Rhode Island's Office of Library and Information Service holds a mock Caldecott award every year, and I try to read through their list of nominees to find what is best of the year's books. I got two through ILL this week: Heat Wave by Eileen Spinelli and Mary and the Mouse, The Mouse and Mary by Beverly Donofrio & Barbara McClintock. I read them with my daughter last night. She liked them especially Mary and the Mouse... Mary is a young girl who discovers a mouse in her house who lives a parallel life. Heat Wave is self explanatory--it's about a town during a heat wave. We finished, and my daughter said, "Now I'm going to read them both together." I furrowed my brow a bit and wondered where this was going.
She started to put the two stories together, and with this particular pair, it worked! How would Mary and the mouse's story change if they lived in Lumberville, the town featured in Heat Wave? Where could you introduce this new element? I loved this idea...read two stories, give one story the other's setting, how do the two stories change? or exchange the main characters? Can children write a new story based on the changes? What ages would this work with? I think younger children would be able to make some simple exchanges, but YA's could take two picture books and make a fairly sophisticated story.
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