Module 5: Picture Books

A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon  is about a girl named Camilla who really loves lima beans but pretends she doesn't because none of the other kids do. She wants to fit in so much that she gets a case of the stripes. She turns flag colored when she says the Pledge of Allegiance. The doctors give her medicine to cure her, but all it does is turn her into a giant pill. Camilla learns that all she has to do to cure herself is to eat the lima beans that she loves and to be herself. This book has a very clever way of encouraging children to embrace their difference and be happy with who they are. The pictures are colorful and vibrant and explosive, and the things that happen to Camilla are both disturbing and fascinating.

Reviews:

• "...The paintings are technically superb but viscerally troubling, especially this image of her sitting in front of the TV with twigs and spots and fur protruding from her. The doe-eyed girl changes her stripes at anyone's command, and only nonconformity can save her. When she finally admits her unspeakable secret, she loves lima beans, she is cured. Shannon (How Georgie Radbourn Saved Baseball) juggles dark humor and an anti-peer-pressure message. As her condition worsens, Camilla becomes monstrous, ultimately merging with the walls of her room. The hallucinatory images are eye-popping but oppressive, and the finale, with Camilla restored to her bean-eating self, brings a sigh of relief. However, the grotesque images of an ill Camilla may continue to haunt children long after the cover is closed." - Publishers Weekly

• "A highly original moral tale acquires mythic proportions when Camilla Cream worries too much about what others think of her and tries desperately to please everyone. First stripes, then stars and stripes, and finally anything anyone suggests (including tree limbs, feathers, and a tail) appear vividly all over her body. The solution: lima beans, loved by Camilla, but disdained for fear they'll promote unpopularity with her classmates. Shannon's exaggerated, surreal, full-color illustrations take advantage of shadow, light, and shifting perspective to show the girl's plight. Bordered pages barely contain the energy of the artwork; close-ups emphasize the remarkable characters that inhabit the tale. Sly humor lurks in the pictures, too. For example, in one double-page spread the Creams are besieged by the media including a crew from station WCKO. Despite probing by doctors and experts, it takes "an old woman who was just as plump and sweet as a strawberry" to help Camilla discover her true colors. Set in middle-class America, this very funny tale speaks to the challenge many kids face in choosing to act independently." - School Library Journal
  

For this book, I would have the kids make a full-body outline of themselves and decorate it with the things they like on the inside and the things they don't like but other people do on the outside of the outline.