CitizenKid: How To Build Your Own Country

This is the second in a series of posts about the Kids Can Press series, CitizenKid. CitizenKid is "A collection of books that inform children about the world and inspire them to be better global citizens."

We're featuring the CitizenKid series because one of the CitizenKid authors, David J. Smith, will be at the February 20, 2010 Dublin Literacy Conference.

The theme of this year's conference, our 21st, is "Celebrating 21st Century Literacies." From the NCTE Position Statement on 21st Century Literacies, we know that "Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments"

There will certainly be authors and presenters at the conference whose topics deal with the tools of technology, multi-media texts, and information management. Just as important, there will be a focus on relationships, cross-cultural collaboration, and the global community.

We hope you'll consider joining us for the day on February 20 at the Dublin Literacy Conference. You can find registration information here.

How To Build Your Own Country

by Valerie Wyatt

illustrated by Fred Rix

Kids Can Press, 2009

As it turns out, there are just three simple steps to building your own country: 1. Stake our your identity, 2. Run the country, and 3. Meet the Neighbors.

Author Valerie Wyatt leads the reader through the details of these three easy steps with lots of humor (the example country is Bathmatia, with a population of 3 [including dog] and a capital city of Lintbourg) and plenty of real-world examples, such as the annexation of East Timor by Indonesia in 1975 and the motto of the African countries of Chad and Burundi ("Unity, Work, Progress.") There's a template for creating your new country's passport, and for writing a National Anthem (to the tune of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm"). Since you're going to have to set up a government, you might as well learn about a few of the most common forms, and in the likely event that you choose a democracy, you can find out about holding elections, writing a constitution, making laws and money, and serving your citizens.

You probably have to teach a unit on government at some point during the year, right? Why not grab a copy of this book and see how much your students can learn by creating their own countries!

CitizenKid: One Hen

This is the first in a series of posts about the Kids Can Press series, CitizenKid. CitizenKid is "A collection of books that inform children about the world and inspire them to be better global citizens."

We're featuring the CitizenKid series because one of the CitizenKid authors, David J. Smith, will be at the February 20, 2010 Dublin Literacy Conference.

The theme of this year's conference, our 21st, is "Celebrating 21st Century Literacies." From the NCTE Position Statement on 21st Century Literacies, we know that "Twenty-first century readers and writers need to

• Develop proficiency with the tools of technology
• Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally
• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes
• Manage, analyze and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information
• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multi-media texts
• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments"

There will certainly be authors and presenters at the conference whose topics deal with the tools of technology, multi-media texts, and information management. Just as important, there will be a focus on relationships, cross-cultural collaboration, and the global community.

We hope you'll consider joining us for the day on February 20 at the Dublin Literacy Conference. You can find registration information here.

One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference

by Katie Milway and Eugenie Fernandes

illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes

Kids Can Press, 2008

review copy compliments of the publisher

This is my review from March 31, 2008:

Based on the true story of Ghanian Kwabena Darko, ONE HEN tells the story of the difference that microfinancing can make to an individual, a family, a community, and ultimately, a country.

In the story, Kojo and his mother live in a community that pools its resources and allows the families to take turns borrowing the money for a project that will help them to make a profit before they pay back the loan. Kojo's mother uses her turn to buy a cart so she can carry more firewood to market. With a part of their profit, Kojo buys one hen. The hen provides them with eggs, but also generates more profit. Kojo buys more hens, realizes he needs to finish school to better run his business and eventually gets a scholarship to an agricultural college. When he returns from college, he expands his poultry business, providing jobs for the community and paying taxes that help his country.

ONE HEN is beautifully designed. The illustrations, by Eugenie Fernandes, are bold and colorful paintings. Each double page spread is one third or one half text on a rich (pun intended), luminous gold background. On each illustration is a line reminiscent of "The House That Jack Built":

This is Kojo.
This is the loan that Kojo gets.
This is the hen that Kojo buys with the loan he got.
These are the eggs that Kojo sells from the hen he bought.

The book includes information about the "Real Kojo," Kwabena Darko, and sections titled "What you can do to help?" and "Making changes in the world, on person, one family, one community at a time..." There is also a glossary of African and economics terms.

ONE HEN was featured on the NPR story, Child's 'One Hen' Lays Microlending Success.

Be sure to check out the ONE HEN website.

Poetry Friday -- Sweet

Joy
by Julie Cadwallader Staub

Who could need more proof than honey—

How the bees with such skill and purpose
enter flower after flower
sing their way home
to create and cap the new honey
just to get through the flowerless winter.

And how the bear with intention and cunning
raids the hive
shovels pawful after pawful into his happy mouth
bats away indignant bees
stumbles off in a stupor of satiation and stickiness.

And how we humans can't resist its viscosity
its taste of clover and wind
its metaphorical power:
don't we yearn for a land of milk and honey?
don't we call our loved ones "honey?"

all because bees just do, over and over again, what they were made to do.

