At my main school building we have a large bulletin board just inside the main entrance.  Each year I put up a back-to-school bulletin board containing identified photos of all faculty and staff.  This functions as a service to students and parents (and new staff) but it also serves to build community among the faculty because we have fun with it.

In the past, during the first teacher attendance day, the teachers at HGS have agreed to dress as Greek Gods & Goddesses (the year of Disney’s “Hercules”), posed with cardboard cutouts the local theatre donated from “George of the Jungle”, or as pirates (the year of “Pirates of the Caribbean”).  I gather the props (with their help) - faculty and staff just have to submit to looking somewhat foolish as they have their photo taken.  I always come up with a slogan to suit the theme.

Last year I used a Hollywood theme.  An e-mail soliciting props from faculty and staff yielded film reels, fur coat, sunglasses, director’s chair and more.  I just put out the props, they choose, and pose.  The digital camera does the rest.

This is a time consuming project for me.  And it consumes time right at the beginning of the year when I have libraries in three buildings to get open for the school year.  But it is worth it.  Faculty & staff, parents and students look forward to it each year.  Actually, when I saw our principal in late July her first words to me were, “What’s the theme this year?”

“Get a Gold Medal Education at HGS” is the theme I selected.  With the Bejing Olympics in full swing it is timely!  A flag, track medals from one faculty member’s talented daughter and we’re off!

Again – this takes time…and I’ll take the time.  I’ll take the time because library service takes many forms, and I see the back-to-school bulletin board as an important service toward building our school community.  And since I coordinate the School Library Media CENTER, I like being CENTRAL to something positive kicking off our school year.

Take the time.  “Put together” a back to school bulletin board for your building!  If the school year has already started – do it for Open House or Parent Teacher Conferences.

I read the Twilight saga by Stephanie Meyer straight through in the last week;  the perfect way to end the summer!  The books get longer and longer:  Twilight – 498 pages, New Moon – 563 pages, Eclipse – 629 pages, and Breaking Dawn (just released) – 756 pages.  But readers won’t be counting!  (They also won’t be getting their house cleaned before school starts!)

I had heard the hype about the books but remained a skeptic.  Female high school student transfers to a small town and falls in love with a vampire?  That isn’t a genre that would normally interest me.  I’m not a fan of horror, but The Twilight Saga is not really horror…and it isn’t exactly romance.  But whatever it is – it is terrific!  Young adult males are recommending the series to their friends, too, so it isn’t just chick-lit!  Part of the appeal is that it is an unprecedented genre – sort of Dark Shadows meets Mary Stewart (queen of romantic suspense).  Indeed Edward Cullen is the most appealing vampire since Barnabas Collins and he and Bella Swan provide plenty of G-rated steam throughout the series.  (Meyer successfully takes a cue from the old movies – what you don’t see/read can be sexier than what you do!) 

The first and the fourth in the saga are more action packed and suspenseful making them the best reads.  The fourth book is the creepiest and will probably be more satisfying to fans of horror than the first books.  Books two and three had me tired of Bella’s alternating self-serving, self-depreciating, selfless and then selfish behaviors.  (Of course, this also made her a realistic American teenage girl!)  But I was beginning to question exactly why both Jacob and Edward were in love with her?  I wanted them to dump her for someone with a spine!

When the relationship boils over in the fourth book it remains creatively G-rated, but the intense relationship between Bella and Edward makes this series of novels a bit mature for middle school readers.  Edward’s fantastic self-control and “old-fashioned values” allow the couple to spend most nights in bed together without having sex in the first three novels, however I don’t recommend teens attempt this at home!  After all, there is only one Edward… and he is fictional!  Definitely fictional!

The Twilight Saga are terrific YA fiction but for my community they are more appropriate for high school so I am choosing not to include them at my 6-8 school.  Public libraries might as well buy a set of the books for their adult section because their adult readership probably matches that of Harry Potter.  I know I’m recommending them to my friends in spite of the fact that Bella is a predictable YA damsel-in-distress who is inexplicably attracted to the guy that is (more than slightly) dark and dangerous.  Add fast cars, fantastic battles, and the afore-mentioned G-rated steam and, well… you might as well read them….  But clean your house and get the laundry done first!

Like Linda Sue Park’s book Keeping Score, Jennifer Holm’s Penny from Heaven is set in 1950s Brooklyn, New York.  Also like Park, Holm is writing what she knows, for the narrative is based on her mother’s large Italian-American family.  Both Park’s Maggie and Holm’s Penny are Brooklyn Dodgers fans, but Holm’s narrative is historical fiction and the Dodgers are only part of the well detailed 1950s setting. 

Penny’s father is deceased, but she has daily contact with his loud, loving, and unusual Italian-American family.  It is the summer of 1953 and Penny bumps through it:  adventures with her trouble-making cousin Frankie, heart to heart talks with her eccentric Uncle Dominic (who lives in his car!), a hospital stay after she is injured, and an adjustment when her widowed mother begins dating the milkman.  Along the way Penny is trying to gain answers to how her father died.  No one will tell her.  Perhaps someone should have told Penny the old maxim “be careful what you wish for or you just might get it”. 

This books is rich.  There is much more plot and action than in Park’s Keeping Score.  I prefer this book to Park’s Keeping Score, but I like history better than sports.  Read both and see what YOU think…

A Newbery Honor book from 2007, Penny from Heaven is on the current 2009 Rebecca Caudill list for Illinois. 

