Wemberly worries by Kevin Henkes

My kidsREAD class has more girls than boys aged seven to eight. Today only one of the two boys appeared in the class while most of the girls turned up. Girls' reading abilities appear to be better that the boys at their current ages. Most of the girls in my class are quite good readers except for one or two who need to catch up with the rest of their peers. I am blessed to have a class where they are no behavioural problems and the children are all quite enthusiastic regardless of their abilities.


We read the book, "Wemberly Worries" by Kevin Henkes during this kidsREAD class. The book's main character is the mouse called Wemberly who in the words of her grandmother was always about being in the state of, "worry, worry, worry!". This is one of the recommended kidsREAD story books written by Kevin Henkes who also has a series of books titled "Chrysanthemum" about a girl who was teased about her name.

The children took turns to read each page from the book while I asked them about what they were worried about in their lives. Most of the standard answers were "I dunno" but some did worry about exams and parents not being around for them. During the kidsREAD volunteers training, the trainer recommended this book for us to use if we wanted to share with children about the topic of worrying as the children who were worriers could identify themselves with the main character Wemberly who had the habit of stroking her rabbit doll Petal.

"Wemberly Worries" illustrations were quite well drawn as in water colours and ink and the children enjoyed looking at what happened during each stage of Wemberly's worries.

The exercise that followed, taken from the kidsREAD 2B workbook, was for the children to draw a picture of their best friend and the things they like to do. I gave the children some hints on what they could write e.g. My best friend and I like to _____________ (talk to each other, complain about boys, play together etc.). We didn't break into small group reading this round as there was only K and myself in for today's session for the Primary one and two class.

It was an enjoyable session as the children seemed to be in a good mood today and everyone seemed to like the book in the way they responded to it.

I will be on vacation for the next week or so and will updated from 1 August 2007.