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Illustrated by Barbara Cooney,
Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 1991
Summary: A group of youngsters make an exciting imaginary play space out of a desert hill.
Level: RL: 3 IL: K-3
Themes:
imagination,
games,
desert
Activities:
1. The Roxaboxen story took place in Yuma, Arizona, where Alice McLerran's mother lived when she was young. Locate Yuma on a map of the United States. Yuma is part of the Sonoran desert. Identify an agreed upon number of the plants or animals pictured below and write their names next to them. Find an agreed upon number more, and add drawings and names to the scene.
2. Learn about the animals and/or plants you chose. How do they protect themselves against the desert environment? Include their behavior (the way they act), as well as their physical composition. Write, draw, or record this information. You will need it later. Now choose an agreed upon number of desert plants and/or animals that you didn't study, and advertise on the class bulletin board for specialists who know about your choices. Find out how these choices protect themselves from the desert environment. Add this information to what you already have.
Now examine Roxaboxen and decide from the words and from the pictures how the children in the story protect themselves against the desert environment. Write, draw, or record that information. Now review what you know about desert animals and plants, and suggest two ways the children could add to their protection. Draw, write, or record your ideas. Students could combine these two projects with a facing-page format: place flora/fauna protection opposite children protection.
3. Sometimes the children pretend that the desert hill is a town. Marian is the mayor, and she has a box desk with an American flag and a sign. Jamie is the policeman, and he has a badge and a cactus jail and a sign. Work with a group to find a town job for each of the other children in the book. What would they need for their job and what would they use or make so they could do their job? Make a page for each job. Write about the job, and illustrate the page. Check your pages with your teacher, then have them included in a special section of Roxaboxen Plus, a 3-ring binder book that can be taken out of the library with Roxaboxen.
4. How many games can you find in Roxaboxen that you have played? Jot them down. Choose another game that you have played that the children in the book could enjoy on their desert hill. Think about how it is played, and what the children could use or make for the game. Write down your ideas. Conference with your teacher, then create a page for the "new game" section of Roxaboxen Plus.
Now, explore some books about games, costumes, disguises. Find one that the children could enjoy on their desert hill. Write down your ideas about how they would play it and what they could use or make for the game. Conference with your teacher, then create a page for the "new game" section of Roxaboxen Plus.
5. For a group to make a Roxaboxen Map, examine Roxaboxen very closely. Make a list of what you will have to include. The first thing might be the river that Marian imagined you would have to ford to get there, the River Rhode. List everything you can find in the text and the illustrations. Check your list with your librarian or teacher, then make a rough draft of a map. Explore some map legends in your library and create some symbols for your map. Put in your symbols and design a legend to explain the symbols. Check your rough draft with your librarian or teacher, then make your map. Ask the students to look at and compare the maps. Have your map added to the maps in your library's vertical file, and have a note added to the front of Roxaboxen suggesting that readers get out the map(s) and use them as they read.
6. Another story you could write or tape could be the story of one picture from Roxaboxen. Choose a picture you like and figure out what the children might be saying, what other sounds you might hear, what activity you could describe. Discuss your plan with your teacher, then go on with your project. Ezra Jack Keats wrote a wordless picture book about the desert called Clementine's Cactus. If you can find it, read the pictures over and over until you find just the words you like to tell the story. Write the story down or make a tape cassette. [You can create a sound to use when your listener should turn a page, and sound effects for the storm and other parts of the story.]
7. What if Curious George found himself in the Sonoran desert? Or Frog and Toad? Or Spot? Or one of your other favorite story characters? For example, Edna Miller wrote a book called Mousekin Takes a Trip. If you find it, enjoy a story about a woodland mouse who hides in a mobile home and winds up in a desert. After her desert adventures, Mousekin finds her way back to the trailer, which returns to her woodland home. Choose one of your favorite storybook characters and think of a way to get your character to a desert and back. Write down this part of your new story. Now imagine what could happen to your character in the desert. Plan two adventures, using at least 1 desert animal and 1 desert plant for each adventure. If you want to add a third adventure, have your character encounter the Roxaboxen children! Put your story parts together and use the editing process that your teacher advises. Conference with a group of students for feedback to help you choose one of your stories for final editing and polishing. When your story is complete, plan and create illustrations for your story. Read and show your story to a group of first graders, and tell them how you got your desert information.
8. Read about water in the desert. Find out how much or how little it rains, and what happens when there is a cloudburst. In Eve Eve Bunting's book, Happy Birthday, Dear Duck, enjoy watching each desert plant and animal appear in the story. This book is written in rhyme, and couldn't really happen, because the animals in it act like people. They wear clothes, and sunglasses, and cook meals, and wrap presents. However, the illustrator, Jan Brett, has drawn each desert plant and animal accurately. Write a short version of the story in prose. [Not in rhyme.] Now brainstorm lots of different ways water could get to the desert. From one or more of these ways make up a funny water story that takes place in a desert. Use desert animals, and have them act like people. Write a short version of the story in prose. Check your ideas out with a classmate. Make any changes that you'd like, and check your ideas with your teacher. Now write a longer version of your story. Plan illustrations and ask classroom specialists to help you with the accuracy of the drawings. When you check your finished product with your teacher, arrange to present your story to your class, and perhaps to another group. If you can't get a copy of Eve Bunting's book, do this activity anyway.
