Me and the Pumpkin Queen by Marlane Kennedy

Beth, at Cover to Cover told me that this was a good one. And, of course, I did! ME AND THE PUMPKIN QUEEN by Marlane Kennedy (Class of 2K7) is a story of Mildred. Mildred lives in Pickaway County Ohio and dreams of winning at the Circleville Pumpkin Show. This is a great story--the author's first book. It has the feel of a Deborah Wiles book--great characters, small town charm, grief, family and friends. As an Ohioan, I love this book. A great Ohio story, based on the best Pumpkin show ever. Since I have never been to the Circleville Pumpkin Show, it was fun to learn all about it and the time and commitment it takes to grow giant pumpkins. I think I may have to attend the pumpkin festival this year. I had no idea these giant pumpkins were over 1000 pounds!? Whether you are from Ohio or not, this is a great story with great characters. The themes of family, healing, and friendship are strong and the info about pumpkin growing are woven throughout in a way that helps you cheer for Mildred to grow the biggest pumpkin. Kids will love this story--everything about it! A great story for upper elementary school. Believe me, you'll want to make a trip to Circleville for the annual pumpkin show after you read this book. And you'll be looking for the Mildreds in the crowd. (To read about the real winners of last year's pumpkin show, visit here.) Pretty cool stuff!

Poetry Friday -- Back to School

One of the books I reread almost every year in August to get myself jived up again for the new school year is Educating Esme by Esme Raji Codell.

Here is one of her poems from the book:



HOW TO TEACH LEARNING

Sing it
Seal it in an envelope
Twist it under a bottle cap
"You are a winner!"
Tie it to the leg of a carrier pigeon
and let it soar
Hoard it greedily, with your back turned
Then share it with magnanimous grin
and glittering eyes
Make it a surprise
shining like a quarter
under a pillow
Whisper it
like the tow of summer's breath
through the willow
Or
Hide it
just between the tart skin and sweet flesh
of an apple
Make it forbidden
Make it delicious
Then
let the children
bite


Used with the blessing of Esme Raji Codell.
Used with apologies for Blogger's erasure of line indents. (Has anyone figured out how to get around this?)

Big A, little a has the roundup this week.

MOXY MAXWELL-INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR!!

It was totally my lucky day! I was at a Choice Literacy Workshop last week and met someone who loved MOXY MAXWELL DOES NOT LOVE STUART LITTLE as much as I did. She had loved it so much that she had found the author's email. She happily shared it with me and Peggy Gifford agreed to a blog interview. Since Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little is my most recent favorite children's book, this is great fun! (As you all remember, I made a call in my first post about Moxy to find the author and tell her to write more!) Well, read away and get the latest scoop on Moxy Maxwell and Peggy Gifford.
Franki: So many people love Moxy already. Is Moxy a character who was like you growing up or is she based on someone else in your life?

Peggy: When I was interviewed by Kirkus they asked the same question and my response was that Moxy is based on Everychild - of which I am one.

Franki: Tell us a bit about your childhood.

Peggy: I spent my summers (2nd through 5th grade) in the basement writing plays. When they were finished I would recruit reluctant adults and children to be in them. I was always the director and the star.

Franki: How did you decide to write about Moxy? Can you tell us a bit about the process?

Peggy: I was in a steam room taking a break from a long nonfiction piece I had been working on, when I noticed that I was noticing my toes. It occurred to me then that I had spent a fair amount of my childhood doing that very thing. What, I wondered, was I doing all those years looking at my toes and then I remembered that I was actually doing very little. As soon as I got home I wrote the first line of Moxy.

(I had tried writing a few times prior to that but now I see that my mistake was in trying to 'sound' like a children's story rather than telling the story I knew in a voice that was most natural for me.)
Franki: The photos in the book add so much and are such fun! How closely were you able to work with the illustrator/photographer on those? How did that piece come to be part of the book?

Peggy: As I was writing, Mark kept creeping in there with his camera taking photographs and I kept writing captions for them, the entire time thinking well, if an editor does like this book, they no doubt will want to cut them. (I thought this because I had never seen fiction illustrated in that way.) When Anne Schwartz and Lee Wade decided not only to keep them but to hire the extraordinary Valorie Fisher to take the pictures as well, I was truly shocked....utterly pleased.

