dicey. I'm going to stick with it though, and I'll explain why. Lane Smith describes the life of the Hocky family after they move from the city to a broken-down farm house in the country. As someone who has lived in the country for about 13 years, I find a lot of the humor in this book to be, well, humorous. There's a whole lot of truth in it. Between the description of leaves in the fall, the chili cook-offs, and the abundance of "furry" creatures such as squirrels and skunks, the country is successfully captured. I have to say that my favorite page, though, is 52, which shows the house and yard covered with snow with a caption that says "In the country there are lots of new games to play. This one is called FIND THE DRIVEWAY." After last year's blizzards, this was a game we played often at my house.

The growth mindset comes in during a couple of the vignettes, in which the Hocky children either become dejected with a failure or decide to take their failure and try again. Some of the vignettes - the ones where the children become dejected - demonstrate fixed minset, while some of them display growth mindset, but in the very end of the book each family member has an opportunity to show growth mindset at last. It's subtle, extremely subtle, but I like it. And I think I could use it. Bottom line, though, this book is a really funny time.

Learning to Fly

This is one of the best picture books I've read in a while, and that's really saying something. I love picture books. But I also love growth mindset and books that display it, and this one does that impressively well. It also doesn't hurt that the drawings are awesome and penguins are adorable.

The narrator stumbles across a penguin who says that he decided that he wanted to fly. So he did. And as he flew he saw some other bird who told him that penguins can't fly. And he fell. The penguin wanted to fly, reached his goal, and then allowed someone else who didn't believe in him ruin everything. How often do we do this to our students? How often do we destroy their fires by believing that they aren't capable? They know when we don't believe in them, and they believe it themselves. Thankfully, the narrator believes in the penguin; he sets up a training program and does everything he can to help the penguin fly again. Unlike the first time, though, nothing works. It's not until the last page of the book, when they spot a penguin colony flying overhead, that the penguin believes once again and easily takes flight. Unfortunately, our students may need an incredible amount of convincing once they've been taught to believe that they're incapable of succeeding. The narrator of this book did everything he could to help the penguin but the final ingredient for success only came when the penguin believed it about himself. This is the case with students, too, and we need to be patient as their educators. It may not be an instantaneous change, but we need to do everything we can to encourage them so that when the moment comes and it clicks and they see what they're capable of, they'll fly just like the penguin.

Mia's Story

This is a genuinely unique story. With beautiful illustrations that provide an intimate sketchbook look and a writing style in the form of a personal narrative, the reader feels as though they are looking over the shoulder of the author as he writes. Taking place in the mountains of Chile, Mia's Story highlights a young girl's determination that embraces every element of her life. Whether caring for her new puppy, searching for that puppy after he disappears, or nurturing a crop of flowers to sell at the marketplace, Mia approaches life head-on. Her family's life in their poor village is difficult and she faces several hardships throughout the book, but she remains strong and focused. Mia finds happiness in each of these situations, whether taking a moment to breathe the clean air on the top of the mountain or harvesting an accidental crop of wildflowers to help her family. An somewhat subtle but sincere example of growth mindset, Mia demonstrates the benefit of seeing good in every situation as well as the results that can come from genuine effort.

Mindset

This book by Carol Dweck discusses the two mindsets that people have: the fixed mindset or the growth mindset. Fixed mindset says that you're born with an intelligence, skill set, and talents and what you have is what you have. Growth mindset says that every moment and every place is a starting point; you can learn a talent, learn a skill, or receive an education. You don't look at all the artistic people and the athletic people and the smart classmates and think "wow, I wish I could do that." You become that. Certainly, we have our natural talents that we are born with - our starting points - but we can always grow, always learn more. We can take an art class, spend some time in the gym, or become motivated enough to become a better student. We read this book in one of my grad classes this semester and I've been officially brainwashed; I see growth mindset everywhere. When I was asked by one of my professors to help her with an ongoing project in which I find her resources to help middle school teachers motivate difficult students, I knew that growth mindset was our starting point. So many teachers are fixed mindset themselves and/or believe a fixed mindset about their students, and no motivation or connection occurs. This book is awesome, and I highly recommend it.

The Red Chalk

Main character Sara has a piece of red chalk that she thinks is boring. After successfully tricking a friend into trading his marbles for her chalk - she says it has magic powers - she quickly becomes bored with the marbles and seeks her next victim. This pattern continues, but the interesting element is that she is always bored and unhappy with what she has and is continually on the hunt for what everyone else has, but each friend that she trades with is completely content with their new toy. It doesn't matter to them that it's just a normal piece of chalk...to them, it really does have magical powers. Why not? They all take their typical object and have the time of their lives with it while Sara remains completely unhappy. In the end, Sara realizes the great thing she had originally with the red chalk, and is finally content.

