This will be the first year in almost 18 years that I will have access to a public library!  We lived in a lovely small town before we moved four weeks ago, but it did not have a public library.  I can’t wait!  And it is a testament to how busy I’ve been that have not been over there to get my library card yet.

Regardless of library access, however, I am still bringing home stacks of books for summer reading.  I need to reread all 20 of the 2010 Caudills in order to write questions for our Reading Counts program.  Scholastic in their infinite wisdom decided their customers should get subscriptions per student and have access to all of their library of tests.  However, I don’t want all of their tests.  I just want the 20 award titles… and selected others.  So, while I own the software and the right to use it, I am no longer their customer I guess.  This means I am writing 30 questions per book and I know from experience how difficult this will be.  But at least I get to reread the books.

The rest of the stack I have to make tomorrow, assuming I get done with all of my work on the last day of school.  Since this has never happened, it will probably be Wednesday.  So… see you Wednesday with my list!

Hooray for stacks of books home for the summer!  You’ll find me on my new patio!

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

I love a theme.  There is something about focusing on a theme that brings out the best in me creatively.  And I’m still focused on chickens for some reason.  The last Monarch book that I read with the students was The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County by Janice N. Harrington.  I seem to have been on a chicken kick ever since.

My grandparents kept chickens.  They kept chickens years after they should have given them up.  They lost money feeding those chickens… but it was important to them.  So I have many years of memories stored up related to their farm (just down the road) and chickens.  My chicken experience paid off as I read Harrington’s book aloud – one second grader actually interrupted the story to tell me that I “do a good chicken”.  My “pruck, pruck, pruck” was apparently very realistic. 

Every class voted for the 2009 Monarch as soon as we were done reading Chicken-Chasing Queen so we didn’t spend much time in extended discussion.  This meant that all my good chicken stories were wasted!  The students really enjoy it when I follow a read aloud with what they refer to as one of my “true stories”.  Personal narrative is a branch of the storytelling art and my students seem to value and enjoy it.  With this in mind I picked one of my favorite books from recent years for the next read aloud, Lisa Campbell Ernst’s Zinnia and Dot. 

I LOVE to read this book aloud.   As I mentioned last week oral reading, done well, is dramatic and Lisa Campbell Ernst has built in plenty of dramatic opportunities in this narrative.  I don’t often “do” voices with books because it is difficult to do well, but Ernst gave Zinnia a drawl and I jest luv to do a drawl!  (I didn’t grow up in West Central Illinois for nothin’!)  Dot’s dialogue lends itself to a slightly snooty tone, so I can really give these two old hens some personality. 

I’ve heard good readers describe the book experience as “a movie in my head”.  Good readers know what this means, but struggling readers of every age never get the mental film rolling.  Bringing a book to life in a read aloud session is an important model.  If I can bring Zinnia and Dot to life for the students, then I am modeling good reading.  My all time favorite phrase in this book:  “It was poultry pandemonium!”

I followed this wonderful book with some of my own chicken stories.  Some of the teachers who also grew up on farms chimed in with their own memories.  Most of us shared the amazement that our grandmothers could reach right under those old hens when gathering eggs, but the old biddies would peck a kid every time.  In my childhood I solved that issue by gently harassing the hens with a stick until they got off the nest.  In retrospect this probably did not improve my relationship with those hens, but it allowed me to get the job done without getting pecked.  (Those old hens sensed my fear, I know!)

Kids not only like personal narrative storytelling, but they love knowing facts so I made sure they had their chicken vocabularies in order:  rooster, hen and chicks.  But no one was familiar with the term for young female chickens – pullets. 

Sharing that term with the students made me remember an old trick of my grandfather’s so I introduced it to the kids, telling them that I would teach them how to remember the chicken names the way my grandfather taught it to me.  I implored them to concentrate, because this was a memory game.  “Rooster” is the forehead, “pullet” is the nose, and “hen” is the chin.  You repeat this several times, then quiz their memories, leaving the nose for last.  When they answer “pullet” for the nose, of course, you pull the child’s nose.  It is a silly game.  If you distract them by convincing them it is a memory test they never see it coming!

