Fiction Evaluation Form

(Picture Books, Folklore, Modern Fantasy, Contemporary Realistic Fiction, Historical Fiction, Multicultural Books)

Your Name:Jade Faye Whitehurst Book Title: Stone Soup

Author: Marcia Brown Illustrator: Ann McGovern

Genre: Fiction Publisher/Year:Simon & Schuster. 1947

EVALUATE THE BOOK USING THE FOLLOWING ELEMENTS

STYLE and Language: Explain the language used – word choices, sentence length, dialogue, rhythm, rhyme.
Explain unexpected insights or interesting information the reader learns from the story. Give examples form
the book for each one:

Word choice: Preschool vocabulary

Sentence length: the sentence are long they is approximately a paragraph per page

Dialogue: dialogue between the townspeople and the soldiers.

Rhythm: the rhythm is very old-timey but it goes at a quick pace.

Rhyme: there isn’t any rhyme.

Insights/interesting information: I think the way they pretended the soul was edible at first is an interesting
perspective that I don't think I’d teach in my class. Lying isn’t a good thing ever and students are sponges. I
wouldn't want to preach that concept. If I’d teach this I’d focus on how lying isn’t kind because those people
did need that food for their families and what not.

CHARACTER – Who is the main character? Explain the character’s personality traits. How can the reader
relate to the character, become involved in the story?
Who are the supporting characters? Give examples of each from the book.

Main character: Soldiers and villagers

Personality traits: kind smart hungry

How the reader can relate to the main character:The children can relate to needing/wanting something and
doing things that may be questionable to get it. Like children and hitting snd putting a rock in your food or
lying.

Supporting characters:no names just their occupations, baker, mayor,etc…

1. PLOT: (Explains the major events in the story.) Summarize the plot

This folklore story is about some hungry soldiers who travel to this town. They ask this town's
people to each share a small amount of food but they refuse because they don’t have enough for
themselves. The soldiers decide to make a meal for everyone. They set up a pot and fill it with
water and a stone and start to cook it. Villagers start to be intrigued and the soldiers offer some
soup in exchange for sharing some ingredients that’ll help the soup be better. They have a big party
and they invite the soldiers into their homes after for a nice place to sleep.

2. SETTING – Explain the place and time of the book. The setting is in an old poor town. The book
happens in one day onto the night and the next day then it sends. Outside is where most of the plot
takes place somewhere near the river.
THEME- What is the story’s theme or lesson? The theme or lesson of this story is the values sharing
with others.

ILLUSTRATION –Analyze the illustrations in the book (see Chapter 4 for details on the categories below.)
Choose a 2-page spread in the book to answer the following:

What Style (realism, surrealism, expressionism, impressionism, naïve, cartoon art)?

The style of this story is realism, there’s no fantasy aspects in the story. They don’t use a lot of
color.

Illustration and Text: explain how illustration and text combined to tell the story.

Then, explain what illustrations show that text does not explain?
The text and the illustrations work together to show the effects of being kind to others. The soldiers
weren't angry because when they didn’t share at first they just approached it differently then it
worked out well. The lack of color I think shows the age of the story but the vocabulary also works
to show it’s from when kings and queens were a more regular kind of government. The illustrations
show how poor the people are. Even though they’re called peasants, seeing the representation is
important.

Page design --Describe:

The Borders no borders

Use of white/dark space: lots of white space.

Text placement:at the top or bottom leaving room to focus on the text.

Font size: Text is a nice size for child reading. It’s not too big.

Placement of illustrations: illustrations cover the whole page.

3. CHILD DEVELOPMENT THEORIES – CHOOSE 2 of theories below and evaluate the book according to the
developmental theories. (How the book fits the developmental stage and age?)

PIAGET-COGNITIVE-INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT

Name the stage_____________________________ and the age_____________________

Preoperational

2 to 7 years

Explain ONE cognitive development trait from the stage:

Begin to think of objects and people outside of their immediate environment because of object
permanence.

Give examples from the book show how the book fits that trait and cognitive stage:

Sharing with main character

ERIKSON – PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Name the stage __________________________________ and the age_____________________

Preschool

Stage - INITIATIVE verses GUILT

Explain ONE social development trait for this stage:

Initiative Stage comes with the ability to do many physical activities and use language.

Give examples from the book that support that social development trait and of this stage:

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Identify the Age __________________________________

Explain ONE emotional development trait for this age:

Give examples from the book to illustrate that emotional development trait and this age: