I debated over which title to write about from the completed side of my summer reading stack and settled upon another favorite first of a series. Dan Gutman's "Honus and Me" is the first in his Baseball Card Adventure series. I read "Jackie and Me" last summer as it was included in our local Reading Olympics list and caught my eye. Then I enjoyed "Roberto and Me" shortly after it was published this past winter. I resolved that this summer, I would read the other books, and do so in order.
I love this series and how it combines different genre (sports fiction and science fiction) for the ultimate combination for reluctant readers. Now, I don't consider myself a reluctant reader, but I could not put this book down. I finished it in two days. I enjoy baseball, but I had very little background knowledge of Honus Wagner. I appreciate that Dan Gutman's didn't expect me to, as a reader. He incorporates so many facts seamlessly, even down to the correct pronunciation of Wagner's first name, Honus as it would sound in honest without the t and is short for Johannes. I even ended the night as I finished reading in a lively debate about the specific name of the company that produced the card. We were both right, as Wikipedia (bad librarian) proved. So, our marriage is still in tact over the great Piedmont/Sovereign debate. See the brands that produced the T-206:
I was contacted to tutor a student as I was starting this book and decided it would be the perfect match. As a result, I've linked to several resources to aid in comprehension for Honus and Me on Diigo
I am looking forward to reading and blogging about Dan Gutman's other Baseball Card Adventure books.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Double Trouble
After recently finishing Andrew Clement's The Landry News, I thought I had figured out where the title of his book, Lost and Found had come from. It was the same as the title of the controversial short story featured in the challenged issue of the Landry News. The short story was about a boy having a hard time dealing with his parents' divorce. The book by the same title was not, as I had guessed, a continuation of the short story.
Instead, it was an incredibly imaginative (I hope) starting with the first day of school for Jay Gleason, twin brother of Ray Gleason. But on this first day at a new school, he is on his own (with his brother sick at home) and makes the surreal discovery that his brother's file has been lost, or rather, combined with his. For the first time in his life, he was an individual, not part of a pair. And he liked it. And he saw an opportunity. The brothers decide the risk is worth the experience of an individual identity. They realize it can't last forever, and quickly realize the complications involved in leading a double, or rather, single life. But every other day, one of the two brothers stays home from school. But they begin to realize that the real fun is...at school.
In reading the back cover jacket flap, I learned something new about a favorite author. Andrew Clements has 20 years of field observation experience of twins as the father of two of them himself. Frindle is his most well known title, but the more I read of Andrew Clements books, the more interested I become. As an author, his writing invites you in. As an educator, he helps you to question the way things are in a healthy and constructive way. And as a student, he may just give you a few ideas...and you can decide what to do with them.
Instead, it was an incredibly imaginative (I hope) starting with the first day of school for Jay Gleason, twin brother of Ray Gleason. But on this first day at a new school, he is on his own (with his brother sick at home) and makes the surreal discovery that his brother's file has been lost, or rather, combined with his. For the first time in his life, he was an individual, not part of a pair. And he liked it. And he saw an opportunity. The brothers decide the risk is worth the experience of an individual identity. They realize it can't last forever, and quickly realize the complications involved in leading a double, or rather, single life. But every other day, one of the two brothers stays home from school. But they begin to realize that the real fun is...at school.
