The Book Search

I got two great new picture book biographies last week. I hadn't read either one of them, instead relying on reviews from the School Library Journal and the Non-Fiction Detectives . It turns out, having someone give you a good recommendation can save you a lot of time and money. Here are three that I really loved.  The first one is called "Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table" by Jacqueline Briggs.  It's a beautiful and vibrantly illustrated story about Will Allen, an urban farmer who is trying to make sure that everyone gets fresh, healthy food.  Here's a short interview with him. The second biography is actually less of a biography (it doesn't tell her whole life story) but tells the story of a pivotal event.  It's called "Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist makers' Strike of 1909" by Michelle Markel and illustrated by Melissa Sweet.  It's the story of Clara Lemlich, who was an immigrant to NY in the early 1900s.  She was th...

I've been thinking a lot about how to help kids fall in love with books. I've read books like the Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller (complete genius) and read blogs Colby Sharp and Mr. Schu. All of these people are passionate about books and their passion leaks out and can't help getting lapped up by everyone around them. I hope I'm able to share some of that passion! One of the things most often talked about when thinking about kids and books is matching up with right book with the right kid (or adult for that matter). It's really a lot less about reading levels and a lot more about what you connect with as you're reading. So less about data and more about feeling and empathy and connection. So NOT what school ends up being about these days. Unless we stand up. Unless we stand up and put books in people's hands and say 'You are going to LOVE this." So here I am, standing up! I got some new books at school today and COULD NOT WAIT to put t...

We just finished up the book fair at school and I'm so relieved it's over with. It's SO much fun. The kids LOVE buying books and we get to see a lot of books that we wouldn't normally get to see. The kids love to look at the Guinness book of world records and the Ripley's Believe it or not books (although the guy with the snakes coming out of his nose and mouth seemed a little over the top to me) and since I refuse to buy those for the media center anymore, it's the book fair or Costco! But it is EXHAUSTING and busy and I'm so glad on Friday afternoon, I packed everything away so when I come in on Monday morning, we can go back to our regular routine. A teacher from the local university stopped in during the book fair (she supervises student teachers at our school) and she asked for books that could help with teaching behavior management. She's going to be teaching a class at our university this fall and she was looking for trade books to put on h...

The Scholastic book fair starts this week at our school.  I wish I could describe to you how excited the kids are by the book fair, but imagine a fifth grade boy (they tend to want to play things really cool) rushing up to you as a truck pulls into the parent up driveway, shouting "The book fair is here!"  Just saying, at our school, the book fair is a BIG DEAL. Scholastic generally offers a good supply of books at reasonable prices and I'm SO happy that my students think that books are fun and exciting.  I read some research somewhere that kids who have books in their homes are more likely to be good readers (they had to do research about that?).  The magic number of books (according to this research) was 50.  50 books that kids selected themselves in their homes and that would help them down the path of being good readers.  Really?  So in my way of thinking, I need to do whatever I can to help them get books into their houses, not just into their h...

Many people like to look back at the year and categorize things from the year... ok, well, I read a lot, so here are a few of my favorite fairy tale books. My favorite picture book fairy tale is called "Elephant Joe, Brave Knight!" by David Wojtowycz.  This is a very funny little fairy tale where the brave knights (a very cartoony elephant and his side kick, the pig) are called upon to rescue a princess from a dragon, BUT things are NOT what they seem.  This would be a great book to talk about elements of fairy tales (after you've read some of the more familiar ones) and then use this as a springboard to writing your own fairy tales.  It's so much fun.  Here's Mrs. Frenzel reading it!  I just read one I really liked. As a disclaimer, I really like fairy tales. This fairy tale was well written, has great characters and some very interesting plot twists. It's called Jinx by Sage Blackwood. The main character is Jinx who lives with his stepmother and st...

The Booksearch app is an awesome little app that allows you to search for books based title or author, just like a card catalog, but what makes it different is that it also allows you to search by the skill you are teaching.  I know what you are thinking... "Big deal, you can use ANY book, to teach ANY skill". Well, yeah, you can, but this is sort of like pushing an easy button.  It gives you a list of books (most of them are books you probably already own or are in your school or public library) and skills you could teach from them.  It also has connections to other books with similar skills or themes.  It's meant to save you time. So here's a little video to show you how it works.

Do you teach reading?  Did you ever need to teach a lesson about a certain skill and draw a complete blank on which book to use?  Boy, I have and I really wished I had a list of all the books I ever read and what skills I could teach with them.  I totally get that you can use ANY book to teach almost ANY skill, but in my mind, there are books that lend themselves more easily to one (or more) skills than others.  So with that in mind, I created a database.  The database allows you to search for books based on the title or author or the level (either F and P or lexile, since that's what I use in my school district) but what makes mine different, is that it allows you to search by the skill you want to teach (either reading or writing).  Once you've pulled up a book title, it also includes books that you can connect to it... like fiction or non fiction or books on the same topic or theme and sometimes books that you can compare and contrast. I also thought, "...