Independent Reflection 4- Sitti’s Secrets by Naomi Shahab Nye and Nancy Carpenter

Sitti’s Secrets is a story about a young girl named Mona. Mona lives in the United States,

but her grandmother, Sitti, lives in a small town in Palestine. Mona and her family go to visit

Sitti. Sitti and Mona don’t speak the same language, so they make up their own using hand

symbols and familiar words. Other times, Mona’s dad acts as a translator. Mona talks about her

visit, speaking highly of the lemon tree Sitti has and how she doesn’t need words to play marbles

with her cousins. At one point in the story she helps Sitti wash her hair, and she says she feels

like she knows a secret, because Sitti usually keeps her hair under her scarf. Together they bake

bread, pick mint to make lemonade drinks, milk cows, hang laundry to dry, and much more.

Mona was sad when she returned home because she really missed Sitti. Because America at the

time was having problems with Palestine, Mona writes a letter to the president at the end of the

story saying that she votes for peace, and that if they knew Sitti they would love her too.

I really loved this story. It was heartwarming, adorable, and honestly really interesting!

Sometimes I feel like children's books can feel repetitive or predictable, but this was one of those

books that I enjoyed reading as an adult. The illustrations were really gorgeous as well. I feel like

students of all ages can enjoy reading or hearing this book, and many of them can probably

relate.

While this book does not have as many outward writing lessons in it like The True Story

of the Three Little Pigs, there are many small things that could easily be turned into a writing

assignment. For one, the entire story is about family and culture. Students could do a multimedia

writing presentation on their family and culture. If you have students that may be foster children

or come from abusive homes, this would be a project that you would skip. Or if they are

comfortable, they could still choose to talk about what they know of their culture or family. This
book is also filled with figurative language. It uses personification, metaphors, and similes really

frequently. If teaching upper elementary students, you could use a descriptive book like this to

launch a unit on figurative language. Have students write creative writing stories using different

forms of figurative language. You could also create an anchor chart describing each example of

figurative language, then start off with “boring” sentences and as a class turn them into “sparkle”

sentences by adding descriptive words and figurative language.

Another important piece of this story is the letter Mona writes to the president at the end

of the story. This could not only be used to launch a unit on writing letters, it could also be used

as a way to start talking about opinion/argumentative pieces, and petitions. Mona is writing to

persuade the president to love Palestinian people, a cause that is important to her. You could have

students write a persuasive letter to the “president” or their local government about a pressing

current issue that they feel strongly about. For extra fun and an extra learning experience,

consider actually sending the letters. You could use Mona’s letter as an example of proper letter

formatting, and tie in the figurative language piece to make the letter more convincing. You

could use a strategy like TREE, DARE, or STOP to help students self-regulate and organize their

argumentative ideas.

This book was an endearing read packed with cultural details in a slice of life style story.

I really enjoyed reading it and I think it can be used to introduce many different topics not only

in writing but in all subjects.

 Works Cited

Storytime with Suzanne. Sitti's Secrets by Naomi by Naomi Shihab Nye Illustrated by Nancy

Carpenter. YouTube, YouTube, 4 Sept. 2020,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPdrXygRq0Y. Accessed 15 Feb. 2023.