I will turn 50 this coming November.  The fact that I am in the final third of my career is reflected in my storytelling.  The combination of experience as a reader and storyteller along with a healthy bank of memories and life experience has changed the way I relate to the students.  I’m not the “mom” librarian now, I’m the “grandma” librarian.  And I like it!  It is freeing!  I can be silly or sentimental and it only strengthens my relationship with the students.  And that is what storytime is about for me – building relationships.  Relationships with the students and myself and with good books.  And it pay great dividends – my student to hug ratio seems to go up every year!

This year’s Monarch winner, the Illinois children’s choice award for grades K-3, was just announced.  At our school the winner was Once Upon A Cool Motorcycle Dude.  But it is interesting to note, that closely behind were the books Skippyjon Jones and Precious and the Boo Hag.  As I think back through these and previous year’s winners I am noticing a pattern.  The students in my school are voting on the memory that we make together with the book as much, or more, than on the book itself. 

A couple of years ago a title which I thought fairly weak garnered many votes from our students.  But I read it with a spot-on British accent, if I do say so myself, and the students remembered that.  So I am certain that it is the read aloud memory that motivates these young voters.   

This year we read Once Upon a Cool Motorcycle Dude together in three large group sessions in the library.  Usually I read aloud in individual classrooms weekly, but during Monarch we read at least one in large groups.  Since Motorcycle Dude actually has three voices – two characters with bubble conversations and a narrator, I had two teachers help me read in each session.  They say teaching is 90% theater, and there is no doubt when you ask teachers to help you read a book like this one!  The kids AND the teachers made a memory! 

Technical details:  I shared the photos of the book by using a digital visual presenter and a screen.  The teachers reading were up front by the screen.  I photocopied the pages of the book for the two teachers reading so I could highlight their parts for them.  It isn’t easy to recognize, otherwise, and I wanted to make this as smooth and painless for them as possible.  Obviously the copies were for the read aloud performance and were destroyed immediately after.  (I’m counting on that to fall within fair use for education.  Although I did copy the entire work, I don’t think I cheated anyone out of sales.  I think we probably promoted sales!)

With Skippyjon Jones I had the students participate.  There are several spots in the book where the text can be sung to the familiar tune of the Mexican folk song Las Chiapanecas. The book has in-text prompts for the clap-clap.  (The tune is familiar to our students, I think, because it is used at White Sox games to rev up the crowd!)  The kids love doing the clapping while I read aloud.  If they don’t do it in rhythm I make them do it again until we get it right as a group.  Kids value true success more than false self esteem! 

I was a bit worried about Skippyjon Jones as a read aloud as it has garnered criticism as racist with its mix of real Spanish and imitation Spanish words:  “el blimpo bumblebeeto bandito”  I do want to be aware of promoting stereotypes, no matter how clever and funny a book might be, so I did point out to the students that Skippyjon is using his imagination and pretending; some of his words are really Spanish and some are just silly and made up. 

We have very few Spanish speaking students in our school, but I watched them each carefully as we read.  Truly they enjoyed the book as much or more, and a student in the first group proudly translated an unfamiliar phrase for me!  Perhaps this is an example of adults over-thinking a potential problem, and kids just enjoying the moment?  Kids understand that Skippyjon is about imagination, not cultural relations.

Our school’s third place winner, Precious and the Boo Hag, was read aloud by one of the third grade teachers who is the queen of scary stories.  I don’t particularly favor scary stories, so this was perfect.  Miss Amy had the time to read to each class since she has a student teacher right now and actually must leave the room for certain time periods.  The students loved her “performance” of the book, so I’m betting it got a higher percentage of votes than at other schools.

One of Miss Amy’s students is moving, and today was her last day at our school.  She came to the library to tell us goodbye, and hugged me three times telling me how much she likes ”my stories”. 

My thanks to the Monarch committee for the work that they do that allows us a special annual focus on twenty wonderful books.  What a privilege to work with children and books.  What a privilege to serve as the extension of creative authors and illustrators as we read aloud.  What a privilege to make memories together! 

