Donavan's Word Jar by Monalisa DeGross

Easy Fiction Treasures

Over the coming months I plan to post details of little chapter books which are perfect for newly independent readers along with books that can be used to read to children in Grades K-2. None of these books are new but most will still be in print so you might consider adding them to your own book or library collection.

This is the old cover for Donavan's Word Jar

In 2010, I talked about Donavan's Word Jar. I noticed it has been recently culled from my former school library. This little chapter book had a huge impact on me and the story has lingered all this time so I decided to buy a copy for myself. It was first published in 1994 but I had no problem sourcing a new copy.

You can see it has a new jacket

Here is an audio reading of the book - it has been slightly abridged.

In my previous post I mentioned I had found a site where you can make a word wall based on the words in this book. This image shows the word list:

Here are some other posts about words and vocabulary:

• Big words for Little Geniuses
• Frindle by Andrew Clements
• The Right Word Roget and his thesaurus by Jen Bryant
• The Weird and Wonderful World of Words by Charles Hope

I would pair Donavan's word Jar with Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge and plan a discussion about memories and simple acts of kindness.