Lit Block Blog

Chrysanthemum, written by Kevin Henkes, is about a little girl who is named after her grandmother. Chrysanthemum loves her name in the beginning, but as she goes to school all the other children start bullying her about her name. She starts to believe that her name is not as beautiful as she thought it was, and she starts to hate school because all the other kids do is make fun of her name. One day the teacher makes a startling revelation about long names and names of flowers, the teacher says her name is also a long name and the name of a flower. After the teacher tells the class this Chrysanthemum loves her name again and the whole class decides they love her name to. I believe that this book is a great book to help children understand emotions. The main character in this book has a lot of the same feelings occur throughout the book, and she has trouble deciding how she feels about her name based on other people's opinion. This would be a great book to help children to understand their emotions and how it is okay for them to change. You could also do a writing activity where you have them write about a time where they might have really loved something and then someone else had a different opinion about it, and they were confused on how to feel about it after. I would use this for grades first through third.