The purpose of this reading is to bring everything together: the text, the vocabulary, and the illustrations. The discussion and activity options focus on analyzing the main idea, theme, character traits, setting, and how all of these story elements relate to each other.

During this reading your child and you will read the story all the way through. Three ways that you can add fun and improve recall during this reading:

~You may switch roles and become the listener and the questioner as your child “reads”(retells) the story to you.

~Your child and you may alternate the pages that you read to each other.

~You may dramatize the story. Take the roles of the different characters. Practice shrieking, stuttering, and crooning.

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The focus of this reading is to read the story and talk about new vocabulary. There will be opportunities in this reading to connect the information in the illustrations to the information in the text.

Ms. Cannon’s use of vocabulary in this story is so descriptive. With words such as sultry, crooned, and clambered your child and you will have fun using the words in extended activities. The themes of acceptance and friendship are well developed through the actions and thoughts of Pip, Flitter, Flap, and Stellaluna.

I encourage you to make predictions about what will happen next in the plot based on your prior knowledge of the illustrations.

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To allow the brain to focus on the information in the illustrations this reading will look only at the illustrations and the information they provide the young reader. There are no right or wrong answers in this reading. Please note, page 1 is the first page with text

The illustrations serve a dual purpose of portraying the action in the story and giving information about bats. The discussions that you’ll have with your listener will be about both the action in the story and how bats really live, moving back and forth between fiction and nonfiction.

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ABOUT THIS BOOK: STELLALUNA
by Janell Cannon
“In a warm and sultry forest far, far away, there once lived a mother fruit bat and her new baby. Oh, how Mother Bat loved
her soft tiny baby. ‘I’ll name you Stellaluna,’she crooned. Each night, Mother Bat would carry Stellaluna clutched to her breast as she flew out to search for food.”

So begins this beautiful story of friendship and individuality. Bats are not an animal that people usually find cute and cuddly. However, the magnificent illustrations that are both warm and scientifically correct will add to your love of this award-winning book.

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