Turtle in Paradise

Holm, Jennifer L.. Turtle in paradise. 
New York: Random House, 2010. 


By Jennifer L. Holm

Copyright:  2010

Publisher:  Random House Children's Books

Reading Level:

• Lexile:  610L

• Grade level:  3

Genre:  Historical fiction

Description:  Changes, New experiences, Challenges, Moving, Adventure

Suggested Delivery:  

• Read as an introduction to a unit on The Great Depression.

Summary:  Turtle is an 11-year-old growing up during the 1930s, and she is very much aware of the scarcity of jobs and money of the time.  When her mother gets a job as a housekeeper, Turtle is forced to move to Key West, Florida to live with relatives she has never met before.  This new place is certainly not what Turtle expected; a hot, strange new home.  But it turns out to be exactly what she needs to break free of the shell she has been hiding under her whole life and to discover so much more that life has to offer.

Electronic Resources:

• The Great Depression: this website gives detailed information about this period in history, as well as articles, links to the different people and groups representing this time period and numerous different educational films for students to view.

Key Vocabulary:  muffling, furtively, outhouse, bustling, staggers, skulking, brunt, rheumatic, scrounging, forlorn

Teaching suggestions:  Independent reading in small groups

Comprehension Strategies:

• Before Reading:  
• Discuss the time period of the book and what it was like for people during The Great Depression.  Give students a clear understanding of the struggles that families faced, causing them to give up many things in life and live with barely enough necessities to get by.  This will help to set the scene for the book.
• Have the students generate a list of words describing how they would feel if they had to leave their parent(s) and move to a new place filled with strangers.  Discuss these adjectives they came up with as a whole class.

• During Reading:
• The author uses many similes and metaphors in her writing.  Have students write down these figures of speech as they discover them in the text and explain their meanings.

• After Reading:  
• Discuss why Turtle dislikes the well-known character, Shirley Temple, so much.
• Discuss why Turtle sees the world so differently from the way her mother does.

Writing Activity:

Pretend you are Aunt Minnie.  Create a journal entry that she may have written before having Turtle come stay with them, anticipating what it would be like to have this young girl stay in their house while using Aunt Minnie's point of view.  Write another entry explaining what effect Turtle has had on their family and how it has changed things.