Alma Flor Ada

Friends
Amigos
Zanmi

BOOK DESCRIPTION

The char­ac­ters of this pow­er­ful story in cel­e­bra­tion of diver­sity are all geo­met­ri­cal fig­ures –squares, rec­tan­gles, cir­cles and triangles—who stick to their own kind and teach their young not to mix with oth­ers. How­ever when two lit­tle cir­cles take a roll into town, they dis­cover for them­selves the joy of mak­ing new friends. This anti-bias book explores sym­bol­i­cally issues of dis­crim­i­na­tion at a level acces­si­ble even to the younger chil­dren, and pro­motes appre­ci­a­tion of others.

Teach­ers of young chil­dren appre­ci­ate that through this story chil­dren learn, or prac­tice, the names of col­ors, the con­cept of sizes, and, of course, the dif­fer­ent geo­met­ri­cal shapes. Chil­dren seem to be touched by the deep mes­sage of the story.

CD AND CASSETTES DESCRIPTION

There is a spe­cial value to lis­ten­ing to a books read by the author. Such record­ings show just where the author wishes to con­vey feel­ings and emo­tions, empha­sis and sus­pense. When the text is put to music it acquires addi­tional inter­est for children.

The spe­cial nature of each of these books led to them to very dif­fer­ent and excit­ing record­ings.
This pow­er­ful tale of cel­e­bra­tion of diver­sity has been read both in Eng­lish and in Span­ish by Alma Flor Ada. The lis­ten­ers of the record­ing in Span­ish will have a com­ple­men­tary expe­ri­ence. Alma Flor has rewrit­ten the story in verse and Suni Paz has cre­ated music for the ver­sion in verse. Her beau­ti­ful per­for­mance gives addi­tional charm to this poignant story of mul­ti­cul­tural understanding.

CD (Sto­ries For The Telling) includes Friends, How Happy I Would Be, The Song of the Teeny-Tiny Mos­quito, Strange Vis­i­tors, Who’s Hatch­ing Here?

AUTHOR’S NOTE

It has been a great joy to lis­ten to young chil­dren tell me how much they like this book, and how good it makes them feel that the book rec­og­nizes that we can all be friends, regard­less of what we look like.

This is the sec­ond of my sto­ries with geo­met­ri­cal char­ac­ters. The first is “El cuadra­dito azul” [The lit­tle blue square] included in the book Explo­ramos from the HAGAMOS CAMINOS read­ing series (Addison-Wesley). In that first story a lit­tle blue square wishes he could be any other fig­ure, a cir­cle or an oval, but not a square, until his grand­mother points out to him all the poten­tials that he holds. The third book with geo­met­ri­cal fig­ures as char­ac­ters is El reino de la geometría which takes the results of dis­crim­i­na­tion a step further.

Ami­gos was my very first book pub­lished in the United States as an Indi­vid­ual trade book, and it started my asso­ci­a­tion as an author with Santillana/Alfaguara.

REVIEWS

School Library Journal

PreS-Gr 1– An intro­duc­tion to basic shapes fea­tur­ing brightly col­ored illus­tra­tions. Squares, rec­tan­gles, tri­an­gles, and cir­cles are lim­ited to play­ing and asso­ci­at­ing only with oth­ers just like them­selves, until they dis­cover the cre­ative pos­si­bil­i­ties of being friends with those who are dif­fer­ent. In the end, the var­i­ous shapes com­bine to make wag­ons, loco­mo­tives, and boats.

FRIENDS MINI-LESSON USING THE CREATIVE DIALOGUE PROCESS

Down­load Friends Mini-Lesson as Word Doc­u­ment
Friends (in Span­ish Ami­gos, in Hait­ian Cre­ole Zanmi) by Alma Flor Ada describes the life of squares and rec­tan­gles, cir­cles and tri­an­gles who live in the same town but keep very sep­a­rate lives from each other. One day, two lit­tle cir­cles went for a roll into town and met a small rec­tan­gle. Together they formed a wagon. Later with young squares they made a train and when lit­tle tri­an­gles joined them they could make a plane and fly. They learned that together in friend­ship they could do what they could not do separate.

CREATIVE DIALOGUE

These ques­tions are sam­ples that can prompt the dia­logue for each phase. Of course, the beauty of the real dia­logue is that it will incor­po­rate real life sit­u­a­tions and expe­ri­ences of the chil­dren. The ques­tions are only sug­gested as dia­logue starters. They need not be asked sep­a­rately, but in a nor­mal con­ver­sa­tion for­mat. We sep­a­rated them into phases to give an idea of the dif­fer­ent pur­pose of each phase, par­tic­u­larly because the con­ver­sa­tions in the class tend to remain at the Descrip­tive and Per­sonal phases and not reach the very impor­tant Crit­i­cal Refle­tive phase and the essen­tial Cre­ative Phase that leads to action.

Descrip­tive Phase

Ques­tions to ascer­tain the com­pre­hen­sion of the story and its concepts.

• How many sides does a square have? Are all sides the same size?
• How many sides does a rec­tan­gle have? A tri­an­gle? Do cir­cles have sides?
• What did the large fig­ures say to the lit­tle ones?

Per­sonal Inter­pre­tive Phase

Ques­tions to invite shar­ing per­sonal expe­ri­ences, feel­ings and emotions.

• How does it feel when other chil­dren want to play with you? When they don’t?
• How does it feel when other peo­ple treat you badly? When you treat oth­ers badly?

Crit­i­cal Mul­ti­cul­tural Anti-Bias Phase

Ques­tions to pro­mote crit­i­cal reflec­tion and anti-bias awareness.

• Was the big squares’ rea­son to for­bid the lit­tle ones to play with oth­ers valid? Why??
• Do all peo­ple who have long hair (or live in the same street) think alike? Have the same taste? Can we tell the feel­ings of a per­son just by the way the per­son looks? By the person’s lan­guage? The person’s ori­gin? What do you think of this?
• Why do you think the shapes had such a won­der­ful time play­ing together?
• What dif­fi­cult things that can hap­pen when peo­ple who are dif­fer­ent play together?
• What good things can hap­pen? How can we pro­mote the good things?

Trans­for­ma­tive Cre­ative Phase

Ques­tions to pro­mote trans­for­ma­tive attitudes.

• What can we do when there are chil­dren who do not want to play with us?
• What can you do if you see some­one treat­ing some­one badly?
• Is there some­one you have not been friends with that you can invite to play with you? Some­one you can learn to know better?

CONNECTIONS WITH THE HOME

Invite par­ents to share with their chil­dren their own expe­ri­ences with friends, now and when they were chil­dren. What were their favorite games and activ­i­ties? Ask them to dis­cuss their con­cept of friend­ship. What do they value in their friends? Can these qual­i­ties be found only in peo­ple of the same age, the same sex, the same lan­guage, the same ethnicity?

PERFORMING THE STORY

The story Friends is easy to be turned into a play with­out great dif­fi­culty. Teach­ers work­ing with Span­ish speak­ing stu­dents can use the dra­ma­tized ver­sion included in the the­atre anthol­ogy Esce­nas y ale­grías. Since the text in verse included text is the same Suni Paz has put to music they could even per­form the story as a musi­cal fol­low­ing the Sto­ries for the Telling CD!

READERS’ RESPONSES

If you have enjoyed read­ing or shar­ing this book, I would very much like to hear from you. Please click here to send your comments.