It’s the most wonderful time of the year… not.  Well, there is a certain satisfaction is completing inventory.  But inventory at three schools annually wears me out.  I’m very thankful for library automation and a remote scanner (Dolphin) when inventory rolls around each May.  For those of you youngsters, the old way of doing inventory was to take the shelf list – one drawer at a time – and check it against the books on the shelves.  A shelf list, in case you don’t know, was a special card catalog with one card for each book in the library, filed in shelf order.  It always took two people to work on inventory, one to read the titles and one to check the shelves.  It was almost impossible to do alone.  Missing books were marked with a paperclip on the shelf list card.  A second paperclip meant missing two years in a row.  We pulled the cards the third year, including all cards in the card catalog.  Primitive, but effective.  I’m not sure everyone used the paperclip method, but that is what I was taught during my student teaching at Homewood Flossmoor High School in spring of 1981. 

Today, even with automation, we prefer two people working the shelves.  One person scanning and one person moving the books so they can be easily scanned.  Our barcodes are on the back of the covers in the upper right corner so they are easy to scan during inventory.

I only have experience with Follett Catalog Plus, so I’m not sure how universal this is, but we run the exception report after each download.  It checks the shelf order, and although we have already shelf-read the books it catches our mistakes.  And it also catches books that were shelved but still checked out to an individual.  This, too, requires two people.  I generally interpret the exception report, calling out possible corrections and my aide checks the shelf.  Sometimes we just scanned them out of order.  Little books hide and you get messed up!  And sometimes the report is just wrong especially if you do not have consistent authority records…as we don’t.  If an author is listed with the date and without, for example, the computer thinks it is two different authors and reacts.  So once again, the human brain is superior to the machine!  But boy, do we appreciate the machine during “that inventory time of year”.

Storytime with K-3 is over by Memorial Day… but if I were reading aloud to ANY grade level or even to adults I would choose “The Wall” by Eve Bunting.  “The Wall” is about a young boy and his father as they visit the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.  They are looking for the boy’s grandfather’s name; a soldier who did not live to see his own son grow up, much less his grandson. 

I do not know anyone who can read this book without shedding a tear, however, so if you can’t read it aloud, read it for yourself on Memorial Day.  Pass it around the teacher’s lounge.  Recommend it to older students, especially.  This book should be included in those lists of picture books for older students.

The names on the Vietnam War Memorial, as Bunting describes them, “march side by side, like rows of soldiers.” In 2001 our family visited D.C. and made the rounds of the memorials.  But it is the Vietnam memorial that I believe has the most impact.  Those names.  All those names.  And among them, my friend Margaret’s cousin William Patrick “Butch” Foran of Decatur, Illinois. 

Freedom isn’t free… and not only those who died pay the price… so do those left behind.

March seems like long ago… but I still wanted to share with you some of the interesting things said by the authors at this year’s Illinois Reading Conference.

“Wish upon a star…but do your homework, too.”  – a poster from his High School Trig class, shared by Kadir Nelson

“There is no such thing as writer’s block, just lack of information.” – Kadir Nelson quoting Nikki Giovanni

Sharon Draper on testing in education:  “If we want our elephant to grow, we feed it.  We don’t measure it.”

“We have created students with self-esteem, but without accomplishment.:” … don’t remember if Sharon Draper said that, or I thought it as I listened to her speak.

Patricia Polacco quoting her grandmother:

“There is no love in this conversation, so stop it.”

“Of course is true story… but it may not have happened.”

Some years I “tell” a few stories.  Somehow this school year flew by and I found myself at the final scheduled storytime for each class.  (I usually stop the weekly stories early in May because of spring bookfairs at two schools and end of the year mahem!)  So I used the last chance to tell rather than read them a story. 

“Mrs. Brandt, where is your book?” many classes asked me as I came into their room. 

“I didn’t bring a book,” was my answer, “but I brought a story.”

I told one of my very favorite stories, and old English folktale “The Three Sillies”.  Steven Kellogg did a picture book of the story, but I much prefer my own version.  The base for my version is rooted in a set of books my mother read aloud when I was young:  “The Family Treasury of Stories” is a three volume set edited by Pauline Rush Evans and published by Doubleday in 1956.  The binding was cheap but I loved those books.  I’m sure I read the stories and poems to myself, also, since I know them all so well.  Early in my library career my mother gave them to me.  (I unpacked them yesterday! – They were in with the Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books!)

