Grandfather's Journey

Author: Allen Say

Illustrator: Allen Say

Genre: Historical Fiction

Say, Allen. Grandfather's Journey. Boston: Houghton, 1993. Print.

Annotation
A young man leaves his homeland in Japan to travel to America. He falls in love with the country and its beautiful sights. When he begins to miss his homeland, he decides to travel back to Japan to see all the beautiful sights he missed and to marry his sweetheart. Later he starts missing his second home in California and takes his family to America to live. When his daughter grows up, she travels to Japan and raises her own family. She loves Japan and her son grows up hearing about his grandfather who lives in America. The boy writes stories about his grandfather and eventually travels to America. When he gets there he understands how his grandfather felt about his travels.

ELA Content Standards
Key Ideas and Details- Grade 3
1.)Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, explicitly using the text as the basis for the answers.

How it Connects: After students read the book, the can ask questions they have about different settings that are shown in the story (Japan and America). They can ask questions about anything about the plot they were unclear of and the teacher can go back in the story and help them answer their questions.

Key Ideas and Details- Grade 3
2.) Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea.

How it Connects: Students can discuss the main idea of the text, go through the story and highlight key details, and talk about how the details help make up the plot.

Vocabulary
steamship, astonished, enormous, bewildered, marveled, warblers, silvereyes

Classroom Usage
Small Groups: Students can split up into 4 groups (more or less depending on the class size) and talk about the plot. They could write about the places they would like to travel in their life and discuss facts they know about Japan and America.

Differentiation
This story would be good for ELL students because it gives them a chance to read a story about different cultures, gaining insight to new vocabulary words.