Lit Block Blog

A Bad Case of the Stripes, written by David Shannon, is a great story about the importance of being yourself. Camilla Cream is the main character of this book and she is a very popular little girl who wants to fit in. She has one problem however, she loves lima beans but refuses to eat them because she is afraid the other children will make fun of her or won't want to be her friend anymore. One day she breaks out into a bad case of stripes! she is covered from head to toe in colorful stripes! Camilla starts getting bullied at school and the other students call her shapes and color that she turns into when they call her them. Camilla and her parents tried everything to cure her stripes, but nothing worked. One day a little old lady figured out how to cure her stripes by giving her lima beans to eat. After eating the lima beans she turns back into her normal self and finds that being herself is better then pretending to be something shes not, even if the other kids don't like the same things she does.This is a great book to show children the importance of being themselves. You can come up with many activities including writing activities, or even hands on activities. You could have a jar of dried lima beans and have each student take one and tell the class one food that they really love, but some people might not. You could also have the students do an activity sheet where they fill out their own "stripes" and write things that they like about themselves on each stripe. I would use this book for Kindergarten through third grade.