Tool Belt Point of View

From one angle, this bunch of petunias blooms from a yellow pot. From another view, it is set in a pot upon a sunny chair in my mom's garden. Point of view changes from our direction, of course. What one person sees, another person might overlook. It happened to me at yoga last night when our instructor thought it was too early to begin. When she stepped from her side view to look at the clock face forward, it was time to begin.

Today the point-of-view shift happened for me with third graders while sharing Chris Monroe's Monkey With a Tool Belt and Monkey With a Tool Belt and the Noisy Problem. Readers and listeners love Chico Bon Bon's twelve-part plan to escape from the organ grinder's box. They love when the organ grinder's toe gets hit with Chico Bon Bon's rubber mallet. But they really love the page where Chico Bon Bon stands facing proudly forward with his incredibly compartmentalized tool belt around his waist. A line points from the tool labels to the tools themselves. There are always chuckles when I read in order "monkey wrench, turkey wrench, donkey wrench" or "pajama hammer, banana hammer, clam hammer."

When Chico Bon Bon is tucked in bed with his tool belt, I show them the second book about this crafty monkey and how he determines the location of the noisy problem (an elephant has clogged his laundry chute!). This book also shows the monkey with his tool belt, only this time the tools are not quite the same. One astute observer asked me to show both the pages of Chico Bon Bon with his tool belt side by side. Look how the second one shows him from the side, he told us. In all the times I have read both books, I never noticed the shift in point-of-view to that profile view! Another lesson learned from a child.