Poetry Friday -- Keeping My Eye On The Big Picture

It's been a long week, what with parent conferences on Tuesday night. I'm feeling a bit like Sisyphus, and not always as sure as the poet that there is a benevolent Big Plan.** Still, I do celebrate, like Countee Cullen, our quirky human experience on this amazing planet.

Yet Do I Marvel
By Countee Cullen

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.


(The rest of the poem is here. Round up is at Karen Edmisten.)


**Almost at the exact moment I hit the "publish post" button, the phone rang. Two hour delay because of the icy rain last night. That's as close to a lightning bolt as I want to get, so I now stand IN TOTAL AGREEMENT with Countee Cullen!!!!

Required Reading

WITH THE LIGHT (Vol. 1): RAISING AN AUTISTIC CHILD
By Keiko Tobe
Hachette Book Group, September 2007
(Vol. 2 to be published March 2008)
Review copy received at NCTE


This is an amazing book.

520+ pages of native manga (a graphic novel read right to left), originally published in Japan, this is the story of a young fictional Japanese couple whose first child is autistic.

Masato, the father, is a workaholic whose hope for his new son, Hikaru, is that he will “move up the corporate ladder like the shining sun.” Sachiko, the mother, tries hard to be the perfect wife and mother, but increasingly, she realizes that Hikaru is not like other babies.

Sachiko deals with in-laws and friends who assume she is not a good mother, doctors who misdiagnose Hikaru with deafness, anger at a child who will not respond to her, and frustration and despair when it seems her marriage will fall apart because of Hikaru.

As Sachiko learns about autism and about how to care for and find appropriate schooling for Hikaru, she also finds supportive professionals and true friends. She and Masato rescue their marriage and learn to work together to help Hikaru grow in his own way toward the goal that he will grow up to become a “cheerful, working adult.”

The book is full of information about autism, accurate portrayals of positive and negative reactions toward autistic children and their parents, and examples of the kinds of accommodations that often help autistic children to succeed in a mainstream classroom. Because it is in the format of a graphic novel, the story feels very immediate and real. You identify with Sachiko and understand the range of emotions she goes through as she grows as a parent through her stuggles to love and care for Hikaru.

30-Day Challenge Update

So, I made it to WEEK 4 of Boot Camp! I can hardly believe that I have made it through 15 days.The name (Adventure Boot Camp for Women) certainly fits. It has certainly been an adventure. Today (a Sunday remember), I automatically woke up at 4:30 AM. Lucky for me, I have no trouble falling back to sleep but my body must be kind of getting used to getting up early. This week will be full last-week things at boot camp. Picture day, Weighing and Measuring too. My before and after picture would look exactly the same but I am thinking it will take months of working out to see big results. I don't know how much success I had with weight and inch loss but I do know I feel better and I actually started a habit that I like enough to stick with for a while. I guess I am okay with it taking longer than I thought since I like it enough to keep it up. I certainly had a few bad days--days I didn't want to wake up, days I thought I would die before the workout was over. But my goal was to get through it. And I knew it wouldn't be easy. For me, things have to be social and I have to like the people I am with. And this is social and fun and I like the people. I have always been willing to work hard if the environment is right. And I must say, we laugh a lot every morning. (How could you not laugh when you are told that you will be having wheelbarrow races next....)

So, I signed up for Round 2 of Boot Camp. (We will have a week in between camps.) To celebrate the fun, I bought a new pair of running shoes. I like them. They will wake me up in the morning. And the shoes now match my exercise mat--nothing like a little 80s aerobics feel. I wore the new shoes on Friday--they are quite lite and comfy. I bought them at a running store right down the street. I am always afraid to go into those stores because I think that only thin running people go there. But, I found out that a lot of people buy running shoes for their jobs so lots of nurses, etc. buy their shoes there. Not just runners. They had some pretty cool exercise clothes. I may have to revisit the store when camp moves outdoors in the spring. I will need some of those serious runner clothes that keep you warm when it is cold outside.

So, this week, we do the mile run, etc. I imagine I will still be almost last and I am okay with that. My goal was to get through it, to make it a habit--one that I could stick with for a long time. (And with losing only 1/2 pound a week, I am going to need to stick with this for a long time.)

So, this week was Week 3 of Success on my 30-Day Challenge. So glad HipWriterMama knows that we need 30 days to make things habit. It was easy for me to decide to commit January to this project. Now, I have done it long enough to make it part of next month too!

Support for Teachers

Lois Lowry appreciates all the work teachers do.

Thanks.

Orbis Pictus Awards Announced

The Orbis Pictus Awards were announced by NCTE on Friday. Such a great list of nonfiction!

Themes, Morals, Lessons

The moral of this story is, "Let them talk during read aloud."

In reading workshop, we've been working on finding the themes/morals/lessons that an author may or may not intend for us to extract or infer from his/her story.

In read aloud the other day, we had a bunch of fun finding silly themes/morals/lessons in 3 picture books.

How could we not read parts of Squids Will Be Squids by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith? Besides remembering or learning what a fable is, we also had a great discussion about why Scieszka can get away with writing a run-on sentence a whole paragraph long (in the Serious Historical Foreword), and fourth graders can't. Or should I say...and fourth graders are required to chop it into sentences, because some of my students CAN (and do) write whole paragraphs and pages without punctuation!

I read "Grasshopper Logic," and the conversation turned to the other things that are not good to say to a "hopping mad Grasshopper Mom."

Next, I read "He who..." because I knew they would be able to fill in the moral on their own. They could. ("He who smelt it...")

