The Elves and the Shoemaker
Retold by:
The Brothers Grimm
Illustrated
by: Jim LaMarche
Raincoast
Books 2003
Traditional
Literature
28 pages
The Brothers
Grimm retells an old story about a shoemaker and his wife. They had a spell of
bad luck and became more and more poor. However, on night the shoemaker leaves
his blueprints to a pair of shoes lying in his shop. The next morning, to the shoemaker’s
surprise, the shoes were completely done and looked extravagant. Before long,
the shoemaker started to leave more outlines every night before he went to bed.
Then every morning, just like before, the shoes were completed and ready to
sale. Who has been helping the shoemaker and his wife? Is magic creating the
shoes for him to sale? To find out, you must read The Elves and the Shoemaker.
The illustrations, created
by Jim LaMarche, are very vivid and realistic. The people and things within the
pictures seem almost real. Every detail is very well thought out and executed
within the pages. Jim LaMarche used a variety of things to help capture his
artwork. He used watercolor paper to bring his acrylic washes and colored
pencil art to life. The illustrations go hand in hand with the story. Without
the illustrations, I believe that the story wouldn’t be as detailed and
exciting to read.
This story
is a great book to integrate into a classroom environment. There are three
different ways I would use this in my own classroom. First, this story has a
lot of large vocabulary words within the text. This would be a great way to
expand my students’ vocabulary knowledge. Also, within the story the shoemaker’s
customers paid him double the original price of the shoes that were created.
This would be a great way to bring doubling figure in math into the picture
inside my class. Then lastly, I can relate this book to a narrative writing
lesson. I would ask my students write what they would do if they were visited
by someone in the night that made things for them so they didn’t have to the
next day.
No comments:
Post a Comment