The Mitten
By: Jan Brett
Traditional Literature

            Nicki is told that he needs to take good care of his mittens, but he ends up dropping one of his white mittens in the snow. He doesn’t even realize he had dropped it. Animals start to crawl one-by-one into Nicki’s mitten. One mole, one rabbit, a badger, and other animals; even a fox! A brown bear crawls in, because who could say no to a big bear? Finally a tiny mouse crawls on top of the brown bears nose.
            All while these animals are crawling into the mitten, Nicki is completely unaware of what’s going on. Just when Nicki approaches the scene looking for his mitten, the mouse causes the brown bear to sneeze. This causes all of the animals and the mitten to go flying. Nicki catches his mitten in thin air. This provides such a funny and climatic ending.

As a child, this was by far one of my favorite books. I thought the ending was so funny I couldn’t even believe it. I remember my mom telling me not to lose my shoes or animals might do the same thing to me! I would love to use this book in my classroom, I could share so many funny stories that go along with this book. Jan Brett does a beautiful job of telling two stories at once. On the sides of every page you can see what is going on with Nicki as the animals are crawling into the tiny mitten grandma had made for Nicki. I think teachers could use this for children in Pre-k through 2nd grade.

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