Franki: We are SOOOO happy that there are more books about Moxy Maxwell coming out soon. Can you tell us a bit about the next books in the series.

Peggy: MOXY MAXWELL DOES NOT LOVE TO WRITE THANK-YOU NOTES is coming out next May and after that, MOXY MAXWELL DOES NOT LOVE TO PRACTICE THE PIANO.

Franki: Will all of the Moxy books have photos?

Peggy: I've just seen the photographs from the Thank You Note Moxy and they are SO FUNNY.

Franki: What kinds of books do you like to read in your free time? What kinds of books did you read as a child?

Peggy: As a child, I was a very eclectic reader picking up this and that.... among the most memorable: Eloise; THE LITTLE LAMB ON WHEELS; A Wrinkle In Time and Don Quixote, which was read to us by my sixth grade teacher over the course of the year. It (subconsciously) introduced me to the wide range of narrative voices; subject-matter and irony that are possible in fiction.

Currently I am staring at the face-down, spine-broken, two-thirds read GRAPES OF WRATH. There is nothing like The Grapes of Wrath to give you a little perspective.

Franki: Do you have a web site where people can learn more about you and your books?

Peggy: My web site will be up by the first of September. Perhaps you would be kind enough to post the address for me when I have it?

Franki: We would love to--can't wait!

More Back to School Books

Hornbook's Monthly Special is Back to School Books that received starred reviews in recent years. Everything from picture books to YA.

Also, the theme of Hornbook's 2008 special issue is...School!

(Thank you, Read Roger, for these news items.)

In local back-to-school/book news, I have added about 1200 titles (more like 1800 books, when you consider multiple copy sets for literature circles) from my classroom library into my LibraryThing. (search the tag "school" to see my classroom library) When I get back to it tomorrow, I will tackle my nonfiction shelf. Right now the mission is to catalog all the books in my classroom library. More later on how I intend to use this behemoth database.

Great New Blog --TWO WRITING TEACHERS

We just discovered a new favorite blog--right up our alley. Ruth and Stacey have started a blog for writing teachers and it is full of great stuff. It is called Two Writing Teachers. This is their mission:

Good teaching is good teaching. Too often we get caught up in what's
happening in our own classroom walls or in the faculty lounge of our own
school building. This blog is a place that erases all of those barriers
and focuses simply on teaching kids to write and catching minds in the
midst. It's happening not only 872 miles apart, but in classrooms beyond
our Midwestern town and East Coast City.


I don't think we realize how important this is in these political times--to connect with other teachers and to learn together without the politics/specific stresses of our own spaces.

Another thing that I love is how they came to blog together (didn't you wonder when you read that they lived 872 miles apart?) Well, here is how it happened:

Ruth and Stacey met in March 2007 at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project’s Saturday Reunion. Ruth attended Stacey’s session, which was about grant writing. Even though Ruth and Stacey live 872 miles apart, they’re in touch daily.

Gotta love that! We all know as teachers how we often find others we connect with and can learn with and from. There is no better way to learn about teaching.

So, check them out. It is a great site--one I will definitely visit regularly! There is lots more I can say, but I think it would be more fun for you to visit for yourself!

Girl With 500 Middle Names by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Since we have been talking about good beginning-of-the-year read alouds and since this is our 500th post(!!!), I thought I would review a book that goes with the theme of the moment!

THE GIRL WITH 500 MIDDLE NAMES by Margaret Peterson Haddix would be a great read aloud. It is an early chapter book with lots to talk about. This is the story of Janie who moves into a new school. Her mother knits sweaters so that Janie can attend the school. But it is hard for Janie to fit in at a school where everyone lives in a big house and has new clothes. Janie has to wear the sweaters that her mom knits--those that were returned with names already on them--and she tells her classmates that she has many middle names. This is a very short chapter book and can cause lots of good discussion about fitting in, etc.


Isn't it coincidental that we posted our 500th post AND Alex Rodriguez (Yankees) hit his 500th career homerun this week? Rodriguez is the youngest in history to accomplish his milestone. And I am the YOUNGEST of A YEAR OF READING bloggers.

Wicked Cool Overlooked Books

Today is the Zombie Ass Kicking Edition of the monthly Wicked Cool Overlooked Books event at Chasing Ray.

