Short & Snappy Happy Book Blog: First Graders from Mars
Episode 1: Horus’s Horrible Day
Author: Shana Corey
Illustrator: Mark Teague
Publisher: Scholastic
Themes: school, martians, aliens, behavior, growing up
Age Range: 4-8
Word Count: 854 words
Teaching Tools:
Back to School Activities, Ideas, Lesson Plans, and Printables
Why I Love It: First Graders from Mars (Horus’s Horrible Day) is short, snappy, and funny; it makes me laugh out loud and that is always a good thing. The story presents a creative spin on first-day jitters about going to school. Horus really misses kindergarten and wonders why things have to change, but it’s time to move on up to first grade. Kids can relate to what Horus is going through, and the author and illustrator make the book especially appealing with fun outer space humor. This book is part of a series.
Excerpt:
“Where is the slime table?” he asked.
“Where are the snooze mats?
Where are the snacks?”
A girl Horus didn’t know giggled….
“This isn’t martiangarten anymore,” she said. “First graders are too big for those things.”
From School Library Journal:
“The colorful cartoon drawings complement this comic sci-fi tale with its flying cups, thinking capsules, and waving tentacles…and the teacher, Ms. Vortex, is really a standout with eyes that are literally in the back of her head.”
Shana Corey is an author and a children’s book editor. She says: "When I was growing up in North Carolina, my favorite books were about the olden-days: Little House on the Prairie, the Betsy-Tacy books, The Little Princess, and All-of-a-Kind Family. I used to check these books out over and over again from the library.”
Mark Teague says his books start as “notebooks full of sketches and scribbles, strange little drawings and phrases that suddenly come together.”
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