(the rest of the poem is at The Writer's Almanac)

I've posted some heavy-duty "gettin' through the rough times" poems in the last couple of months. (Thanks for your patience, Regular Readers.) When I saw this poem on The Writer's Almanac last week, I knew I wanted to use it. Partly for a change of mood, partly because I knew I had taken that great bee-on-a-sunflower shot last September (click on the picture to fill your screen with JOY), and mostly because my class has (finally) come together and I know again that I am doing what I was made to do...and the world is sweet.

The round-up this week is at the blog of the author whose book gets to wear the shiny Caldecott Honor Medal: Liz in Ink is the blog, Liz Garton Scanlon is the author. (Marla Frazee made the winning pictures, but couldn't have done it without Liz's fabulous words!)

HOW TO CLEAN YOUR ROOM by Eileen Spinelli

I bought HOW TO CLEAN YOUR ROOM without even looking past the cover. Once I saw that it was written by Eileen Spinelli, I knew it would be good. This is a unique "How To" book. It is not only a how to book but it is also a pop up book. This book starts out telling you how to clean your room. She knows that the closets is a mess and the books are piled high. But instead of the drudgery that usually comes with cleaning a room, Eileen Spinelli reminds us of all that we love in our rooms--all of the memories, all of the fun. She reminds us not to rush when we clean our rooms, but to slow down and enjoy the memories. My favorite line in the books says this about cleaning your room. "It's to feather-dust the corners of yourself slowly."

I love the poetic language in this book. It really makes me think about my expectations of a how-to book--such a nice surprise. It would be a great mentor text for kids. And, I so wish I had had this book when I did my book weeding last month. It would have made the task so much more enjoyable!

PicPocket Books

I have been watching some of the iPhone/iPod apps that offer picture books for kids. Lots of companies seem to be jumping at the opportunity to get books out there, no matter the quality. I haven't had much luck finding great books. But when I saw that one of Grace Lin's book ROUND IS A MOONCAKE: A BOOK OF SHAPES was a new PicPocket Book, I thought I'd check it out.

The problem with so many of the other sites I've found that offer books for kids to read on a handheld, is the fact that the books were written and produced for this purpose. Needless to say, the quality of many of the books designed as an app are not too great. PicPocket books offers mostly books that are already well reviewed by reviewers--books that kids already enjoy in book form.

I loved ROUND IS A MOONCAKE. The book is well done. You can choose to have it read to you and choose to have word highlighted as they are read. Picpocket doesn't have a huge selection of books yet, but the ones that they have are good.

I was pretty worried that picture books would never be good enough on a handheld--that ebooks were really about books for adults. But after seeing ROUND IS A MOONCAKE, I think I was wrong.

I am not sure how many of these books we'll want our kids to have on their iPod or how we balance this out for young readers. They are semi-expensive because you buy each one as its own app. Each costs a few dollars. But I think this is similar to listening centers and other ways kids have enjoyed books over the years. I can imagine kids having a copy of the "real" book and a copy of the ebook for trips, etc. I also think there are some good implications for the library and classroom if companies continue to put out quality books. As long as the book and story are good, I see it as a great thing for kids to do on their own. I am excited to see some great books like Grace Lin's becoming part of the world of handheld picture books. I am so happy to see PicPocket Books working toward getting quality books reformatted in this way.

The Socially Networked Classroom by William Kist

I have been reading lots professionally dealing with 21st Century Literacies. I have watched my own literacy change over the last few years and I am excited about the impact it can have for children in education. THE SOCIALLY NETWORKED CLASSROOM: TEACHING IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE by William Kist is my new favorite on the topic. I like it for lots of reasons:

-Kist gets into lots of classrooms and helped me to create a vision of what this could actually look like. It is clear that he works with a variety of teachers so he shows us many possibilities for social networking in the classroom.

-He is realistic in his understanding of the challenges we face as teachers trying to implement social networking. So, he takes time to share ideas no matter what kinds of blocks and constraints you have in your school/district. He gets to the bigger picture of 21st Century skills so that there is an in for everyone.

-He balances the theory with practical examples and some info on some terms we may not know. His voice is easy to follow and even when he is introducing something that was new to me, he helped me understand the tool as well as implications for student learning.

Early in the book, Kist says, "This book takes the stand that the writing is on the wall or rather on the screen: Schools are going to have to move past whatever barriers exist and closer to the literacy practices increasingly used in the "outside world". No matter where you may be on the continuum of believing in or disbelieving the construct of "childhood", there can be no doubt that communication in this new century is going to be different than communicating in the old century-not necessarily better or worse but different..."

Later he goes on to say that this book "chronicles the sometimes messy first steps of educators who are attempting to include social networking inside real schools and who are grappling with all the challenges that come along with this new kind of teaching."

If you are thinking about this topic at all, I would say this is a must-read. Even though it is written specifically for teachers of grades 5-12, I found it to be very applicable to elementary grades. I could see how things could be tweaked a bit to work for younger kids.

The English Companion Ning is beginning a book talk on THE SOCIALLY NETWORKED CLASSROOM this week. Bill Kist will be leading the discussion. I am anxious to get a sense of what others are doing with this issue and to hear others' responses. I think this book is going to make a huge impact on classrooms as we work to figure out the role of social networking in our classrooms.

WINNERS!

