The Hatseller and the Monkeys

Author: Diakite, Baba Wague Title: The Hatseller and the Monkeys
Book Genre: Multicultural Publishing Info: Scholastic Press, 32 pp.

Summary: This book is about an African man who makes his living selling hats. He loves selling hats and believes that this is a wonderful business. This story relates a specific time that BaMusa was going to a nearby festival to sell his hats. On his journey he encounters some silly monkeys and learns a valuable lesson from them.

Personal rating: Great****

Rationale: This book was well written with an interesting plot. The illustrations in the book are very beautiful and match what is happening in the text well. I like the fact that BaMusa in able to gain some good knowledge out of what could be considered an annoying incident.

Reading level: 4.1 Interest level: K-3rd

Thematic Areas: Perseverance

Content Areas: History, Social Studies, Natural Resources, Language Arts, Trade and Money, Human resources

Potential Problems or Difficulties: Some students may not be familiar with the occupation of hat selling so the teacher could have a mini lesson relating to this.

Possible use in classroom:

*This book could be used in conjunction with a lesson on the different jobs that African people do to make a living.
*The teacher could hat a weaver come in and show the children how to weave a simple hat out of reeds. Then students could make simple hats for an Art project.
*The teacher could have students name occupations that they are familiar with and then chart the responsibilities of each job and compare similarities and differences.
*Students could make a book filled with different occupations (written descriptions and illustrations) and the requirements of the individual who is employed to do that job.
*For a connection to Math students could have a “market” set up in class with African related items for sale that they could “purchase” with play money. The teacher could have a student assigned to make change, and this job could be rotated every few minutes so everyone could have a turn to buy and sell.