Corduroy

One of my all-time favorite childhood books was Corduroy, written and illustrated by Don Freeman, which was published in 1968. In this book a young teddy bear, named Corduroy, loses one of his buttons to his overalls and sets out on an adventure to find it in the department store in which he is a toy set up on the shelf to be sold. 

Corduroy is a fictitious children's picture book, a mere work of fantasy. Corduroy as a character is dynamic and full of life and has a certain appeal to adventure. The illustrations in this book are very artistically striking and provide the reader a visual representation of what is going on in the story. Freeman's outline style and use of texture, color, and shapes is brilliant!

Reading Discussion

1) Why do you think no one ever seemed to want Corduroy?

2) What did Lisa see about Corduroy that no one else saw?

3) Why did Corduroy think he had climbed a mountain and visited a palace?

4) Why didn't the night watchman suspect Corduroy of making the mess in the furniture department?

5) What if Corduroy had not found a button? Would Lisa have taken him home? Why or why not?

6) Why didn't Lisa want the sales lady to put Corduroy in a box?

Motivational Activities

1) Button Count: Count the number of buttons everyone in class is wearing. For each button counted the teacher will then hand out an assortment of that number to each child. Once each child has those buttons they can do addition and subtraction problems (i.e “If we have 2 red buttons and add 3 blue buttons, how many buttons would we have all together?”

2)  Classification: After the button count activity is completed, students can then sort and classify the buttons by color, size, shape, or even the number of holes the buttons have. Have them keep a chart of the ways they classified each button and then compare and contrast their charts to their classmates to see if anyone else had any other ways of classifying them.

References:

Galda, L., Cullinan, B., & Sipe, L. (2010). Literature and the child (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.

Freeman, Don. Corduroy. New York: Viking, 1968. print.