A Home for Mr. Emerson

Written by Barbara Kerley and Illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham

Published by Scholastic Press, 2014

This is the story of Ralph Waldo Emerson who was a great writer. The story follows his journey from a city boy who dreamed of owning his very own land to making this dream come true as he fills his home with great books, ideas, and people.   

Lexile Level: 830L

Age Range: 8-13 years old

Page Count: 48 

Suggested Delivery: Read-Aloud

Key Words: Home, Friendship, Non-Fiction, "Savings Bank", Literature.   

Internet Resources:
Barbara Kerley's Website
http://www.barbarakerley.com/Site/Welcome.html
This is Barbara Kerley's personal website where she has posts about herself that would be great for the students to explore more about the author. There is also a book trailer to some of Barbara's other books. For teachers there is a great page that has each of her books with a link to the standards that can be taught along with the book and why.
Edwin Fotheringham's Scholastic Page
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/bookwizard/books-by/edwin-fotheringham#cart/cleanup
For the students who really enjoyed the illustrations this webpage is one students can go to learn more about the illustrator and see the other books that Edwin Fotheringham has illustrated for that they might also like to read.

Vocabulary:

• Visitor: a person visiting a person or place. 
• Community: a group of people living in the same place, or having a particular characteristic in common. 
• Discussion: a conversation or debate about a certain topic.
• Rebuild: to build something again after it has been destroyed. 
• Impatient: restless in desire or expectation. 
• Renew: to reestablish, or repeat something after a break. 

Teaching Suggestions:

1. Since Mr. Emerson is a writer, ask the students to become writers of their own. Ask students to respond to the prompt, "What is the best day ever?" Have the students use their imagination to come up with this. After they have written their stories, go through the editing process, and then put all of the stories together in a class book to share with everyone. 
2. Have the students do research into other famous authors and have them choose one to become for the day. In the book Mr. Emerson has conversations with his friends and neighbors in the parlor, so have the students role play what they think a conversation might look like with those authors that they have researched. 
3. The book does not go into much detail about who Mr. Emerson is, I would have the students do more research on their own into who Mr. Emerson was and create a profile to share with the class including all of the facts that they learned about Mr. Emerson. They may use the facts that they found from the reading of the text, but they must also include new information that was not in the book. 

Reading Strategies:

1. Before: Have a guest speaker come to the class to discuss what it is like to be an author. Have the author tell the students what their life as an author is like so after they have read A Home for Mr. Emerson, they can compare the lives of these two people. Also have the author describe to the class the process of being an author from the first idea to the finished product. 
2. During: As the teacher reads the story aloud, have students write down in their reading journals all of the facts that they hear and find interesting. 
3. After: There are questions in the back of the book under Build A World of Your Own with questions that help the reader to make connections with the text. These questions ask students to look at the type of person they are, the kind of job they might want, the kind of house they would like to build, and community. 

Writing Activity:

The end pages are filled with quotes from Mr. Emerson. Have the students read each of the quotes and pick the one that resonated with them the most. Have them write about this quote and think about the quote in context with what they have just read about Mr. Emerson along with why they picked this quote.