Overheard Conversation in the Library

In the library today, I overheard one of our second graders with a new student. She was walking around showing her the library and helping her look for a book. The new girl was not having any luck finding a book. So the "tour guide" turned to her and said, "Tell me about a book that you really really really love and I'll help you find another one."

I say that to kids all the time but didn't realize it until I heard this second grader saying it! Crack me up! It was too cute.

Columbus Metropolitan Library Website Demo

Have I mentioned lately that our public library system, the Columbus Metropolitan Library, won Library Journal's 2010 Library of the Year Award?  We are SOOOO lucky to have this library system in our community.  I imagine we take the library for granted at times and we probably shouldn't!

I have to admit that I don't visit many of the library's branches. I need to make some time to get downtown to the main branch. But our Dublin branch is so good and I always bump into one of the children's librarians there, that it is the one I visit most frequently. The 3 children's librarians at the Dublin Branch have been so supportive of our school and we have done great partner activities over the last few years to build relationships between the students and the librarians there. The 3 are all very familiar faces to our students and at least once a week, some child comes in to tell me that they talked with one of them on a recent visit to the library.  

As I move into my third year, I am able to bump things up a bit in terms of student learning.  This year, when Loren Scully and I met to set our year plan, one of the goals was to help students be more independent at utilizing the tools at the public branch library and to help them know the resources available. So, this week, Ray, the teen librarian at Dublin, spent time with every 4th and 5th grade class. He spent about 35 minutes with each class, giving them a tour of the CML website and some of the resources they could find there. He demonstrated how to go about reserving a book that they were hoping to read.  He also shared some resources available to the community such as CultureGrams. Kids learned how to search available books by favorite authors and more.  And, of course, Ray can't leave the school without sharing some great new books with kids.  He is so knowledgeable about books for this age group that many kids found new books to add to their "to be read" list.  The kids were GLUED to his talk. They seem excited to explore the CML website on their own.  I have to spend more time on it myself--there is so much there--really amazing resources. 

I know the librarians are hugely busy and we appreciate the time they give to the students at Riverside.  Our kids LOVE when they see one of the Dublin librarians whether they are at school or at the Dublin Library. Our students love anything connected with the library because of this.

TELL THE TRUTH, B. B. Wolf by Judy Sierra

I enjoyed MIND YOUR MANNERS, B.B. WOLF by Judy Sierra when it came out.  I picked up TELL THE TRUTH, B. B. WOLF as soon as I saw it. I loved it. The story is about B.B. Wolf again and it takes place in the library.  The librarian, Miss Wonderly, invites B.B. Wolf to tell his story of how he met the 3 Little Pigs. But he is a bit nervous.  He says, "But I wasn't a hero."  As in the first book, lots of other characters we love are part of the story.  Rumpelstiltskin, The Three Little Pigs and the Little Engine to name a few.

B.B. Wolf doesn't exactly tell the story as it happens. Instead, he twists things a bit and the crowd does not like it. Many of the listeners (including the pigs) demand that B.B. Wolf tells the truth.  There is great word play embedded in the story. I love the line:  "No one is falling for your story," cracked Humpty Dumpty.  There are a few other fun words hidden throughout. Finally, B.B. Wolf admits that he wasn't so nice, tells the group he's changed and apologizes.  He even changes his middle name from "Bad" to something much more fitting. And he figures out a way to make it up to the pigs.

An overall fun story!

Poetry Friday -- Over the Rainbow

Someday I'll wish upon a star

And wake up where the clouds are far

Behind me.

Where troubles melt like lemon drops

Away above the chimney tops

That's where you'll find me.

from "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"
music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg

I've been wishing for a rainbow recently, and last weekend I got one. Now if only we could arrange for the "troubles melt like lemon drops" part...

But sometimes if you can't get your troubles to melt, at least you get some good news to sweeten things up -- our Poetry Friday Panel proposal ("Poetry Friday: Sharing Poems and Celebrating Poetry, One Blog at a Time") was accepted for KidLitCon! If you haven't signed up to go to Minneapolis (October 23), now you've got one more great reason: you can come chat about all things Poetry Friday with this great panel: Andromeda Jazmon of A Wrung Sponge, Elaine Magliaro of Wild Rose Reader, Laura Salas of Writing the World for Kids, Mary Ann Scheuer of Great Kid Books, Toby Speed of The Writer's Armchair, Amy VanDerwater of Poem Farm, and me of here. We're very excited to meet each other in person, and we can't wait to meet YOU and talk about poetry in the Kidlitosphere!! I even heard a rumor that the "founder" of Poetry Friday, Kelly Herold of Big A little a might be coming to KidLitCon. What are you waiting for? Go register now!



