Exploring the Genre of Tall Tales with Steven Kellogg

Kellogg, S. (1986). Pecos Bill. William Morrow.

As you can see from my listing of recent read alouds that I have shared with my second graders, I have been exploring tall tales during our daily sessions over the past week. The staple of this unit has been incorporating a focus on one of our classroom "featured authors" for the year, Steven Kellogg. As some of you may know, he is an amazing illustrator as well as an entertaining author, and the pictures he creates are truly best enjoyed interacting with the book one on one. Once my students are familiar with his style, I make a big deal out of beginning of visualize what Steven Kellogg may have drawn on certain pages before I show them while reading the page aloud. Like so many illustrators and storytellers, he uses the drawings to convey additional information, and in this case, exaggeration, to the already stretched tale.

We enjoyed discussing his works, read in this listed order: Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind Crockett, and Mike Fink. With the reading of the second book Pecos Bill, students already began to make text to text connections and began to define Kellogg's indelible stylings as a writer and artist. Sharing his tall tales lends itself to our ongoing reading studies of how to create story maps, define main ideas of a story, and identify a story's elements such as setting, problem, or solution. In the case of these Kellogg's escapades, the main characters keep a positive attitude and tackle problems and solve each one with wit and cunning (or what I humorously refer to with my class as "old west McGyvering skills.") Not only do these heroes tackle each problem with gusto, they encounter one problem after another in each story, each one more outlandish than the last, leaving the readers almost exhausted themselves at the end of the journeys.

With these observations about Kellogg's crafting as an author, as with other "Featured Authors" throughout the school year, the children extract stylings, inspiration, and observations to take into their own experiences as a young author. We are currently experimenting with creating our own tall tales. The students want me to share their newest creations, which are currently being incorporated into a class treasury, with my college class that I am "so lucky to take." I share appropriate things with my students all the time, and I told them that I am taking the "best college class EVER right now. I get to read children's books!" They know I am in heaven! They love to see the giant stack of books ever changing on my desk, and have taken on the attitude that what they read is really important because I am reading it in college. It's so funny how yet another layer to the love of reading has been added to my students and classroom library.

The children relish in being able to "think-pair-share" about what will occur in the story lines, discussing, revising, and expanding their own conceived guesses, and then interactively discussing the possibilities with their peers seated on the floor around me as well as with myself. Discussions are never just about "telling the teacher the right answer" when it comes to literature discussions. I nurture a "grown up" style where they look at each other and share reflections, questions, predictions, and connections interactively.

It's always during this time of year that I think to myself, "Gosh, look! I have been able to pass along to another group of students this way of thinking about books. Every one of these kids has grown, to some degree with my guidance, some part from the modeling of their peers, and the rest from an inner drive and curiosity that they have found in themselves. Do they really have to leave me in June?" I will relish the rest of the year with them all, and since today was 100th day, I only have 80 days worth of read alouds to share! Time is of the essence! :)