This week's Mentor Monday (a link up feature at
The Reading Tutor/OG blog) is about using text to help teach figurative language. I realize I am a day late this week, but I am very excited about this topic and have a few perfect books to highlight similes and metaphors.
Personally, I love similes and metaphors, as well as all kinds of figurative language in literature and poetry. I am not sure the best way to teach my writing co-op students about the concept, but I am excited to give it a try in a few weeks!
The first book I enjoy is
My Best Friend is Sharp as a Pencil by Hanoch Piven, which treats similes as the focal point of the book. In this book, a girl describes her friends and teachers at school by using school supplies and familiar items: sharp as a pencil, loud as a kazoo, fancy as lipstick. The art work is collage art using the items to describe the people, so it adds a double element of interest to the similes described. It is not a subtle book, but it does provide vivid examples of what similes actually are! I think we will begin with this book when our writing workshop turns to figurative language in a few weeks.
My next book suggestion has much less text and is geared to a much younger reader.
One Special Day by Lola M. Schaefer is a big brother book, where a boy looks forward to a new sibling. Before we meet the new sibling, we learn about Spencer: he is strong as a... and a picture of a bear playing with him fills the page. Funny as a... and monkey joins him. I love how this encourages the young reader to finish the simile. At the end, of course, he is more than all of that as the animals subside to the background and a new baby helps him be gentle. Although this book would be perfect for teaching very young children about similes, I believe it would also do wonders for the older student as well. Have them illustrate their own similes of who
they are!
Finally, my favorite book to demonstrate metaphor is
Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors by Joyce Sidman. In this book-length poem, color is a metaphor for everything throughout the year. I simply love the poem. I have not used it yet in teaching, but I'm thinking April will be our figurative language month. I hope the students enjoy reading sections of this poem with me as we enjoy the colors of the seasons! I think this book is a fantastic one, especially for those who already understand the concept of simile and metaphor.
What books would you suggest for teaching simile and metaphor to writing students?
Note: The book images above are linked to Amazon.com, through which I am an Associate. If you choose the purchase these books, I'd love it if you did so via the links above!Related Articles:
In Tia Isa Wants a Car and A Chair for My Mother, kids work towards earning money for a goal. Although they are very different stories, the goals of the main characters make them perfect for a lesson in comparing and contrasting. The ultimate goal setting lesson from these books is also a great character
Read More
The Red Book by Barbara Lehman is a wordless picture book, so it may not be the first to come to mind when considering a book to “read aloud” to a class. However, because the illustrations tell the story, The Red Book can be an ideal book to use as students practice outlining and retelling
Read More
I had a lot of fun considering favorite picture books as I considered the variety of ways one could organize a story. So many times in elementary school kids are given a prescription for writing and they must follow that. Obviously many stories follow a traditional structure with a clear beginning, a middle, and an
Read More
For our writing class, we compared the perspective of the two characters in A Tale of Two Beasts, beginning with a Venn diagram to brainstorm. A Tale of Two Beasts by Fiona Roberton is an amusing tale about a girl who finds a strange beast in the woods and brings him home to take care of him.
Read More
To encourage my children to write more often, I’ve tried to make sure I have a writing center easily accessible to them in our school room (which is also our playroom). As we make writing a fun part of our days, my children get handwriting practice as well as practice writing from their own creativity
Read More
I’m always excited to find picture books that would work well as writing prompts for elementary school kids, so I was extra excited to find Ten-Word Tiny Tales: To Inspire and Unsettle by Joseph Coelho (Candlewick, 2023). This new volume has stories that are each, as the title suggests, just ten-words long. With a variety of illustrators
Read More