Because sometimes it makes you feel better just to sing along, here's Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and here's Judy Garland singing it.

Elaine has today's Poetry Friday roundup at Wild Rose Reader.

3 Great Nonfiction Books

As I work on updating the nonfiction section of the library, I am thrilled with the books I am finding lately. JUST ONE BITE by Lola Schaefer is a great book for all ages. Because LIFE-SIZE ZOO has been such a hit, I think this one will be too. Although the illustrations are not photos like LIFE-SIZE ZOO, it is an over-sized book with great illustrations.

Each spread gives information on one animal and what it can eat in one bite (or flick, when it comes to a frog.) The basic text is pretty predictable and inviting for new readers. The end of the book has more information on each of the animals included. There is a bit of invited prediction and a pull-out page, which are fun features for kids. I think this book would be a great lead-in to conversations about the food chain or any other animal unit that elementary students are involved in. So much information in such a simple book.

UP WE GROW: A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF A SMALL, LOCAL FARM by Deborah Hodge is a book about farming. It is often difficult to find books for kids that show farms now, rather than in the past. Hodge writes a great book that follows the seasons on a farm--the work, the activities, the fun. The text would make for a great read aloud. It is packed in terms of information, but written in a way that is accessible to kids. The author stops to ask questions of the reader throughout the text which will make the book engaging. The photographs by Harris help to capture animal life on the farm along with the life of the family.

THE BAT SCIENTISTS by Mary Kay Carson is the newest in the Scientists in the Field Series. This book is packed with so much great information. It is definitely a big read--for upper elementary kids, it would make a great read aloud or a great independent read for kids interested in the topic. The photos will draw readers in. The book includes great photos of scientists doing their work, diagrams of bats, basic information and more. The text is separated into short chapter-like parts. Extra resources as well as a glossary are listed in the back of the book.

AND THEN THERE WERE GNOMES

Guinea Pig Pet Shop Private Eye #2: And Then There Were Gnomes
by Colleen Af Venable
illustrated by Stephanie Yue
Graphic Universe, 2010
I bought this book because I'm a sucker for series books, and besides, you just can't have too many books with a guinea pig main character in your classroom library. Plus it's a mystery and a graphic novel all in one.

Sasspants the pet shop guinea pig who, in book one, was called upon by Hamisher the hamster to solve a mystery because the g on her cage label had fallen off, making her a GUINEA PI (private investigator, get it?), is once again needed to solve the mystery of where all the mice are going to. The pet shop is down to just one mouse, the pet mouse of the chinchillas, and the store is being haunted by a ghost to make things even more complicated and creepy.

In spite of the clueless (pardon the pun) pet shop owner, the airhead goldfish, the vain chinchillas, and the rabbits who borrow one of the mystery books from Sasspants' personal library but need to be told what books are for: "READ them, don't EAT them!" Sasspants manages to solve the mystery of the missing mice.

BINKY TO THE RESCUE

Binky to the Rescue
by Ashley Spires
Kids Can Press, 2010
my cat Willie Morris (who looks a lot like Binky except he's orange and white) made me buy this book

Last September, Franki reviewed the first of the Binky Adventures, Binky the Space Cat, and as soon as I laid hands on that book I was in love. This summer at the Kids Can Press booth at ALA (I'm beaming a million more thanks toward Canada even as I write), I got a Binky the Space Cat lanyard for my ID, which I've faithfully worn since the beginning of the school year. Imagine my chagrin when one of our reading support teachers came dancing in my room with HER copy of Binky to the Rescue before I had gotten MINE!

As soon as Willie Morris was done reading his my copy when it arrived, I took it to school. I immediately gave it to the overworked Instructional Support Teachers in the office next to my classroom. They looked like they needed a laugh. One started reading it and giggling out loud and the other insisted on a read aloud. Soon I could hear the healthy sound of laughter coming from their office.

