Stars Beneath Your Bed THe Surprising Story of Dust

Stars Beneath Your Bed The Surprising Story of Dust

By: April Pulley Sayre

Illustrated by: Ann Jonas

Greenwillow Books, An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

Text Copyright © 2005 by April Pulley Sayre

Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Ann Jonas

Genre: Science

Interest level: k-3

Reading level: 4.6

Summary:

Stars Beneath Your Bed The Surprising Story of Dust explains what dust is, how it is made, and how it is connected to nature’s most beautiful sights; the sunrise and sunset. It shows us that dust can come from old or new skin, dirt, eyelash of a seal, burning toast, scale of a snake, ash from a volcano, crumbling of a leaf, salt from the sea, cosmic dust from outer space and asteroids, and much more. We also find out that dust never goes away, so the dust on our computer screen could have muddied a dinosaur, and that dust that made King Tut sneeze is still on Earth. The title of the book comes from when the author is making a connection between the dust under your bed and what it could have been from before it was under your bed. She uses the example that it could have been from Mars. At the beginning and end (beginning shows a sunrise and end shows sunset) of the book it shows us how we are able to see dust in the sky the dust of our day, and that it can color our sky.

An evaluation of the text based on Donna Norton’s characteristics of high quality literature:

This children’s book is considered a high quality literature book. This book relates to the lives of children everywhere. No matter where in the world you are there are days when you can see the sun rise and set. Also every child has also seen dust around their house, or outside. Dust is everywhere and it is something that all children can relate to. Also it is an informational book, but when you are reading it, it feels more like a book to read for fun, making it more interesting to children, which makes them want to keep reading. Stars Beneath Your Bed shows many different examples of how dust can be moved, or formed, and these examples are from all sorts of different places. At the end of the book there are two pages where it gives more information about Dust and Sunsets. This is very nice for students who want to learn more about it.

Three literary elements:

The three literary elements are setting, theme, and style. The book shows setting by having the book start out at sunrise, and end at sunset. That gives the book a certain time frame shown by the sun. The book also shows Theme. The theme of the book is dust. It shows how dust is formed, what dust is, and how dust moves. Also Stars Beneath Your Bed shows style. The book poetically talks about dust. Its style is a form of poetry.

Illustrations and their relationship to the text:

The illustrations in this book relate to the text as close as it is possible. For everything the book mentions there is an illustration to go along with it. For example: when it talks about the sunrise it shows a sunrise, when it talks about a tractor making dust from brushing the dirt up it show a tractor doing so with the dust flying. There are multiple examples on each page of different ways dust can form, or be moved, and on each page it incorporates the things together to form pictures within the big picture that can make sense being together.

Mini lesson:

Setting

Each page of the book shows the Sun getting higher in the sky after the sunrise, and lower in the sky right before the sunset. The pictures in the book relate and show the text, but in a way that shows setting. The first page is the sun rising. Then throughout the book it shows things going on involving dust throughout the day according to what time of the day it is. I would point this out to students before reading the book and show them how the illustrations show setting. I would have them make a short picture book just using drawings to show the different things they do during the day depending on what time of the day it is, and have the sun point out about what part of the day it is. I would tell them why this is important, and make my own book to show them to give them an idea of what to do for their book.

Target Audience:

The Target Audience for the book would be for students in kindergarten to third grade. Or with a reading level of 4.6.