In reading the back cover jacket flap, I learned something new about a favorite author. Andrew Clements has 20 years of field observation experience of twins as the father of two of them himself. Frindle is his most well known title, but the more I read of Andrew Clements books, the more interested I become. As an author, his writing invites you in. As an educator, he helps you to question the way things are in a healthy and constructive way. And as a student, he may just give you a few ideas...and you can decide what to do with them.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Books Beat Boredom
Said Amanda (of Amanda and Her Alligator) wisely. Amanda is Mo Willems' newest character, along with her alligator...and penguin. Willems is one of my favorite children's picture book author/illustrators. First graders did an author study of Mo Willems, learning to draw the pigeon and create mixed media illustrations in a Knuffle Bunny-esque style. Amanda and Her Alligator with its mini chapters was an interesting deviation. I felt like I got to read 6 1/2 books instead of one, and I enjoyed the alligators surprise, post thinking cap. The illustrations are simple, and yet convey a great deal of emotion. I enjoy that Amanda spends time at both the library and the zoo. The book titles were very clever. For example, my husband (a rock climbing instructor) would appreciate "Climbing Things for Fun and Profit," and as a reader, I appreciated Amanda's reading stance (upside down, with one leg kicked in the air). I have always enjoyed Willems' books, but as a librarian, reading them repeatedly to different classes, helped me to notice new details, so I know that upon multiple readings of this book, I will find new details as well. Don't forget to look for the pigeon.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Book Fair Frenzy
We do two Scholastic Book Fairs each year and I blogged waaaay back in October before our first book fair about some of the preparations. I wanted to discuss some of the changes that worked really well for both our fall and spring book fairs.
Theme: the fall theme was Here's to our Heroes and to help incorporate the theme, I dressed as a different superhero each day of the book fair. It definitely made a difference for students, parents, and teachers alike. I don't think there was a single person who didn't know that we had a book fair going on. The spring theme was carnival based and I considered dressing as a clown, but I was advised against it as that can be scary to some kids. We did play carnival music throughout in the background and used pennants as our recognition of One for Books contributions.
Location, Location, Location: we moved the registers this year so that they were up on the circulation desk rather than over in the midst of the fair on a table. This accomplished a few things. It utilized a surface we already had, so we didn't need an additional table set up. We were also able to use the shelves below that part of the circulation desk for baggies for change, bags for books, and other materials like rubber bands, one for books slips, teacher book dedication stickers, etc. This freed up space for us to spread out the fair a little more. We also borrowed the cords and stanchions (fancy/real names for movie theater line thingies) from the high school to create a specific place for the line. This was mostly necessary for the evening book fair which can get quite crowded, but I also created a system to match up older and younger partner classes on either side of the line.
Teacher Wishlist: On the location note, we changed up how we make a teacher wish list. In the past, teachers wrote out a wish list and they were posted on the wall by the door. If you wanted to get a teacher a book, you first of all had to know there was a wish list, find it, then find the book you might like to get. Most people didn't know this was an option, and some teachers made wish lists, others did not. This past year, I encouraged all teachers to make a wish list. We made up bookmarks with each teacher's name and grade or area at the top. We gave 6 to each teacher. They came in during book fair preview and selected their books, but instead of writing a list, they put their bookmark in, made a pile and placed the pile on our teacher/classroom wish list display. Then, if a parent or student wanted to get a wish list book, all they had to do was go to that area and pick one up. Easy.
The Little Things that Make a Big Difference: there were a few little changes that helped so much. We got snack sized ziplock bags to give change back in. So much easier than putting it back in an envelope that has already been opened, and good for those kids who come with a fistful of dollar bills and no wallet, envelope, or bag. We color coded the sections, and labeled areas by number, so in each area was a location number. On the student wish lists, there was a spot to write down location number. For orders that were sent down to the library, having a location number made filling orders so much easier. The last copy slips were also organized by color to match the closest location number sign, making it easy to return last copies after a backorder was placed.
Poster Raffle: When you put posters on display, you get to keep the,. Now, as much as I love "Paw Wars", Justin Bieber, and "Fur-ever Friends," I don't know that I would have gotten much use out of the posters. So, we set up a poster raffle. Whenever a student made a donation to One for Books (even a penny), or purchased a teacher wish list book, they were entered into out poster raffle. I kept track of entrants by having the, write their name on a pennant (next year name and homeroom). Then I went through the pennants and entered each name into a Google Spreadsheet. At the end of the week, I used a random number generator to select the number of winners to correspond to the number of posters we had. At times, I made it a job for an older student to type the names into the google doc and I will likely do this again next year.
