A New Friend for Moxy and Clementine

Just Grace
Still Just Grace
by Charise Mericle Harper
Houghton Mifflin, 2007

When Mindy, at propernoun, said she loves Grace more than Clementine, my eyebrows shot up (left higher than right). How could this be possible?

How?

1. There are whole chapters in Just Grace that are lists. Like the first chapter. "I Did Not Get To Be."
2. There are adorable sketches and comics sprinkled about in the text.
3. Grace's nemesis, Sammy Stringer, is obsessed with poop. What are the chances that I'd come across another poop-filled book?
4. Grace has the superhero superpower of empathy, just like Clementine.
5. Don't worry, Grace is not a rip-off of Clementine, but Grace does solve problems in unique ways that threaten to become worse problems, like when she makes a life-size cardboard Crinkles (her neighbor's cat) with photography and cardboard and glue. She takes pictures of cardboard Crinkles in different places around town and makes postcards and sends them to her neighbor to cheer her neighbor up. Except her neighbor thinks they are ransom notes from the person who stole Crinkles. Except Crinkles wasn't stolen, he was...

...well, you better read it yourself.

Grace is a fun girl character with a unique voice. This book would make a great mentor text (take note, Literacy Teacher) because of the super short chapters that are almost like notebook entries and the chapters that are lists. I'm thinking that my beginning-of-the-year 4th graders next fall will be relieved to see that they can satisfy their inner doodler by adding sketches and mini-comics to their writing and get away with it. I was already planning to start read aloud with Clementine, and Just Grace will make a great compare/contrast second book.

NEA N-E-1 ?

Are you going to NEA RA in Philadelphia?

Me, too!

All of the librarians had KidLit drink night at ALA, how about we have one at NEA?! (This is my first-ever rep. assembly, so I have exactly NO idea how realistic that suggestion is...)

Blogging Continuum of Skills

Here's a perfect example of my spot on the continuum of blogging skills that exist in the blogosphere:

Alkelda the Gleeful, at Saints and Spinners, has become an iTunes affiliate site. (That's cool and new -- I had only ever heard of Amazon affiliates.)

She's going to use the money she earns to buy a goat through Heifer International. (Barbara Kingsolver would approve!)

She has this little linky thing on her blog that takes you right to iTunes. (Another linky thing on her blog, the one where we got to vote for the patron saint of potty training, gave me the idea for the surveys for our 5 Things Meme.)

But wait! Look at this! When you go to iTunes, you find a playlist that Alkelda herself has put together and which you can buy in part or in whole! Hand-picked tunes! (The purchase of which helps buy a goat!)

I'm in awe. I'm in heaven: I'm learning!

(The July Carnival of Children's Literature will be at Saints and Spinners. Something makes me believe that it will be accompanied by fireworks! And music for sure!)

Welcome Katie!

We are pleased to announce the birth of a new blog, Creative Literacy, authored by Katie, a primary teacher at Franki's school. Katie is also the mother of three boys, known on her blog as Mo, Larry and Curly. Her blog's mission is "Nurturing the lives of primary readers and writers while searching for my own reading and writing identity."

Last Saturday morning, Franki and I met Katie at Caribou Coffee to answer some of her blogging start-up questions. Because I am just a little ahead of Franki on the technology end of blogging, that makes me the "blogging guru" in her eyes. But the thing I love about blogging is that there is a huge continuum of blogging skills/abilities/tricks. I'm nowhere NEAR the high end of the continuum with my skills. (Just ask Tricia, who this week taught me to make a link in comments using html code!) But it is enough for me that I am even ON the continuum. I know that what we do with our blog is an approximation of what could be done, but right now, I can do most everything I want to, and when I need to know how to do more, I know where to go for help. (In teacher lingo: scaffoding.)

Katie was bemoaning the amount of time she already found herself devoting to her blog, and to finding and reading other blogs. In my eyes, this is not wasted time. It may not yield a product as visible as a weeded garden, a clean house, or a knitted sweater, but it is time spend MAKING something, rather than just consuming -- watching TV, shopping, etc. And invariably, blogging leads to LEARNING as well.

I think as teachers, we must MUST MUST keep ourselves on some kind of learning curve. It doesn't matter what we are learning to do, we need to keep learning. The craft of our teaching will automatically improve if we can share with our students not just the memory of, but the real and present joy of learning.