Just about the same thing happened in my classroom. One of my most serious, get-down-to-business students was grinning (GRINNING!) and chuckling over Binky's belief that he's keeping the house safe from aliens (which are really just bugs), that when Binky falls out the window, he thinks he's in outer space, that he digs a tunnel to rescue his mousie Ted from the wasps, and that the story might not be quite over at the end of the book.

You look like you need a laugh today. Go get your (cat's) copy of Binky To The Rescue!

EMILY'S FORTUNE by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Emily's Fortune
by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Random House (Delacorte Press), 2010
review copy provided by the publisher

When we finished Clementine, Friend of the Week (my review here), our first read aloud of the year, I asked my class what kind of book they wanted to hear next. They wanted action, adventure, scary and longer than Clementine.

My pick? Emily's Fortune.


Action? Tree climbing, stagecoach rides, near-drowning...Check.

Adventure? Orphaned girl disguised as a boy running away from an evil uncle who wants her ten million dollar inheritance...Check.

Scary? "The man at the bar wore black boots up to the knee, brown britches, and a brown shirt. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to the elbows; his large arms bulged out of his sleeves, and on one of the huge arms was...a tiger tattoo."  Well, probably not scary by ten year-old standards, but it will have to do.

Emily's Fortune is only 147 pages, so it won't qualify for longer than Clementine, but it takes a look at friendship and trust that will make a nice compare/contrast with Clementine, Friend of the Week. It will also give us more cliffhangers than one book should be allowed to have, as well as some extra-"juicy" words and phrases for our word wall:

"Who in flippin' flapjacks..."

"Where in tumblin' tarnation..."

"What in the hokie smokies..."

"How in the ding-dong dickens..."

Word Study

Locust, or cicada, is chicharra in Spanish. I know this because as we were looking at the shells and corpses of cicadas that one of my girls brought in (you go, GIRL!), one of my Spanish-speakers walked up and said with an authority that he does not have yet in English, "Chicharra." We all tried to roll our r's as well as he did and the more we said chicharra, the more we sounded like a bunch of cicadas in the trees. Say it! See what I mean?!?

I love that my students are bringing their passions to school already in the third week, and I love that we are adding first-language words to our "juicy" words we're collecting. When the one-third of my class who were gone for Eid on Friday return this week, we'll see if there are words from their language and their celebration that we can add to our list and learn.

Here's where we collect our "juicy" words:

This is the best solution for covering our classroom's mirror that I've ever come up with -- "Reflect on These JUICY Words." The classroom assistant has a pad of sticky notes, and whenever anyone come across a "juicy" word in the book they're reading or I'm reading aloud, in class discussion, overheard in a conversation, etc., they help the assistant put it on a note and post it on the mirror.

Every so often, I type the newest juicy words onto a blank page in the SmartBoard software. This is our electronic Word Wall! I've made each of the words on the word wall a piece of movable text so that we can sort the words, looking for similarities and differences, categories, parts of speech, prefixes, suffixes, etc.

Soon we'll need to make a second page, we've collected so many words. I can't wait to see how this Word Wall project develops. Out of all the ways I've tried to integrate my new SmartBoard into my teaching, this is my favorite so far.

Making Lemonade

Good thing our phone was on the fritz a couple of weeks ago. That meant we didn't have Internet access on a Tuesday night when all my work depended on getting online. Needed to pay bills. Little stuff like that.

We packed a book to read (him), a computer (her), and went to Scotties, the nearest Free Internet With Your Cup of Coffee joint that we could think of.

I was (more than) just a little tired and crabby about not being able to work at home in my jammies and then fall right into bed. As we walked into Scotties, my ears went, "Is that LIVE music?" and the crabby started to leak right out of me. Four old guys were playing 1940's-60's tunes on electric guitars that were amped but not cranked. They sounded like my childhood guitar teacher, Rudy Schlichenmayer. They sat slouched over their guitars in a wide half-circle so they could watch each other and riff off each other. When they sang, their voices sounded like the records my parents used to play. My crabbiness left me. I started noticing that they weren't really all that old, now that I'm on the near side of old myself. They were probably in their 60's. They obviously liked each other and enjoyed getting together to have a public jam session.

I got my work done. We checked the schedule. They play every Tuesday night. I'll be there whenever I can.