PPBF: Your Name Is A Song

Today I'm grateful because I just got back from a trip home;

Wisconsin summers seriously serve up some stunning sunsets.

Our character cam caught this beauty from my Dad's back porch. I went up there to help him with his recovery from a full knee replacement surgery, but I also managed to take long walks and reconnect with my siblings and mom. It was a therapeutic getaway, just what the doctor ordered.

I'm so proud of my niece and nephew, two 2021 college grads!

While I was hanging out up north, my reflections and suggestions

around What's In A Name? went live at EduMatch {here}.

As I was prewriting the piece on the importance of our names,

I found today's PPBF, the perfect complement to that post.

Title: Your Name Is A Song

Author: Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow

Illustrator: Luisa Uribe

Publisher: The Innovation Press

Birth Date: July 7, 2020

Suitable for: ages 7-10

Themes: names, identity, equity

Brief synopsis: A young girl gets frustrated at school when no one, 

not even her teacher, can say her name correctly. Will she believe

her mom when she says that her name is really a song?

Opening page: "I'm not coming back ever again!" The girl stomped. 

Resources: Enjoy a read aloud {here}.

Find lots of enrichment activities {here}.

Check out this conversation with the author.

Listen in on Elmo's Sesame Street song about names.

Why I like this book: One of my SMARTIE goals this year was to not shy away from names that I wasn't familiar with or that challenged me, so you can imagine my delight when I found this book:

"No one? Not even your teacher?" Momma asked.

"She tried. It got stuck in her mouth."

That. Hit. Home.

I didn't mean for anyone's names to get stuck. But sometimes they did.

Or when I couldn't remember names, I'd call them honey or my friend.

I didn't intend to dance around their names;

I shied away because I didn't want to get it wrong.

I know now that I missed many opportunities

to practice saying their names with them, to understand the

origins and different cultures behind their names. 

To celebrate their names.

To learn about their namesake. 

To honor who they are.

So I loved the way this book suggests approaching names

that are unfamiliar or seem difficult to pronounce:

Sing them.

Of course! That makes perfect sense, right?

I can easily see adding a ukulele chord or two

as I strum them into greatness by 

singing their names.

Brilliant.

After a read-aloud, encourage your budding musicians

to put their names into a cadence, melody, poem or song.

Then, ask your learners (or faculty) to make a tag

with their name and their place of birth.

Enrich the lesson by grabbing a map and some push pins. Locate all of the places that your class or school family hails from. Figure out mileage from one place to the next, and set a goal to collectively run the distance to each other's hometown during recess or physical education class or even as a weekend family challenge. So, for example, it's 1000 miles from Friendswood, TX to Wayside, WI. If each of our 500 students runs two miles, we'd have collectively made our way from our school to where I grew up. Wouldn't that be a fun way to honor not only our names but also our birthplace? You could even track where staff attended college, or where students hope to go to make it as personal as possible.

Pair this with writing an I Am From poem; 

invite them to make a PSA about their homeland.

Another fun idea is to put names on masked-up self portraits.

Here's part of a staff display at the entrance at Bales Intermediate,

hand drawn by my book's talented illustrator, Audrye Williams.

Check out this page from Mr. Quigley's Keys to help students learn how to spell in sign language. Practice your own and each other's name, address and phone number in American Sign Language. 

I'm doing virtual author visits now, and we can't wait

for the world to hear Mr. Quigley's Keys. I had a blast

reading it at Zion Lutheran in Wayside, where I attended

grades 1 through 8 with Linda, who teaches there now.

It was a God wink to take our picture in front of an I can wall, 

given that there's a can-doer theme woven into our story.

Prepare for Your Name Is A Song to put a song in your heart,

then head to Susanna Hill's blog to see which other PPBF

picks our KidLit authors have for you today.