Olivia Leong

TED 509
Fiction Book Comprehension Strategies

The award winning fiction book I chose is ​Creepy Carrots​, written by Aaron Reynolds and
illustrated by Peter Brown. This book was published in 2012 and was awarded the Caldecott Medal in
2013. This is a picture book illustrated mostly in grayscale with the only color shown in the orange
carrots. The main character of this book is a rabbit named Jasper Rabbit. Jasper loves carrots,
especially the carrots that grow in Crakenhopper Field. He eats those carrots every chance he gets
until one day, the carrots start following him. He swears that he can hear the carrots creeping up on
him in the field, in the shed, and in his bedroom. He tells his parents about these creepy carrots but
when they search the house, they cannot find anything. He is haunted by the creepy carrots until he
realizes “they couldn’t get him...if they couldn’t get out.” So he builds a fortress around Crakenhopper
field, complete with an alligator filled moat. Jasper is finally confident that the creepy carrots are not
following him. But once he leaves, the carrots in Crakenhopper field happily celebrate their victory in
the fortress. It is revealed that they did not want Jasper to eat anymore carrots from their field. They
hatched a creepy plan to follow Jasper everywhere and make him scared of carrots.
Two comprehension strategies that would help students understand the story better would be:
summarizing and drawing inferences from the text. Summarizing the text requires readers to pick out
the most important details and restate them. It is an important comprehension strategy because
readers need to focus on the main ideas of the text to fully understand it. The ending of ​Creepy
Carrots​ was unexpected and surprising to me. When I finished reading the text, I found myself
thinking about the events in the story and summarizing what had happened. I thought about the
beginning of the story where the author writes about Jasper visiting Crakenhopper Field multiple times
throughout the day just to eat the carrots. Then, I thought about the story from the carrots’
perspective. Summarizing the events from both perspectives helped me to better understand the
book. However, learning how to paraphrase and summarize can be difficult for students. A way to help
students summarize and understand ​Creepy Carrots​ would be to create two summary charts for the
events in the story. One chart would detail the events from Jasper’s perspective and the other chart
would tell the events from the carrots’ perspective. The Jasper summary chart would follow exactly
what happened in the book. I would have students think about what happened first, next, and last in
the story. Then, together as a class, we would discuss and write down the events on a big chart. We
would follow the same process for the summary chart from the carrots’ perspective. After both charts
are completed, we would compare and contrast the stories from both perspectives.
The second comprehension strategy, drawing inferences, involves reading in between the
lines to make inferences about the characters or theme of the story. After I read the book and
summarized the carrots’ perspective on my own, I thought about why the carrots would make the
creepy plan in the first place. Drawing inferences about the carrots’ motivations helped me understand
the story better. To get students to think about drawing inferences, I would read ​Creepy Carrots​ again
and after I would ask students to think about why the carrots made their creepy plan. Students would
make inferences about how the carrots felt at the beginning of the story. They might say the carrots
didn’t want to be eaten or the carrots were sad that their friends were eaten. Afterwards, I would have
students write a short story or draw a picture depicting the story but from the carrots’ perspective.
Rereading the story and doing this activity would give students the opportunity to listen more
confidently and recognize clues in order to draw inferences about the carrots’ motivations.