Exploratory Essay

Children’s books come in different shapes, sizes, and content. They bring about imagination, feelings, and an individual’s views on certain ideas. There are children’s books about a magic treehouse, a dark day when the crayons quit, and of course a little Lorax who wants to save his forest. But how do we, as teachers, know that these books we pick out for our students have any effect on their view of the world around them? Does a book about a very giving tree, make children think about taking too much from the world they live in? Or does a book about some funny looking green eggs and ham cause our students to think about trying new things? These are the type of questions that as a future educator I want answered before building a classroom

If we take a look at the math are of common core it is trying to accomplish just that, creative thinkers who can view problems in different ways. So if we can accomplish this through different math problems why can’t this be the case with reading? We know that there are certain ways of accessing thought while trying to solve a math problem, but how do we find ways to access certain thoughts through reading? Could it be that the different books within certain genres that we provide our students create certain ideas and thoughts within our student’s minds. Genres are an important factor in this equation because genres cover all sorts of different topics and ideas within a

Short (2014) There are eight different genres all of which are based on different attributes. The wonderful thing about having eight different genres is that it can create interest in reading to our young ones by providing a multitude of topics to choose from with different settings, plots, and ideals. So how does this relate to the question I posed earlier of, how do we really know if specific books within these genres are affecting the way our students think about the world around them? The purpose of a well-rounded library is to allow students the opportunity to be exposed to a world of possibilities, to be sucked in by a hungry bear and his friends and gain different ideas from it such as the idea that no matter how frightened, sad, or hungry you are as long as you are with your friends everything will be alright. As an avid reader myself I know what concepts and idea’s that I have gathered from books but I want to understand if a certain genre presents certain idea’s to the world growing around our