The Doorbell Rang

The Doorbell Rang
Pat Hutchins

My Rating: 5 out of 5

Genre: Realistic Fiction/Picture Book
(lesson plan)

In Pat Hutchins's The Doorbell Rang, brother and sister Victoria and Sam find themselves in quite the predicament. Their mother bakes them a dozen cookies and tells them they can share them between themselves. Just as they figure out how many each will get, the doorbell rings and in walks their next door neighbors. Max and Victoria then have to share the twelve cookies equally between four people. This pattern continues until Victoria and Sam have to share the cookies equally among twelve people...and the doorbell rings again...and again! Nobody wants to open the door because there are no more cookies to share. They even thought about eating all of the cookies before opening the door! Finally, they decide the right thing to do is to open the door and share the cookies the best they can, and to their surprise, the person at the door turns out to be none other than their grandmother with more cookies!

I would recommend this book as a read aloud for Kindergarten and first grade. I liked it because it provides a great lesson in sharing and doing the right thing. I would also recommend this book for second and third graders as an introduction to division by equal sharing. The students can follow along with manipulatives of their own to represent the cookies, and as the teacher reads the book, students can be actively engaged in finding the answer to how many cookies each person would get. Hutchins' book can perform double duty in the classroom making a great addition to the classroom library.