I am actually not sure how many folks follow this blog.  If you do you know I try to faithfully post each Monday and Wednesday.  But I’m going to take a short break since I am packing and moving out of a house where we have lived for 18 years.  My new mantra – storage space in a home is NOT a good thing.  We just fill it up.  Buy a home with no storage and purge, purge, purge….

Back soon…thanks for visiting!

-Marcia

This title is another that I distinctly remember Captain Kangaroo reading aloud on TV.  Published in 1958 (a year older than myself!), this was one of my childhood favorites.  With pictures by Maurice Sendak and words by Sesyle Joslin, this picture book still holds great appeal to kids. 

The joy in reading this book aloud is to allow the students to predict what polite response is required to the quirky situations:

You are picking dandelions and columbines
outside the castle. Suddenly a fierce dragon
appears and blows red smoke at you, but just
then a brave knight gallops up and cuts off
the dragon’s head.

What do you say, dear?

Of course… you say “Thank you very much!”  If the students responded with just “thank you” I encouraged them to think… The brave knight just saved your life!  Is a simple thank you, enough? 

It is important to find ways to validate each student’s response.  Students need to feel safe offering their guess of “What do you say, dear?”  If you simply tell them they are wrong or, worse, laugh at a response it becomes a negative experience.  I treat the answers more like brainstorming… saying something positive about their response, but guiding them all toward a better/best/correct response.  It is often necessary to remind them that we are searching for the polite response.  For many I told them their response would be a very direct approach, but we wanted a polite phrase.  How could they rephrase that very politely?

I shared this book just before Easter break.  Our school serves a fairly homogeneous cornfield community, so it was comfortable to encourage the kids to think about polite behavior at the upcoming Easter dinners most of them would attend with extended family.  Instead of “I want more potatoes” or even, “I want more potatoes, please” this book allowed me to encourage them to say “would you please pass the potatoes”.  And to ask “may I please be excused” when finished. 

This is the beauty of books and read-aloud.  A chance to talk about something with kids in a way that is both meaningful and fun.

A word of caution – a couple of the situations in the book no longer seem politically correct.  (The bad guy has a gun to your head and wants to shoot you.  What do you say, dear?  You say, “No, thank you.” of course.)  But while not politically correct in our overanxious era, the kids don’t mind.  They find the whole thing hilarious.  Adults over-think – kids enjoy.  I heartily recommend this classic book.

So… what do you say, dear?

Our school hosts a day where the third graders can invite their grandparents to school.  There are plays on the stage in the library, activities in the classroom, refreshments in the cafeteria, and I annually read a story aloud to each third grade room. 

I have done this for 22 years; realizing that in recent years the grandparents are often my contemporaries!  And, of course, working in a small community I see parents back as grandparents.  One set of former grandparents were there this year as Great-Grandparents!  And for 22 years, since the stage is part of the LMC, I have listened to countless practices for “The tale of the Unhoppy Bunny”.  My aide and I can quote lines and probably could could serve as understudy for most any part!

The opportunity to read to the grandparents is enjoyable.  It brought me a surprise this year, however.  As I sat in the hospital waiting room during my mother-in-law’s surgery, a gentleman sitting across from us didn’t say hello, but rather, “why are you playing hooky from school?”  I was startled.  I didn’t recognize him at all.  “Do I know you?” I asked.  “Well, you’ve read to me three times during grandparent’s day,” he grinned and proceeded to tell me who his grandkids were.

This year I read aloud Jon Agee’s The Retired Kid.  Before I started I asked the third graders in each room what it meant to be retired.  Their sincere answers provided greater entertainment than the book itself!  The Retired Kidwas a nice short read-aloud, giving me time to share with the grandparents about my job as School Library Media Specialist, and to encourage them in their job as storytellers for their grandchildren.  This year I encouraged them to not just “do” things with their grandkids, but to share their own personal narrative stories.  Those personal stories provide a foundation for children that is invaluable.

By the way… did you know that being retired means “you are too old to do it anymore so they fire you”!?!  I hope I never retire!

Pairing Fiction and NonFiction

Buffalo Music by Tracey E. Fern

Thunder on the Plains:  The Story of the American Buffalo by Ken Robbins

Saving the Buffalo by Albert Marrin

With both Earth Day and Arbor Day, April is the month to think about nature!  Buffalo Music is an unusual, but perfect read for a conservation theme.  A fictionalized story of early and successful efforts to preserve the American Bison from extinction, this appealing picture book is somewhat poetic as it attempts to view the influence of the wild animals as music to accompany life.  The text is full of period phrasing, such as “fixin’ to turn a profit on hides and hooves” and “they took to it like flies to a keg of molasses.”  Like That Book Woman I explained a lot to the students, particularly K-1) as we read the book together.