But I have told “The Three Sillies” often throughout the years and it is now “my” story.  I have pattern and repetition based on the original, but phrasing and details are my own.  Since it is an old English folktale, I picture old England with cellars, cider, sweethearts, parlors, courting, thatched roofs, villages, and mill ponds.  I throw in minor explainations as I go along to bridge the culture gap, but I work them into the telling.  I also use motions a lot – turning on the tap, running the rope down the chimney, and raking out of the pond.  The universal favorite with the students, however, is the man who runs and tries to jump into his britches.  (Britches – not pants!  Explain the vocabulary if you must, but use the old words and phrases!)  The students truly giggle at the thought of how silly is a stranger who thinks he must jump into his britches.  For the motions there, I use two fingers on one hand as the legs to run and jump, but when the gentleman shows the stranger how he manages getting dressed each morning I actually pantomine putting one leg in at a time, standing up and fastening the britches.  And I end with an unusual phrase – “and if they didn’t live happily ever after, well, then that is another story.” 

I have found that students actually are more attentive to storytelling than to read alouds.  I’m sure there are studies and articles to back up that fact, but I know it to be true by experience.  One of my most enjoyable Master’s classes was Storytelling with Kate McDowell.  (I regret that I missed the opportunity to take the class with Betsy Hearne, but Kate was wonderful!)  Years ago I took a weeklong class in storytelling at Lindenwood in St. Charles, MO with Keith Polette, so I was not new to storytelling.  But I never miss an opportunity to polish the skill…and I don’t practice it nearly enough. So….

…my new school year’s resolution for the fall is less read-aloud, more storytelling!

We are in our new home and now I am the commuter to work instead of my husband and young adult daughter.  The church we attend is also in this community, so it makes sense economically when you consider the cost of gasoline.  But we left a small town Main Street home, built in 1900, which sheltered us for over 17 years.  We did the old girl a lot of favors – stripping six layers of wallpaper from each room, removing false ceilings, adding and updating electricity and plumbing, replacing windows, updating kitchens and baths, and adding a second bathroom and a third floor/attic family room.  We raised two daughters there, and the dear old house was the only home our youngest daughter remembered.  Since we were two blocks from school and our daughters were active members in the marching band our home was a revolving door for their friends.  I poured my heart and a lot of elbow grease into that American FourSquare home.

But change is sometimes good for us.  And we are pleased with the new home which someone else clearly loved, updated, and cared for before us.  59 years newer, out “new” house is the same age as my husband and I so I hesitate to call it an old house.  But my favorite family antiques have each found a spot.  Unfortunately there is still overflow in the garage, but school is almost out and I will get through it all soon.

So as I sit in my “new” little house and return to writing “Read to me…” I find I must first pass along a link a friend forwarded to me.  Roger Sutton, editor of Hornbook, mourns the passing of Eden Ross Lipson and links to an article, “Future Classics”she wrote in 2000 for Hornbook.  In it Lipson addresses the strengths of the books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I particularly value the fourth paragraph, as my friend knew I would, where Lipson so aptly describes the values integral to those narratives. 

I realize the “Little House” books have fallen out of favor in some circles.  Society changes and we view things through new eyes.  But LIW’s books are not meant to remain current.  They are meant to capture the people, places, and events of the author’s childhood.  Recent research for a civil war project brought me to a digitized collection of Civil War Era newspapers.  The site’s disclaimer caught my eye:

“They [the newspapers] are full of fascinating history, but note that the language in these newspapers is often highly offensive, especially when the subjects are African-Americans, Irish immigrants, or women. Please read this language not as statements of fact but in the context of mid-nineteenth-century politics and society.”

Shall we not use and value these primary source documents because they are offensive by today’s standards?  Certainly not.  We use them with understanding, taking value where we can and recognizing the effects of time on attitudes. 

The Little House books have been condemned by some for their views on Native American Indians.  I do not dismiss that concern, but shall we then lose all that is good and fine and valuable in Wilder’s narratives?  Certainly not.  As Lipson said:

“There’s no magic in the Little House books, no invisible railway platform leading to a fantastic place, no wizards at all. It’s a plain account of ordinary lives, that’s just what makes it so thrilling and so engrossing. The Ingalls family’s ordinary lives are so far from our own. The lesson they teach, without comment, is that there is dignity, honor, and pleasure in work well done. They teach it superbly.”

Change is sometimes good for us, but unfortunately our society has lost site of “dignity, honor, and pleasure in work well done”.  Ask any public school teacher. 

So I would like to add a hearty “second” to Lipson’s views on the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and I shall continue to recommend them as read alouds to teachers and to students.  We must use the “Little House” books with understanding, taking from them the wonderful values and recognizing the effects of time on attitudes.  For if we don’t we lose so much…

Mr. Sutton and Eden Ross Lipton, thank you.  I believe I shall reread those books yet again.  You can just glimpse my childhood copies behind the statue in the banner on this page.  Now if I could just find the box my copies of “Little House” are still packed in from the move…