"Who's Who in My Family?"

Who's Who in My Family?
Written and illustrated by: Loreen Leedy
Published by Holiday House in NY in 1995
ISBN:0-82341151-6
Genre: Picture Book, Informational Text
Reading Level: Grade 1
Activity Level: Grades K, 1, and 2

Summary: This book is set in a classroom where children are making their family trees. The teacher asks one student to share her family tree and tell about her family. Through this readers learn about aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Then, through a series of questions asked by the teacher and the other students, readers also learn about adoptions, step-parents, step-children, half-siblings, second cousins, and first cousins once removed!

Response: I believe that this book is great for teaching children more about their own families and about differences in families. I love that it is set in a classroom environment because I feel that it makes it a perfect segway into the children creating their own family trees, once they have learned from the information in the book.

The illustrations in this work are absolutely adorable! The children in the classroom are all animals--cats, frogs, raccoons, rabbits, and skunks and the teacher is a fox. This adds an element to the book that makes it more useful for teachers of younger students.

Many of the illustrations are only single-page spreads and some of the pages have multiple illustrations per page in order to incorporate everything the book teaches.

Teaching Connections: In a kindergarten class I would read this entire book to my class and then tell them that they were going to begin making their family trees. As another example outside of the book, I would draw mine on the board as they were working on theirs and would re-read the page about parents, then grandparents, etc. again as they were working to remind them about these family members. For this age group, I would not have them go beyond their grandparents and, maybe, aunts and uncles in their family trees so as not to make the assignment too difficult for them. Initially, the students would just make the tree and branches and then, after they talked with their parents, they would finish drawing each person and perhaps share their tree with a small group of students.

With first graders I would have them do a family tree and include their great-grandparents and also have them draw a picture of each person in their family. I would also have this group of students share the family trees with a small group of students.

With second graders I might ask them to include a couple, but certainly not all, of their second cousins, and/or their first cousins once removed, in order to make it a little more difficult than for the kindergartners and first graders. I would have them present their family trees to the entire class.

What Students Learn: From this book and activities students are able to learn about their own families and about how everyone's family is very different.