Chris Van Allsburg rocks!

We began an author study yesterday, which will continue for much of the month, on Chris Van Allsburg. He is one of my favourite authors of all-time, so I'm very excited to share his work with the class. You (and many of the students) are already familiar with at least one of his works, as he wrote and illustrated The Polar Express, which was turned into a movie a few years ago. He also wrote Jumanji and Zathura, which were made into movies as well. However, he has written many more books that just those, and we began to explore his work as a class yesterday by reading, discussing, and writing about The Garden of Abdul Gasazi. Today, we did the same with The Stranger. It was so much fun to read the books to the class - you could hear a pin drop, as the class was completely riveted to both of the stories. He is a brilliant writer, with illustrations that absolutely grab you and pull you into the stories. As we read the books, we'll add them to our Shelfari at the bottom of our blog - I highly encourage you to check out Van Allsburg's work for yourself!