I love inspirational quotes. When I saw this book at the store, I instantly knew I would need to purchase it. Each of the quotations is hand-lettered by Lisa Congdon, who began the series when she was doing a blog called, “365 Days of Hand Lettering.” The title of the book, Whatever You Are, Be a Good One, refers to the quote by Abraham Lincoln.
I really hate cutting apart books, but each of these pages is worthy of framing. There are several that encourage a healthy growth mindset, such as, “Success is never so interesting as struggle,” by Willa Cather, and, “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning to sail my ship,” by Louisa May Alcott. You will also find encouraging quotes about kindness and being happy.
I haven’t figured out how I will be using the book in my classroom, but my students love to look for quotes. They enjoy browsing my Pinterest Board of Favorite Quotations, and also like to choose quotes from other books that I have in the classroom. (I have a picture frame with scrapbook paper on the inside, and they use dry-erase markers to write a “Quote of the Week” on it. They also use quotes in their Dream Team projects.)
Another idea would be to show the students the style of the book, and have them choose their own quotes to hand-letter. The Paper by 53 app on the iPad is a nice tool for doing this.
You would probably not want to let younger students (K-4) browse through this book unattended. There is a quote from Dostoyevsky that uses a word that some might consider questionable. Many of the quotes are a bit difficult for that age group to understand, anyway.
