Dream On

by Shannon Hale, Marcela Cespedes

In this encouraging picture book, dreaming becomes an invitation to imagine possibilities and look toward the future with hope. Shannon Hale’s text and Marcela Cespedes’s illustrations offer a starting point for conversations about imagination, aspirations, and the many ways children can envision their lives. This is a provisional thematic overview: the book’s text and illustrations were not supplied, so specific characters, events, and visual details should be verified against a classroom copy.

Big Idea

Imagination helps us explore who we might become, and our dreams do not all have to look alike. Writers and illustrators can help readers experience possibility through language, pictures, and the timing of a page turn.

Discussion Questions

1.Which words or pictures in Dream On make a possibility feel exciting to you? What do you notice about them?
2.How do the illustrations help you understand something that the words leave open?
3.Which dream or possibility in the book would you like to explore? What would you add from your own imagination?
4.Where did you want the reader to slow down, pause, or turn the page quickly? What caused that feeling?
5.How can we encourage someone whose dream is different from our own—or someone who is not sure what their dream is yet?

Classroom Activities

One Dream, Three Page Turns

Children create a small illustrated book that moves from imagining a possibility to exploring it and choosing a small next step. Using a verified word, image, or possibility from Dream On as their starting point, they experiment with a short line, a fuller scene, and a deliberate pause to discover how page design changes reading pace. Dreams may involve making, learning, helping, playing, or becoming; children need not choose a future career or share a private aspiration.

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes📦 A classroom copy of Dream On, paper, pencils, crayons or markers, chart paper, and a stapler or clips; optional sticky notes and a document camera.

Learning Goals

Use a specific detail from the read-aloud or illustrations to explain an interpretation.
Distinguish between what a picture communicates and what accompanying words communicate.
Create an illustrated sequence with an opening, development, and ending.
Experiment with line length, punctuation, or page turns to influence reading pace.
Listen respectfully to classmates’ different ideas and aspirations.

Activity Steps

1.Read and notice, 8 minutes: Read Dream On aloud with its illustrations visible. Invite children to identify one place that feels expansive or exciting and one place where they want to linger.
2.Study a spread, 7 minutes: Revisit one actual spread. Record what its words contribute, what its pictures contribute, and where readers naturally pause; use only features visible in your edition.
3.Plan a dream sequence, 5 minutes: Each child chooses an imagined possibility, optionally inspired by a verified detail from the book, and plans three moments: imagine it, explore it, and try one small step.
4.Make a mini-book, 12 minutes: Fold two sheets into an eight-page booklet, using a cover and three working spreads. Children draw, dictate, label, or write; encourage one short line, one more detailed moment, and one intentional pause.
5.Partner-read and revise, 8 minutes: Partners read or describe their books aloud and identify where they sped up or slowed down. Authors revise one word, mark, picture placement, or page break.
6.Share and reflect, 5 minutes: Invite volunteers to share a page and explain one pacing choice. Close by naming ways the class can support different dreams without comparing their importance.

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS RL.K.7 and RL.1.7—Discuss how illustrations relate to or contribute to a story’s meaning; select the standard appropriate to the class.
ELA: CCSS RL.2.7—Use information from illustrations and words to demonstrate understanding of a text.
ELA: CCSS W.K.3–W.5.3—Develop illustrated, dictated, or written narrative sequences with increasing detail and organization appropriate to grade level.
ELA: CCSS SL.K.1–SL.5.1—Participate in collaborative conversations, listen to others, and build on shared observations.
SEL and Visual Arts: Explore personal interests, respect different aspirations, and make intentional choices about images and page composition.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

