"Beatrice's Goat"

Title: "Beatrice's Goat"
Author: Page McBrier
Illustrator: Lori Lohstoeter
Publisher: Scholastic, Inc., 2001
Genre: Multi-Cultural
Grade: 2-3

This book is about a Ugandan girl named Beatrice. Beatrice longs more than anything to go to school and learn like all the others. One day her family receives a goat that is going to bring them lucky gifts. Mugisa, the goat, has two kids, Expected and Surprise. After the two kids had gotten older, Beatrice began selling Mugisa's goat milk for money. One day she comes home and sees her mother crying and her mother tells her she has enough money to go to school now. Beatrice is so unselfish she asks what about the other things they need and she tells her "First things first." On Beatrice's first day of school, her friend Bunane comes by and tells her that he wishes he was going to school and she tells him not to worry because his family is next in line to receive a goat.

I loved this book. I can't believe how unselfish Beatrice was. She did everything that Mother asked her to do. She worked in the fields, tended to the chickens, watched the children, and ground up the cassava flour they would take to the market to sell. When the goat came she also had to take care of it. She never questioned anything. She just did it for the family! When she finds out she is making all this money, her first thought of what to do with it is to buy a new shirt for Moses and a warm blanket for the bed she shares with Grace. The pictures in this book are amazing! The illustrator uses acryllic paint to illustrate. The village looks exactly like I would picture a village in Africa. They have the banana trees and the straw house just as I have always pictured. I think this book is definitely a good multicultural book. It informs the reader of how life in Uganda would be as a young girl. It tells of all the chores and how school is not an option for every child. This book is written through an insider's perspective because it is written about this little girl and her family but it is told like she knows what Beatrice is going through.

I would use this book in my classroom to talk about the different hardships that different cultures face. I could chose some other books and have my students to compare and contrast these hardships. They could do this in a venn-diagram or in a story. I could also ask them what they would want if a lucky goat could bring them anything. They could write a story about their desires and illustrate it.