The Important Book

The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown
Pictures by Leonard Weisgard
Published by Harper and Row (1949)

I first heard about The Important Book last semester thanks to one of my Education professors. She shared some of the book with the class. I knew I just had to read the book because it feels like a classic piece of children's literature.

The story is written in a repetitive, almost poem-like, nature. It starts each page with the line, "The important thing about ___(noun)_____ is that_______. It is followed by a couple sentences about various details about the noun, and ends with the same sentence it began with to reiterate its main point. The book talks about several ordinary items such as spoons, shoes, the sky, snow, and apples. I included a picture of the last page of the book which is my absolute favorite.

This book has many applications in the classroom. It is a great book to use at the beginning of the year for students to talk about themselves and what makes them important and different. One of my classmates read this book to a class of 4th graders and had them choose something they wanted to write about. She compiled their pages into a classroom book of important things. I love that idea! This book challenges students to look at simple items such as a daisy or the wind and really think about what makes that thing different from the rest of the world. The Important Book could be used in a variety of grade levels also.

The illustrations in the book are fairly life-like. Leonard Weisgard uses both color and black and white to give the reader various perspectives.

I would highly recommend that The Important Book has a place on the shelf in every teacher's classroom!

Brown, Margaret Wise, and Leonard Weisgard. The Important Book. New York: Harper, 1949. Print.