It worked best to show illustrations from Thunder on the Plains and discuss the buffalo with the students before reading Buffalo Music.   In each class I showed a map of the U.S. and gave them a visual on where the Great Plains, home of the buffalo, are located.  I also located the pan handle of Texas for them as the setting for the story.  Using the non-fiction Thunder on the Plains to set the stage for the near extinction of the buffalo helped the students better absorb this weighty fiction title. 

I also showed the students the more text intensive Saving the Buffalo.  Better third grade readers interested in the topic could probably tackle it successfully.

Buffalo Music is a valuable title if you wish to inspire your students that individuals really can make a difference in their worlds! 

Both this and Avi’s “Iron Thunder” are touted as “An I witness title”.  I visited the Hyperion Books for Children website hoping to learn if this series included more authors than Avi, but no information was available.  A call to an editor there has thus far not been returned.  “Hard Gold” does include a letter to readers from Avi which describes the series as “exciting stories about fictional young people during real events in history.  I Witness stories will make you feel as if you are right in the middle of the action.  The illustrations will show what things really looked like.”   A fair assessment!

 “Hard Gold” does include quite a mix of illustrations, many culled from historical publications.  As a long time student of history, they weren’t particularly useful to me since I was already familiar with the subject at hand, but I’m sure they will add a lot to the narrative for young readers.  This is a visual generation after all!  Additionally, the novel is an excellent example of historical fiction as it includes a glossary, bibliography, author’s note, and credits for the illustrations. 

This novel was much faster paced than “Iron Thunder” with plot details that will hold appeal to the young reader.  Written in diary format, the short entries will be beneficial to challenged readers.  Most of the vocabulary is accessible to a challenged reader, with the exception of Mr. Bunderly’s pontifications:  “Therefore, I shall put forward sufficient enterprise by which to mend my broken fortunes.  I do believe, young man, that without endeavor there can be no progress – material or spiritual.”  Avi gives nod to it in the text “Mr. Bunderly really did talk like that – planting words all around his thoughts, rather than weeding them.” 

There is enough of Avi’s excellent writing, however, to keep the interest of more advanced readers including Avi’s wonderful incorporation of period dialogue:  “…I’ve seen you about town with a man who bore a remarkable resemblance to being your father.  I suspect you are no more an orphan than I.  Indeed, I believe you are running away and therefore a brazen liar.’

Young readers will identify with the loyal and good hearted, independent and determined Early.  And they will appreciate the colorful Lizzy and the growing relationship between the two.  The quest to find Uncle Jesse in the gold fields of the future state of Colorado will keep the reader’s interest as the journey rewards them with nuggets of historical information worth their weight in gold.

http://www.avi-writer.com/

Sequel to “The Declaration”

I was told that “The Resistance” stands alone well as a novel.  After reading it, however, I disagree.  A great deal of background information is hinted at, but missing.  I would recommend that students read the two novels in order. 

Once again I am struck by the fact that my cornfield readers are less sophisticated than their Naperville cousins.  The friend that recommended this title to me thought it was appropriate and of interest to junior high readers, however I thought it more of a high school book.  A complicated book most appropriate for older readers, the book has action, but it isn’t fast paced; the subject matter is a fairly complicated view of science and ethics involving stem cell research; the relationship between main characters Anna and Peter is solidly adult; and the book’s British-ness is often evident.  Booklist reviewed it 9-12 and I completely agree.  I’m sending this novel to our high school!

Just like Cal did not understand his sister Lark’s fascination with books, my father did not understand how I could spend a whole day with my “nose in a book.”  A farmer, he would come in for lunch during the summer and demand that I get outside and do something.  I usually complied by taking my book outside and reading on the porch swing or on the hill in the yard under the walnut tree.  (Not exactly what he had in mind!)

I shared this story with my students after we read Henson’s That Book Woman together.  As I explained to them, my father certainly could read.  He was a college graduate.  But he didn’t LIKE to read, certainly not for entertainment.  And my (and my mother’s) love of books and reading was pure puzzlement.

My mom and I were both fans of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books.  Beginning in fourth grade, I read the entire series 12 times during my school years.  A 1975 trip to South Dakota included, of course, a stop in DeSmet.  My father and brother were not as excited about the visit as mom and I, but we stopped!  In the year’s since my mother and I have visited almost all of the Little House sites together and separately.  It was during a trip to Wisconsin (and a visit to Little House in the Big Woods) that my father insisted on knowing what was the fascination with these books.  “Why don’t you read one,” my mother said.  A wise woman, my mother… she gave him “Farmer Boy” first.

Grandpa got his first tractor when Dad was nine, but Dad remembers farming with mules and horses.  Naturally he loved “Farmer Boy”.  It was a time consuming read for him, but when he finished he said, “Give me the next one.”  He eventually read all nine in the series and then told my mother to “find me something else to read.”