I don't have a particular book to share this month, but I was thinking of doing something with the news that FirstBook had interviewed a bunch of people about the book(s) that hooked them on reading. (Here's the list of the top 50 books or series.) In true blogger form, Blog From the Windowsill turned the list into a meme. If you want to play, copy the list and put a + in front of the books that hooked you as a reader. What are some of the books that hooked you that DIDN'T make it on the list? (This is the part that connects to WCOB, in case you were wondering!)

- Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene
+ Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
+ Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
- Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
+ The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
- The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
- Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
- The Poky Little Puppy by Janette Sebring Lowrey
-Go, Dog, Go! by P. D. Eastman
+ Are You My Mother? by P. D. Eastman
+ Curious George by Margret and H. A. Rey
- Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
- The Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper and Loren Long
- Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
- Dick and Jane by William H. Elson
- Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary
- The Bobbsey Twins by Laura Lee Hope
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
- The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
+ The Black Stallion by Walter Farley
+ The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Heidi by Johanna Spyri
- The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
+ A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
- Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling
- Clifford the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell
- Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
- Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
- Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
+ Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
- The Hardy Boys by Franklin W. Dixon
- One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
- Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
- Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne
- The Baby-sitters Club by Ann M. Martin
- Horton Hears A Who by Dr. Seuss
- Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish
- Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss
- Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs
- Encyclopedia Brown by Donald J. Sobol
- Mrs. Piggle Wiggle by Betty MacDonald
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
- The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
- Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
- The Bible
- Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary

A Wrinkle in Time is the book that launched me as a reader. I got it from the book order in 6th grade. It was the longest, most challenging book I had read up until that point. It was also my introduction to fantasy. It really made me think. No book had done that up until then, and once I had that experience, I expected it out of every book I read. (I either wanted the book to make me think, or make me feel. I spent many a Sunday afternoon rereading sad books and crying -- Little Britches, Love Story, Where the Red Fern Grows...)

The other books I marked with a + are books that I remember being in my life as I grew up. I read a lot as a child and we took regular trips to the library. All that reading got me ready for A Wrinkle in Time, so I won't dismiss it as water through a sieve, but it was definitely not memorable.

This was also the first time my reading life outside of school had intersected with reading inside of school. Up until that point, reading at school was a basal reader and SRA cards. I was a good reader according to all of that, but none of my teachers knew me as a reader. None of my teachers ever asked me, as I will ask my students in a couple of weeks, to tell them about my reading history. None of my teachers ever gave me a list like this and asked me which books had hooked me on reading.

We survived our schooling. It was something that was done to us. How much better it is now that students actively participate in their learning. Now that students are asked and can answer, "Which books hooked you on reading?"

Synchronicity

Susan, at Chicken Spaghetti, has real, live chickens!

More First Read Alouds

Franki got us thinking about first read alouds when she pointed us to Shari Frost's Choice Literacy article.

Here are some of the picture books I read in the first weeks of school, and that we revisit at the end of the year or the end of the loop.

Ish by Peter Reynolds
I value approximation.

The Wonderful Happens by Cynthia Rylant
I celebrate each unique student.

The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi
We honor diversity, and recognize the importance of names.

The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
Stamina and persistence are positive traits.

The Secret Knowledge of Grown-ups by David Wisniewski
Humor is valued in my classroom.

EDITED TO ADD:
How We Are Smart by W. Nikola-Lisa
Everyone is 100% smart, even if we are different mixtures of the multiple intelligences. (I finally got my ginormous Powells order -- in it was this one that I bought based on the Poetry Friday review at Tea Cozy.)

A Mama For Owen by Marion Dane Bauer

I purchased Owen and Mzee as soon as I saw it. I loved the book and so have all of the children I've shared it with. A fascinating and heartwarming story.


I was glad to see this new version of the story, A MAMA FOR OWEN by Marion Dane Bauer. This picture book is categorized as fiction. It is a more simple story of the relationship between the baby hippo and the old turtle. The illustrations are done in earth tones, ad the text is more poetic.

The reason I bought this book is to share with my students as a sample of writing--it is not often that I find a fiction story based on a true story that is also available. We do quite a bit of nonfiction writing in 3rd and 4th grades and this will be a nice piece to add to the books we study--it will be interesting to see what the kids notice when comparing the two accounts, when we think about how this author made decisions as a writer, etc.

I am excited to have two versions--one nonfiction, and one based on the true story, to share with kids about an engaging topic.