The Book Search

Since it's winter break, I've had a chance to do some reading and I actually got to read some grown up books in the last few weeks!  I love the end of the year lists of best books.  I figure if someone is bothering to make a list of the best ones, they've read more than one or two and so it's worth at least looking at what other people are reading.  This past week I read a couple that were highly rated this year. The first one (and my favorite) is called "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr.  This is a great story.  It's about two kids growing up during World War 2.  If you think you've read enough about World War 2 (I think I have), don't skip this one.  It's told from the perspective of two different characters.  One is a girl in Paris who is blind.  Her dad works in a museum and loves puzzles and models so he builds a model of their neighborhood so she can navigate the neighborhood by herself.  They end up fleeing Paris and going

I've been busy enough with the books in my hands so I haven't been looking at Netgalley but now that school is out for a few weeks, I had a little extra time to look.  I found a really great one that will be published in March and if you like books that make kids think about global issues, this is going to be one for you.  It's called The Red Bicycle by Jude Isabella.  It's about a red bicycle and what happens to it after the boy who buys it in Canada is finished with it (he outgrows it).  He donates it to charity that takes bikes to Burkina Faso and donates them to charitable organizations there.  I loved how it showed not only that the bike went to a girl who really needed it, but how she used it to help her family.  When she was finished with it, she donated it to another charitable organization which used the bicycle as an ambulance.  The pictures are cheerful and simple but evocative enough to make you feel a part of the story.  It also has information in the back

It's winter break here, but the day before our break started, I got three boxes of brand new books, many of which I'd never read, so yippee!  It's winter break, I have tons of free time AND lots of new books to read.  Does it get better than this? The first one I read is called Pete and Pickles by Berkeley Breathed.  It's about a little pig named Pete that lives a quiet, orderly existence.  One day his order is disturbed by a runaway elephant named Pickles and really, things are not the same after that.  It's a funny and a little strange ride, but as with most friendships, it's totally worth the weirdness.  I think this would be a great book to match up with some of the other unlikely friendship books like Amos and Boris by William Steig, Henry and Mudge by Cynthia Rylant, Mr. Putter and Tabby also by Cynthia Rylant. I also read "Spoon" by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.  It's also a picture book.  It's about a little spoon who is feeling like ma

A few months ago, I was approached by one of my colleagues to see if I wanted to help her teach an all day class through an organization called SEFLIN .  If you don't know it, SEFLIN is a group that supports libraries in Southeastern Florida by providing training both online and in person.  I've taken some really great classes with them and so I jumped at the opportunity to teach one, especially face to face.  Our topic was "Using Technology to support the library program" and we had a blast putting it together.  My colleague, Michelle Cates, is the media specialist at Freedom Shores Elementary, and this girl has got it going on.  She is doing some really amazing projects with her elementary students so it was fun to think up new projects that I'm going to do with my own students.  One of my favorite things that Michelle talked about were brain breaks.  My brother is an occupational therapist in eastern NC and this is something he's been supporting in his scho

Thanksgiving just passed here and I've been thinking about gratitude.  You know the kind I mean, the lump in your throat, tears in your eyes kind of gratitude that you get once in awhile (thankfully, I only get it once in awhile, because the tears are often a little embarrassing and hard to explain).  Anyway, I've been having a few more of those moments this week, I think the holidays sort of bring it out.  One of the things I'm really grateful for is my family.  I have a kind and loving husband who has a job that keeps him busy enough without draining him completely and allows him to pursue golf as much as he wants.  My parents are healthy and love where they live and have enough things to keep them busy without making them any crazier than they already are.  My brother has a great job and a wonderful partner and because of the completely amazing political system we have, is going to be able to get legally married in his state (which we are all pretty shocked about, as the

Yesterday I got to go to the Miami Book Fair and wow, was it terrific.  In case you didn't know, there is a completely AMAZING book fair in Miami every year in November.  The down side is that the weather in November can be a bit dodgy.  It's Miami, so what that translates into is pretty much a range of choices... either it's sunny, quite warm and muggy or we get a cold front and it can be quite cool and windy.  This weekend we had the remarkable combination of lots of wind, muggy, rainy and not too hot.  Although it was not picture perfect weather, the event was as usual, just wonderful. The first thing that's awesome about the Miami book fair is that they invite authors from all over the place to come and speak.  Miami is a bilingual kind of town so there are many Hispanic as well and English speaking authors.  There is also an amazing range of authors from chefs to political commentators to fiction, poetry, non fiction, murder mysteries and kids books.  In fact, i