Welcome to the party, Katie!

The One O'Clock Chop by Ralph Fletcher

I received an advanced copy of THE ONE O'CLOCK CHOP by Ralph Fletcher. If you know his novels, most are middle grade novels. Fig Pudding, Flying Solo, and Spider Boy are three that are for middle grade kids. This new one, due out in the fall, seems more appropriate for the upper end of the middle grades--early middle school, I would say.

It is a great story with characters who stay with you. I read the book about a month ago and found myself thinking about the main character, Matt, long after I finished the book.

The plot is deals with an interesting issue--two first cousins who somehow fall in love.

Fourteen-year-old Matt learns that his cousin from Hawaii is coming to spend the summer with his family (Matt and his mom). His cousin "Jazzy" is beautiful and Matt begins to fall in love with her. Matt and Jazzy both know that you can't fall in love with your cousin but they can't stop what they are feeling. The story is well done--a real issue with believable characters.

The book and the writing remind me a bit of Carl Hiaasen. It could be the setting and the big part that clam digging plays in the book--Matt spends his days on a boat with a friend of his mom's--learning about the work of clam digging and about life. But there is something about the way that the story works that reminds me of Carl Hiaasen, only better.

A little romance, a little conflict, great characters and Fletcher's great writing make this a great read for kids. It is a delicate issue--a forbidden romance-and is very well done. I think it will appeal to lots of middle school kids.

Locavore

ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE by Barbara Kingsolver

This is narrative nonfiction, a book about her family's year-long attempt to be locavores -- eating almost exclusively locally grown (mostly in their garden and on their farm) foods. I read this book with a pencil in my hand. I underlined and starred and exclamation pointed and smiley faced my way from beginning to end. There are too many great lines and important thoughts to share here, but I'll pick one:

"I share with almost every adult I know this crazy quilt of optimism and worries, feeling locked into certain habits but keen to change them in the right direction. And the tendency to feel like a jerk for falling short of absolute conversion. I'm not sure why. If a friend had a coronary scare and finally started exercising three days a week, who would hound him about the other four days? It's the worst of bad manners -- and self-protection, I think, in a nervously cynical society -- to ridicule the small gesture. These earnest efforts might just get us past the train-wreck of the daily news, or the anguish of standing behind a child, looking with her at the road ahead, searching out redemption where we can find it: recycling or carpooling or growing a garden or saving a species or something. Small, stepwise changes in personal habits aren't trivial. Ultimately they will, or won't add up to having been the thing that mattered."

Thank you, Barbara Kingsolver, for reassuring me that I AM making a difference by recycling and composting and completely giving up Mandarin oranges from China and flatly refusing to buy apples from New Zealand. Now that the farmers' markets are in full swing, you'll know where to find me on Saturdays. I'll probably do some canning again this summer. I'm back to baking bread. I'm making my own kind of difference.

When Heaven Fell by Carolyn Marsden

I read When Heaven Fell on the plane ride home for Portland, Maine today. I picked it up at Cover to Cover the other day. I was drawn to the cover and then realized that I had enjoyed several other books by Carolyn Marsden (especially THE GOLD THREADED DRESS). But, I had not heard anything about it and knew nothing about the plot.

WHEN HEAVEN FELL is a kind of adoption story--so I paid attention as an adoptive mom.

There is an interesting review of this book at Ethnically Incorrect Daughter. I trust this review because the write is a woman who was adopted from Vietnam. So much of what she says about the book makes sense. It is a review worth reading to really understand some of the issues in this book.

But, I saw this book to be one with a lot of merit--one I will put on a bookshelf for my daughter to read as she gets older. I thought it was a good story of the way adoption affects everyone.

This is the story of Binh, a little girl who finds out that she has an aunt that was sent to the US during Operation Babylift. The aunt was 5 years old at the time and the family is awaiting their first visit from her. Binh's family lives in poverty conditions and the expectations of an "American aunt" are based on the movies they've seen. The visit proves them all wrong.

I think what I liked about this book was that it addressed the pain that all partied have when adoption is involved. The struggle of the birthmother deciding to send her daughter to the US for a better life was well-handled. Her grief and sorrow are clear in the book. The sadness of the adopted daughter--even though she is happy- is also addressed. The connection to the birthfamily and the pain that they all feel based on their roles in the family seems authentic to me. The reunion seemed authentic to me--comfortable, yet difficult. I have yet to read a book on adoption written for children t--especially international adoption--that addresses the struggles and pain of all parties so equally.

