Aunt Chip and the Great Triple Creek Dam Affair

How much TV is too much TV? Welcome to Triple Creek, where the townspeople watch TV day and night. They watch it when they're eating, working, playing, and sleeping. They even use TVs to teach the kids at school. But when Eli's eccentric Aunt Chip (who refuses to own a TV) discovers that her nephew and her neighbors don't remember how to read, she pulls the plug on the whole town?using books that have been piled high to build a dam to spread the magic of reading all around.

Customer Reviews:

What a wonderful book to use to teach students!

By A Customer - February 21, 1999

What a wonderful book to use to teach students a variety of concepts! I used this book to start a lesson in computers. Students listened to the book and then we discussed some concepts: Value of books How TV can take over one's life Importance of reading Team WorkAfter this the students tracked their activities for 7 days - 24 hours a day. We then created spreadsheets with this information and finally graphed our information - using excel or other spreadsheed program. At the end of the session, I had some thought provoking questions that they needed to answer in small groups based upon their graphs and spreadsheets. They loved it!!

A great book on the importance of reading!

By Nicole Schuette - May 26, 2000

This book is a wonderful story about what happens when people no longer read. It has great imagery--books being used for table legs and to prop open doors, even as a dam. I used it in my seventh grade language arts class, following it up with a discussion of why reading is important. Even though it's a picture book, my seventh graders really got into it.

A book on the power of reading

By A Customer - February 29, 2000

THEMES and/or Bibliotherapeutic Potential Fictional parable for young readers ages five and upThe Power of ReadingAunt Chip and the Great Triple Creek Dam Affair is a humorous parable by Patricia Polacco on the dangers of too much television watching. Aunt Chip took to her bed fifty years ago when the big television tower came to town and the library closed. She knew the consequences would be great. Everyone stopped reading and then did not remember how. Books were used, but not for reading. When Aunt Chip finally got out of bed to teach the children to read, they were reading so much they were taking books out of potholes and sagging buildings. Eventually they took books out of the dam and an ensuing flood caused the television tower to fall down, angering adults and inducing them to learn to read. Reading again reigned and Aunt Chip again was the town librarian. The author tackles the issue of too much TV with her trademark humor and charm. Although... read more