For my first set of blogs I chose to read some of my favorite picture books. I loved Dr. Seuss books as a kid so I chose to read McElligot's Pool. It's a story about a boy who is fishing in McElligot's Pool, which is a tiny pool. A farmer approaches the boy, and let's him know that he's wasting him time fishing there because there aren't any fish in the pool, just junk. The boy explains to the farmer that he may be right, but then again who really knows what's in the waters of McElligot's Pool.
I think this book is a great book because it has a lot of wonderful messages. The little boy, Marco, is a very patient fisherman because he has sat at McElligot's Pool for three hours without a bite. But he continues to wait patiently because you never know what might happen. It also encourages people to use their imagination because the possibilities are endless. To the farmer the pool is the place people throw their junk, but when Marco imagines what's below the surface of the pool it suddenly seems to connect to a great body of water and contain all sorts of crazy fish. This book allows the readers to be imaginative while they read the book. The illustrations switch between black and white to color, so the readers have the opportunity to imagine the colors of the various fish Marco dreams up.
I think this book appeals to a wide variety of ages. It can be read in a younger classroom that has started a unit on rhyming. It can also be used in an older classroom as an opener before a creative writing assignment. This book is an easy read, and has the great rhythmic flow of Dr. Seuss's writing.
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