The Book Search

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 o...

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 n...

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 a...

I've been trying to figure out how to get to advanced readers copies so I can read the latest and greatest books so I can then recommend them to my students.  Through a group I follow on Goodreads, an completely awesome book recommending site, I found Netgalley.  Netgalley provides advanced readers copies online (like through a Kindle) so you can read books ahead of time.  Some of them are REALLY badly formatted, but in the case of this last book I read, the formatting didn't distract from the complete awesomeness of the book! This one was called "Ava and Pip" by Carol Weston.  Ava and Pip are sisters and they are word nerds.  Their names and their parents names are palindromes, they like to play a homonym game, and Ava would like to be a writer.  Pip has some un-named issue that makes her smaller and shyer than Ava so Ava tries to help.  When a new girl decides to have a party the same time as Pip's thirteenth birthday party, Pip is very hurt. ...

I just finished reading a not very new book called "The Akhentaten Adventure" which is part of the Children of the Lamp series by P. J. Kerr.  I liked the story a lot, which is about twins, John and Phillipa who discover that they are genies, or djinn.  Djinn have a different kind of magical power (one that is depleting to their bodies, so they are instructed to use their powers carefully) and in this book, they spend a lot of time learning about their powers as well as the history of the djinn, both from a historical and a literature perspective.  It got me me thinking about magic as a genre of fiction and why it's so common. There have been a lot of books about magic in the last few years, most notably Harry Potter, but there have been others like Charlie Bone and Percy Jackson.  The overarching theme to me is most often good versus evil.  I mean it's really cool to be able to do magic and make things happen outside of the world of reality, but if there isn'...