Duck for Turkey Day
by: Jacquelene Jules
This story is about different traditions for holidays. It is Thanksgiving, and the class was talking about pilgrims and the native Americans, the first Thanksgiving, and making turkey pinecones. Everyone was going to eat turkey for Thanksgiving, except Tuyet. Her family, who were Vietnamese, were going to make duck. Tuyet was sad that everyone else was eating turkey but her, but she also loved the duck, she even had seconds. When they returned to school, they talked about what they did and ate at Thanksgiving. To Tuyet's surprise many of her friends in class did not eat turkey, they had roast beef, enchilada, and many other entrees for dinner than duck.
This story was published in 2009, and is multiculural literature for children. The setting is home and school for thanksgiving. The theme is Holiday Traditions, and diversity. The main character is Tuyet, supporting characters are her family, her classmates, her teacher, and her grandmother. Multicultural books are those that show diversity of the children who come into your classroom, they are books that reflect the perspectives the trials that students from diverse backgrounds deal with when assimilating to our Culture. This book depicts one of these struggles, but also highlights the fact that not everyone, even native born, share the same traditions, and there are more of us who are different than you think. The book is also considered contemporary realistsic fiction, because the story, events, and the dilemma are all things that can realistically happen.
The illustrations look like watercolors, but with beautiful colors. The style of art used is again representational, because they depict realistic scenes, charcters, and events, although cartoonish (Lee, 2010)." The images walk the reader through the events, through the dilemma, and really add to the books theme of traditions, showing what the characters family traditions are. Tthe pages alternate from full pages of artwork, to small images with light fading out edges. The title page uses this small image as well. The images are beauiful.
Some activities that can be included for this story can include a writing prompt about traditions. What traditions does your family have that make you different, or make your celebrations unique. Have the children write, make pictures and share their traditions to the class. Then once all the traditions are in, you can make a class holiday, where every tradition shared can be incorporated into the celebration. Another idea is to make a class tradition, have the students come up with a class tradition. It can be anything from a chant that they all say in the morning, to a class song or phrase. This works as a collaboration assignment and a writing assignment in one.
Resources:
Lee Galda, B. E. Cullinan, and L. Sipe. (2010). Literature and the Child. 7th Ed.
Belmont: Wadworth. Cenage.
Jules, J. (2009). Duck for Turkey Day. Albert Whitman and Company. New York.
Duck for Turkey Day alternative activity:
ReplyDelete1.) Each student could present on their favorite holiday tradition in their family. If a child doesn't have a tradition, have them pick one he/she wished their family did.
2.) Students could each bring in their favorite food from a specific holiday to share with the class. This allows students to try new foods from different cultures and holidays that might differ from their own.