Children’s Literature Evaluation Form

Your Name: ​Montserrat Navarro

Book Title: ​Cactus Soup

Author: ​Eric A. Kimmel

Genre: ​Folklore

Illustrator: ​Phil Huling

Publisher/Year:​ 2011/ Two Lions

Evaluate the Book for the following elements

Style and Language:​ Using examples for the book, explain the following:
Word choices, dialogue, rhythm, rhyme and sentence length. Share
unexpected insights or interesting information the reader learns from this
story. (5 points)

Word Choice: tortilla, tamales, chile, sombreros, fiesta - english book that
incorporates spanish words with context clues to teach the reader
spanish vocabulary.

Dialogue: “but why ask for what you don’t have?” - this piece of dialogue
is so important to the theme of the story.

Rhythm: none.

Sentence Length: small paragraphs

Character:​ With examples from the book, provide the following- (5 points)

Who is the main character?

How can the reader relate to the character?

Who are the supporting characters?

Main character: Captain, he comes into the towns and greats the
townspeople and mayor and introduces his soldiers.

The reader can relate by relating to a moment of where the reader’s

family might have come together to share something together.

Supporting characters: townspeople, mayor, soldiers

Plot:​ Summarize the major events of the story (6 points)

The townspeople of San Miguel agreed with the mayor out of selfishness
to pretend to be poor and not share food. When the captain and soldiers
came into the town and proposed the idea of ‘Cactus Soup’ the town
came together to create a soup and a fiesta. In the end, the mayor and
townspeople of San Miguel enjoyed it and agreed to always share their
food.

Setting​: Explain the place and time of this book. (2 points)

Theme:​ What is the main message of this book? (2 points)

This book takes place in San Miguel Town / morning/afternoon

The theme of this story is the importance of coming together and sharing
rather than being selfish.

Illustration​: Analyze the book you selected with the following categories

Style (realism, surrealism, expressionism, impressionism, naïve, cartoon

art)? (2 points)

Realism

Media Choice (paints, oils watercolors, pencils, pen, charcoal, crayons,

acrylic, chalk): (2 points)

Watercolors

Give examples of describe how the following visual elements are used in
the illustrations: (3)

Line: ​horse legs, hair

Shapes: ​circles for the tomatoes, carrots and sombreros. Triangles for
noses

Color: ​yellow, green, red

Texture: ​clothing, wall texture, floor, mustache, eyebrows

Page design (placement of the illustrations, use of borders, white and

dark space and all pages the same or different). (3)

Picture takes up the entire page.

Child Development Theory​: Choose either Piaget, Erickson or Social

Emotional to describe the connection to the book Chose 1 only (5 points)
Emotional Development:

Identify the age: ​7-8 years old

Explain the social development for this age and how the book relates

to the emotional level you chose:

At this age, there is an emotional understanding that responds to

empathy and they feel shame and guilt. The townspeople of San Miguel
start the story off by being selfish and towards the end, they want to give
more and share. The reader will feel guilt in the end and will empathize
for the soldiers and share with them anytime they come into the town.

1 would not recommend 2 average 3 highly recommended

Your rating of the book: _______​3​_______

Why?

My dad would tell me a similiar bed time story when I was younger.
Instead of cactus soup it was a stone soup. It was so fascinating for me to
pick a random book and it happens to be a story I am very familiar with.
This story teaches the morality of sharing and I really love the lesson.