Calculator Station: We set up a calculator station with a chart that showed how much tax one would owe for different amounts of money. There was another chart with directions for adding up the prices of items and multiplying for tax. There were calculators there. This was a huge time-saver and good math practice for students as well. When they would come to me and ask, "Do I have enough?". I would guide the, to the calculator station and 9 times out of 10, they could figure it out themselves.
Stuff: What better way to put it? Stuff. At a Scholastic Book Fair, there is a lot of stuff, besides books. And it can be really distracting. In the spring, I wanted to try something different. We only sold the stuff during the evening book fair. This did not include posters. I told all students this during their preview week a week before the fair. During the evening fair, it was set up away from the rest of the books. This served many purposes. 1) The stuff did not become a classroom distraction, get lost and cried about, or worse, taken. 2) We did not have the twenty times over repeat customers. This may sound like a good thing, but these are the kids who would work hard to spend every last cent but it took many trips to the register, and much time out of class to do so. Not having erasers, bookmarks, and cell phone pencil sharpeners cut down on this kind of behavior. 3) By selling these items during the evening book fair, we knew kids had their parent's permission to get that item. Previously, there might be complaints that kids spent money intended for books on erasers and giant pointer fingers. 4) Oh, and the giant pointer fingers almost always ended up as weapons, so there was none of that. 5) Timing. So, our fair runs for 6 days. If you are a kid in the class that comes on the first day, you get to have your pick from all the stuff. But, if you come on the last day, it is slim pickin's indeed, so this eliminated that problem. 6) Along the same line, if a student comes on day 1 and fills out a wish list with one of these items, by the time day 6 rolls around, they return the wish list, more often than not, that item is gone. And I'm the lucky individual who had to make the call to customer service to request that a pink sparkly pen with a fuzzy thingie on top be shipped out ASAP. They never knew what I was talking about.
Delivery: On a regular day, we use rolling carts outside of classes in grades K-2 to pick up their library returns and also to place outside the class that will have library the next day as a reminder to bring books back. We were able to use these same carts to make deliveries to classrooms by grade level.
I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but these changes made things run so smoothly. I'm looking forward to this fall's fair and building reading excitement for our students.
If you are a school librarian and you have some ideas you use in your school, include them in the comments section below.
Theme: the fall theme was Here's to our Heroes and to help incorporate the theme, I dressed as a different superhero each day of the book fair. It definitely made a difference for students, parents, and teachers alike. I don't think there was a single person who didn't know that we had a book fair going on. The spring theme was carnival based and I considered dressing as a clown, but I was advised against it as that can be scary to some kids. We did play carnival music throughout in the background and used pennants as our recognition of One for Books contributions.
Location, Location, Location: we moved the registers this year so that they were up on the circulation desk rather than over in the midst of the fair on a table. This accomplished a few things. It utilized a surface we already had, so we didn't need an additional table set up. We were also able to use the shelves below that part of the circulation desk for baggies for change, bags for books, and other materials like rubber bands, one for books slips, teacher book dedication stickers, etc. This freed up space for us to spread out the fair a little more. We also borrowed the cords and stanchions (fancy/real names for movie theater line thingies) from the high school to create a specific place for the line. This was mostly necessary for the evening book fair which can get quite crowded, but I also created a system to match up older and younger partner classes on either side of the line.
Teacher Wishlist: On the location note, we changed up how we make a teacher wish list. In the past, teachers wrote out a wish list and they were posted on the wall by the door. If you wanted to get a teacher a book, you first of all had to know there was a wish list, find it, then find the book you might like to get. Most people didn't know this was an option, and some teachers made wish lists, others did not. This past year, I encouraged all teachers to make a wish list. We made up bookmarks with each teacher's name and grade or area at the top. We gave 6 to each teacher. They came in during book fair preview and selected their books, but instead of writing a list, they put their bookmark in, made a pile and placed the pile on our teacher/classroom wish list display. Then, if a parent or student wanted to get a wish list book, all they had to do was go to that area and pick one up. Easy.
