Milo's Hat Trick

Agee, J. (2001). Milo's Hat Trick. New Your; Michael Di Capua Books.
(This book selection came from our textbook list)

I stumbled across this book while helping one of my resource students pick out some AR books.  My students always pick out boring books that talk about "crops" or "tractors".  These books are very plain, simple, and straightforward and the students hate reading them but the pick them because they needs points for AR.  This is another picture storybook that uses the pictures along with the text to tell a wonderfully funny story that my all of my students enjoyed.  The book is a second grade level reader but I was able to use it with all of my students because they are all non-readers and we read the book as a group.  The story centers around a magician that cannot complete even the simplest of tricks and that includes pulling a rabbit from his hat.  Ultimately he goes on a hunt for a rabbit and discovers a bear that changes his fortunes as a magician.

Agee does a great job the cartoon-like illustrations that mirror the events within the story.  The story in general would fit into the cartoon style with events and actions from the story (like a bear coming from a hat, or a magician).  The shape of the illustrations is very large with most of the pictures encompassing an entire page without borders.  Agee's style is eccentric and funny with his tale that my students loved and couldn't get enough of. 

I used this book with three different grade levels of SPED students.  Great activities for this book would be choral reading.  I allowed my first grade group to act out the story by using the pictures: I had a magician, a bear, a manager, and audience, etc.  The one question that I asked my students happend prior to reading the last page.  I asked my students: What do you think the magician is going to do?