Note:  For the very first time our school winner matched the state winners, not only for first, but for second place! 

Library Lion is my favorite of the 2009 Monarch titles, but Nora’s Ark by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock comes in as a close second!  It is a beautifully told story of a true disastrous event, the Vermont flood of 1927.  (See links at the end.)

Grandma Nora’s newly constructed home up on a hill becomes a refuge for people and animals alike during the flood.  One of the beautiful elements of the book is how Grandma doesn’t want this new house, considering it “just gravy” on an already blessed life.  When the waters rise, however, Grandma moves on up without complaint. 

Grandma explains the phrase “just gravy” to Wren – and by the time I was done reading the book aloud twelve times (as I do on Thursday story days at my school) I was missing MY grandma and was REALLY hungry for her fried chicken, mashed potatoes and white gravy.  Of course that exists only in my memories… 

Side note:  There is a scene in the movie “Peggy Sue Got Married” where Peggy Sue, who has gone back in time to her teen years, makes use of this time-travel experience to spend time with her grandparents.  I cry often at movies.  I even cry two minutes into “Extreme Home Makeover”!  But this scene in “Peggy Sue Got Married” makes me not cry, but weep every time I see it.  (I’m splashing on the keyboard now just thinking about it!)  If time travel were possible I would spend one more Sunday dinner as a little girl at my grandparent’s with all the aunts and uncles and cousins around.

Sigh!

As for reading aloud “Nora’s Ark”, be prepared to say a line in French.  Madeleine Lafleur is amazed at chickens in the baby carriage in the kitchen and says, “Des Poulets dans le chariot de bébé?”  (My three years of high school French paid off!) 

And if you are like me, be prepared to choke up a bit while reading.  Grandpa is missing in the midst of this awful flood.  Wren and Grandma find him, but Grandpa cries over a dying cow… and the fact that they have lost absolutely everything on the farm, save this brand new empty house.  Because this portion chokes my voice with emotion and fills my eyes with tears, those sweet soft hearted boys and girls to whom I’m reading often tear up, too.  This is the power of story – a good story well told. 

Unfortunately, if you do not preface “Nora’s Ark” with a brief overview of the iconic ancient story of Noah’s Ark, students will not understand grandpa’s line, “Nora, I thought I was building you a house, but I see it was really an ark.”  Very few of my students knew the story of Noah’s Ark.  I let those students help me with a brief telling of the story before we began reading.  I also brought in the following books from our collection and promoted them with the students for further reading:
222 Ife K.3                  
           Ife, Elaine, 1955-.  Now you can read… : Noah and the ark.
                Windermere, Fla. : Rourke Publications, c1983.  A recounting
                of the Bible story in which Noah builds a large strong ship
                to save his family and two of every kind of animal from a
                flood which covered the earth.

222 Pin K.3                  
           Pinkney, Jerry.  Noah’s ark.  New York : SeaStar Books, 2002.
                Retells the biblical story of the great flood and how Noah
                and his family faithfully responded to God’s call to save
                life on earth.

222 Spi K.3                  
           Spier, Peter.  Noah’s ark.  1st ed.  Garden City, N.Y. :
                Doubleday, c1977.  Retells in pictures how a pair of every
                manner of creature climbed on board Noah’s ark and thereby
                survived the Flood.

363.3 Vog 4.8                
           Vogel, Carole Garbuny.  The great Midwest flood.  1st ed.  Boston
                : Little, Brown and Co., c1995.  Text and photographs depict
                the cause and effects of the Midwest flood of 1993.

Fic Cal K.3                  
           Calhoun, Mary.  Flood.  New York : Morrow Junior Books, c1997.
                One fictional Midwestern family is forced to leave their
                home during the flooding of the Mississippi River in 1993.

“Nora’s Ark” on the surface is about the 1927 Vermont flood.. but the theme of this book is really about remembering what is important – “family and friends and neighbors helping neighbors.” – another timely lesson for ourselves and our students during these tough economic times.  “Everything else is just gravy.”

