Love Is

Title: Love Is 
Author: Diane Adams  
Illustrator: Claire Keane 
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Publication Date: January 24th, 2017 
Genre/Format: Fiction/Picture Book 
GoodReads Summary: Perfect for Valentine's Day—or any tender moment—this story of a girl and a duckling who share a touching year together will melt hearts old and young. In this tenderly funny book, girl and duckling grow in their understanding of what it is to care for each other, discovering that love is as much about letting go as it is about holding tight. Children and parents together will adore this fond exploration of growing up while learning about the joys of love offered and love returned. 
What I Think: I'm in love with Love Is! This is such a super sweet book. It's a book that captures the tender love between a child and her pet. This book is a perfect mentor text for looking at how words and illustrations work together.  But it's also a great mentor text for practicing visualizing and looking at how an author shows instead of tells. I love making the connection between reading and writing for students. When we write, we use good reading strategies like visualizing to help us understand what we are reading but at the same time, we can examine what craft moves the author made in order to help us visualize. Adding this level of thinking helps students more deeply understand how the act of writing impacts our readers. Even young writers can start to realize the author makes specific choices when he or she writes and this text is a great way to bring about this discussion.
     The specific snatch of text I chose would be one page I might even read before showing students. I would ask them to visualize and imagine and I might even think aloud my connection to the main character. As a mom, I remember having to wake up to feed my babies in the middle of the night and more recently, I had to wake up to feed our puppy in the middle of the night. The illustration captures the feeling perfectly so building up the suspense would get kids thinking and visualizing and then they could compare what they were thinking to what the illustrator drew.
Snatch of Text:  

"Love is noisy midnight feedings,

shoe box right beside the bed."

Writing Prompt: What impact do the illustrations have on the story? How do the illustrations and the text work together? Can you write about a time in your life when you loved something and had to let it go?