Martina Josefina Catalina Cucaracha...unforgettable character

  I am totally biased about this book.  It is based on a Cuban folktale that I grew up listening to and it is written by a childhood friend, Carmen Agra Deedy, so it is close and dear to my heart.  Nevertheless, I promise that anyone who reads it will fall in love with Martina and with the ways in which Carmen develops such believable characters.

  All students enjoy the story, the way in which Spanish words are weaved into the story, and the rich detailed illustrations by Michael Austin.  For those of Cuban heritage, each page is filled with details of our culture.  When I read it, I talk to kids about all the objects that tell ME stories, all of my own.

  One activity I did with 1st graders came out of their disappointment at the end.  The story ends with Martina falling in love and saying yes to Perez' wedding proposal.  Every class I read it with, 6 of them, was sad they hadn't gotten to see the wedding, so each class took an event related to the wedding and we wrote a sequel as a class.  One class wrote about Martina's wedding dress, one class wrote about the wedding, one wrote about the wedding reception, etc.  They drew pictures for each story that was written on chart paper and we had our own publishing party by posting them out in a hall for all to see.

    With older students, it is a wonderful mentor text to work on developing characters.  Students love when Martina sits on the balcony to receive suitors and "she crossed her leg, and crossed her leg, and crossed her leg."  The vocabulary is rich with words that students don't generally use but the context helps them define it, so it is also a great tool for teaching about context clues.

   If you don't know this book, get to a library or, better yet, a bookstore.  You will want to use it again and again with students.