Babe The Gallant Pig

King-Smith, D. (1985). Babe the gallant pig. New York: Crown 

Babe is a wonderful animal fantasy book with an AR reading level of 6.6. Babe is a book that most any child would like to read because it deals with talking animals, problems, solutions and happy endings. Reading Babe in the classroom can bring on great discussion from the students since Babe is written with vocabulary students may have never heard before. For example "Listen, there 'tis agian, did you hear it, what a racket, what a row, anybody'd think someone was being murdered, oh dearie me, whenever is it, just listen to it, will you?" from page 9. Simply reading this sentence could spark a discussion in the class as to why people talk this way, how it is different than the way we talk, why do we think people talk this way? 
Babe has very well developed characters and students can see the animals in their minds while reading. This aspect of Babe is one of my favorites because it ropes the students in to the book. While reading the students can picture in their minds Babe running the sheep for Mr. Hoggett, they can picture Babe sitting beside Mr. Hoggetts chair while they watch the evening news and Mrs. Hoggett is preparing dinner.
After reading this book the students will see that Babe was a hard worker, well mannered pig and it got him far. By being well mannered and hard working students it will get them far. The students will also see that even though Babe was a pig he still believed that he could do anything. This could help students realize that anything in life is possible.
To continue to fantasy chapter book the class could read Charlottes Web. Although it is a lower level book students could still relate it to Babe and make connections on how a fantasy book it written. After reading these they could embark on coming up with their own fantasy book ideas. Coming up with characters, plots, etc. Of course most students will write about animal fantasy because that is what was just discussed but animal fantasy seems to be the easiest to develop because I think most people have thought about animals talking.
I used the post-it note strategy while I was reading I put a post it on the words that could become topic vocabulary or word wall words (at my school) I also found words the students may not know or may have forgotten the words since they don't use them on a regular basis. I also marked the different things that could become classroom discussion like you did. This book give so many good examples of things to talk about in a class discussion.
This book is a wonderful example of a book that students would want to read that has language that can turn into a wonderful class discussion.

Questions to think about:

How would you feel if you had a talking pig?

What would you do if you were in a situation where you knew you could do it but no one else thought you could?

How could you overcome being different than others? Could you explain to people why you were different?