Realistic Fiction

The Dot

Written and illustrated  by Peter H. Reynolds

Realistic Fiction

This is a cute little story about being confident in what you can do. A young child, Vashti, hates art class because he can't draw or paint or anything. The art teacher finds a way to activate Vashti's artistic abilities. This story shows a beautiful self discovery within Vashti. The child soon learns to love what he does and be proud of what he creates. If you are looking for a heart warming story, then this is definitely the book for you! If you enjoy this book, check out others from the same author!

The art in this book is just as great as the story itself. The illustrator uses beautiful, bright watercolors mixed with drawings in ink. The drawings are very fresh and have the ability to really evoke feeling within the reader. They are simple, open drawings but they are still very meaningful. 

You could use this in literally any class to motivate your students. Vashti has low confidence, but soon finds a passion for the very thing he didn't enjoy. The best lesson this book teaches is to carry on the encouragement. Just like Vashti's art teacher encouraged him to try, Vashti encourages another student to just try their best and be proud of whatever the outcome. This could definitely be used to teach kindness in a lower level social studies class. 

For a gifted learner you could discuss things that they may not have been good at before, but then they ended up liking. Maybe students had misconceptions about school, but they actually enjoyed it afterwards.