Author Ed Young has illustrated more than 80 children's books, authoring 17 of those, as well. Born in Tienstin, China and raised in Shanghai, he came to the United States to study architecture, but found his true passion in children's illustrations. Tie your book study of "Lon Po Po" to social studies class with activities like mapping travel routes from Shanghai to New York, where Young currently resides. Have students create a journal detailing life in Shanghai, followed by entries Young might have written on his journey, to provide writing practice that also incorporates a study of Chinese culture and geography. Students also may enjoy writing a letter to the author about the book or about himself. In addition to the 1990 Caldecott Medal, Young has won Caldecott Honors for two other books, and he has two nominations for the prestigious Hans Christian Anderson Medal. Encourage students to select criteria for a new children's book award and to design the medal winners would receive.
"Lon Po Po" provides many opportunities for teaching and reinforcing different reading and writing skills. Like most stories, it allows students to stop and predict future action in the story, along with summarizing the story. At the basic comprehension levels, students can practice retelling the story, with the important details, through a puppet show or class play, or they can create a graphic novel version of the book. To encourage higher-order thinking skills, ask students to use a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the story with the more familiar "Little Red Riding Hood" version, or to retell the story from the wolf's point of view. After a discussion of climax and denouement, students may also rewrite the story to change the ending.
Young makes use of the Chinese art style of panel paintings, in which a scene is "cut" into parts, usually one larger panel and two smaller. As an accompanying art lesson, allow students to create their own panel pictures. For younger students, you could have them cut a magazine picture or a photograph to card stock, cut it into panels and then make a paper frame, while older students could draw or paint their own design. In the book, the wolf appears in disguise, and he tells the sisters that the fur they feel is actually hemp brought for basket weaving. Tie your art class to the story by providing papers, fabrics, beads, sequins, fibers and other embellishments with which to make masks, and help them to weave paper or reed baskets, as well.
The sisters use a pulley system to fool the wolf, so a study of simple machines would be a timely complement to the literature lesson. You could also bridge the cross-curricular gap with exploration activities about wolves or about gingko trees.