Elvis & Romeo

by David Soman

David Soman’s picture book centers on the title characters, Elvis and Romeo, inviting readers to follow their relationship through words and illustrations. Because the book’s text and illustrations were not supplied, this guide uses an evidence-based relationship-and-pacing lens rather than an unverified plot synopsis; confirm specific events and themes with the classroom copy.

Big Idea

Readers learn about characters by noticing what they say, do, and reveal in pictures. Writers and illustrators can control how quickly we experience those discoveries through words, visual details, pauses, and page turns.

Discussion Questions

1.What do you notice about Elvis and Romeo when you first meet them? Which words or picture details support your ideas?
2.Where do Elvis and Romeo seem alike, and where do they seem different? How do those similarities or differences affect their interactions?
3.Choose a moment when one character responds to the other. What might each character be thinking, and what evidence helps you decide?
4.Which page made you want to turn quickly, and which made you stop and look? What did David Soman do to create those different experiences?
5.What do you think the book suggests about relationships? Which moment involving Elvis and Romeo best supports your interpretation?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 40–45 minutes📦 A classroom copy of Elvis & Romeo, paper or six-panel templates, pencils, crayons or markers, chart paper, and optional sticky notes.

Learning Goals

Describe Elvis and Romeo using evidence from the text and illustrations.
Explain how an illustration contributes information about a character or event.
Represent a selected interaction in a clear beginning–middle–end sequence.
Use an added detail, short sentence, or pause to change a story’s pace.
Compare two versions of a scene and explain their different effects on a reader.

Activity Steps

1.Read the book aloud, allowing students to examine the illustrations. Establish what the book actually shows about Elvis, Romeo, and their relationship before discussing possible themes.
2.Revisit one brief interaction. Make a two-column chart labeled 'Words tell us' and 'Pictures show us,' recording students’ observations.
3.Model a fast three-panel retelling of that interaction: an initiating action, a response, and an outcome. Keep the captions brief and preserve the original event sequence.
4.Students create their own fast strip, then a slower strip of the same interaction. In the slower version, they expand a meaningful instant with a close-up, gesture, sensory detail, or clearly labeled imagined thought.
5.Partners read both strips aloud, using their voices to emphasize the pacing difference. Each listener identifies where the slower version invites closer attention.
6.Share several examples and complete an exit response: 'I changed the pace by ____. This helps my reader notice ____.'

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS RL.K.3 / RL.1.3 — Identify or describe characters, settings, and major events, using appropriate support and key details.
ELA: CCSS RL.K.7 / RL.1.7 — Connect illustrations with the story and use pictures and details to describe characters, setting, or events.
ELA: CCSS W.K.3 / W.1.3 — Use drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate an event or a short sequence of events.
ELA: CCSS SL.K.1 / SL.1.1 — Participate in collaborative conversations about a text and classmates’ work.
SEL: Social awareness and relationship skills — Consider characters’ perspectives and discuss how actions affect another person.