I was surprised as I began reading Keeping Score to find Linda Sue Park writing a book with a non-Korean main character.  Maggie (or Maggie-O as her father and his friends at the fire station call her) is from Brooklyn with an Irish mother and an Italian father.  The setting is the early 1950s (1951-1955) and, of course, Maggie is a Brooklyn Dodgers fan.  When Jim, a young new fireman down at the station, teaches Maggie how to keep score while listening to the games on the radio, her days as a baseball fan hit a new height.  Maggie likes Jim… in spite of the fact that he is a Giants fan.

Keeping Score is really about being a fan of baseball.  Parks explains this world in a way that even I, the I-could-really-care-less-about-any-sport-kinda-girl, can gain some insights into the mind and heart of a baseball fan.  Park draws on her own painful years as a Chicago Cubs fan to add the realistic angst of the “maybe next year” attitude necessary to be a fan of the early 1950s Brooklyn Dodgers. 

Maggie desperately wishes to go to a live game, but her fireman father’s phobia of crowded places prohibits it, so Maggie must content herself with listening to the games on the radio at home or at the fire station with the guys.  She annually fills a notebook scoring each season.  I am not a sports fan in any sense, but I enjoy going to occasional baseball games; but I go to watch people, eat ballpark food, and enjoy the atmosphere.  My husband is a true fan.  A die-hard Cubs fan.  Like Maggie he religiously keeps a scorecard when we attend games.  (He still has his first Cubs scorecard from when he was 8 or 9 years old!)  Who knew a YA novel could help me better understand my husband of 25 years? 

So baseball forms the main theme of the narrative, but when Jim is drafted and sent to Korea Maggie seeks to understand that conflict with the same detailed intensity with which she scores baseball games.  Maggie keeps a notebook on the origins of the war, the progress, and the lack of progress as the conflict in Korea unfolds through Jim’s letters and the newspaper accounts.  Her notebook on Korea is like keeping score… only it is no game… and there are no winners.

The quintessential advice given to writers is “write what you know”.  Linda Sue Park knows baseball and Korea.  In combining the two she has created a very credible sports book with depth and meaning.  And if I liked it…  sports fans are gonna love it!

Opposites attract as the shy and proper Natalie finds summer surprises in her new neighbor Annie.  Annie (age 9) runs around shirtless or clad in an old choir robe and tells lies as easily as she breathes.  This summer will be anything but boring as they give themselves the code names Elvis and Olive for the spy club they have formed.  But spying on the neighborhood may have unexpected complications.

Putting the name Elvis in the title I consider a cheap hook, so if you are expecting this book to have anything to do with “the king”, Elvis Presley, be aware it does not.  But it does have to do with  summer fun and games, first crushes, and learning about friendship.  A great book for fourth and fifth grade readers!  Stephanie Watson has written a promising first novel.

This book made me remember a Boxcar Kids club we formed one summer.  My friends actually had an old boxcar as a playhouse in their yard.  More than a little influenced by “The Boxcar Children” books, we made membership cards and created imaginary adventures.  (Packrat that I am, I still have my membership card in the attic.)  I wonder where fellow members Theresa and Sharon are now?

Arrow over the Door and Children of the Longhouse are well researched, sensitive, and balanced looks at Native Americans through historical fiction.  While not among Bruchac’s scary stories which I love to promote to kids, they are worth recommending to children based on their own strength – Bruchac’s credibility and his easy-to-read, flowing narratives.

Arrow Over the Door, based on a real incident during the revolutionary war, explores the mutual fears and ignorance of a group of Quaker Friends and a war-bound band of Abenaki men.  Told through the eyes of two young men – one Quaker, one Abenaki – this hopeful tale illustrates that peace is possible.

Children of the Longhouse explores the daily life of the Iroquois people through the eyes of a Mohawk brother and sister – Ohkwa’ri and Otsi:stia.  Students will identify with the moral dilemas Ohkwa’ri faces as he deals with a bullying gang of boys within his tribe.  Bruchac deftly interweaves Mohawk culture (and stories!) throughout the narrative, including some wonderful scenes with the game of lacrosse.  I found this particularly interesting since my nephews play lacrosse competitively.  Students will be fascinated, too, so make sure you have a non-fiction title on lacrosse ready to hand to them next!

When Joseph Bruchac was asked, in a conference session (IRC, March 2007), whether he preferred the term Native American or Indian he indicated it didn’t matter to him.  Just call him “Joe”, he quipped.  But then he added that to be truly accurate he should be referred to as Abenaki.  Native American is an umbrella term that truly isn’t any more suitable than Indian, according to Bruchac.  Bruchac’s many novels reflect this as each one explores a varied people group, helping students understand the vast differences between tribes and regions. 

Nobody does Native American like Bruchac!  Make sure you’ve weeded out of date materials on Native Americans so there is room on your shelf for books by Joseph Bruchac! 

Wintering Well is well written… but I don’t think this title by Lea Wait is going to have a waiting list! 

Unfortunately I think it is the kind of book that has great appeal to adults-who-read-for-children, but the appeal for students will be limited to dedicated readers.  This is a title that will have to be promoted to find the larger audience it deserves! 

Wintering Well begins with a diary entry.  Cassie’s entry finishes with the words “Please, God, let Will live.  And please, God, forgive me.”  If you can get this title in a student’s hands, this great hook should motivate them to read it!  From this intriguing opening the narrative flows as it follows the struggles of a Maine farm family in 1820.  Son Will is crippled in an accident and daughter Cassie blames herself.  A coming of age novel for both of them, this excellent piece of historical fiction includes insights into Maine entering the Union as a free state along with the rather primitive “practice” of medicine in that time period.

This title reminds me of both Worth by A. LaFaye and The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker by Cynthia DeFelice – two other wonderfully crafted pieces of historical fiction that need to be promoted and recommended by teachers and librarians before they will find readership.