35 Best Books for Teaching U.S. Regions
by Toni Buzzeo and Jane Kurtz
Scholastic Professional ISBN: 0439207630

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Take your students on a learning-packed trip across the U.S. with books they'll love!  This resource includes background information, activity ideas, reproducibles, and Internet connections to help you use 35 great novels as springboards to social studeis learning.  A great way to get your kids to read more deeply--and learn more about the seven U.S. regions.

From the Introduction--Jane and Toni

About the Book

We can remember exactly when 35 Best Books for Teaching U.S. Regions sprouted in our minds.  We were part of a fiction writers’ retreat at Popham Beach, Maine, when we were joined at breakfast by a principal from a New England school.  After she was introduced to the writers from Maine, North Dakota, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Illinois, she said, “Do you know what schools really need?  They need a resource for novels set in different geographic regions all across the United States.” We looked at each and nodded.

For each of the seven U.S. regions featured in this book, we recommend fifteen books and include background, resources, and activities for five of those books, all of which are available in paperback. In all the bibliographic information, we provide the paperback publisher (when available) and the original copyright date. We also note when a book is available as an audiobook.

It was important to us that the books reflect the interesting mosaic of the North American experience, so we included many cultures, time periods, and perspectives.  Occasionally a book’s settings span several regions. (Take, for example, The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963, in which the characters travel from Flint, Michigan to Birmingham, Alabama, and back again.)  Such books muddy the waters a bit, but they can also be a rich resource for comparisons.  While we encourage you to use them wherever they fit best for you, we placed them in the region where most of the activities were centered.

How to Use the Book

We’ve designed the book for maximum flexibility.  If you group states into regions different from ours, use the state designations to set up your own regions.  Explore all the books in all seven regions if you have time, work with one or two books from each region, or concentrate on only one region—whatever fits your needs. 

We recommend that you consider three possibilities for using the five focus novels: reading them aloud to the whole class, buying a classroom set so every student can read the novel individually, or dividing the five novels among literature discussion groups.  We encourage you to support students' reading opportunities across each U.S. region by stocking your classroom library with the additional titles, book pairings, and suggested resource books. In addition, you will want to alert your school library media specialist (and perhaps your public librarian) to the titles in the regional bibliographies as well as in the book pairings.

Teacher resource pages: To help you create a rich reading experience for students, we've provided summary, background, and resource information about each featured book--including online and in-print author information and background information on the time period, culture, or setting.  The Hands-On Activities section offers creative ways to help students process the information they've learned and use additional resources to explore themes and topics introduced in the book.  The activities emphasize the following skills and concepts:

• Geographic concepts and skills
• Learning from literature through reading and writing
• Critical thinking skills in different content areas
• Internet research skills

Student activity pages: Most sets of resource pages are followed by a student activity page that invites students to think critically about the featured book and make important connections to literature.  Copy and use this activity page with students during or after they read the feature book.