Navigating Night

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In Navigating Night, the girl uses a map to help her father find his way through the rainy streets as they make deliveries for their family restaurant. Help students explore how maps work by sharing examples of maps, such as a map of the neighborhood near your school, a park map, road map, or transit map. Talk with students about why people create and use maps and how knowing how to read them helps people find their way and confidently explore the world around them.

Have students draw their own maps of where they live, including parts of their neighborhood that are important to them, like a park, store, restaurant, or a friend’s house. As students work on their maps, hang up a map of your community that includes your school. When students finish their maps, invite them to share their maps and explain the places they chose to include. Then have them all work together to figure out how each student’s map connects with the school map. Display the completed maps and invite students to add sticky notes identifying places they have visited or landmarks they recognize, creating a collaborative map of the places that make up their community.

Questions for Discussion or Reflective Writing

• How does the girl in the story help her father? How does she feel about helping? How do you help your family?
• What does the girl mean when she thinks, “But I don’t want to be a good kid. I want to be a normal kid.”
• How do you think the girl feels about helping after she hears Baba’s story about finding his way in a new country? What are some reasons that people might choose to leave their home to build a new life in another country? How would moving to a new place make you feel?
• Baba and his daughter are both quiet after Baba says, “Before I had you, I would get so lost.” What aren’t the characters saying? What do you think they are feeling?
• What do you notice in the illustrations about the weather? How is the weather like the relationship between the girl and her father?

Related Resources

Navigating Night resources from TeachingBooks

Map Skills for Students Ages 4-8 from National Geographic

What Are Maps? from PBS LearningMedia