Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse

Title: Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse

Author: Kevin Henkes

Picture Book #3

I absolutely adored Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes because it was a story about anger and how to properly deal with that complicated emotion. The story begins with the main character, Lilly, explaining about how much she loves school and all of the things she likes about school best. She then goes into discussing her teacher, Mr.Slinger, and how she wants to be a teacher just like him some day. As the reader of the story, I connected with Lilly greatly and reflected on my own feelings as a child when I used to want to be exactly like my teachers. They were always great role models to me and I used to take everything they said and did to heart, which is why I sympathized with Lilly when Mr.Slinger had to reprimand her one day for showing off her purple plastic purse during inappropriate times throughout the day. Out of anger Lilly draws a mean picture of Mr. Slinger and sticks it in his bag at the end of the day only to find that he has written her a nice note saying she may share her purse with the class another day. The rest of the story details how she goes about apologizing for her mistake.

I think this story would be good for young readers because it teaches them about properly reacting when they are mad. Through the story, the children learn how Lilly is sorry for actions against Mr. Slinger and how she shouldn’t have reacted so poorly and so rashly. This would be a good story to use during a unit about emotions with Kindergarten or for a circle time book with the class after an altercation between classmates, a student and the teacher, etc. Moreover, I feel like the students would connect with the main character, Lilly, because she is described as being a student like them. Having a male teacher may appeal to the boys in the room if a story about a plastic purple purse is “too girly” for them to read.