Read On: Cover to Cover

9 Fifteen-Minute Programs
Grade Level: 3 - 4
Curriculum Area: Language Arts: Reading

Use these exciting stories that employ the cliff-hanger approach to motivate student readers to read more.  Tales of heroes large and small, human and animal, set around the world will keep children engaged and entertained.   Along with illustrations, computer graphics, and music, host John Robbins introduces books that help broaden students' reading abilities, experiences, and appreciation.

Teacher Guide: 37 pages; includes program synopses, on-air passages, pre- and post-viewing activities, cross-curriculum activities, information about the author, book lists, and curriculum grid.

1. McMummy (Betsy Byars) 14:44
   Mozie promises to take care of Dr. Orloff's greenhouse for the summer, but one of the plants develops an enormous pod that terrifies her.

2. Number the Stars (Lois Lowry) 14:43
   In Denmark during World War II, a Christian family saves a Jewish family from the Nazis.

3. Strider (Beverly Cleary) 14:43
   Leigh and Barry find an abandoned dog, Strider, and agree to share custody, but then Leigh decides he wants Strider all to himself.

4. Program Rights have expired.

5. Me, Mop, and the Moondance Kid (Walter Dean Myers) 14:21
   The Dominican Academy Orphanage in urban New Jersey turns out good kids who play terrible baseball until Sister Carmelita gets involved.

6. A Jar of Dreams (Yoshiko Uchida) 14:44
   Rinko Tsujimura learns firsthand the sting of prejudice when her family's new home laundry business threatens the owner of the biggest established laundry business in Berkeley, California.

7. Program Rights have expired.

8. Teacher's Pet (Johanna Hurwitz) 14:43
   Cricket Kaufman cannot understand why her teacher hasn't already discovered her singular brilliance, outstanding leadership qualities, talent, and natural gift for practically everything.
   Attaboy, Sam (Lois Lowry)
   Four-year-old Sam is making perfume for his mother's surprise birthday present, and it contains all her favorite smells: chicken soup and one of his father's pipes, for starters.

9. Program Rights have expired.

10. Program Rights have expired.

11. Chevrolet Saturdays (Candy Dawson Boyd) 14:43
    In this African-American family, accepting a new father means letting go of the natural father.

12. Program Rights have expired.

13. Program Rights have expired.

14. Daphne's Book (Mary Downing Hahn) 14:29
    Daphne is missing a lot of school because she is afraid to leave her baby sister at home alone with their guardian/grandmother, who is deteriorating mentally.

15. Dragonwings (Laurence Yep) 14:44
    In 1909, six years after the Wright Brothers' triumphant first flight, the feat was repeated by a Chinese-American with his own airplane in California.

16. Shades of Gray (Carolyn Reeder) 14:43
    Will loses his whole family in the Civil War and hates the thought of having to go live with an uncle who refuses to join the army.