A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon

• Title: A Bad Case of Stripes
• Author: David Shannon
• Publishing: Scholastic, Inc. June 1st, 2004
• Synopsis: This story revolves around the life of a little girl names Camilla Cream. Camilla Cream really loved to eat lima beans, but never ate them because she was afraid of what people would think of her. In general Camilla was really worried about being liked and the first day of school meant trying on 42 different outfits. All of the sudden, Camilla discovered to her horror that she was completely covered in stripes. Many doctors came to her house and none could figure out what was causing her stripes. When Camilla arrived at school everyone made fun of her and shouted out different patterns as Camilla changed colors with each demand. After tons of doctor examinations, news crews, and children's laughter, an old woman finally discovered what was wrong. Camilla needed to eat her lima beans. Once she did, the stripes went away and Camilla decided to always be true to herself and the things she likes.
• The author of this book is also the illustrator. The pictures in this book are amazing and very colorful, really adding to the story. This book also uses awesome word choice that helps with the illustrations to make the story more vivid. 
• This story is a really create way to get across a very important but simple message of the importance of being yourself. I remember reading this story as a child and thinking how cool it was that Camilla eventually decided to be herself in the end. I think the lesson of being true to yourself is a very important one for young children and this book explains it so well, making it a great book. 
• While reading this book, I could see myself using it to create a number of different creative writing prompts. I thought of various writing prompts, such as describe a time in which you liked something that was unpopular with your friends or classmates. Did your friends opinions change your mind or did you stay true to yourself? In sticking with the creative response theme, I also found a website with many more prompts which I feel would be useful if I were to use this story in the classroom. The link  to the creative writing prompts is below: https://www.webteaching.com/free/stripes.htm
• I also thought I could use this story to spark creative thinking by having the children create a picture in which the draw what they would choose to look like if they were in Camilla's position in the book. What pattern or colors would they choose to be? Would they want to have scales or feather too like Camilla? I would let the children draw or paint little body cut outs and glue anything they want on them such as feathers or buttons. I would then like to hang them around the room.