Breaking News!

Four kidlitosphere bloggers will present a panel session at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) annual convention in November 2007. The theme of the convention is "Mapping Diverse Literacies for the Twenty-First Century: Opportunities, Challenges, Promising New Directions."

Jen (Jen Robinson's Book Page), Liz (A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy), Kelly (Big A little a) and Mary Lee (A Year of Reading) will present "Welcome to the Kidlitosphere: Reading, Reviewing and Blogging about Children's Literature" on Saturday, Nov. 17.

Mark your calendars! Hope to see you there!

Summer Reading Plans for Kids

Last year, there was big talk on the blogs about summer reading. I just wrote an article for Choice Literacy about the things I do with my class to help my kids think about and plan their summer reading. It is here if you'd like to read it.

What We're Reading

Elaine at Wild Rose Reader tagged us with a book meme: What books are you reading?

Franki's traveling this weekend, which sometimes means great chunks of airport reading. We'll have to wait for her update. Here are mine:

Adult Book Club:

Mostly True by Molly O'Neill. The biography of a Columbus girl who grew up in a family of 5 boys who were all sure they were going to make it big in baseball. One did. Molly escaped to New York City to became a food columnist for The New York Times Magazine and the host of the PBS series Great Food.

5th Grade Literature Circle:

Our last book of the loop -- The View From Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg. This is my gift to these 6 extraordinary readers. I hope they will go on to be extraordinary 6th graders, proud of their talents and willing to follow their passions in the face of peer pressure.

To Review:

Reality Leak by Joni Sensel. Review copy courtesy of the author.

The Fairy Chronicles volumes 1 and 2 by J.H. Sweet. Review copies courtesy of the publisher.

Waiting for me at the bookstore:

Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg
Animal, Vegetable and Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver
Test Talk by Glennon Doyle Melton and Amy H. Greene (Stenhouse)
Strategies That Work 2nd Edition by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis (Stenhouse)
Mentor Texts by Lynne R. Dorfman and Rose Cappelli (Stenhouse)

Poetry Friday

This week, I'm thinking of the Virginia Tech families. I'm thinking of the folks in Greensburg, KS. I'm thinking of a 1 lb. baby born prematurely by C-section. And I'm thinking of a dog who's come back from the brink.

On a Tree Fallen Across the Road
(To Hear Us Talk)

The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws down in front of us is not to bar
Our passage to our journey's end for good,
But just to ask us who we think we are

Insisting always on our own way so.
She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,
And make us get down in a foot of snow
Debating what to do without an axe.

And yet she knows obstruction is in vain:
We will not be put off the final goal
We have it in us to attain,
Not though we have to seize earth by the pole

And, tired of aimless circling in one place,
Steer straight off after something into space.

by Robert Frost

Standing Women --Mother's Day

Have you heard about the Standing Women event on Sunday, Mother's Day? Women across the world are standing at 1:00 for five minutes of silence to imagine a better world.

It is a pretty amazing thing. Thanks to Ann Fisher for her Dispatch article on the event in today's paper. A group of women have invited women all over the world to stand together.

The idea came from a book called a THE GREAT SILENT GRANDMOTHER GATHERING: A STORY FOR ANYONE WHO THINKS SHE CAN'T SAVE THE WORLD by Sharon Mehdi. (Yes, it is on order as we speak:-)

As I am writing this, there will be women 2284 events in 66 countries. The number keeps growing.

The combination of women and good books continue to make the world a better place.

I MET ANNA QUINDLEN!

A group of us went to hear Anna Quindlen last night. She was here on a book tour, reading from her new book RISE AND SHINE. I had read it the day it came out--That is what I do with books by Anna Quindlen. Loved the book--a must read! Her talk was amazing and she was so genuine. (And thanks to our good friend Meredith, we had GREAT seats!) I am a huge fan. Have read all of her books. Read every NEWSWEEK column . Have extra copies of a few of her books. I love her novels. I really love her essays. And, I am a HUGE fan of her little books. I purchased another copy of BEING PERFECT last night. HOW READING CHANGED MY LIFE is one of her more brilliant pieces of writing. It speaks to me and I use it with my students a lot. Last night, she talked a lot about her life as a reader. How she couldn't imagine life without reading. She talked about kids needing to find books that they care about. She talked about the fact that, for her, books never seemed like books--they seemed like places that she visited again and again. She was passionate about all she said about her life as a reader. I could very much relate! 
She is on tour for the new book. If she is coming anywhere near you, I would highly recommend going to hear her. Even if she isn't really close, hearing her is worth traveling a bit. It was a great evening with friends. We even got to take a picture with Anna Quindlen! (As you may have already noticed..)