The Little Things that Make a Big Difference: there were a few little changes that helped so much. We got snack sized ziplock bags to give change back in. So much easier than putting it back in an envelope that has already been opened, and good for those kids who come with a fistful of dollar bills and no wallet, envelope, or bag. We color coded the sections, and labeled areas by number, so in each area was a location number. On the student wish lists, there was a spot to write down location number. For orders that were sent down to the library, having a location number made filling orders so much easier. The last copy slips were also organized by color to match the closest location number sign, making it easy to return last copies after a backorder was placed.
Poster Raffle: When you put posters on display, you get to keep the,. Now, as much as I love "Paw Wars", Justin Bieber, and "Fur-ever Friends," I don't know that I would have gotten much use out of the posters. So, we set up a poster raffle. Whenever a student made a donation to One for Books (even a penny), or purchased a teacher wish list book, they were entered into out poster raffle. I kept track of entrants by having the, write their name on a pennant (next year name and homeroom). Then I went through the pennants and entered each name into a Google Spreadsheet. At the end of the week, I used a random number generator to select the number of winners to correspond to the number of posters we had. At times, I made it a job for an older student to type the names into the google doc and I will likely do this again next year.
Calculator Station: We set up a calculator station with a chart that showed how much tax one would owe for different amounts of money. There was another chart with directions for adding up the prices of items and multiplying for tax. There were calculators there. This was a huge time-saver and good math practice for students as well. When they would come to me and ask, "Do I have enough?". I would guide the, to the calculator station and 9 times out of 10, they could figure it out themselves.
Stuff: What better way to put it? Stuff. At a Scholastic Book Fair, there is a lot of stuff, besides books. And it can be really distracting. In the spring, I wanted to try something different. We only sold the stuff during the evening book fair. This did not include posters. I told all students this during their preview week a week before the fair. During the evening fair, it was set up away from the rest of the books. This served many purposes. 1) The stuff did not become a classroom distraction, get lost and cried about, or worse, taken. 2) We did not have the twenty times over repeat customers. This may sound like a good thing, but these are the kids who would work hard to spend every last cent but it took many trips to the register, and much time out of class to do so. Not having erasers, bookmarks, and cell phone pencil sharpeners cut down on this kind of behavior. 3) By selling these items during the evening book fair, we knew kids had their parent's permission to get that item. Previously, there might be complaints that kids spent money intended for books on erasers and giant pointer fingers. 4) Oh, and the giant pointer fingers almost always ended up as weapons, so there was none of that. 5) Timing. So, our fair runs for 6 days. If you are a kid in the class that comes on the first day, you get to have your pick from all the stuff. But, if you come on the last day, it is slim pickin's indeed, so this eliminated that problem. 6) Along the same line, if a student comes on day 1 and fills out a wish list with one of these items, by the time day 6 rolls around, they return the wish list, more often than not, that item is gone. And I'm the lucky individual who had to make the call to customer service to request that a pink sparkly pen with a fuzzy thingie on top be shipped out ASAP. They never knew what I was talking about.
Delivery: On a regular day, we use rolling carts outside of classes in grades K-2 to pick up their library returns and also to place outside the class that will have library the next day as a reminder to bring books back. We were able to use these same carts to make deliveries to classrooms by grade level.
I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but these changes made things run so smoothly. I'm looking forward to this fall's fair and building reading excitement for our students.
