Rules
Lord, C. (2006). Rules. New York: Scholastic Press.
Category: Disability/Award Winning Book (Newberry Honor Award and Schneider Family Book Award)
Synopsis of Book: The only thing Catherine wants is a normal life but that is almost impossible with David, her brother with autism. Catherine has taken the responsibility of looking out for David and coming up with social rules for him to follow. She does this to limit David embarrassing her in front of Kristi, the new girl next door, who could potentially be a friend. Catherine spends the summer finding out in unexpected ways about the true meaning of being “normal.”
Use in Classroom: It is important in an elementary classroom setting that every student is respectful to others who are different from them. As a future teacher, I will not tolerate discrimination in my classroom and I think that the values the children have will develop and they will have those same values when they are older. This book would be a great to read out loud to my class and have a discussion of what is considered “normal” in our society and why, realistically, we are a little not-normal ourselves.
One of the themes of this book is disability and how the individual with the disability as well as their friends and family cope with it. Cynthia Lord uses a lot of imagery to help the reader imagine how things look, feel, smell, sound, and even taste. In Chapter 2 of Rules there are a lot of imagery components that you could have the students analyze and place in a graphic organizer and then have a class discussion on what they found. The graphic organizer would have three columns with the following titles:
- Imagery Found In-where you would place the object being described along with the page number
- Words that Create Imagery- what words the author uses to describe the object
- The Sense or Senses That the Imagery Appeals to- smell, taste, touch, sound, or look