This post is part of the 31 MORE Days of Literature Unit Studies series. You can find all of the links to the thirty-one studies in this post. If you’d like to use these ideas to create your own unit study, this post has step-by-step instructions as well as a free unit study planner. (Want to know more about what, exactly, a unit study is? This post will help.)

Book Information
Title: Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears
Author: Verna Aardema
Age Suggestion: K-2nd grade
Book Summary: Mosquito’s bragging sets of a chain of events that leads to the sun failing to come up in the forest. Lion calls a council to see what happened, and the verdict is that Mosquito should be punished.
Extension Activities
The PBS Show Between the Lions has a fun episode all about folktales and fables.
This site has a large collection of folktales to read with the kids.
This folktale uses lots of onomatopoeia words. This video has a cute song that will teach kids what onomatopoeia means.
Have kids write- or dictate- their own creative folktale to explain why something happens (like the sun not coming up).

Other Folktale Picture Books
How Tiger Got His Stripes: A Folktale from Vietnam by Rob Cleveland
The Drum: A Folktale from India by Rob Cleveland
Favorite Folktales from Around the World by Jane Yolen
Stone Soup by Ann Mcgovern
It Could Always Be Worse: A Yiddish Folktale by Margot Zemach
The Elves and the Shoemaker by Paul Galdone
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