If you are a school librarian and you have some ideas you use in your school, include them in the comments section below.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Lunch Money and Elementary Comic Con
How could I forget to post about Lunch Money?!? A parent recently commented on my day at the beach post via Facebook and mentioned that her son enjoys the authors I had read: Dan Gutman and Andrew Clements. So I replied with a bunch of other titles by those authors that I have read this summer. But I forgot to mention Lunch Money. Lunch Money is a story about creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, and a friendly (well, not exactly) neighborhood rivalry between the two main characters Greg Kenton and Maura Shaw. And, as it seems in all or most of Clement's books, there is also an element of students bucking the conformist school system, in this case the students are selling mini comic books of their own design and creation at school and they are banned from doing so. In working together, they come up with a way to continue. The book included a diagram for creating your own mini comic book and I'm interested to try it out. Without giving too much away, I'm interested in seeing if students in the school would want to learn to create their own mini comics, similar to Greg and Maura's in the book. Either as a project option or as a free choice activity in the library, I think this idea has a lot of possibilities.
Lunch Money also addresses an important point about "appropriate" comics for school. As graphic novels pick up speed and young readers, I think it is incredibly important that we embrace this form of reading and look at all of its artistic merits. Graphic Novels offer a beautiful art form, one that many reluctant readers embrace. And not so reluctant readers, for that matter. And they're not always "easy" reading. So, a few of my favorite graphic novels for school libraries (in no particular order, since they are all pretty awesome):
1) Lunch Lady
2) Baby Mouse
3) Squish
4) The Knights of the Lunch Table
5) Frankie Pickle
In the spring, our book club skyped with Jennifer Holm, co-author of Babymouse. We talked to her primarily about her books Penny from Heaven and Turtle in Paradise, but she shared with us about Babymouse and Squish as well.
This past Friday, at Doylestown Book Shop's Children's Book Festival, I had the opportunity to meet and hear a bunch of great children's authors and illustrators from around the Philadelphia area. The books I wanted to check out most were from the Frankie Pickle series. I was able to listen to author and illustrator, Eric Wight, talk about the character and his use of traditional chapter book formatting for "real world" mixed with a comic/graphic novel layout to show events that are happening in Frankie's imagination. I was floored by this combination! The best of both world! And (don't tell the kids) the content is educational and/or has lessons embedded. Score!
Like the principal in Lunch Money, don't discount the positive power of a great graphic novel!
Lunch Money also addresses an important point about "appropriate" comics for school. As graphic novels pick up speed and young readers, I think it is incredibly important that we embrace this form of reading and look at all of its artistic merits. Graphic Novels offer a beautiful art form, one that many reluctant readers embrace. And not so reluctant readers, for that matter. And they're not always "easy" reading. So, a few of my favorite graphic novels for school libraries (in no particular order, since they are all pretty awesome):
1) Lunch Lady
2) Baby Mouse
3) Squish
4) The Knights of the Lunch Table
5) Frankie Pickle
In the spring, our book club skyped with Jennifer Holm, co-author of Babymouse. We talked to her primarily about her books Penny from Heaven and Turtle in Paradise, but she shared with us about Babymouse and Squish as well.
This past Friday, at Doylestown Book Shop's Children's Book Festival, I had the opportunity to meet and hear a bunch of great children's authors and illustrators from around the Philadelphia area. The books I wanted to check out most were from the Frankie Pickle series. I was able to listen to author and illustrator, Eric Wight, talk about the character and his use of traditional chapter book formatting for "real world" mixed with a comic/graphic novel layout to show events that are happening in Frankie's imagination. I was floored by this combination! The best of both world! And (don't tell the kids) the content is educational and/or has lessons embedded. Score!
Like the principal in Lunch Money, don't discount the positive power of a great graphic novel!
Saturday, July 30, 2011
What Was Your First Clue?