Vermont Flood History websites:

http://www.vermonthistory.org/freedom_and_unity/1800s/natural_disaster.html

http://vermonthistory.org/index.php?Itemid=241&id=391&option=com_content&task=view

http://www.vtgrandpa.com/fhs/flood27.html

http://www.erh.noaa.gov/btv/events/27flood.shtml

The first thing my aide and I noticed when we unpacked the book shipment which included Cookies:  Bite-Size Life Lessons was the girl on the cover.  She looks amazingly like my aide’s youngest grandaughter!  I included her picture so you can judge for yourself!

Cookies:  Bite-Size Life Lessons is one of the 2009 Monarch Award nominees.  Amy Krouse Rosenthal has created a clever book that presents life-defining vocabulary words such as cooperate, patient, optimist, pessimist, fair, unfair, compassionate and more through cookie analogies.  Not cookie recipes, as you might expect, but recipes for living!  “Trustworthy means, if you ask me to hold your cookie until you come back, when you come back, I will still be holding your cookie.”

As much as I liked the book and appreciated its distinctive approach to character education, I was skeptical about using it as a read aloud.  I didn’t think my students would like it.  But I was wrong – my students ate up this book!  (Hah!  Pun bad, but intended!) In each class they were exceptionally attentive; it gave them something to contemplate, and contemplate they did!  After twenty-two years of reading aloud to K-3, my predictions about what they will or will not like are not often wrong.  But the students still surprise me;  I realize the older I get, the less I know!  Which brings us to Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons final entry:  “WISE means, I used to think I knew everything about cookies, but now I realize I know about one teeny chip’s worth.”

I enjoyed the many common old phrases which are sprinkled throughout this picture book from Betty Ren Wright.

• It won’t do a speck of good.
• Oh, my stars and garters!
• …every last one of you.
• …anyone in his right mind…
• I should think not.
• You’ve earned your keep.
• I couldn’t eat another bite if you paid me!

I prefaced the reading of the book by telling them about the big snowstorm of 1967 (Chicago area) when my husband and his sisters couldn’t get home because their school bus was stuck in the drifts.  The bus riders were “farmed” out to the few houses on that stretch of the road and everyone “made do”.  The next morning my father-in-law and the neighbor took a bulldozer and truck and plowed a road directly across the fields to reach their kids.  The roads would remain sealed shut for days.

Before reading The Blizzard, I made sure the students understood that the setting for the story is probably 20 years before my 1967 story.  The one-room schoolhouse for the country kids dates it pre-1950s, but the presence of a telephone in the farmhouse probably means 1940s.  Preparing students to notice the unique features of the one-room school experience is helpful:  the oldest boys helping with custodial tasks, all ages in one room, the unmarried teacher, sack lunches, and using an outhouse.  Before we started reading I made sure they knew what an outhouse was!  Porta-potty helps explain it, but the students enjoy further explanation!

I grew up going to a country church which had no indoor plumbing.  There were two “three-holers” outside – one for Gentlemen and one for Ladies.  Although a trip to the outhouse could provide an opportunity to waste a great deal of church time, I rarely asked to go there.  Cold in the winter and wasps and spiders in the summer – not to mention the smell – limited the trip’s appeal.

With background and “my” stories out of the way, the narrative of The Blizzard flowed quickly.  There were a few places worth pausing. Pa’s line “I’d say you’ve all earned your keep,” was fun to explain…and fun to ask them if they do enough work to earn their room and board at home.  Asking them if they earn their keep is interesting!  I also sang bits of the songs mentioned.  (None of them knew Suwannee River”, although the 1st grade teacher who was a native of Florida shared it is Florida’s state song!)  I recommend also pausing to allow the students to predict what last song Ma is choosing.  If they need a hint, turn the page.  The sight of the birthday cake will usually help them realize it will be “Happy Birthday”.

This is a warm and satisfying story… in spite of the blizzard.