9. Roxaboxen seems to be an almost perfect place. You can eat all the ice cream you want, everybody has a car. Make a list of all the wonderful things about Roxaboxen. Now find a folksong called "The Big Rock Candy Mountain". Listen to a tape of it, or get someone to play and sing it to you. Use your list to rewrite the song so that it is about Roxaboxen. Make up some extra wonderful things about Roxaboxen and add them to the song. Videotape the pages of the book and extra pages that show your extra wonderful things. Now dub your song onto the videotape. You could make up your own song about the almost perfect place if you prefer. After you have presented your new song to an audience, arrange to have it available in the library for checkout. Ask the librarian to put a note in the library catalog and in the book about your song's availability.
10. Petroglyph rocks are sometimes found in the area where Roxaboxen takes place. These particular rocks are naturally covered with a dark brown or black "desert varnish", which has been chipped or cut to create petroglyphs. Find out about petroglyphs. Search especially for how they might look. Work with your art teacher's supervision to create a number of 'facsimile' petroglyphs. Design and make a museum-type display about petroglyphs for the library or school hallway. Use your facsimiles. Include in your display an invitation to read about your petroglyphs in Roxaboxen Plus. If the children in Roxaboxen found petroglyphs like these, imagine how the rocks could contribute to their play. Remember, they used lots of pebbles and stones and rocks. List the ways they used rocks. Write out a plan for two pages with text and illustrations [using your petroglyphs as models] that would add playing with petroglyphs to the Roxaboxen story. Conference with your teacher and art teacher. [Bring your list, Roxaboxen, and your written plan to the conference.] Complete the two pages and have them added to Roxaboxen Plus.
Resources
Barwell, Eve. Disguises You Can Make. Lothrop, Lee, & Shepard 1977.
Caney, Stephen. Stephen Caney's Kids' America. Workman 1078.
Corbett, Pie. The Playtime Treasury. Doubleday 1989
Fiarotta, Phyllis and Noel. Be What You Want to Be. Workman 1977.
Grunfeld, Frederic V. Games of the World. UNICEF 1982.
McCoy, Elin. The Incredible Year-Round Playbook. Random House 1979.
Sandberg, Inger. Let's Play Desert. Delacorte 1974.
Atwood, Ann. The Wild Young Desert. Scribners 1970.
Baylor, Byrd. Before You Came This Way. Dutton 1969.
__________ The Desert is Theirs. Scribners 1975.
__________ Desert Voices. Scribners 1981.
__________ Everybody Needs a Rock. Scribners 1974.
__________ If You Are a Hunter of Fossils. Scribners 1979.
__________ I'm In Charge of Celebrations. Scribners 1986.
__________ The Way to Start a Day. Scribners 1977.
__________ We Walk in Sandy Places. Scribners 1976.
__________ Your Own Best Secret Place. Scribners 1979.
Boston's Museum of Science. A Closer Look - The Desert. Collamore 1988. [An interactive computer program with accompanying reference book.]
Dewey, Jennifer. A Night and Day in the Desert. Little Brown 1991.
Feltwell, John. Animals and Where they live. Grosset & Dunlap 1988.
Goodheart, Barbara. A Year on the Desert. Prentice-Hall 1969. Different seasons in different deserts.
Pond, A. W. Deserts: Silent Lands of the World. Norton 1965.
Simon, Seymour. Deserts. Morrow 1990. Excellent maps.
Spencer, Guy. A Living Desert. Troll
Sutton, Ann. The Life of the Desert. McGraw Hill 1966.
Wiewandt, Thomas. The Hidden Life of the Desert. Crown 1990.
Bare, Colleen Stanley. The Durable Desert Tortoise. Dodd Mead 1979.
Bash, Barbara. Desert Giant: The World of the Saguaro Cactus. Little Brown, 1982. This book is also featured in a 30 minute video by Reading Rainbow.
Baylor, Byrd. Hawk, I'm Your Brother. Scribner 1976.
Bunting, Eve. Happy Birthday, Dear Duck. Clarion, 1988.
Conklin, Gladys. Tarantula: the Giant Spider. Holiday 1972.
George, Jean Craighead. The Moon of the Wild Pigs. Crowell 1968.
John, Naomi. Roadrunner. Dutton 1980.
Keats, Ezra Jack. Clementina's Cactus. Viking 1982. A wordless picture book.
Lauber, Patricia. Snakes are Hunters. HarperCollins.
Miller, Edna. Mousekin Takes a Trip. Prentice-Hall 1976.
Nunes, Susan. Coyote Dreams. Atheneum, 1988.
Overbeck, Cynthia. Cactus. Lerner 1982.
Reese, Bob. Rapid Robert Roadrunner, Scary Larry, the Very Hairy Tarantula, and other Easy Readers published by Children's Press as Critterland Adventures.
Russell, Franklin. Hawk in the Sky. Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1965.
Sadoway, Margaret. Owls: Hunters of the Night. Lerner, 1981.
Saunders, Susan. Jackrabbit and the Prairie Fire - The Story of a Black-tailed Jackrabbit. Smithsonian Soundprints 1991. [Cassette Tape and stuffed model animal also available.]
Simon, Hilda. Wonders of Hummingbirds. Dodd Mead 1964.
Fradin, Dennis Brindell. Arizona. Childrens Press, 1993.
Prepared by Audrey Conant, MEMA Board
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