The Year of the Baby, Andrea Cheng

For this week we got to choose whatever novel we wanted to read.  I did not really know where to go with this so I decided to read The Year of the Baby by Andrea Cheng, which is the second book in my series novel that I read earlier this year.  This book continued the journey of Anna and her friends.  However, this year her parents adopted a baby girl from China named Kaylee who is not thriving.  They are constantly taking her to the doctors and trying to figure out how to get her to eat.  Anna and her friends have to do a science fair project, after much thinking they decide to do it on Kaylee.  They want to test and see if singing songs in English or Chinese will make her eat.  

The Year of the Baby is a wonderful book.  It would be great for students whose families are going through change.  I would recommend it to students who are about to become a big brother or sister, or whose family is adopting, since that is what the whole book is about.  I would also recommend it for students whose parents are separated or getting a divorce, because Anna's friend Laura is going through this in the book and it could help students with transitioning through this process.  This is a great book to integrate with science or math, I would have my students get into groups and come up with their own science fair project and come up with their own problem, hypothesis, observations, and conclusion.  It also shows bar charts and graphs to teach a math lesson.  I like this book and think it would be beneficial to students.