A Ball for Daisy

Written & Illustrated by: Chris Rashka

Genre: Wordless Picture Book

Awards: Caldecott Winner 2012

Summary:

In this wordless story, we meet Daisy, a dog who loves the ball her owner gave her. She plays with the red ball everywhere she goes. At the dog park, Daisy and her owner play fun games with the ball until it flies to the other side of the gate. A kind park visitor gave the ball back to her, and Daisy began to play with her brown dog. Unfortunately, the brown dog accidentally pops Daisy's red ball, leaving Daisy very sad. Daisy loses the spark and energy she had before. Daisy and her owner run into the brown dog and his owner the next time they go to the park; the owner is very sorry for what happened to the red ball. She surprises Daisy with a brand new ball, and Daisy gets her high-energy back.

Teacher Evaluation:

I would use this book in a second-grade classroom for a language arts lesson. My class would do a reading/writing project over several class meetings. To start the project, we would read and discuss the book as a class. Next, we would create a word bank of descriptive language that we could use while looking at the story. Finally, students would work in small groups to write a story for "A Ball for Daisy." They would need to write at least a sentence for each page using the word bank we created as a group.