Choose Your Books Wisely - Ep. 052
Wouldn’t it be handy to have a template for choosing the most effective books for therapy?
That’s exactly what you’ll get in Episode 52, Choose Your Books Wisely. This episode covers:
Four criteria for choosing an effective book
- What adds to a book’s complexity
- A comparison of two books, one that is effective and one that isn’t, and why.
But that’s not all— check out the Free Resource Library on thespeechumbrella.com for
- a list of favorite books to use in therapy and
- Bingo games to use when talking about or retelling stories.
--- Useful Links ---
Narrative Language Intervention Part 1
Narrative Language Intervention Part 2
Frog and Toad
Houndsley and Catina
Music: Simple Gifts performed by Ted Yoder, used with permission
Transcript
Denise: Welcome and thanks for joining me under The Speech Umbrella. Today, we're going to talk about books. I've titled this podcast, Choose Your Books Wisely", because how do you choose books for beginning storytellers that are both simple enough and engaging enough?
So under our umbrella, as speech language pathologist is storytelling. And under that umbrella is introducing our clients to the delights of books in a way that won't overwhelm them. This is important because stories ramp up very quickly and become quite complex. Even children's stories.
So, what we're going to do today is go over criteria for what adds complexity to a story. What makes a book effective for therapy and what you want to accomplish with the book in therapy.
[00:00:46] Simple and Complex Stories
Denise: First let's go over simple and complex stories. Now, those of you who are not familiar with Story Champs, you might want to listen to my podcast interviews with Doug Peterson.
He's the creator story champs. So I'll link those in the show notes. The very simplest of stories consists of characters, problem, feeling, action and resolution, just five things.
So that's pretty simple. That's a story like: John was riding his bike. He fell off and hurt his knee. He was sad. He asked his mom for a Band-Aid. His mom gave him Band-Aid and he got back on his bike. Okay.
That's a really simple story, but take the story of Goldilocks. That's not so simple because Goldilocks has repeated attempts. John only had one attempt which worked to fix this problem. Right. And he asked his mom for the Band-Aid. Goldilocks tries several different things. And not only does she try several different things, then the bears try several different things and you've got to change a perspective.
Because you've got Goldilocks his perspective and the bear's perspective. So, a very simple children's story, suddenly ramps up to lots of complexity. What makes a story more complex? You've got failure and repeated attempts to solve the problem. You've got different perspectives.
Almost any story you pick up, aside from some really simple counting books and maybe some rhyming books without the plot, is going to have this. They're going to be complex. Since our target audience consists of beginning storytellers, they may not necessarily be readers.
I'm reading these books to them, but they can understand a simple story. It behooves us to pick stories that are just going to fit right where they're at and up a little bit. That's why picking the right book for therapy can be a little bit tricky, but it's really, really worth it for what you get out of.
[00:02:28] Effective Books
Denise: Okay, so what makes a book effective? An effective book is going to have a clear story arc, and that includes a clear problem. Some problems can be pretty murky. They need to have a clear problem. No side trips into irrelevant topics, multiple opportunities to make clear inferences and humor a little bit on the absurd side, but not too sarcastic.
They don't get the sarcasm, but they really love the humor that comes with the characters, just doing absurd things.
I'm going to use two stories just to illustrate this: one that is an effective book for therapy and one that isn't.
And here's my disclaimer. I'm not a children's book critic. The story that wouldn't be effective for therapy, this is not a criticism of the book per se. It's why this wouldn't be effective for therapy. Okay? So there's a Frog And Toad story called "Cookies", by Arnold Lobel. And this is the summary of the story.
[00:03:26] "Cookies" by Arnold Lobel
Denise: Toad made cookies, brings them to his friend, Frog. They're so delicious. They're the best cookies they've ever eaten. He made a lot. They eat a lot. They say to each other, we should stop eating these cookies, but the cookies are on the plate right in front of them. So they talk about different ways to stop themselves from eating the cookies. Putting them in a box. Toad says oh, but we can still untie the box and doing this and doing that. Toad keeps saying, well, we can still get to the cookies, even when frog gets a ladder and puts them on a high shelf. So finally, frog goes outside, opens the box and calls the birds to eat the cookies, which they do. And then Toad is sad because the cookies are gone. And they talk about willpower in this book, about how they need willpower to stop the cookies.
And toad says the cookies are all gone. And frog says yes, but we have lots and lots of willpower. And Toad says, well, you can keep your willpower. I'm going home to make a cake. So that's the cookie story.
The other story, Helmsley and Katina by James Howe, I actually bought because I'd heard that it might be a little bit like Frog and Toad. You've got a cat and a dog who are friends who have these adventures together. But this is the summary of Houndsley and Katina. Katina wants to be a writer and she writes something like 74 chapters and she shows it to Houndsley. She wants his opinion on her book, what she thinks is fantastic.
And it is inferred, it's implied, but not really directly stated the Houndsley thinks the writing isn't very good, but he doesn't really say anything. And that's the end of the first chapter. The second chapter, Helmsley's making dinner for some friends and although Katina is a cat, she is a vegetarian cat.
