Linda James
Elementary
Literature Activity
Annie and the Old One
By Miska Miles
Illustrated by Peter Parnall
Little Brown and Company,1971
About the book
Annie and the Old One is the story of a Navajo girl trying
to cope with the impending death of her grandmother. Annie, her parents and her grandmother live together in a
hogan. The family is very close and
share many great experiences. Annie’s
grandmother, the Old One, predicts that she will die when the rug on the loom
is finished. Annie does not want to
accept this. Annie tries many things to
prevent the rug from being finished in hopes of prolonging her grandmother’s
life. The Old One explains the cycle of
life to Annie and helps Annie to understand the inevitable change of death.
About the Author
Patricia
Miles Martin was born on November 14, 1899 in Cherokee, Kansas. She attended
San Mateo College and the University of Wyoming. In the 1930's she was an
elementary school teacher for four years in Denver, Colorado and Armito,
Wyoming.
Ms.
Martin started writing almost by accident. In 1957, while attending San Mateo
College, she enrolled in an upholstering class that was too full. She noticed
that another class had empty seats so she sat down. It was a creative writing
class, and there was room for her. Sylvester and the Voice in the Forest
(1958) was her first published book.
Ms.
Martin began a story with a thought or message she wanted to convey, usually a
value she lived by and wanted to share with her readers. Research was very
important to Ms. Martin and she spent time carefully working out all of the
details first. She often traveled to a particular region and studied how her
story would develop based on the surroundings of the area and how it related to
her story.
During
her lifetime, Ms. Martin wrote over 100 stories under her own name, as well as
the pseudonyms Miska Miles, Patricia A. Miles, and Jerry Lane. She wrote
autobiographies of famous Americans, presidents, and inventors, and fiction
stories about different cultures, people and animals. Her inspiration came from
the things that happened to her while living on a farm in Kansas and a Navajo
reservation. In 1972, she received a Newbery Honor and a Christopher Medal for Annie
and the Old One (1971). This book and many others were also named as ALA
Notable Books, Junior Literary Books, and were on the Horn Book honor
list. Annie and the Old One was adapted to film by Greenhouse Films in
1976. (Major Authors and Illustrators, pp. 1583-1586).
Before Reading the Book
1.
Discuss with students how older relatives such as
grandparents and great aunts and uncles are important to their family. Encourage students to bring pictures of
these relatives to school.
2.
Students will complete a family tree (they can take it home
and complete it with help from family).
3.
Have students to interview an older relative and complete
the “A Special Person” sheet. Make a bulletin board with the pictures and
sheet.
4.
Discuss the different emotions/feelings that people have –
peaceful, happy, angry, sad, scared proud, ashamed, brave etc. Make a cluster diagram on the board or
overhead to help students visualize.
5.
Show students on a map the southwest region. Tell students that most Navajos live in the
states of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
6.
Tell students that in the story Annie and the Old One,
Annie’s family still follow some of the traditional ways of the Navajos.
During Reading
1.
Read the story aloud with the students. Tell students to think about Annie and how
she feels throughout the story. Remind
them to look for the emotions/feelings discussed earlier.
2.
Tell students to look for examples in the story that show
both the traditional and modern lifestyles of Annie’s family.
3.
Throughout the reading of the book, have students to predict
what might happen next. (They can write
the predictions in their reading response journals or answer orally.)
Some possible points in the books
for predictions:
ü What is
grandmother going to tell the family?
Pg 13
ü What gifts
from the Old One will each family member choose? Pg 15/16
ü What are
some things that Annie might do to keep the rug from being finished? Pg 19
ü What will
Annie’s parents or the Old One do when they discover that Annie has been
unraveling the rug?
After Reading the Book
1.
Students will complete a web showing Annie’s
emotions/feeling during the story.
2.
Students will complete a Venn diagram comparing Annie and
her grandmother, the Old One.
3.
Students will make a chart showing the traditional and
modern lifestyles of Annie’s family.
Extension
1.
Students will research Navajo Rugs on the Internet. Then they will design a rug by making a
colored sketch.
ü http://www.kstrom.net/isk/maps/rugmap.html
ü http://navajocentral.org/rugs.htm
Evaluation
The webs, Venn diagrams and charts can be used to evaluate the students’ understanding of the book.
Meet A Special Person
_______________________________________________
Name of person
Relationship to student_____________________________
Where were you born? _____________________________
Where have you lived? ____________________________________
_______________________________________________________
When you were young:
What were your hobbies? __________________________________
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
What did you like about school? ____________________________
What was your favorite book?
What is one of your happiest childhood memories? ______________