Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon
Picture Book Read Aloud
book summary
In Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon, Molly Lou is known as the girl who looks and sounds different than the other girls her age. She is smaller than the other kids in her class, she has big buck teeth and frizzy hair and sings like a bullfrog being squeezed by a boa constrictor. She also has enormous insect-like eyes, but none of this bothers her because her grandmother taught her that if she carried herself with confidence…the world would always look up to her, and if she smiled…the whole world would smile too.
It seemed to Molly that her grandmother was right until her family moved to a new house and started a new school. One particular boy, Ronald Durkin, at her new school makes fun of her. Each day, Ronald finds something new to tease Molly about, but Molly follows her grandmother’s advice, stays confident, keeps, smiling, and stand up to Ronald. Molly showed him that just because she looked different did not mean she could not do some pretty amazing things. Molly was able to outrun Ronald on the football field to score the winning touchdown. Molly even shows off one of her more unique special talents by stacking pennies on her buck teeth to help win Ronald over. After getting to know Molly a little better, Ronald Durkin starts to rethink how he has been treating Molly Lou.
Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon is all about embracing your individuality and becoming the best version of ourselves by sharing our talents and unique qualities with the world! It is also the perfect book to use to spark a discussion of how to best handle bullies. Molly shows us how loving yourself can lead to accomplishing some pretty amazing things! She uses her uniqueness to bring joy to others by taking what some would have seen as negative characteristics and turning them into something positive!
suggested teaching point
Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon is perfect for showing how characters change during the story.
On page 29, readers can see that Ronald has changed his actions and has done something nice for Molly. Why do you think Ronald had changed? How do you think Molly will respond?
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