Best Friends Wear Pink Tutus
Written by Sheri Brownrigg
Illustrated by Meredith Johnson
Title: Best Friends Wear Pink Tutus
Synopsis: Best Friends Wear Pink Tutus is a fictional story about Amanda and Emily. The girls are best friends who made their story debut in book All Tutus Should Be Pink. Much like their first book, the girls are always dressed in their pink tutus. Best Friends Wear Pink Tutus follows the girls to ballet class where they will tryout for the main role in The Nutcracker Ballet. The girls are concerned if one of them gets the leading role, the other one will be upset. Both girls try their hardest, but get thrown off when they see each other during their tryout solos. At the end of the story the girls are excited to get snowflake roles, because that means they can dance together and both wear their pink tutus on stage.
Author: Sheri Brownrigg
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| Meredith Johnson |
Illustrator: Meredith Johnson was raised in Raytown, Missouri. She has been drawing from the time she could hold a crayon. In school she would help decorate the holiday bulletin boards because she was able to draw angels better than anyone else. Meredith currently lives in California with her husband. She has two adult children. Meredith used to create commercials, but now spends her time focusing on illustrating children's books. She has illustrated close to 100 books and is enjoying the opportunity to work out of her home. http://www.meredithjohnson.net/
Genre: Fiction
Grade Level: Hello Reader Level 2 (Kindergarten-Grade 2)
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| Emily and Amanda |
Theme: The two major themes that can be connected to this story are friendship and ballet dancing.
Pre-reading Activity: The teacher will ask the students to think back to the story All Tutus Should Be Pink. The teacher will show the pictures of All Tutus Should Be Pink to refresh the students' memory of the story line. The teacher will then guide the students to listen for ways Best Friends Wear Pink Tutus is the same and different from All Tutus Should Be Pink. No writing should be going on while the story is being read.
Post-reading Activity: After the story is read, have the students fill out a Venn diagram about the two stories. The Venn diagram should include the ways All Tutus Should Be Pink and Best Friends Wear Pink Tutus are the same and different.
Assessment: The students will be assessed on their Venn diagram answers. They will be assessed on how well the listened and retained the information from the stories. They will also be assessed on their comparisons and how many facts they include.
Personal Reflection: Best Friends Wear Pink Tutus is a great sequel to All Tutus Should Be Pink. The author and illustrator are consistent at keeping the friends relateable and interesting. The emotions the girls go through during the tryouts are familiar feelings that most children go through with their friends. The story has a great ending that pulls together the girls friendship and shows that every role in a production is important no matter how big or small as long as you have fun and do your best.
Best Friends Wear Tutus sounds like a story that I would have loved as a little girl. I danced for fifteen years and made several life-long friends in the process. In my spare time (not sure when I will actually have any), I will have to pick up this book and the other one about Emily and Amanda. Perhaps I can bring it to the dance studio to share with some of the younger dancers. Thanks, Claire!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was going through your blogs I came across this particular book and noticed the cover to be very familiar. As I was reading your post it occurred to me that as a young child I owned this book. I remember reading it all the time. I really enjoyed it because I was a dancer. Using the venn diagram in your post-reading activity will definitely assess what the students retained from the story. Great job!
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