This book is adorable. The illustrations are cute, Sara is cute, and the lies Sara comes up with to trick her friends are...imaginative. For me, though, this book is an excellent example of growth mindset. Our students look around in the classroom and in the gym and in the lunchroom and they see what everyone else has. Everyone else is smarter, stronger, more popular, more artistic, more musical...fill in the blank. They wish they could trade talents - or just have one of the talents - of their peers and they fail to see what they have already. But everyone has talents, everyone has abilities, and everyone has the ability to learn. All of Sara's friends traded their items with Sara based on the premise of the lies that she told them. But when they realized that their item didn't really make you a genius or give you three wishes, they had just as much fun with the item anyway. They saw the item for its true potential, not just what they were told at face value. Just like Sara eventually realized that she should have seen the value of her red chalk rather than chase after what everyone else has, our students can learn that they already have the abilities to be whoever and whatever they want to be.

Harold and the Purple Crayon

Could there be a more adorable cartoon boy than Harold? I think not. Believe it or not, I just read this classic for the first time about a month ago and thought it was the cutest thing I'd read since I myself was a toddler. When I had to do a children's book assignment for one of my classes this week, I knew the Harold was my boy. This book is, in my opinion, excellent for instilling inspiration and personal motivation in students: Harold wants to go for a walk with his crayon, so he draws his walk. He makes his own street. He makes his own moon and his own picnic and his own sailboat to rescue himself and his own apple tree. When Harold travels all over with his crayon, creating his own adventures, and wants to go back home, he draws his house and he's home. Basically, Harold decides that something should exist, so he creates it himself. When unforseen scary times approach - Harold accidentally draws waves that swallow him up and try to drown him - he doesn't loose all hope and give up...he draws himself a sailboat so he can pull himself out of the scary water and sail back to land. When he accidentally falls off a cliff that he never drew the other side of, Harold calmly draws a hot air balloon and floats away. What a perfect conversation starter for students who have grown up thinking that they have been provided with a concrete set of intelligence or skill or talent and that they lack any control over their success. I think it might be even more perfect for a conversation regarding how to react when bad things surprise you. Harold didn't give up. Harold simply created his own escape plan and turned it into something good. If you aren't so interested in this particular route for instruction, I think this book also works beautifully for introducing unconventional figures (historical, scientific, fictional) who broke the rules and thought a bit nontraditionally but who made a huge difference in their given field. If none of these interest you, you could perhaps discuss Harold's impact on the environment as he travels through his drawn world...but that might be a little bit of a stretch...

John, Paul, George, and Ben

I had heard about this book for a while - seen it in stores, heard it referenced in the one day I spent in my accidental enrollment in an elementary ed. course, etc. - and pretended to know all about it but didn't really. When my professor brought it out the other day to show us, I secretly got really excited because I could finally have an actual wealth of knowledge about this popular little picture book. And honestly, it's really cool. Since I am going to be licensed to teach both middle school English and middle school History, I'm pretty interested in finding books that can span both of those subjects. [I'm really interested in finding books that can span all subjects, for the record.] This particular book follows the childhoods of four of our Founding Fathers, John Hancock, Paul Revere, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin. These childhoods range from being semi-fictional to [as far as I know] very fictional, but they're extremely humorous and they all relate to things we know as fact about those Founding Fathers. For example, John Hancock has a hard time not writing his name extremely large on all his elementary papers, and Paul Revere shouts constantly as a young boy. It's cute and it's very comical, and it would be a great way to introduce some funny post-unit material to students after they've learned the necessary information to "get it." All the little stories in this book are funny because we already know about what the grown men were like and what they are famous for; the book wouldn't be nearly as interesting to students if they hadn't learned those facts yet. There's something very powerful to a middle school student, though, to be able to watch a movie or read a book that has references to what they've learned in school and to get the reference. This book provides a great tool for that.

Rhyming Dust Bunnies

This book is completely adorable and completely hilarious. As you could imagine by the title and the image on the cover, it's a short picture book about four dust bunnies who like to speak in rhymes...except Bob, the difficult one. As the other three dust bunnies - Ed, Ned, and Ted - speak in perfect rhymes to get their points across, Bob continues to be a problem by speaking out of rhyme. Exasperated, Ed, Ned, and Ted correct him each time...until Bob turns out to be relaying a very important message.

Honestly, this book takes about three minutes to read out loud, start to finish. But the possible intents and messages to relay to kids or students seem endless. Bob is an outcast and nonconformist who is the only one willing to speak out of turn in order to accomplish something. Because of this, Bob goes unheard and mildly shunned by his peers. They roll their eyes and correct him and think that's he's maybe not all-together with it. But Bob, in the end, is the only one who's got it right. I know this may seem like a lot to extrapolate from a picture book that I've already confessed takes a brief three minutes to read, but seriously: it's a good one. So funny and so entertaining while also containing incredible potential for a conversation starter in a class of students. [Plus, isn't Bob one of the best names in the whole world? Don't agree? You clearly need to see this movie.]