So, this is a book I will have in my classroom--it gives a clear picture of the struggles of any adoption and shows each character as one to empathize with. I will also keep the book for my daughter as she gets older. You never know which book might help a child make sense of life and I thought this one did a good job with some of the adoption issues that most books ignore-like the birthmother struggle. A difficult subject but the author did a good job of addressing it for such young children.

The High King

A week ago, I finished my first summer reading goal: to reread the Prydain Chronicles in memory of Lloyd Alexander.

TARAN WANDERER is still my favorite, and THE HIGH KING was particularly hard for me to read this time. At its heart, this book is about war and conflict, power and leadership, ultimate evil vs. uncertain good. Friends die. Hard decisions must be made. It's all a little too close to current events right now to be a comfortable read.

At least in this book, we have a thoughtful leader who struggles with the need to use violence to preserve culture -- the culture he learned in TARAN WANDERER in the Free Commots. "My way is not the warrior's way; yet, if I do not bear my sword now, there will be no place in Prydain for the usefulness and beauty of any craftsman's handiwork. And if I fail, I will have lost all I gained from you." And later, Coll says of Taran, "It is harsh enough for each man to bear his own wound. But he who leads bears the wounds of all who follow him." (If only.)

The end of the book is filled with themes so huge that it seems impossible that Alexander could pull it all off and pull it all together. Certainly this is why the book was a Newbery winner. There is the nod to the Arthurian legend when Taran rolls a boulder off the enchanted sword Dyrnwyn and defeats the ultimate evil. There is the Biblical loss of enchantment and eternal life when the Sons of Don return to the Summer Country and Taran must stay behind and Eilowny chooses to stay behind, forfeiting her magical powers. Hen Wen becomes an ordinary, rather than an oracular, pig.

And there is the bittersweet realization that one's greatest accomplishment is only a beginning:

"Evil conquered?" said Gwydion. "You have learned much, but learn this last and hardest of lessons. You have conquered only the enchantments of evil. That was the easiest of your tasks, only a beginning, not an ending. Do you believe evil itself to be so quickly overcome? Not so long as men still hate and slay each other, when greed and anger goad them. Against these even a flaming sword cannot prevail, but only that portion of good in all men's hearts whose flame can never be quenched."

There you have it...

This rating was determined by the presence of the following words: poop (x7) and sex (x1). (I found two incidents of "sex" in our blog, here and here. I know where all the poop is!) I guess scrotum and other below-the-waist body part words managed to slip through this rating system, once again making us wonder what the big deal was... Thanks to the excelsior file for the link.

The Qwikpick Adventure Society

THE QWIKPICK ADVENTURE SOCIETY
by Sam Riddleburger
Dial Books for Young Readers
May 2007
review copy compliments of the author

Add this book to your stack of "Perfect BOY Books."

The author suggested that members of my literature circle might like it, but as soon as I read it, I knew better. All of the boys who had been reading Andy Griffiths' Butt books (THE DAY MY BUTT WENT PSYCHO, ZOMBIE BUTTS FROM URANUS, and BUTT WARS: THE FINAL CONFLICT) needed to read this book which prominently features poop. And not just poop, but a poop fountain.

Stay with me here. Poop is just the hook to get the reader into this book. Once you're hooked, you get three memorable characters, "handwritten" sections that are "taped" in, photos that give the whole thing an air of authenticity (you'll have to read the book yourself to find out why there's no actual photo of the poop fountain), haikus that each character wrote to describe the poop fountain experience, and an author who obviously can channel his inner middle school self -- his writing has impeccable voice and timing and humor. The story is ludicrous and impossible (it all happens on Christmas Day, for heaven's sake!) and completely and totally believable.

I didn't get the chance to watch this book work through the underground readers' network in my room this year because it came too late. Only one of the Butt readers had a chance to read it (and LOVED it). I can't wait until next year when I pick a boy who will read this book and then pass it along. Funny thing is, after it makes the round of the boys, I'm pretty sure there will be girls who want to read it. Partly to find out what the stink is all about (pardon the pun), but also because one of the characters is a really cool girl!

I'm looking forward to more well-written, easy-ish books (for boys or not, doesn't matter) from Sam Riddleburger!