A Beach Tail

Title: "A Beach Tail"

Author:  Karen Lynn Williams

Illustarted by: Floyd Cooper

Ages: 4-8

Grade: Pre-kindergarten-second

Published: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-publication Data

Language: English

This story is about a little boy named Gregory. Gregory goes to the beach with his father. When Greg fins a stick at the beach he starts to draw a lion in the sand, His fathers tells him don't go into the water and do not leave Sandy the lion. The little boy listens to his father and does not go into the water and does not leave Sandy. Greg still finds a way to make his way down the beach by making Sandy's tail longer and longer before he looks up and see that he can not see his father. Greg makes the trip back to where his father is by following the trail of Sandy's tail. When he gets back to where Sandy was Greg looks up and there his is father waiting for him. Greg tells his father he never went into the water and he never left Sandy. His father smiles at him and they head into the water for a father son swim. 

What a great book to bring out in a classroom at the end of the school year. Spending time at the beach is a way a lot of children spend time in the summer. Going to the beach is an memory that most children relate to summer time. 

From the Author on why she wrote the story:

http://www.karenlynnwilliams.com/beach.html

Behind the Story

I love the beach and had wanted to use this setting in a story for a long time. When I am near the ocean, life is always open to possibilities and the creatures there fascinate me. I had been playing around with a simple story of a child who gets lost and uses his sense of place and interest in nature to find his way back. I grew up in New England and beaches there are my favorite. But I had the opportunity, recently to go to the beach and write on St. Simons Island in Georgia. Finally it hit me that this story about finding your way should be a beach story.

I remembered when my son Peter once wandered down the beach as my husband and I watched from the blanket under the umbrella and we could see the moment he looked up and panicked when he realized he could not see us. Peter did not have a stick or Sandy’s tail so my husband ran after him and guided him back to our blanket but the memory came back to me as inspiration for this story.
As a child I spent many weekends and vacations on the beaches of Rhode Island and Cape Cod where my dad taught me about jellyfish and sandcastles and how to body surf. He was always nearby when a wave knocked me over.

  

This story is a great read-aloud that will get children excited about the summer time, spending time with family, and being out in the hot summer sun. The story grabs your attention because its about a little boy who goes on an adventure down the beach with out his father. The father is watching him the whole time but to Greg he felt lost until he followed his trail back to his father. The story is one that gives children the idea that as children they still have a chance to be interdependent. Greg makes his way down the beach with out anyone but himself and Sandy's tail, what a great way to show children that as we grow up we get to make out way down the beach. The author tells us that she loves the beach and wanted to write a story about it, so expressing how she feels about the beach through Greg and his father gives us a scene that she wants us to feel the wonderful world of the beach. The story is portraying an African-American father and son spending time together in the sun. Their race is never mentioned in the text but is illustrated through the pictures. In this story race is not the focus of the story which is a change from a lot of story children read which are mainly about slavery, racism, the civil right movement, etc. Those topic in children books are very important but its great to see a story that many children will look at and relate to in a positive way. This book does a great job of portraying a life for people of color in which their race is not the main plot of the story. What a great book to read in class where children can see themselves as the character.

The literacy elements in this story are onomatopoeia, pun, and alliteration. The onomatopoeia is heard though out the whole story. Whenever Greg draws Sandy's tail longer he makes the sound of "Swish-Swoosh." He also makes Sandy talk by saying "Roar" which is also another example of onomatopoeia in the story. The pun is said when every Greg sees something on the beach like the "Gooey purple jelly-fish". The last element is alliteration and again this can be found in the whole book "spray splashed," "deep, dark ghost," and many more. The illustartaions in the story are wonderful they make you feel ask if you are on the beach hearing the waves crash on the beach, the bird singing in the sky, and feeling the sand all over your body. Floyd Cooper makes the images build on the text, most of the time the images make you feel beyond the text. The face of the boy, his father, and the sand he is drawing on become so real that the words are not even needed but of course the word make the story just as wonderful as the images.

A mini-lesson I would do with this story is to read it aloud to the class and have them draw out an anmial that would have a tail as long as Sandy. I would also ask them to draw the animals or things that their animal will run into like Sandy's tail did. After reading this story you will feel as if summer can not come soon enough. Karen Lynn Williams and Floyd Cooper do an amazing job at grabbing your attention in so many ways its great!