Joanne O'Sullivan

My wife is taking a children's literature class and it's been fun perusing my collection with her... the first week it was folk tales, last week it was personal narrative, this week we're looking through nonfiction.  We've read some good ones!

     I love Joanne O'Sullivan's books 101 Things You Gotta Do Before 12! and 101 Places You Gotta See Before You're 12!  As I was rereading them tonight, I was creating the list of things that I've never done that I was supposed to have done a very long time ago!  Who knew?
     The beauty of both of these books is that they can be used as mentor text for writing.  If you're asking children to write expository text... you might just want to check out a few pages out of either of these books.  Short pieces of text, written with voice, around a single topic:  perfect!
     Joanne O'Sullivan has written many other nonfiction books:  101 Ways You Can Help Save the Planet Before You're 12!, Calling All Dogs: Grrreat Names for Your Perfect Pooch, Calling All Cats: Purrrfect Names for Your Fabulous Feline, and I Don't Care If We're Not There Yet: The Backseat Boredom Buster.  I think her books are terrific examples of well-written expository text... children love being able to sit down to read about new things, in short snippets, and to think about what to do with the information they're learning!