Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae

I shifted our classroom chapter book section this past week and brought out new titles while keeping the many of the ones we began the school year with.  I have readers progressing as transitional readers and students not quite there yet.  I had to move things around a bit physically and wanted to make sure our community embraced everyone needs different things.

Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae is the perfect book for this discussion.  Gerald can stand still quite well and has difficulty moving around which makes the yearly jungle dance hard for Gerald to do.  Gerald is bad at dancing.  Different animals begin to dance and when Gerald tries to take a turn the lions say some hurtful things to Gerald.  By this point, the class was attached to Gerald and our room filled with sad moans.  

Gerald leaves the dance and begins to walk in the moonlight.  A cricket meets Gerald and shares my favorite line in the story, "But sometimes when you're different you just need a different song."  The cricket offers Gerald some sound advice and new music.  Gerald returns to the dance with a skip in his step and more.

I shared this book during an OCTM Twitter Chat and I was surprised a couple of people didn't know about it.  I started this blog in hopes of sharing books that were new to me and old ones I adored.  Stay tuned for old and new books.