Fireflies

Julie Brinckloe's "Fireflies" takes the reader back to the summer days of their childhood. The book follows a young boy, extremely excited for a night of catching fireflies in a jar with his friends. The night shines with the flashing of hundreds of fireflies and soon his jar is full and it's time

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to return home. As he settles into bed with the jar on his nightstand, the young boy soon realizes that the once bright light of the fireflies is fading and they seem to be dying. But they are HIS and he does not want to release them. At last when it looks like they will not survive, the boy finally realizes that he cannot be selfish and lets the fireflies go, back into the wild where they belong. Their lights shine bright once again and he knows he has done the right things no matter how hard it was for him to do.

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The story is told in first person, and the setting seems to be in the country. This story is about a young boy making a wise decision to let the fireflies free so that they too can be happy, although he wanted to keep them badly. This book will interest students to find out what do fireflies need

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to survive, what do they eat, and how would one go about having a pet firefly?

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This book is perfect for grades k-2. It is written in first person with dialogue. Teachers can have lessons on this book to introduce these two elements of writing into their classroom.

This book I use with my Realistic Fiction Writing Unit. It does a beautiful job of “show don’t tell” in creating characters. It is powerful and detailed in a simple way. It is even a good book for envisioning- read it once without showing the pictures, then read it another day and who them

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the pictures. Have them create a T Chart of what they envisioned, and what was really there, or a Venn Diagram.

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This book involves lots of wonder and excitement, and gives us a glimpse of the mysterious firefly bug. It has wonderful illustrations of pencil and watercolor that really bring the story alive. It also teaches a lesson of freedom and understanding of other creatures.

I really enjoyed this book it reminded me of being young in the summer catching fireflies with my best friends in our front yards. Not only were the illustrations in the story great, but so was the word imagery. I found the illustrations correlated well with the story line. The author used bright

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colors for the fireflies and darker colors to represent the night. I enjoyed how much the images focused on the fireflies by making them so bright and florescent. I also found the use of dialogue to be attention grabbing and kept the story interesting for the reader. The author chose colorful language to match the colorful imagery. The author used common language to keep it family and kid friendly. I think this book would be great for first time readers. This book is easy for any reader to relate to and enjoy.

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The central message of the story is to take care of living things. The boy did the right thing by letting the lightning bugs go. If he did not, the bugs would have died. I liked this story because of the author’s language. The author uses adjectives to describe the details in the story. For

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example, the boy cleaned off the dusty jar with his shirt. With this information, readers can make inferences about the jar. For instance, the jar could have been dusty because it had been in the cellar for a long time. The author also uses metaphors to help enhance her language, and help readers relate events in the story to what the author is comparing them too. In addition, I liked the illustrations of the story. My favorite is when all of the fireflies are in the jar blinking bright. The jar was the brightest item on the page. It was the focal point on the page that supported the key detail in the writing. The illustrations help readers understand the central ideas for each page. The last reason why I enjoyed this story is because of the author’s writing. The writing is organized, and easy to understand.

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We begin the story with a boy who is eating his dinner and at the corner of his eye he sees a light. The light that he saw was a fire fly. When he sees that the fire flies are out for the day, he asks to be excused and rushes to get a jar. He grabs his jar and joins his friends and goes on to catch

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"hundreds of fire flies". As he is in bed looking at his jar of fire flies, he realizes that fire flies aren't meant to be kept in a jar.

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This book is one of my all time favorites! I love this book because of my personal love and connection that I have with fireflies and the many summers I spent collecting them at my grandparent's home up north. I also have used it every year with my 2nd graders during our writing workshop to show

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small moment writing. It's the story of a boy who, like myself, collected fireflies in a jar and keeps them in his room. At first, the glow of the fireflies are bright and stunning. Soon, the glow starts to weaken and the boy struggles with a hard decision. The story is beautifully written and one I will always treasure.

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This was a great book for students such as 2/3rd grade. This is something students can understand and learn about nature and letting things go.