Fancey Nancy See Stars

Title: Fancy Nancy Sees Stars

By: Jane O'Connor

Pictures based on the art of Robin Preiss Glasser

Reading Level: Ages 4-8

Grade: Pre-kindergarten-second

Paperback: 32 pages

Publisher: HarperCollins (September 30,2008)

Language: English

Fancy Nancy Sees Stars is about a little girl named who is very fascinated by the sky and how the stars sparkle in the sky. She has been learning a lot about stars in school and they class is going on a field trip to the planetarium. The rest of the day the whole class take time learning more about starts, playing games, and building their very own starts. When it is time to go home the teacher reminds the children that tonight they will be going to the planetarium. On the way home it starts to rain and Fancy Nancy is starting to get worried that she wont be able to go to the field trip. The rain caused a big traffic ram and Fancy Nancy can not make it to the planetarium, but her father makes it up to her by showing her that in the back yard she can see just ask many stars as she would at the planetarium, so in the end it all works out for Fancy Nancy.

This stories are great one for beginning readers. Its a I Can Read book Level One.The words in the story are at the right level and then ever once in awhile they will through a couple harder words in with the definition next to it. Its a great way to show level one readers that no matter what word you are are you can sound it out and keep reading. The story is one that can connect to a lot of children if they were looking forward to going some where and become of the weather or something else they could not make it. Fancy Nancy is a character a lot of children connect to. She has a problem and she over came it by being able to see the star in her own backyard. The language use in the story is wonderful you can see the author is bring in new and unfamiliar words to some and challenging them with it. The picture in the story are beautiful you get the feeling that Fancy Nancy is a girl with a lot of sassy, and you can tell she has a desire to learn. The literacy elements in the story are onomatopoeia and alliteration. The onomatopeis is writing when the rain is falling and you can hear "drip drip drip". The alliteration is when Fancy Nancy talks about the "show starting soon". 

A mini-lesson I would do with this story would be to talk about onomatopoeia because through out the whole story it is raining and the "drip drip drip" sentence happen a lot. So I would want to talk about how an onomatopoeia is a word that describes a sounds.