The last one I read, my own personal favorite of the entire collection, was "Straw and Matches." They started getting the double entendres and puns from the very beginning: "It was the end of summer vacation. Straw had done everything he could think of. He was bored. So he went over to play with someone he had been warned to stay away from." They groaned with laughter when they heard the moral and knew it was both about choosing one's friends and about playing with fire.

I didn't read any more from "Squids Will Be Squids," because my goal was for them to want to read more on their own. (It worked.)

Next came Jane Wattenberg's version of Henny-Penny. (How did it happen that this book got so old so fast! It's from seems-like-yesterday, but in-reality 2000!)

I read the whole book, because how often you get to shout, "CHICKABUNGA!" during a regular school day?

I swear, this class found more in Wattenberg's illustrations than any class ever! Not only that, but they could identify nearly every world landmark the flock of fowl visits in the course of the story. (Only the Coliseum and Stone Henge stumped them.) And one student knew what a cave would be like it it was "dank." WOW!

A few morals of this story? "Don't leave home until you lay your egg." "Stranger Danger -- Don't follow someone you don't know into a dark, dank cave." "Check to see what hit you in the head before you run off to tell the king the sky is falling." And here's mine: "Sometimes it's best to be the last one in the cave, because you might be the only one who makes it out!"
We ended with The Wolf Who Cried Boy by Bob Hartman. They knew the moral before I ever started reading, so this one, too, was more about the puns and word play. (Lamburgers, Sloppy Does, Chocolate Moose, Boy Chops, Three-Pig Salad, Baked Boy-tato, Boys-n-Berry Pie...it goes on and on.)

After read aloud was over, one of my students asked if I had The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Sadly, I only have the variant. I will have to correct that soon. A day later, the same student came back from the book fair with The Dog Who Cried Wolf.

I love it when I get them started and they keep going on their own!

Poetry Friday--Note to self

Remember to think twice when you are frustrated. Perhaps you should think of him as a poet rather than a problem.

The Poet
by Tom Wayman

Loses his position on worksheet or page in textbook
May speak much but makes little sense
Cannot give clear verbal instructions
Does not understand what he reads
Does not understand what he hears
Cannot handle “yes-no” questions


(The rest is here. Round up is at Mentor Texts.)

Humor, Memory, Imagination

Great read aloud today! I love it when the sense of humor part of 4th graders' brains starts to develop in earnest. Or in hilarity, as it were.

That's all I'm going to write for today because I left the books I read aloud today at school, and without them in front of me, all the specifics are gone. Poof.

So instead, let's ponder this article about what happens to an adult's brain when the memory starts to go.

Sigh.

Stay tuned for more about today's great read aloud.

Mr. Pine's Mixed-Up Signs

I visited Joseph-Beth Bookstore in Cincinnati over the weekend. I was thrilled to see a republished edition of one of my favorite books from childhood-Mr. Pine's Mixed-Up Signs! My husband was in the store with me and I recited the first page before opening the book! (Scary how you can still do that 40 years later...). So, of course I bought the book. I read it to my eight year old who loved it too. How could you not love Mr. Pine?

I did a little research on the publisher--Purple House Press. It seems their mission is to bring back those great children's books that have gone out of print. They have republished all of the Mr. Pine books! (I believe the company is names after their first project--Mr. Pine's Purple House.) And the site has a bit of info about the author, Leonard Kessler.

So, I found a great book from childhood and a great company with a mission that I love! I am looking forward to adding all of the Mr. Pine books to my collection once again!

Trucktown Debut!

It was a big week for us in Columbus. Jon Scieszka and Loren Long stopped by Columbus on their book tour for their new, amazing series for young readers--TRUCKTOWN!


They visited our school on Thursday, thanks to Cover to Cover Bookstore and Simon and Schuster. To get ready for the visit, I read the new book SMASH! CRASH! to lots of K-2 classrooms. I got the same feeling when I read this book as I did when I read Mo Willem's DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS to young children when it first came out. SMASH! CRASH! begs for child participation--yelling Smash! Crash! is part of the fun. But there is more to this first book than that.--great fun characters that are predictable in their actions, some great humor, fun fonts , and amazing illustrations. How three illustrators can come together to create one illustration is fascinating to me. And the result is amazing. If you know the work of Loren Long, David Shannon, and David Gordon, you can see in each illustration, what each person brings to the art. The colors, the characters, even the lettering is quite engaging.

The visit was great fun! Loren Long spoke to our K-2 students at Chapman. He drew a truck--showing them how he did that, read the book (asking them to join in when it was time to yell CRASH!), and spent time answering questions. Loren came dressed in his Trucktown Mechanic Suit which added to the fun.

Both Jon and Loren spoke at Cover to Cover and it was standing room only. The audience's reaction to the book was extremely positive as the kids joined in and laughed throughout the book. If either of them come anywhere near your city, go see them!

Jon, our new National Ambassador for Children's Literature, talked a bit about what we can expect from Trucktown in the next few years. I think he said that there will be 50 TRUCKTOWN books over the next few years. More picture books likes SMASH! CRASH!, some easy chapter books that young children can read on their own, board books, and more.

I am a huge fan of kids reading books where they know and love the characters. These Trucktown characters are certainly characters that we will all find ourselves falling in love with--my current favorite is IZZY the Ice Cream Truck. (After seeing Loren Long act out Izzy'a part, Izzy may be my lifetime favorite character!)

You can tell that Jon Scieszka did a great deal of research before embarking on such a project. These book are very inviting for the kids he wrote them for. In a Columbus Dispatch article announcing his visit to Columbus, Jon spoke a bit about his platform: The article said that his message is that: Adults should back off from making kids read the "right" books, expand the definition of reading to include all mediums and technologies, stop demonizing television and, above all, read themselves.

Perfect timing for a series like this and a perfect team to create the series. I can't wait to see the rest of the series!