It goes into how he chooses food, beans and tofu worms and stuff like that. And that's the end of the second chapter. And in the third chapter, he's such a good cook, he's in a cooking contest, but he's nervous because he's being judged and his cooking is a disaster.
And at the end, Houndsley decides that he only wants to cook for friends. That's how he does it best. Katina decides she doesn't really enjoy being an author and she should just do what she enjoys. So that's the summary of Houndsley and Katina.
[00:05:35] What makes a book effective for therapy
Denise: Now let's talk about these books in light of what I said makes effective books for therapy.
1. A clear story arc. In Frog And Toad, you've got a very clear problem: they would not stop eating the cookies . You've got some repeated attempts to solve the problem. And you've got the resolution that the cookies are gone, and you've got a clear feeling there about how Toad feels about that.
The story arc in Hounsdley and Catina is not clear to me because one of the problems is it's implied that Katina isn't a very good author. And you can see this when you read the book because it's got her rather messy handwriting with words crossed out, words misspelled and stuff like that.
In my opinion, that's the author's way of showing a problem. Houndsley kind of looks at it. It doesn't say anything. The problem here is, 90% of my kids, write that way, even when they're interested in writing. I don't see that as a clear indication that someone isn't a good writer. and no child would write 74 chapters if they weren't actually interested in writing.
I mean, that's an adult construct that someone would pursue something and pursue something, even if they had no real interest in it, because maybe they thought that that was expected of them? Do you see how that just doesn't work for kids? That's such an adult way of thinking and not a really effective adult way of thinking, actually.
And there's no resolution. This book is broken up into little chapters, but there's no resolution to that problem, until the very end, when Catina decides that she doesn't want to be an author. That's going to be confusing for kids.
[00:07:06] Side Trips
Denise: Okay, let's talk about side trips. Frog And Toad story, there are no side trips. Everything's relevant to the story. In Helmsley and Catina, you've got a vegetarian cat and that's just going to confuse some clients and it's going to sidetrack your clients who have an obsessive knowledgeable animals. SLPs, you know who those kids are. Your session just might go off the rails with that. What! A vegetarian cat? And they just won't be able to let go of that.
It's true we always suspend reality anytime we pick up a book of fiction, but there are limits. And I just think of vegetarian cat as a bridge too far for kids.
[00:07:39] Inferences
Denise: Okay. Now let's talk about inferences. The inference in the Frog And Toad cookie story is very clear. Why was toad sad? I mean, it doesn't actually say in the book, but kids can make that leap. We know why toad was sad. The cookies are all gone. We know why he's going home to make a cake.
That's not actually written out in words, so kids get the chance to inference. You can ask all those great inference questions. On Houndsley and Catina, the inference that she doesn't really enjoy writing is not really clear. The inference that Houndsley cares about his friends enough to make the food that they like to eat. It's a little bit murky. It's a little bit fuzzy. It would be hard to use that book, to teach kids, to make inferences.
[00:08:21] Humor
Denise: Okay. Humor. The Frog And Toad story just made me laugh as I was telling it right here. The whole thing about willpower, and "You can keep your willpower. I'm going to go make a cake." It's so great. And a little bit of the absurdity in that Frog actually gets the ladder, you know, goes up, puts the cookies on the top shelf. How many of us would really do that? It's a little bit of the extreme, which kids absolutely love. In Houndsley and Catina, everything's so adult-like. The characters act so adult-like like Houndsley doesn't say, "Well, this book is terrible." Or something that a kid might say. In fact, he says nothing and just waits for things to kind of play out on their own.
There's really no humor injected into the book. There's none of that absurdity that kids love.
And let me just say, kids are absurd too. And they do have big reactions. Like just last week, one of my little clients with autism, she's five. She did not like how our memory game was going because she wasn't winning every single match. Right. Miss Denise was winning a few hands too, that did not sit well with her. So she did a controlled fall off of her chair onto the floor. She wasn't really hurt. And she raises her hand up really weakly in the air. "I'm okay, Miss Denise." Which is so like a thing Toad would do in the Frog And Toad stories, you know? That's why kids love this humor. That's why they love these characters doing these things that are a little bit out of the ordinary. It appeals to them.
[00:09:51] Books In Therapy
Denise: So now that we've dissected those two books, talked about why one is effective and one isn't, let's talk about what you want to accomplish with the books in therapy with this target audience I'm talking about. Now, I've got a big list here and you may not accomplish all these with one book, right? This is a fairly comprehensive list of what to accomplish over time with multiple books.
What I like to do is I like to read the book all the way through first with them for pure uninterrupted enjoyment, and then we can start talking about it and we can go back to certain pages and point things out, but it's just very nice for them to get the big picture, the whole book. Number one, you want to broaden understanding of story, parts, character, setting, feeling action resolution, and their ability to just talk about the story parts. Questions like, why did toad feel sad when the birds ate the cookies?
And have you ever felt sad when something was gone? I'm sure many of them experienced the feeling of sadness when someone else eats the last cookie. Number two, you want to broaden their understanding of more complex stories, those that introduce plans and repeated attempts, which as I said before, almost every story you pick up is going to have repeated attempts.
