Mapping Kevin Henkes' Books

We recently finished an author study of Kevin Henkes.  We enjoyed reading many of his books, and we focused on learning the story elements.  To focus on the setting of the story, we made maps of three of his stories.

 

For the book, Old Bear, we made a map together showing the places he went in his dream.  After reading Owen, we made another map together. This time, we started with Owen’s home.  Next, we added Mrs. Tweezer’s house and the fence separating their homes.  As we worked, students decided there must be a street that passes their homes, maybe a school, and a park perhaps?  We decided together that those places could be added to the maps as long as we could justify that they would make sense in Owen’s neighborhood.  They really enjoyed having the freedom to add a few things from their own imaginations.

Now the kids were ready to make their own maps.  This time, we used Henkes’ book, Little White Rabbit.  This is a simple story, without a lot of text. Most students were able to read it on their own after hearing it read aloud.  In this story, Little White Rabbit wonders about many things as he wanders through his neighborhood.  With such sparse text, students needed to add their own ideas to the maps.  They enjoyed the challenge, using titles for their maps such as “Bunnyville” and “Little Rabbit’s Imagination.”                   
                                                  
 I’m not sure I’d stick with such simple stories for mapping the setting, but I really like the idea of integrating maps with reading (hits Common Core standards in Social Studies and Reading).  

Enthusiasm was high, and I will definitely use this idea as a center in the future.