My Pal, Victor
By Alyssa Bewley-EDEL 411-Section D
About The Book
Illustrator: Robert L. Sweetland
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Topic: True friendship is the most important thing
Reading Level: K-4
Awards: recognized by the American Library Association (ALA) as the 2005 winner of The Schneider Family Book Award for best picture book for young children.
About the Author
About The Illustrator
An illustration from the book
My favorite illustration from the book
Another Illustration
Criteria for High Quality Multicultural Literature
2. Includes member of a "minority" group for a purpose other than filling a "quota". Victor and Dominic are both from some kind of hispanic background. The book tells a story about these two hispanic backgrounded boys who have a strong friendship.
3. Names of characters should be culturally authentic and their personalities should reflect believable attributes. Victor is a commonly known spanish origin name, usually pronounced (v IH k - t er). Dominic could typically be a hispanic name but is not as commonly occurring as Victor.
My Pal, Victor Lesson Idea
CCSS RI.2.7 Explain how specific images contribute to and clarify a text.
The students will find evidence from pictures in the text that help tell the story and will explain how these images contribute to and clarify the text.
Lesson Procedure:
- The lesson will begin with the teacher asking meaningful and relatable questions such as: Who has a best friend? What do you and your best friend do for fun? The teacher will then introduce the book, My Pal, Victor, and tell the class that we will be learning about two best friends today. The teacher will remind the students to look closely at the illustrations in the book.
- The teacher will read the book aloud. As the teacher and the class is reading through the book the class, as a whole, will thoroughly look at the illustrations on each page and describe what is happening. Throughout the book on some of the pages the teacher should wait to read the text and have the class look at the illustrations to see if the class can figure out what is happening on that page without information from the text.
- After the book is over the class will talk about what happened in the book. What surprised you at the end? The class will talk about the last picture in the book of Dominic and Victor.
- When the discussion is over, the teacher will direct students back to their desks. At the student's desks, the students will write a brief reasoning from the questions: Why is it important to look at the pictures in a book? What can the pictures or illustrations tell you? Explain evidence you found in My Pal, Victor that supports the importance of illustrations and why.