Chato's Kitchen

Chato's Kitchen

Written by Gary Soto

Illustrated by Susan Guevara

Genre: Picture Book

Awards:

Pura Belpre Illustrator Award Parent’s Choice Award Winner

Suggested Grade Levels:

Kindergarten – 3rd; This silly children’s book would be suitable for K – 3rd grade students because the illustrations help tell the story and would clear up any unfamiliar foreign words in the text. Overall, the plot is manageable to follow with the support of the illustrations.

Summary:

After an attempt and failure to catch a sparrow passing by, “cool cat” Chato sees he has new neighbors moving in. His new neighbors are five mice, leading Chato to fathom a way to invite them over for dinner (for his own dinner). As the mice consider the kindness of Chato, they begin preparing dishes to bring to the “fiesta.” The mice consider bringing a friend to dinner and Chato eagerly concedes. In the conclusion, the mice bring a friend who is a dog.

How Chato's Kitchen could be used in the classroom?

Chato’s Kitchen lends itself to being a suitable lesson plan on comprehension because of the obvious sequence of events and distinct characters. Teachers can model and instruct students on how to complete a story map graphic organizer to build comprehension. This story could also be used to demonstrate how to discover meaning of vocabulary words. Using the Spanish words, teachers can show students through a think-aloud how they would use the illustrations and context clues to discover meaning. Because of the prevalence of Spanish words, teachers could also use this book for a lesson to teach those words to native English speakers. This would be especially valuable in schools where a large portion of students come from Hispanic backgrounds.

ESOL strategies/applications/accommodations:

This book would be valuable for ESOL students if their native tongue is Spanish because of the presence of Spanish words throughout the text. It would be useful because it would reduce the students’ cognitive load, allowing them to focus on the meaning of English words. Using the students’ experiences, the teacher can guide the students to discover the meaning of English words. Placing students in small groups or with buddies to read this story would be helpful so Spanish-speaking students could help English-speaking students and vice-versa. This would give each student a purpose for reading and allow them to discuss and laugh at the story at the same time.

Suggested Read Aloud pages:

I would suggest reading aloud the entire book, if time permits, because discussion of the plot, characters, and climax would be profitable. If time is limited, reading aloud pages 6-10 would be beneficial to students because it gives way for a lesson in making predictions at the climax of the story.

My opinion of Chato's Kitchen and its illustrations:

The unexpected sequence of events in Chato’s Kitchen really engaged me as I giggled at the silly plans of each character. The context clues and illustrations made it easy to pick up the meaning of Spanish words so I could see how this book would be profitable in a classroom.