Now you must realize that Sunday afternoons at our house did not include sports on TV.  Oh, no!  My father watched Western movies on Sunday afternoons.  A wise woman, my mother… she filled my father’s request for something-else-to-read with Zane Grey… which of course, was followed by Louis Lamour.  At the age of 54 my father had become a reader!  He was always literate – but he wasn’t a reader until then.

Dad’s reading for pleasure fizzled for a while, but when I sent him Richard Peck’s Long Way from Chicago his reading was renewed.  Peck’s recent books have been marketed to his usual Young Adult audience, but they aren’t really appreciated by that audience.  Adults – especially his contemporaries – absolutely love all of Peck’s books since Grandma Dowdel first picked up her shotgun.  When Dad finished reading Fair Weather he called me to talk about the book.  “Best Peck book ever,” Dad declared.  Growing up I never expected to have a conversation with my Dad about literature, but here it was!

Dad was 73 on March 18th.  These pages honored him that day as I reviewed Schmidt’s First Boy. My parents are retired now and spend several months each year serving with RVICS.  As they travel they purchase books about places they visit and they both read in the evenings now.  My Dad was once a literate non-reader.  Now he reads.

I know parents are often proud of their kids.  Well, I am proud of my parents – the way they serve others rather than themselves with their retirement, the sensible way they are handling aging, and the way they have always lovingly supported my brother and I and our families.  But I can’t tell you how proud I was to share with my students that my Dad, although a late bloomer, finally became a book lover.  I didn’t share all of the details above with my students, but I turned it into a story for them.  If Cal in That Book Woman didn’t inspire them, I hope the personal narrative about my father did!

Read aloud / storytime has many purposes beyond entertainment and reading development in my professional opinion.  Among those is to sometimes inspire and stretch the minds of the students.  I chose a book this week that was a bit difficult and required some interpretation on every page, but I wanted the children to appreciate the many facets of this unique picture book.

That Book Woman by Heather Henson honors the Pack-Horse Librarians of Eastern Kentucky in the 1930s.  (If you have never read about this New Deal Era project, please read the links provided at the end!)  While this book doesn’t always flow easily as a read aloud, it is still lyrical and full of the flavor of 1930s Appalachia.  Words like a-twixt, critters, a-wander, britches, greenbacks, and poke of berries.  With K-2 I stopped after every page and we explored the words or concepts I thought they would not know.  With third grade I waited until the end and then went back to discuss pages.

This book is a stretch because of the unfamiliar vocabulary, but as we explore unknown words together I am modeling reading skills.  But this book is worth reading for more than that.  Hopefully it will inspire non readers to embrace reading as Cal, the main character, does by the end of the book.  Cal has no intentions of sitting “stoney-still” with his “nose a-twixt the pages of a book” like his younger sister Lark.  But the tenacity and dedication of the pack horse librarian eventually wins his admiration and peaks his interest.  “…all at once I yearn to know what makes that Book Woman risk catching cold or worse.”

“Teach me what it says” Cal asks his sister Lark.  This is my favorite page out of all David Small’s lovely illustrations.  The pure, steady look on Lark’s face as her older brother holds out a picture book so she can teach him to read is breathtaking.  “…she does not laugh or even tease, but makes a place and quiet-like we start to read.”  Cal learns to read that winter.

When spring comes Cal’s gift to the Book Woman is to “read me something.”  My teachers get teary eyed at this part, for after all, student success is why we do what we do.  It is the greatest gift our students can give us.

How do we make our students into lifetime readers?  I readThat Book Womanhoping to inspire my non-readers.  Cal calls them “dumb old books” at first, but by the last lovely wordless page he is sitting on the porch of that mountain cabin beside his sister, each with their noses a-twixt the pages of books.

Wednesday I’ll share the personal narrative I related to each class after we finished this lovely book.

For information on the Pack Horse Librarians of Eastern Kentucky:

http://www.kdla.ky.gov/resources/KYPackhorseLib.htm

http://newdeal.feri.org/library/j_1k_bg.htm

http://www.kykinfolk.com/knott/bookwomen_easternkentucky.htm

“In a small town on the coast of California, everyone over the age of fourteen suddenly disappears, setting up a battle between the remaining town residents and the students from a local private school, as well as those who have “The Power” and are able to perform supernatural feats and those who do not.”

The above CIP summary statement for this novel truly covers this narrative’s straightforward plot.  But it doesn’t hint at the many subplots that weave through the lives of the main characters.  This book reminds me of “Twilight” and I think it will appeal to the same readers.  (Note: This is appropriate for more younger readers than is Myer’s novel.)  The elements of supernatural and a budding love story are both reminiscent of “Twilight” in my estimation, but it is the pace of the plot which truly makes me think it will appeal to the same readers.  And, like “Twilight”, it isn’t great literature – but it is compelling.  You just can’t put this one down.  Introduce it to one student and I guarantee it will be GONE from your shelves week after week…  No fooling!