Starting HUGO CABRET

We started HUGO CABRET. It was a fun day. Books from amazon arrived on time. I passed out the books. Kids shared books in groups of 2 and 3. The first few minutes were spent watching the kids lift the books up and down and talking about how heavy it was. Then they flipped through it looking for interesting thing--mentioning things they noticed.

It was a tricky read aloud, I must say. I read the Intro page and then the first 45 pages were illustrations. I had forgotten about that. I wasn't sure what to do, so I had them look at those 45 pages on their own. It took a while. Then we chatted. We pointed out things we noticed, shared characters we'd met, events that had happened, setting, etc. We also discussed whether that 45 pages was "reading". It was an interesting conversation. Since there were no words, a few students did not think that they were reading. But after lots of talk, most kids agreed that, of course it was reading. They were reading pictures, thinking, making meaning, creating a story.

The other tricky thing was that because they had a copy and you can look at it for hours, it was a little tough to have a conversation. We stop and talk often during read aloud. But, the kids couldn't really pry themselves away from the book to participate in the talk. The newness of the book was too fun.

The kids were all pretty excited. I think it will take us a few days of this book to really settle in, stop lifting it up and down in amazement, get used to the way we'll read it together, etc.

No matter how tricky this read aloud is, I can tell already that it will be worth it.

Baby Steps

Thank you everyone for your kind words and wishes for Bess. She's keeping food down and she still hasn't had any seizures. Neither the vet nor the online sources we used were exaggerating when they said to start her back on tiny amounts of food and increase what she's getting by tiny amounts very slowly.

I've been thinking about other things that work better when you take very tiny, very slow baby steps:

• moving a child from habitual disruptive behaviors to more cooperative, socially acceptable behaviors
• convincing a beginning reader to believe in himself
• teaching 10 year-olds to make a bibliography, do long division, or use a protractor
• teaching my mother to send an email attachment
• losing weight after 40
• adding weight to the machines after back surgery
• learning to ask for help
• learning to say no to one more committee

Pet Stories

This week Kelly wrote about her book-shredding cat, Lois Lowry wrote about a coyote sighting (and gave equal photo time to Alfie), and Neil Gaiman rescued a white German Shepherd.

Now it's my turn.

It's been the week from gastonomic hell for our dog, Bess. She started throwing up last Sunday morning, and she didn't really stop until Thursday. She kept food down from Friday night until Sunday morning, and we're pretty sure that one was our fault for optimistically increasing the amount of food she was getting at too rapid a rate. (We went from 1/8 c. dog food with her chicken and rice to 1/4 c. dog food with her chicken and rice.) You wouldn't fault us if you could see how weak she is. She can barely stand.

No, this isn't related to all of the pet food recalls, no, she doesn't have have any intestinal blockages, and no, she doesn't have any indicator of organ failure due to her epilepsy meds.

The silver lining in all is, in fact, related to her epilepsy. She was having rounds of seizures every 19 days before all this. She has now gone 24 days seizure free. Could the food she had been fed since puppyhood be the cause of her seizures? Now is our chance to start from scratch with a new brand of food. We're trying one that is high protein, all natural, wheat free, and of course, made in the U.S.

Needless to say, between clean-ups at all hours of the day and night, time spent fretting, and time spent researching possible causes and new food options, very little reading and blogging got done this week.

Here's hoping for a more normal week.

Previewing HUGO CABRET

The class was VERY excited when I pulled out THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET. The whole idea of it intrigued them as it did me when I first saw it. They can't wait to start on Monday. Friday, we previewed. Before each read aloud, we preview by reading the back, the blurb, the first page, the author flap, etc. Then we think about the kinds of things we might think about as we read the book. We just brainstorm all of the things that might be worth holding on to as we read-things that will be important in the books. Kids keep reading notebooks--nothing that I check or is graded but a place of them to jot down thinking during read aloud--thinking that they can go back to to comprehend the text more deeply. It is a tool that works for lots of them because it is totally up to them on how they use it.

So Friday, after our preview, we charted all of the things kids planned to think about as we read. Here are the questions/thoughts they had before we started--ways they will be using their notebooks.

What's the invention?
What do the pictures tell us beyond the words?
How does the invention change his life?
How does the drawing connect to the invention?
Mark important pictures
2 columns to keep track of predictions and reasons I predict.
Characteristics about Hugo
Words author uses to describe Hugo
How does the mysterious drawing affect anyone?
He has a lot of secrets--what are they?
How does Hugo change?
What are the other characters like?
His father's secret notebook--why is it important?
Why the setting--why did the author choose it?
Discoveries and Secrets
Why is he stealing? Does he have a good reason?

Hopefully the books will be in before read aloud time tomorrow! I'll keep you posted. This should definitely be an adventure:-)