A 2009 Monarch Award Nominee

To read more about the Blizzard of 1967

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-chicagodays-1967blizzard-story,0,1032940.story

http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/events/chisnow1967.htm

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/wwatch/winter_storms/witnesses.htm

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=weather&id=4973699

http://wintercenter.homestead.com/photo1967.html

There is no one better at making simple illustrations expressive than Mo Willems!  The Elephant and Piggie books are top notch for emerging readers.  Vocabulary is simple with words and phrases repeated for reinforcement and success.  All narrative stems from the conversation bubbles in large font above each character’s head.  The speaker is further distinguished for the emerging reader as the conversation bubbles are color coded – gray for Elephant and pinkish for Piggie.

 As a rule, books for emerging readers do not make good read alouds, but Today I Will Fly is the exception!  In spite of its deliberate simplicity, it is funny!  The expressions Mo Willems gives the characters lead the reader to adding expression and inflection to the narrative.

Elephant:  Yes, it was a big jump.  But you did not fly.

Piggie:  I will try again.

Elephant:  I will go to lunch.

 
Elephant’s eyes on the “I will go to lunch” line are what make the line cynical and funny.

 I reflect the character’s faces in my face as much as possible as I read.

 
“YOU WILL NOT FLY!” – bold print read loudly, of course

“She will not fly.” – look at the students like Elephant does as you read the line!  (The students laughed aloud as I read this one.) 

One of the 2009 Monarch Award nominees –

Today I Will Fly!  Academically sound.  Simply funny!

Since “Fuzz Frenzy” only took about 14 minutes to read, and my storytimes with the students are 20 minutes, we slipped in another of this year’s Monarch Award nominees, There is a Flower at the Tip of my Nose Smelling Me by Alice Walker.

My students and I both were not particularly impressed with Walker’s verse. (If she wasn’t already Alice Walker Pulitzer Prize winner would it have been published?) But we were quite impressed with the illustrations by Stefano Vitale. His interpretations of the text are wonderful: giving a tulip a subtle face with which to smell, the singing body shaped as a guitar with a heart hole, and the pen literally “writing me”.

The vocabulary in the book is simple, but we discussed and explored the illustrations together. The word “staff” is not mentioned, but is illustrated flowing out of the hair in the singing body. I questioned each group on it – they learn about the music staff in general music. Most couldn’t come up with it, but sighed in recognition when I shared it. I chastised them for dropping what they learn at the classroom door! Our learning should follow us everywhere!

My learning is a puppy following me!

The catalyst for The Great Fuzz Frenzy was when Janet Steven’s dog Violet dropped a tennis ball down a prairie-dog hole one day.  Stevens began wondering what the Prairie-dogs might think of this mysterious object… and a story was born.

This 2009 Monarch Award nominee begins and ends on the end-pages so don’t miss them!  Large amounts of alliteration and conversational text make this a fun read aloud.  There are three pages which must be turned vertically to read.  Two of these also fold out – adding literal depth to the depiction of underground prairie-dog town!  Quirky phrases such as  “-it was war!  War between the fuzzes and the fuzz-nots” and “they came, they saw, they picked” make this as enjoyable for the adult reader as for the listeners. 

I explained about prairie-dogs and prairie-dog towns before beginning the book since most Illinois students have not encountered them.  We also discussed the meaning of the word “frenzy”.  I find that students understand meaning more completely when given some examples.  For frenzy I used the example of mom hanging up the phone and yelling, “company will be here in 10 minutes…we have to clean!”  I also said it would be a frenzy if I tossed up five pieces of candy and said to the class, “Everyone get a piece if you can!”  That certainly would be a frenzy and the students understood this.
A funny book, my students all laughed at the line, “Naked as a plucked chicken.”  We all know –  there is just something about the word naked and/or underwear that crack up primary students. Janet Steven’s incredibly detailed and funny illustrations make this unforgettable.  (My favorite is the fuzz as it ends up on the eagle as a federal style wig.)

It is fun to play up the fickle crowd mentality portrayed by the prairie-dog masses in the book.  As the crowd attempts to catch Big Bark falling from the eagle talons I actually moved the book to reflect the words, “They ran left, then right, then left.” 

On a more serious note, this book could be used to discuss crowd mentality with older students.  The recent Black Friday stampede at an East Coast Wal-Mart comes to mind.  A fatal frenzy indeed.