Thursday, May 2, 2013

Book talk: The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School (Virginia Readers' Choice, 2013-2014)


[For this booktalk, you’ll be acting out one scene from the story. You’ll need a whistle or a baseball hat (something coach-like) and a ball – a soccer ball or anything comparable – and a little paper gingerbread man, missing part of his foot.]

Hi, I’m the coach of the elementary school just down the road, and kids lose stuff in gym class all the time. Just today I found the oddest thing in the world stuck to a soccer ball. I was just bouncing this soccer ball and all of a sudden it started making noises. I looked down, and guess what?

There was a cookie stuck to my soccer ball! And it spoke to me!

“I’m the gingerbread man, and I’m trying to find / the children who made me, but left me behind.”

What kind of children would leave behind a gingerbread man?

So, being the good coach that I am, I advised him to run after the kids, but the story keeps getting weirder and weirder.

The poor little gingerbread man had lost his toe! So he looked for it and finally found it, and he went off limping to the nurse’s office. Gee…I hope he’s okay. I felt sorry for the poor little fellow. Hey, have you seen him lately? I wonder where he is now?

The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School by Laura Murray, illustrated by Mike Lowery. Unpaged. 2011: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Virginia Readers’ Choice, 2013-2014. Booktalk to primary grades.

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