A Perfect Season for Dreaming

Specifics
A Perfect Season for Dreaming, by Benjamin Alire Saenz, Illustrated by Esau Andrade Valencia
Published by Cinco Puntos Press, 2008

Target Audience
Lexile level not shown
This book would be for younger students, because they would really enjoy looking at the illustrations and counting the things Octavio Rivera dreams of.

Summary
This book is about an old man during the summer, and each day of summer he dreams about something wonderful. His dreams are so crazy, though, he does not want to tell anybody about them. After eight days of his incredible dreaming, Octavio can no longer keep his dreams to himself, and he thinks of someone that he can definitely tell- his granddaughter. So he shares his wonderful dreams with her, and the next night, he has an even more wonderful dream about nine hundred hummingbirds. There is an English paragraph on the top of each page, with a Spanish translation under each one.

Evaluation
This is a great story about it being okay to use your imagination, and to tell others about what your mind comes up with. The character's motivations for telling someone about his dreams are very realistic, because when you dream of something so great, all you want to do is tell someone about it. His reservations about telling other people are also realistic, though, because they might just believe that he is old and crazy. The character fit the setting because the illustrations do look like they have mexican influences, and his dreams are all in the background behind him, along with illustrations of his family members, including his granddaughter who loves his dreams. The author's message of it being a good thing to use your imagination is a very good message for kids, because as adults, we tend to use our imagination less and we should encourage them to use it as much as they can. The character overcame his problem of having no one to tell about his dreams in a very natural way, and I love that he told his granddaughter, rather than another adult, about his dreams.

Lesson
The lesson for this book will be for each student to write about some kind of fantastic dream that they have had, whether it was while they were sleeping, or if it is just from their imagination. The use of allegory for the message of the book can be discussed, by talking about what the book is telling readers. The author's use of repetition in the numbers, and each animal or thing Octavio dreams about being from a different place can be discussed, asking why the author decided to use repetition for this story. The personification of each thing that Octavio dreams can also be discussed, using the illustrations as tools to show how each thing is being brought to life by the dreams.