I recently completed the first book of the 39 Clues series. Previously, I hadn't started the series as I'm literally trying to read everything in our school library as well as everything that is coming out and everything that might not be new but that we should have. And they're already incredibly popular, so I didn't have to do much book talking to keep the, circulating. But I was curious. Why are they so popular? Now I know! Filled with drama, adventure, AND history, Grace Cahill challenges her family members to make a real mark on mankind by finding a great treasure as a part of her will reading. The end really threw me for a loop but I should really get back to the middle. The first clue was to follow Franklin, so my "marketing" plan for the fall is to feature a 39 Clues book paired up with non-fiction that will serve the reader with information too. So, for the first book, I would pair books about Ben Franklin (being an elementary school library in Pennsylvania, close to Philadelphia, we have a few {note the sarcastic understatement}of those lying around the biography shelves), Philadelphia, Boston, and Paris. I'm also trying to brainstorm my own 39 clues for the library as a scavenger hunt to start the year. This may be ambitious. Maybe. If it happens, I will share so that others may be able to solve a mystery in their school too. I'm excited to read the rest of the series, but my nightstand is already a bit crowded with my to-read list growing longer everyday. I listened to the first book on audiobook and may do the same for the next. I love listening to books as I drive. Multi-tasking at its best.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Reading Vacation Day or Happy Birthday to Me
For my birthday, my husband gave me the best gift ever! A day at the beach, all to myself, to do whatever I wanted. I love the beach. And I love to read and nap and take long walks and swim. And I do love doing those things with other people too. But I don't mind doing them on my own either. So, on this day I got to the beach early and left very late. I packed three books thinking this might be overkill, but I was wrong. I read each, cover to cover without too much effort.
First up was Andrew Clements' The Landry News. I enjoyed this story, much as I enjoy all of Andrew Clements books, but the concept that a teacher could actually sit and do nothing with no repercussions was a bit disturbing, especially in these teacher bashing times that we live in. The principal re-iterated the misconception that teachers with tenure can't lose their jobs and that simply isn't true. But I'll get off my political soapbox. I thought the concept of first amendment rights challenges was a strong one for students to understand with real context.
The second book I read was the third in Dan Gutman's Baseball Card Adventure series with Joe Stoshack: Babe and Me. I enjoy these books and liked the story that Dan incorporated of Babe taking the drive to visit a sick boy on the day of one of the World Series games. Oe's mission was to see if Babe really called the shot. Whether he called it or pointed at the pitcher is still debatable, but he pointed at something.
The third book I read was Andrew Clements' A Week in the Woods. Are you seeing a pattern? I've been reading my way through our existing collection, or trying to anyway. This book and the experience the students have reminded me very much of a trip our sixth graders take each year to the Pocono Environmental Education Center. I'm excited to share it with those teachers and also my fifth grade students as they look forward to the trip the following year.
Overall, I had a great reading vacation and can't wait to do it again, but for now I'll read them one at a time and love every minute of it!
First up was Andrew Clements' The Landry News. I enjoyed this story, much as I enjoy all of Andrew Clements books, but the concept that a teacher could actually sit and do nothing with no repercussions was a bit disturbing, especially in these teacher bashing times that we live in. The principal re-iterated the misconception that teachers with tenure can't lose their jobs and that simply isn't true. But I'll get off my political soapbox. I thought the concept of first amendment rights challenges was a strong one for students to understand with real context.
The second book I read was the third in Dan Gutman's Baseball Card Adventure series with Joe Stoshack: Babe and Me. I enjoy these books and liked the story that Dan incorporated of Babe taking the drive to visit a sick boy on the day of one of the World Series games. Oe's mission was to see if Babe really called the shot. Whether he called it or pointed at the pitcher is still debatable, but he pointed at something.
The third book I read was Andrew Clements' A Week in the Woods. Are you seeing a pattern? I've been reading my way through our existing collection, or trying to anyway. This book and the experience the students have reminded me very much of a trip our sixth graders take each year to the Pocono Environmental Education Center. I'm excited to share it with those teachers and also my fifth grade students as they look forward to the trip the following year.
Overall, I had a great reading vacation and can't wait to do it again, but for now I'll read them one at a time and love every minute of it!
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