Library Orientation - Book I

It’s that time of year and I’m digging out my beginning of library books. Over the years I have fallen in love with these books and repeatedly use them. I find that my students are captivated by them. I use a specific book for a specific grade level to ensure that my students haven’t heard the story before.

Book #1
The Library Dragon by Carmen Agra Deedy
Kindergarten, Lesson One

 Practice your dragon voice and get ready to entrance the kindergarten students. I start off by warning them that the first book I am going to read to them is a scary book. I tell them it’s about a fire breathing dragon and then ask them to raise their hand if they are afraid of dragons. I then inform them that the dragon in the story lives in a school library.

I will admit that over the years I have omitted certain parts of the story and added my own text in places. The story has a lot of puns that I don’t think the kindergarten students will pick up on them. One change I make is using my schools name and the name of the kindergarten teacher’s class that I am reading to. Some kids pick up on it, some don’t.

After reading the story I introduce the students to my sidekick Shelly. She is a sleepy, silly, chocolate loving snail puppet I bought from Folkmanis HERE when I first became a librarian back in 2002. Shelly comes out of her bag screaming and telling the kids I am really a dragon. I try to tell her not to scare the new students but she keeps insisting I am a dragon and pointing out how I am like a dragon.

I have found a library dragon coloring sheet HERE.

I also found this Teacher's Guide in the Resource section of Carmen Agra Deedy's website HERE.

I can follow up next week’s lesson with Return of the Library Dragon the following week. Mike Krochip and his eReaders better watch out in this sequel!