Caldecott Award: Madeline

Title: Madeline 

Author and Illustrator: Ludwig Bemelmans 

Genre:   Realistic Fiction   

Major Awards: Caldecott Medal Nominee (1940), Indies Choice Book Award for Picture Book Hall of Fame (2010)
Age Group: 3-7 years old

In an old house there lived 12 girls. The little girls were always in two straight lines at all times, at dinner, when they brushed their teeth, and when they slept. The girls were always very proper and responded appropriately in all situations. “They smiled at the good, frowned at the bad, and were sometimes sad”. Everything was always planned and organized. The girls left home at the same time everyday rain or shine.  The smallest one in their entire group is Madeline. Madeline is bold and brave. She’s not afraid of mice or the lions in the zoo. One day Miss Clavel woke up because she felt something was wrong. When she arrived at the girl’s room Madeline was crying in pain. When the doctors came, they learned that Madeline’s appendix had ruptured, and they had to rush to take her to the hospital. Madeline stayed in the hospital all by herself and began to notice all the different details about the hospital to pass time. One day Miss Clavel told the girls they would be going to visit Madeline at the hospital.  Walking into Madeline’s room there were so many toys that her dad had gotten her, and a scar she shared with everyone. The other girls were very excited and eager to play with the toys and fascinated by her stomach scar. After that night, the other girls went home and followed their schedule as usual. It wasn’t until the night that Miss Clavel got up to check on the other girls that she saw they were all crying because they wanted to have their appendix removed just like Madeline.

Madeline is a really cute book that would make a nice addition to any PreK-2^nd grade classroom library. The story flows so beautifully and rhymes so it has a natural rhythm. I think Madeline would be a really nice book to incorporate in the classroom doing a unit on rhyming words. Students could listen to the story during the class read-aloud and afterwards work either in whole class or small groups to do a scavenger hunt looking for rhyming words in the text. Likewise, seeing as how the book is a Caldecott Award recipient, a lesson can be done in conjunction with the read aloud of the book where students can explore the images used in the book, describing what they see and what colors are used in the illustrations.