I've been reading a big mix of things this week.  I finished another one on the short list for the National Book award for young people.  This one was called Noggin by John Corey Whaley.  It's about a 16 year old boy who had been dying of leukemia, had his head cryogenically frozen, then five years later his head was reattached to a new body (of a boy of a similar age who had died of a brain tumor) and he wakes up.  The author's voice on this was amazing... a strong clear voice of this young man who is 16 and trying to cope with not only being gone for 5 years but living with a body that's different from the one he left behind.  Parts of it are funny and parts are heart rending.  It was a great mix of social issues and humor.  Here's a book trailer about it. I also read on called The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey.  It's the continuation of a book that came out last year called The Fifth Wave about an alien invasion of the earth.  I really loved the first one

This week I've been reading award winning books.  My local library JUST got in the books that are on the short list for the National Book award for young people so I totally SCORED.  I'd read three of them already, so I had two left.  This week I read one of them called "Threatened" by Eliot Schrefer.  He also wrote Endangered which was also on the short list for the National Book award last year and I can totally see why.  "Threatened" was such an interesting story with very compelling characters and very topical situations.  It's about a boy named Luc who lives in Gabon.  He is so ignorant that as he starts to tell his story, I was bit confused about how he had come to live in a boarding house (essentially a share cropper kind of situation where he owed a lot of money from his mother's and sister's extended hospital stay so he was working off the debt, which sounded like it would probably take forever).  Luc is serving drinks at a local bar whe

I read two new books on Netgalley this week and I think they were a lot of fun. The first one is called Witherwood Reform School by Obert Skye.  You might have heard of Obert Skye from his other series about a kid who's closet is a mess and morphs literary characters in to one terrible character, like Harry Potter and Chewbacca, who become "Potterwookie".  They are pretty hilarious and my students like them a lot.  The Witherwood Reform School is a departure from those characters and situations and a leap in a series of unfortunate events.   Two perfectly charming children, Tobias and Charlotte, have been living with their dad (a distracted and overworked but loving parent) and a completely horrible nanny (and how they can afford the nanny when their dad is driving a cab is a bit of a mystery).  Tobias and Charlotte play a trick on the nanny so to punish them, their dad drives them to a deserted place and drops them off.  He drives away but almost immediately turns arou

This week I've been reading some of the young people's books that are on the list for possibilities for the National Book Award.  I find that I'm not such a good judge of great literature because I sometimes don't care for the award winners (like last year's pick-That Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata, which I didn't really like) but I like to read (a lot) and so when someone smarts says "Wow, that's a really great book" it feels like I OUGHT to pay attention. Of the five that are on the short list for the book award, I've read three of them and believe it or not, I really liked all three.  The other two I've never heard of so I guess I need to get to the library (or more likely, to Amazon!).  Even more surprising, two of the selections this year are non fiction and one of the non fiction one is also poetry.  Holy cow, what diversity!  So here are the three I've read. "Revolution" by Debroah Wiles is a story about three

I've been reading some advanced readers copies on Netgalley.  If you haven't heard of Netgalley, it's a website where you can sign up for FREE and read advanced readers copies of books.  I think the hope is that people like us will help generate buzz for the books.  Win-win!  Awesome!  Anyway, this morning I read a really awesome one called Daisy to the Rescue by Jeff Campbell.  It should be out this week and it's wonderful.  It starts off explaining about the mythology of animal rescue and goes into some detail of verifying sources (which would make for a great lesson about fantasy vs. reality). The stories are sorted into groups and before each story there is a sort of a fact sheet with a lovely pen and ink drawing of the animal.  The stories are quite short and the author's voice is strong, which I think the kids will really connect to.  I think this is one that's really going to be worth looking for. I also read Tucci's Table by Stanley Tucci and F

If you don't live in Florida, you probably don't know about this award sponsored through the librarians association of Florida (FAME).  The committee picks 15 books for grades 3-5 and grades 6-8 from a list of about 250.  The limits are that the books have to be for pleasure reading, they have to be written within the last 4 years and they have to be written by an American author.  The kids of Florida read the books and vote on which one is their favorite.  So, since I'm a school librarian in Florida, I've been reading the new SSYRA books and like even a really great box of chocolates, there are some you like better than others. One that completely took me by surprise was 8 class pets + 1 squirrel divided by 1 dog = chaos by Vivian Vande Velde.  It's a pretty skinny little chapter book and has a funny cover but I was pretty sure I wasn't going to like it (really?  Judging a book by it's cover?  Shame on you!).  Well, wow, was I wrong.  This is a very fast

