Title: Round is a Mooncake
Author: Rosanne Thong
Illustrator: Grace Lin
Recommended Grade Level: PreK, K, 1 and 2
Common Core Mathematics Standards Addressed: Geometry, Counting and Cardinality
Summary: This is a wonderful, reflective story that focuses on shapes. From the young Chinese-American girl's point of view, we are taken on a journey through ordinary daily life and around every corner, circles, squares and rectangles appear. The shapes are found in objects of her life and subtly, through the rhyming verse style of the story we learn how these sometimes Chinese, sometimes American objects are meaningful to her. The book is beautifully illustrated with big colorful shapes and stylistic patterns. The author also engages the readers by inviting them to see if they, too, can find shapes within the imagery.
Rating: ***** I highly recommend and think your students will enjoy it too. It includes many universal concepts that readers will connect with.
Classroom Ideas: This book is full of inspirational material for young students. Scientifically, students can practice observation while counting shapes on the page. Students can also practice prediction as unfamiliar objects present themselves and students make guesses based on the context as to what these objects might be used for. Culturally, the Chinese, customs, art, food and more are presented and may be use as inspiration to compare cultural similarities and differences. Mathematically speaking, children will learn about shapes. By using manipulatives in the classroom like blocks, felt board, computer, geoboard children can begin to recognize, name and identify 2 and 3 dimensional shapes. Playing with 2-dimensional shapes will help to develop relational terms as "above", "below" and "next to". Older students may want to create patterns with the shapes. Creatively, the students may want to pick one shape idea in the story, and write about or paint a picture with the same shape, to express where they find it in their own lives.
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