This is the cutest book written by Lester L. Laminack. The story begins with a quiet day on the farm, until a strange box falls out of the back of a truck. A beautiful bird, with strange feathers, comes out of the box and struts to the farmers stand. Cars being stopping and taking pictures, and the farmer gets more business than ever. Back at the farm, the hens have became upset because they think they are performing all the work on the farm and the peacock gets to have all the fun. The four birds swap roles after guidance from the old hound, and at first it seems marvelous. To find out the fate of the birds, you will have to read the rest. At the end of this story, another mysterious box falls from the truck but no one knows what's inside. This would be a great writing activity for the class because they could make inferences about what was in the box and predict what would happen next on the farm. Another activity could be to compare and contrast this story to the "Three Little Pigs" by using a vinn-diagram. This text is a 3.3 on the Accelerated Reader scale. 

Grade: 4th

This is a great book to introduce making inferences with. Throughout the story, the class believes that their teacher is missing. They are stuck with an evil substitute teacher named Viola Swamp. What they do not seem to know if that Miss Nelson is not missing. She is actually Ms. Swamp. At the end of the story, my class will fill out a chart. One side of the chart will say, "The text says.." and the other will say, "I can infer that..." Students will then go into the text and find parts of the text that they can infer something about. For example, they could put, "Back at home, Miss Nelson hung her coat next to an ugly black dress." They can infer that that ugly black dress was Ms. Swamp's. Therefore, they could write in the inference box, "I can infer that Miss Nelson was Viola Swamp."