Last year, I totally had to concede to Franki -- only she and our bookstore friends, Beth and Sally, had read The Graveyard Book. This year, Bill, Karen and I get to be in the picture, too! Congratulations to Rebecca Stead and When You Reach Me for winning the Newbery Award! (Sally has The Shiny Stickers in her hand, ready to put on all the copies of books that hadn't already been sold!)

Here's the hash (sweet potato with smoked turkey, eggs over hard)...

And here are the Central OH bloggers who were able to get together today for the re-hash of the awards: which books won, which didn't, which we read, which we haven't, and which intern at Random House Kids lost their job this morning because they Tweeted the Newbery Award at least 5 minutes before it had been awarded from the podium.

We reconvened at Cover to Cover for more book talk and, of course, to buy some books. Pictured are (back row) Mandy, Bill, Kristine, Katie, Shelly, (front row) Franki, Karen, Mary Lee, and Lisa. We were joined for breakfast by Tony.

You can see many of the winners in our hands.
All the winners are listed here.

Kids Weigh in on Caldecott Award

This week, we spent library time looking at about 70 2009 picture books that could win the Caldecott Award. After having Loren Scully from the Dublin Library come talk to the kids last week, they had time to really look at the books this week. I always enjoy listening in on their conversations, but I really love to see the books that they gravitate to. I worry that they will vote for only the books they know, but that is never the case. They are much to smart to do that--they take this vote very seriously.

This year, the following books were favorites of the 1st through 5th graders at our school--in no particular order. It was fun to watch them spend so much time thinking hard about the 2009 picture books. I imagine these will all be checked out consistently for the rest of the school year.

THERE ARE CATS IN THIS BOOK by Vivianne Schwartz was one that so many kids loved. I didn't realize that the illustrator was from the UK until after it was out. It gave me a way in to remind them of the criteria of the illustrator living in the U.S. again.

DUCK! RABBIT! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal was well-loved. Kids spent lots of time talking about the illustrations with this one with friends.

OTIS by Loren Long is my personal favorite. The kids know this and it seems that several kids agree with me. So many kids spent time finding new things in the illustrations and needing to share their findings. This seems to be a story kids love to go back to again and again.

THE LION AND THE MOUSE by Jerry Pinkney was another favorite. The kids were amazed at the illustrations and seemed to spend lots of time on single pages.

SPOON by Amy Krouse Rosenthal was another favorite. The kids were drawn to the cover and loved the story. This was a brand new one so kids hadn't seen it earlier. Kids loved the story adn the fun in the illustrations.

THE DAY-GLO BROTHERS by Chris Barton is another that kids were drawn to. I had read this book to several classes so many already loved it. But for the kids who had not seen it, they were immediately drawn to it and loved the way the story was told.

The Dust Bowl Through the Lens

The Dust Bowl Through the Lens: How Photography Revealed and Helped Remedy a National Disaster

by Martin W. Sandler

Walker Publishing Company, 2009

review copy provided by the publisher

I'm probably not a completely unbiased reviewer of this book -- my dad was born in a sod house in Eastern Colorado in the late 1920's. I heard stories of the Depression and the Dust Bowl all my growing up life on the flat, arid, treeless, barren landscape of the photos in this book. (So you can decide how much you want to trust my assessment of this book.)

This book is fabulous on many levels. First of all, it is inviting and accessible. Every double page spread has a short essay with a telling title and quote that functions as a subheading on the left, and a period photo that illustrates the essay on the right. The photos are so compelling that one way to read the book is simply to look at the photos and read the captions.

As much as it is a book about the Dust Bowl, this is a book about the history of the development of photography as an art form...which just happened to take place during the years of and largely because of the Dust Bowl photographers.

This is a book about how art (photography) can be used to document and remedy social inequities.

It is a book not merely about what the Dust Bowl did to the people but also about what it did to the land -- it's a book about the importance of soil conservation and smart farming practices.

This book is a testimony to the strength of the human spirit and the will to survive. And we mustn't forget that the Dust Bowl also gave us The Grapes of Wrath, Woody Guthrie, The Wizard of Oz, and Will Rogers.

History was changed because of the Dust Bowl and because of the Depression, because of the Okies and because of Roosevelt's response to the economic tragedies of the nation at that time, because of photographers like Dorothea Lange and because of the photographs themselves. At the same time, photography evolved from a portrait-making tool, to a tool for social change. A new form of storytelling, photojournalism, was born of the Dust Bowl and the Depression, as were photographic essays. The way we get information and understand the world around us was radically changed during those years.

Like I said, this book is fabulous on many levels. Pick it up and take a look. I'm pretty sure you'll have a hard time putting it down without reading the whole thing.

Poetry Friday -- There Are Worse Things

THINGS

by Fleur Adcock

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.

(the rest of the poem is at The Writer's Almanac)

I hate it when I goof: when I forget something important, when I drop the ball, when I'm late no matter how hard I've tried to be on time, when my intentions are misread, when I speak without thinking or without sufficient preparation. I am haunted by my mistakes. They leave their tracks everywhere. The snow will melt and others will no longer see them, but I can't erase them from my memory.

Mary Ann's got the Poetry Friday Round Up at Great Kid Books today.