I'm Not Feeling Well Today - Hardcover

Neitzel, Shirley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688173802 ISBN 13: 9780688173807

Publisher: Greenwillow, 2001

Synopsis

Anyone who can turn pages can read this book.And what fun it is! If you're not felling well today, the prescription for felling better--quickly--is: A box of tissue A cat Cartoons on TV A bear And a whole bedful of other things guaranteed to make any day a happy one!

About this title

About the Author

In Her Own Words...

"My earliest memories are of my mother reading aloud. A lot of characters from books were real to me, as our family ritual included bedtime stories for me and chapters from longer books for the older children.

"I wanted to read for myself, so I often lay on the kitchen floor while my mother worked and I 'read' to her from memory. Soon I realized I could tell the story more exactly if I looked carefully at the words on the page. Spelling aloud the words I couldn't figure out, I worked my way through enough stories to satisfy me until our nightly reading session.

"I was eager to start kindergarten, and the day finally came when I walked the mile from our small farm in the western part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula to a one-room school. I watched eagerly as the teacher gave each child a stack of books. When she gave me only one, I was disappointed, but I turned it sideways and read the parts that said 'To the Teacher.' Then I carefully followed the directions. When my teacher said she wanted to talk to my mother, I thought I was in trouble, but it turned out she thought I should work with the first graders. That made me happy because they each had more than one book.

"My love of reading continued. In sixth grade I went to the 'big' school in town. The school had a room with one whole wall filled with books. Immediately, I decided to read every book in that library. A story I wrote was chosen for our school newspaper. I enjoyed people telling me they liked 'My Life as a Pencil.'

"In high school I won some essay contests, so I thought of a career in journalism. But I became a teacher instead so I could continue reading wonderful books for children. I encouraged my students to write, and sometimes I shared my writing with them.

"While planning one assignment for my students, I played with the pattern of the nursery rhyme 'The House That Jack Built.' My students laughed in the right places, and friends encouraged me to send my rhyme to an editor. It took a lot of courage to do that, but I sent it to Greenwillow. The editor-in-chief, Susan Hirschman, liked my rhyme, and chose Nancy Winslow Parker to illustrate it. Nancy drew little pictures to replace some of the words. The result was The Jacket I Wear in the Snow, the first in our series of rhyme-and-rebus books.

"Usually I start with a topic and decide how the story should end. Then I write little snippets of rhyme and, like putting a puzzle together, figure out how each part connects to another. Before I finish, the story changes many times.

"Sometimes when I read my books to children, one of them says, 'Read it again.' I think that's the best reward a writer can have."

From Booklist

Ages 4-7. The team that produced The Dress I'll Wear to the Party (1999) and other books presents this new story in which a young boy describes the things he will need "since I'm not feeling well today." Like the earlier book, this one is made up mostly of cumulative verses and rebuses that allow prereaders to participate and increase their sight-word vocabulary at the same time. Parker's crisp pictures, expertly rendered in watercolor and lightly outlined in black pen, depict each item on the boy's list--TV cartoons, puzzles, puppets--as a large, nearly full-page illustration, then again as a rebus in the text. The boy's list of needs ends about three-quarters of the way through the book, and a funny rhyming text takes over: "You say if I were really ill, I'd not complain, I'd just lie still?" In a surprising plot twist, the boy finds out that school was cancelled for the day: "Hurrah! Hurray!" The cumulative verse element of the story makes this a good choice for choral reading, with each child or group of children reciting a line and perhaps creating their own rebus picture. Older children can also make up their own cumulative verse and rebus stories as an enrichment activity. Lauren Peterson
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Edition details

• Publisher: Greenwillow
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0688173802
• ISBN 13: 9780688173807
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Parker Nancy Winslow