Dream On offers an opportunity to investigate how a picture book makes room for imagining. In a Pace-Write-Read study, children first experience the book as listeners, then examine how words, pictures, and page turns shape that experience. The guiding question is not simply “Was this fast or slow?” but “What did this moment invite us to feel, notice, or imagine?” Because a verified text or preview was not provided, the workshop below uses observation prompts rather than claiming particular scenes, quotations, recurring phrases, or design features. With a classroom copy open, select two contrasting spreads: one that invites a relatively quick reading and another that rewards lingering. If that contrast is subtle, read the same spread in two ways and discuss which interpretation its language and artwork better support. Attend to the actual length of phrases, punctuation, arrangement of text, and amount of visual information. Treat the title, Dream On, as a doorway into discussion: how might those two words sound as encouragement, an invitation, or a continuing possibility? Children then borrow a craft move rather than copy the author’s language. Younger students can draw and dictate a brief sequence; older students can revise sentence lengths, line breaks, and page turns while keeping the underlying idea the same. Throughout the workshop, distinguish what is demonstrably present in Hale’s text or Cespedes’s illustrations from an experiment students are adding to their own work.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Read one spread of Dream On twice, varying the speed, and ask which reading better suits its words and illustrations. Identify the textual or visual evidence behind that choice.
2. Plot	Map the book’s actual progression after reading: does it develop through events, related possibilities, or another pattern? Do not force a problem-and-solution plot onto a text organized differently.
3. Prosody	Try saying the title, Dream On, with different stresses and intonations. Carry that attention into an actual line from the book, noticing how expression changes its emotional effect.
4. Word	Choose one word from Hale’s text that makes a possibility feel vivid. Test a student-proposed substitute and discuss what changes in meaning, sound, or reading speed.
5. Concept	Ask what the book suggests about dreaming, supporting answers with words or pictures. Separate its central idea from any individual example used to develop it.
6. Voice & Worldview	Investigate how the text makes imagining feel: welcoming, playful, bold, reflective, or something else. Ask which language choices support that impression and whose possibilities receive attention.
7. Point of View	Locate the pronouns actually used in Dream On and identify who speaks and who is addressed. Rewrite a short idea using a different pronoun to hear how the relationship with the reader changes.
8. Setting & Place	Study where Cespedes places the people or figures in a selected illustration. Discuss how the surroundings make a possibility feel familiar, surprising, attainable, or imaginative.
9. Original Characters	Choose a person or figure visible in the book and distinguish observable traits from guesses. Have students give their own dream-book character a distinctive action or interest rather than inventing a biography for the published figure.
10. Dialogue	Check whether Dream On includes spoken exchanges or uses another kind of address. If dialogue is absent, add an optional speech bubble to a student sketch and discuss how it changes the pace.
11. Details	Ask children to find a small illustration detail that deepens a dream or possibility presented on a spread. Discuss how noticing that detail extends the time readers spend there.
12. Descriptions	Compare what Hale names with what Cespedes shows on the same spread. Invite students to describe one pictured detail, then decide whether their own mini-book needs that information in words.
13. Firsts	Examine the first words and first illustration for the expectations they establish. Students can test two openings for their dream books and explain which more effectively invites a reader in.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Identify the first moment when students feel drawn into Dream On. Determine whether that engagement comes from language, an image, a connection to their lives, or the interaction of these.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Notice whether a selected spread presents a specific moment or a broader idea. In student writing, expand one imagined moment with an action and a sensory detail to compare its pace with a brief summary.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Look for uncertainty, an unexpected image, or an intriguing possibility rather than assuming the book contains danger or conflict. Ask what makes readers curious enough to continue.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Check whether the book actually shifts time or leaves a moment unresolved. Distinguish imagining a possible future from narrating an established future event; introduce other devices through student experiments if they are absent.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Pause before a selected page turn and ask what readers anticipate seeing next. Study how this picture book uses spread boundaries rather than assuming it has chapters.
19. Pace & Creativity	Use an idea prompted by a verified Dream On spread to create both a one-line version and a fuller version. Compare how brevity and elaboration give the reader different kinds of imaginative space.
