My Travelin' Eye by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw

Kostecki-Shaw, J. (2008). My travelin' eye.  New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

This book is a wonderful introduction for students if they haven't seen any literature representing children with disabilities.  My Travelin' Eye is a picture book about a young child, Jenny Sue, who is born with a strabismus causing her eye to "travel" which makes it misalign and turn in and out, up or down.   Jenny Sue struggles with her disability in class where her teacher doesn't quite understand her and her fellow classmates make comments that makes Jenny Sue feel poorly about her condition.  Later on Jenny Sue's mother creates her an eye patch that makes her excited about her eye, and the other children start to celebrate her uniqueness and join in with making their own eye patches.  It is a whimsical book with bright illustrations and a fun style of writing.

The lexile level of this book is between the ages of 4-8.  It would most likely be enjoyed by a first or second grade classroom as a read aloud.

This book is a great piece to share with your students since every single school has children with disabilities.   Teasing is a real problem in schools, and students can relate with Jenny Sue and her poor self image in the beginning of the book.  Later on, she realizes that she is special, and being different is a gift.
The story is very natural and believable, since children have start to have self realization and an idea of self image at an early age.   This story is based off the author's childhood, and is told with a purpose and meaning behind the text.   The book is told by the main character, and is relatable to a child that age which I thought was endearing for a text.   The main setting is in a school and in Jenny Sue's family home, where the characters are all appropriate for the time and place.
There are many different students represented without the use of stereotypes and culturally appropriate for the time and place.
All characters are portrayed as equal by the end of the novel, seeing as that the only character viewed negatively at any point in the main character.
Nonwhite characters are represented in this book, and seeing as equal to the nonwhite characters portrayed.
The text is age appropriate and without use of offensive or inappropriate language, in fact, it is very captivating for a child within that age range.
The illustrations of this book are very colorful and fun, but still representative of each character portrayed with accuracy to their ethnicity without the use of stereotypes.

What teachable moments can we find in My Travelin' Eye?
The use of metaphor:
My right eye is the navigator. 
My travelin' eye is the artist. 
The author is comparing her eyes to actual humans in the way that they are able to behave.

Foreshadowing:
One day after class, Jenny Sue is sent home with a note from her teacher suggesting she go see a specialist to correct her eye problem.

This gives us a sense of an idea that Jenny Sue will be getting her disability looked at, where later on in the book, she is taken to an ophthalmologist to help work on her Travelin' Eye

Irony:
Jenny Sue is made to wear a patch to help lesson the amount of time her Travelin' Eye goes traveling.  The students in her classroom were fascinated by her eyepatch; the same students who made fun of Jenny Sue for her disability in the first place.  They all wanted to make their own patches and feel special just like Jenny Sue.
This is ironic, because they all want to be just like the disability that they made fun of prior to the eyepatch.

How can we teach this?
A metaphor can be taught at a young age, and using Jenny Sue's eyes as a jumping off point, you could pose to your classroom the challenge of creating their own metaphor connecting something that  they already know with another object.