The Falling Leaves

Author: Steve Metzger

Title: The Falling Leaves

Illustrator: Jill Dubin

Genre: Picture Book

Subgenre: Seasons and Fall

Theme: Don’t plan life out because you never know what is going to happen.

Primary and secondary characters: Red Oak, Orange Maple, Purple Beech, Yellow Hickory, and the Wind.

Award(s) date of publication: None, 2002

Publishing Company: Scholastic Inc.

Brief Summary and how I would use this book with students: The Falling Leaves is about four leaves- Red Oak, Orange Maple, Purple Beech, and Yellow Hickory, who are discussing how each one plans to fall from the tree this year. The first three leaves are all very excited and competitive against each other. They ask the fourth leave, Yellow Hickory, how he plans to fall and the Yellow Hickory tells them that he is going to let go and relax and let the wind guide him safely down. The others laugh at him saying that he is going to fall straight to the ground. As each leave begins to fall things do not happen as they planned for the first three leaves and all three end up in the mud. The fourth leave who had no particular plan ends up flying in the wind and landing on the nice cool water. I can use this book in my class to teach my children the idea that things do not allows goes as planned. It is good to have a plan but one should be aware that things can and usually take a different direction. It is better to know a head of time that If you have a plan it may possibly fail or turn out differently than expected.