The Clay Ladies

I am an art teacher and this book is superb for helping my 1st-through- 5th-graders learn to read. This story gives them practice in vocabulary, fluency (including phonics), and reading comprehension. The story has a great deal of meaning to them because we just finished our clay unit and one of the projects was a bird. There are many ways to use this story to teach reading. For example, when one plumbs the text for phonics activities one will not be disappointed. One can teach how changing an ending changes a meaning just from the list of things sculptors do as they make their sculpture (push, pushing, pushed, for example). My students read this story silently while I read it to them; meanwhile, the gorgeous images are projected on the big screen in front of them. We even "read the pictures..." as I have them verbalize the contents of the richly-detailed illustrations. By first verbalizing the contents of the illustrations they are then more able to recognize and comprehend the mention in the text of those things. I find the illustrations absolutely gorgeous and quite convincing. I greatly admire the illustrator's mastery of perspective and point-of-view, and I use his illustrations to teach these principles to my students. For example, the illustration drawn from the point of view of a spider hanging from the crest of the ceiling above the bird cage, looking down and out on the whole room, is just superb. This illustration is so well-done that the kids are able to say what is the tallest thing in the whole room (the huge sculpture, shown with brilliant foreshortening) and what is the farthest-away corner of the room (the one in the upper-left of the image). Not knowing in advance that this story is historic fiction, I, too, was taken by surprise on the first read-through by the obvious nature of the two sculptors' relationship. However, I am not concerned that my elementary-school students would notice. What matters to me--and what I want to matter to the students---are the unspoken messages of creativity, gentleness, healing, transmission of a culture, caring for things smaller than oneself, and how living an authentic life sometimes requires one to live a bit outside the box. My students' day is hectic, loud, and frenetic. I feel that our culture is even more hectic, loud, and frenetic. The gentle and peaceful tone of "The Clay Ladies" has my students quite captivated in an oasis of quiet at the end of the day. I see this story as simply another fine Canadian export. I wish I could shake the hands of both the author and illustrator.