I love reading chapter books from the book fair.  I've gotten to the point where I really don't want to buy books because I live in a fairly small house without tons of storage so I just don't have room for stacks and stacks of books.  The other part is, why do I want to pay $25 for a hardcover book that I might only read one time?  So I love that I can haul these books home and then tell the kids which ones are worth owning (in my opinion!). My favorite one from the book fair is called "The Fourteenth Goldfish" by Jennifer Holm. (I bought three copies for the media center and nagged several people into buying it too!) I already adore Jennifer Holm who writes with an amazing mix of humor and deep feelings.  I completely loved her chapter book called "Turtle in Paradise" about a girl who moves to Key West in the 1930s and her graphic novels that she writes with her brother Matt,  "Baby Mouse" and "Squish" are also wonderful.  Her lat

We just finished our Scholastic book fair.  I love the book fair.  I love how exciting it is!  Brand new books!  Lots of colorful displays!  Books I've never heard of before!  Shopping!  But as much fun as it is, I'm always happy to pack it up and go back to the regular media center where its peaceful and fairly quiet and I know where (most) everything is.  And I don't have to handle money. One of the best things about the book fair is getting to read all the new books.  I had a head start this year since I've been using Netgalleys.  Netgalleys.com is a free website that allows you to register and then read books (using an electronic device) before they are published in exchange for reviewing them.  I'm always happy to give my opinion (just ask anyone around me!) so for me, it works out pretty well!  But at the book fair, there were several books that I hadn't seen (in book stores or on Netgalley). The first one is by one of my favorite authors, Eric Kimmel.

When I talk with other elementary school librarians, they are often concerned about the amount of non fiction their students are reading.  The Common Core puts more emphasis on reading non fiction, which is what most adults read (like newspapers and professional documents) so it's important that kids learn to read non fiction as well.  The funny thing is, at my school, which is a public Montessori school, my shelf of books that needs to be put away is ALWAYS heavy on non fiction.  I like to think it's because the Montessori method encourages the teachers to teach from scientific concepts and tends to minimize fantasy, it's probably because it's more complicated to put the non fiction books away and with the amount of time I have to shelve books (the five minutes between classes doesn't allow for a lot of contemplation!) Anyway, I've been reading some really great non-fiction as advanced readers copies through a group called Netgalley.  It's been an awesome

I've been noticing that my students have been struggling with vocabulary for many years.  When I did my master's degree (through Walden University back in the last century), I did my master's project on effective vocabulary instruction, so I read a lot of vocabulary research back then.  It turns out, things haven't really changed. In "Young Children" July 2010, Tanya Christ and and X. Christine Wang tell us Some children come to school know- ing far fewer words than others. Hart and Risley (1995) studied young chil- dren’s vocabulary development and found that when children from families with low incomes were 3 years old, they knew 600 fewer words than children  the same age from families with upper incomes. By grade 2, the gap widens to about 4,000 words (Biemiller & Slonim 2001). At my school, they are so concerned about the gap that they've purchased a new amazing vocabulary instructional program that only takes

Our kids started back to school this week.  The teachers started back the week before so it's been a pretty busy couple of weeks.  A lot of people don't really understand why teachers are so exhausted the first few weeks (months) of school so let me try to illuminate you. Imagine that you've just spent the last two months do whatever you like.  For many teachers, this involves another job (like working summer camp, tutoring, or painting houses).  Then you come back to your real job and for the last two months, people have been thinking about ways to make your job more efficient.  In the first week of school, they spend time explaining to you how to do that.  Then you have to completely unpack and re-arrange all of your work materials because in the two months you've been gone, they've come in and cleaned the floors (you may also have had to move your things from one room to another room, possibly on the other side of the campus).  There may also be new materials t

Today was my first day back to school.  I always forget how much stamina it takes to get through a day at school, so this afternoon, I was totally ready for a nap.  Thank goodness my friend, Pam called and teased me into going to the beach.  It was far more refreshing than a nap and I'll probably sleep a lot better! I've been reading a LOT this summer (and when I count how many books I've read, I'm really surprised!  72!  Holy cow!  Did I do anything else?).  I found a couple that I think will be awesome for the start of the year. For the littlest kids, I just read one called "F is for Feelings" by Goldie Millar.  It's an ABC book about a variety of feelings, both positive and negative.  What's really great about this one, is that the sentences are short and both name the feeling and give a situation or describe the feeling.  On top of that, there is beautiful artwork that shows not only the facial expression, but the body language and for most of