My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother

    Overall, I found this book to be useful in terms of relating to prospective students. I feel this would be beneficial to use in the classroom as a means of promoting discussion and understanding about family, competition, personal feelings, appropriate reactions to situations, and more. This would be a great tool to use as a starting prompt for early personal narratives and other writing unit practices. I loved how Patricia Polacco decorated the inside covers with personal photos of her brother and herself as kids. Her illustrations help set the tone of the story and further develop the characters' personalities through expression, posture, and other physical aspects of the characters.
      I feel this would be great to use with younger students, because they can relate the book's competitive nature to their own siblings, friends, and/or classmates. I believe this would help that younger age group understand how to positively interact with others. This could help simply address classroom issues or be incorporated into an actual lesson. The lesson could be used to prompt other discussions as well. Some ideas may include elements of art, how to add illustrations to a story to show what the author is talking about, or how/what is necessary to include in defining various emotions the characters are feeling in the story.  

My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother
By: Patricia Polacco
Published in 1994