20. Play	Invite children to mime or sketch an imagined possibility connected to the reading. Let playful exploration come before writing so students can discover actions worth including.
21. Performance	Perform a short passage with gestures and changes in volume, while respecting its punctuation and meaning. Discuss which choices help listeners imagine and which distract from the book.
22. Personality	Look closely at expression, posture, and action in one of Cespedes’s illustrations. Ask how those visible choices communicate individuality without requiring a long written description.
23. Humor	Invite children to identify any genuinely amusing moment in the words or pictures, without presuming humor is present. If none emerges, discuss how an invented playful detail would alter the book’s mood.
24. Pause	Choose a place in Dream On where students want time to think or inspect the artwork. Practice a silent pause and explain what the pause allows readers to do.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Listen for sound patterns, figurative language, or concentrated imagery in the actual text. Name only devices you can demonstrate; an encouraging or lyrical effect does not automatically mean the book rhymes.
26. Repetition	Check for repeated words, sentence patterns, or visual ideas across the book. If a pattern appears, discuss whether it creates reassurance, momentum, emphasis, or another effect.
27. Rhythm	Tap gently while reading a selected passage, then speak it naturally without tapping. Notice how its stresses and phrase lengths shape movement without forcing a regular beat.
28. Punctuation	Inspect punctuation on a selected spread and model how it guides the voice. Students can change one mark in their own writing and hear whether their intended feeling becomes clearer.
29. Questions	Check whether Hale asks questions explicitly or whether the illustrations prompt questions in the reader. Use one student-generated question about a possibility as a starting point for writing.
30. Compare-Contrast	Compare two actual spreads for language length, visual activity, and emotional tone. Ask how each presents possibility differently and whether those differences change reading pace.
31. Objects	Select an object actually pictured in Dream On and discuss what it helps readers understand. Students then choose one meaningful object to make their own imagined scene concrete.
32. Threes	Look for an authentic group of three words, actions, or visual elements, but do not impose one if none appears. As a separate writing experiment, build a three-part sequence and test its rhythm.
33. Lists	Determine whether the text or illustrations gather multiple possibilities in a list-like way. Students can turn their own list of imagined activities into a sequence and compare the two reading experiences.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Examine the space around words and figures on a selected spread, whether blank or colored. Discuss how open areas and crowded areas direct attention and affect time spent looking.
35. Art & Graphics	Study Cespedes’s use of color, scale, line, and composition in a spread from your copy. Explain how one visible choice supports or adds to Hale’s words.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Use a teacher-created noticing game: find a detail, explain its contribution, and invite a partner to add evidence. Present this as a classroom extension, not as a claim that Dream On includes built-in interactive features.
37. Placement	Notice where text sits in relation to the illustration and where your eyes travel first. In student layouts, move the same sentence to a different location and compare the resulting emphasis.
38. Form	Discuss what Dream On gains from being a picture book: readers encounter words and images together across a sequence of spreads. Compare that experience with hearing its words without seeing the pictures.
39. Dummy	Make a folded-paper dummy—a rough model of a picture book—with one imagined moment per spread. Use the published book’s page turns as a study model, without implying access to its creators’ drafts.
40. Passion	Invite students to identify an idea in Dream On that connects with something they care about. Encourage a vivid, personally meaningful choice while allowing invented dreams and private responses.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute task: “Dream, Pause, Turn.” Minutes 0–4: Revisit one spread from Dream On that presents a possibility children find compelling; name exactly what its words contribute and what Cespedes’s illustration adds. Minutes 4–6: Each child selects an imagined possibility connected to that spread or a personally meaningful alternative. Minutes 6–12: Fold a sheet into a four-page booklet: a cover and three interior pages showing an invitation to imagine, a specific action within that possibility, and a small step toward exploring it. These are student-created stages, not a claimed sequence from the published book. Children draw, dictate, or write, placing one short line before a page turn and a fuller detail after it. Minutes 12–16: Partners read the booklets aloud, pausing at each turn, and name where they wanted to hurry or linger. Minutes 16–19: Authors revise one pacing feature—word count, punctuation, line break, or picture placement. Minute 19–20: Share one revision and explain its effect. For K–1, accept pictures, gestures, and dictated captions; for grades 2–3, encourage connected sentences; for grades 4–5, ask for an intentional contrast between compressed and expanded moments.