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

In a picture book, pacing comes from the partnership between language and illustration. A short passage may be read quickly, yet its picture may invite a long look. Studying Elvis & Romeo therefore means attending to two experiences: how quickly the words carry us forward and how long Soman’s pictures ask us to stay. During the first reading, let children experience the whole book; during a second reading, ask them to locate moments that feel quick, quiet, or worth revisiting. The title characters provide a concrete focus for this craft study. Follow an interaction between Elvis and Romeo and notice how the reader receives each character’s action and response. Does the text explain something that the picture also shows, or does the illustration supply additional information? Have students support their observations with the actual spread rather than assuming that a particular technique appears throughout the book. The workshop below is designed for approximately kindergarten–grade 2. Since the full book was not provided, its prompts distinguish techniques to look for from techniques students can try themselves; they do not assume the presence of rhyme, flashbacks, repeated phrases, or other unverified features. The central writing lesson is transferable: give important moments enough room for the reader to notice what matters.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Compare two spreads featuring Elvis and Romeo: where does the action move forward, and where do readers linger? Separate the speed of reading the words from the time spent examining the pictures.
2. Plot	Map the book’s actual opening situation, important developments, and ending. Ask which interaction between Elvis and Romeo changes what happens next.
3. Prosody	Read a passage involving the characters twice, changing emphasis and pauses without changing its words. Discuss which reading best fits the expressions, actions, and punctuation on that page.
4. Word	Select an action word used in connection with Elvis or Romeo and consider its effect. In a student-written caption, try a different verb and listen for changes in energy or speed.
5. Concept	After reading, ask students to state the book’s central idea in their own words. Test each suggestion against more than one moment involving the title characters.
6. Voice & Worldview	Notice the attitude conveyed by the narration and pictures toward Elvis and Romeo. Ask whether readers are invited to feel amused, sympathetic, curious, or something else, and require supporting evidence.
7. Point of View	Determine who tells the story and whose thoughts, if anyone’s, readers can access. Retell one interaction from Elvis’s imagined perspective and then Romeo’s, labeling both as student interpretations.
8. Setting & Place	Use Soman’s illustrations to identify where the characters are and what they can do there. Ask how moving the same interaction to another place might change its timing or meaning.
9. Original Characters	Build separate evidence charts for Elvis and Romeo using actions, appearance, and any speech. Discuss how these specific details distinguish the characters from generic story figures.
10. Dialogue	If the book includes dialogue, examine how an exchange affects pace and reveals character. If it does not, students can write a clearly labeled imagined exchange based on one illustrated interaction.
11. Details	Locate a small visual or verbal detail that changes your understanding of Elvis or Romeo. Explain why noticing it requires slowing down.
12. Descriptions	Compare what the text describes with what the illustrations communicate about the characters. Have students write one useful descriptive sentence that adds to, rather than merely repeats, their own drawing.
13. Firsts	Study the reader’s first encounter with each title character. What information arrives immediately, and what must readers discover later?
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Revisit the opening and identify what first draws attention to Elvis and Romeo. Ask students to explain whether an action, image, question, or another feature makes them want to continue.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Find a moment presented closely and check whether another passage covers more time with less detail. Use this comparison to distinguish a scene from a summary without assuming both forms occur.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Pause at a point when students are uncertain what Elvis or Romeo will do next. Identify the evidence that creates that uncertainty, then compare predictions with the following page.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Check whether the story moves directly forward or includes a shift in time; name only devices actually present. As an extension, students can invent a cliffhanger before a response in their own Elvis-and-Romeo-inspired scene.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Examine what readers know immediately before and after a page turn involving the characters. Focus on picture-book page breaks rather than assuming the book has chapters.
19. Pace & Creativity	Choose one actual interaction and imagine giving it either one panel or three panels. Discuss how expanding the moment creates opportunities to show a reaction or detail.
20. Play	Look for playfulness in the characters’ behavior or in Soman’s presentation, if present. Let students experiment with playful caption lengths while keeping their chosen interaction recognizable.
21. Performance	Invite two students to enact a selected Elvis-and-Romeo interaction while a third narrates. Try a quick performance and a slower one, keeping the actions the same.
22. Personality	Ask how the timing of a character’s action or response contributes to an impression of personality. Support descriptions of Elvis and Romeo with specific textual or visual evidence.
23. Humor	If students find a moment funny, ask what produces the humor and when they notice it. Check whether the effect depends on wording, a picture detail, contrasting reactions, or a page turn.
24. Pause	Choose an illustration of Elvis or Romeo that rewards a silent viewing pause. Discuss what students notice during that pause that they missed during the first reading.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Listen for sound patterns, figurative language, or especially vivid phrasing in the actual text. If none is evident, treat adding alliteration to a student caption as an extension, not a feature attributed to Soman.
26. Repetition	Check for recurring words, actions, or visual arrangements connected with the two characters. If a pattern appears, ask whether its next occurrence confirms an expectation or changes it.
27. Rhythm	Listen to the movement of sentences across a selected spread. Compare that verbal rhythm with the sequence of actions or reactions shown in the illustrations.
28. Punctuation	Inspect the punctuation in a passage about Elvis and Romeo and read it aloud accordingly. Students can revise punctuation in their own captions to test a change in pause or emphasis.
29. Questions	Identify a question the story raises in the reader’s mind, whether or not it is written in the text. Ask when the book answers it and how that waiting affects the reading experience.
30. Compare-Contrast	Compare how Elvis and Romeo act or react in a shared situation. Use differences supported by the book rather than assigning contrasting personalities in advance.
31. Objects	Look for an object that matters to an interaction between the characters, if one is present. Track whether attention to that object helps prepare, delay, or explain an action.
32. Threes	Check whether any action or visual sequence occurs three times; do not assume a rule-of-three pattern. Then organize a student retelling into action, response, and outcome to explore a three-part structure.
33. Lists	Notice whether the text groups several actions, qualities, or things together. If no list appears, compare a student-written list of character observations with a focused scene and discuss their different speeds.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Examine the space surrounding Elvis and Romeo in a selected illustration. Ask how the amount and arrangement of unoccupied space direct attention or influence the feeling of the moment.
35. Art & Graphics	Track how expressions, body positions, color, and composition contribute information about the characters. Identify something readers learn from Soman’s art that the words do not explicitly state.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Turn rereading into an evidence hunt: partners locate a character clue, a pacing clue, and a picture-only clue. This is a classroom game added to the reading, not a claim that the book contains interactive features.
37. Placement	Notice where the characters and text appear on a spread and describe the path your eyes take. Ask whether placement makes you see an action before a response or notice both together.
38. Form	Discuss how the picture-book form lets readers experience Elvis and Romeo through both language and images. Compare a spoken-only retelling with reading the illustrated book.
39. Dummy	Make a folded-paper mock-up that places an interaction across several pages. Try moving the response to the page after a turn and evaluate how that changes anticipation.
40. Passion	Ask students which moment involving Elvis and Romeo they most want another reader to notice. Use that choice to decide where their own retelling should slow down and give the moment more space.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute task: 'Before the Response.' Materials: the book, a sheet of paper folded into four panels, pencils, and crayons. Minutes 0–3: Revisit one actual interaction between Elvis and Romeo and identify an action and the other character’s response. Minutes 3–6: Students make a two-panel quick retelling on the first half of the sheet, using one panel for the action and one for the response. Minutes 6–13: On the second half, they retell the same moment more slowly: the first panel enlarges a meaningful detail just before the response, and the second shows the response. Add a brief caption to each panel; label any invented thought as imagined rather than quoted from the book. Minutes 13–17: Partners read both versions, pausing longer over the expanded detail, and explain what becomes more noticeable. Minutes 17–20: Students share the sentence, 'I slowed the moment before ___ so the reader could notice ___.' Keep the book open for checking that the retelling preserves the characters’ actual actions.

Classroom Activities

One Moment, Two Speeds

After reading Elvis & Romeo, children choose a brief interaction between the title characters and represent it in two three-panel story strips. One strip moves quickly; the other slows down to show a look, gesture, thought, or reaction. Students use drawings and short captions, then read both versions aloud to discover how pacing changes the reader’s experience. Suggested audience: kindergarten–grade 2, with dictation or drawing options for emerging writers.

One Moment, Two Speeds

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