You want to talk about all the attempts, you can act them out. Wouldn't be fun to act out all the repeated attempts in Frog And Toad and have a little box, tie it up, put it up high, all that kind of stuff? You get to practice using words like "then" and "after", and "finally". You know, finally Frog, took the cookies outside and had the birds eat them. You can talk about plan and use plan words. Now plan words are also mental verbs, words like "decided", "thought", "remembered", "knew". You can play bingo with these connecting words and mental verbs. I'll link to my bingo cards that I have for connecting words and mental verbs.
Number three, different perspectives. So Frog and Toad have a different perspective, don't they? On willpower and on what you should actually do with the cookies. You can talk about would Toad have given the cookies to the birds? What would he have done? What would you have done?
Let me take a moment here and talk about those bingo cards. When I say connecting words, that's just the easier word for conjunctions. Kids understand Legos connect together. And the connecting words connect two sentences together, words like "when" and "after" and "because", and, "but", and "so". The mental verb bingo card has words like "because", "knew", "thought", "remembered", "wanted". It helps them construct sentences that talk about what characters are doing internally.
So that's great. And both of those are available in my free resource library .
On to number four, which is making inferences. Using both words and pictures. Pictures are so valuable because they show characters' expressions or things they're planning to do that maybe aren't in the words and gives our clients a chance to inference again. Why did they eat so many cookies? Why did they think they needed to stop? Why did they have a hard time stopping?
All of those are implied, but not directly stated. So it gives them a chance to inference. Why did Frog give the cookies to the birds?
Some books are really, really great for using pictures for making inferences. And one that I really love is, "Oh, Where They Ever Happy" by Peter Spier.
Let's just say the kids take it upon themselves to paint the house for their parents while their parents are away. It's the most fantastic book. Number five, let's talk about absurdities and how they help our clients recognize responses that are inflexible or over reactionary or show ineffective problem solving.
There's a whole list of things you can address using books like these. So these are responses that if they happen in real life, they might cause people to have uncomfortable thoughts about them. I'm borrowing that phrase for Michelle Garcia Winter. The uncomfortable thoughts when kids do unexpected things that aren't really expected in society, but in books, our characters can do it and you can talk about it.
And it's funny, the way it's presented in the book. Toad does many things that if a child did in real life, you'd be like, well, what are you doing? But take it in the context of books, it's a very comfortable and easy way to talk about it.
Examples from some books that show inflexible thinking. "Max's Dragon Shirt" by Rosemary Wells and "The List" in Frog And Toad. Toad's got some pretty inflexible thinking there. Examples of books that show an overreaction? Again in Frog And Toad, we've got "The Lost Button", "Henry's Awful Mistake" by Robert Quackenbush.
Talk about overreaction. Henry is trying to kill a bug in his house, ends up destroying his house. I just laugh thinking about it. Okay. Ineffective problem solving "Henry Babysits", again by Robert Quackenbush.
Of course, you can also use the books that show effect a problem solving, we don't rule that out. "The Baby Beebee Bird" by Diane Redfield Massey. Great way, but it's still got humor in it. It's still got absurdity, but the animals in the zoo have a problem with the baby Beebee bird and they are very clever in fixing that problem. Humor makes everything go down better. "What fires together, wires together" and "humor lights fires".
So I'm always looking for books with that humor in them. All of the books I just talked about are humorous with the touch of the absurd. Many of these are part of a series and usually that gives you several books that will be effective, like Frog and Toad is part of a series. The Max and Ruby books are part of a series. And in case you're wondering, " can I do this with videos?" Yes, you can do it with videos and I especially love wordless videos, but that is a whole nother podcast. So I'm not going there today.
[00:15:40] Wrapping Up
Denise: Well, let's wrap it up. Let me just summarize here what we've gone through. A good book has a clear story arc, and that includes a clear problem, nothing irrelevant to the story, opportunities to practice inferencing and humor often bordering on the absurd.
So with the right book, this is what you can do. You can teach perspective-taking. You can teach mental verbs. You can teach connecting words, that includes the time words, "then", "after", "while". You can also practice describing repeated attempts. You can practice talking about cause and effect. When you explore inferences, they get a chance to explain why things are, why they made that inference. Why did they come to that conclusion? And last but not least, you can explore over the top reactions to problems. These are all things we want our kids to be able to do, and you can do it with books.
As you can tell. I have a lot of books that I love, and I'm going to put these in a list for you, and it will be available in my free resource library, at TheSpeechUmbrella.com/free. Now, if you have a book that you love for therapy, please tell me about it. Go to TheSpeechUmbrella.com/blog/52 and leave it in the comments. I will update my list periodically as I get ideas for new books, and as you give me ideas for new books and we'll have the best list ever for our therapy, and also this would be great for parents. In fact, this podcast would be great for parents because they want to read to their kids.
They want to choose good books, books that are engaging to their kids that can help them on their journey. So I would encourage you to direct your parents to this podcast, if this is something that would benefit them because You can never have too many good books.
And remember when you mastered the simple, the complex takes care of itself. So think back to our two books that we contrasted, which one was simpler? Simpler books work better.
