Once Upon A Time By John Prater

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About Book

Title: Once Upon A Time
Author & Illustrator: John Prater
Genre: Fantasy
Major Book Awards: No major awards
Recommended Age Range: 4 to 8
Appropriate Grade Levels: Kinder to 3rd grade

Summary

This book written by John Prater, tells a story about a boy's "normal" day. The story starts off with an empty neighborhood as everyone is just waking up. As the boy is narrating his life through the text, his neighborhood starts to form through the illustrations. There's a baby bear crying over his broken chair by Goldilocks, red riding hood walking with her basket of food, the 3 little pigs starting to build their house, and a witch flew on her broom. As the boy is observing the common folktale and nursery rhyme characters coming to life, he continues to live his own life as well. When the story comes to an end, all the characters were eventually able to solve their own problem and starts to head back home. The boy finishes his night as well by suggesting to read a story because "nothing much happened around here today."

Evaluation - Would I Incorporate this book in Classroom?

I think this book was pretty unique read. Usually when I read a book, I read the text first and then look at the illustrations to connect with what the text may be referring to. When I continued reading, I realized that the text didn't really connect 100% to the illustrations. I soon realized that the text is more about the boys life, while the illustrations focused on a whole other story. It was the most popular fairy tale characters and their stories coming to life. I was able to understand what was going on because I've read these stories before. I can definitely see myself using this book in my classroom for kinder to 3rd grade, but not as a checking for comprehension type of book, but more of teaching students on how to focus on the illustrations as well, even though the text didn't 100% align with it. Some students can get confused about the illustrations, if they only focus on the text. Students have to learn how to connect what is going on throughout the story by looking at the pictures, even if they've never read the stories before. Something else that I can do is ask students if they can spot their favorite characters throughout the book. 

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