Dying To Meet You

Dying to Meet You (43 Old Cemetery Road: Book One)

by Kate Klise

illustrated by Sarah Klise

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., 2009

review copy provided by the publisher

I love the Regarding the.... series by the Klise sisters, but sadly, I have never been able to get my fourth graders to share my love. I think I'll try this book as my next shared read aloud, and then we'll see if I can hook some readers into the Regarding the... series! (or at least the second book of this series -- Over My Dead Body)

Dying To Meet You is written like the Regarding the.... series, billing itself as "a collection of actual letter and documents written over the course of one summer and pertaining to the strange events that took place in a certain house located at 43 Old Cemetery Road in an otherwise quiet town called Ghastly, Illinois." As in the Regarding the.... books, the reader has to make lots of inferences, but the pages aren't quite so packed with information that might be pertinent to the story (or that might be there just to amuse the reader). The story line is more straight forward, and the letters and documents are more clearly linked.

A famous children's author moves into a Victorian mansion to finish the book he's working on. Unfortunately, he has a bad case of writer's block, and also unfortunately, he finds that the mansion is already occupied by a ghost and an 11 year-old boy who has been mostly abandoned by his globe-trotting parents. The writer, the ghost and the boy are at odds at first, but wind up working together towards a common goal.

One of my favorite things about this book are the puns with the names: Ghastly, Illinois; a children's book writer named I. B. Grumply; Anita Sale, a real estate agent; E. Gadds, a lawyer. And on, and on.

A very fun read for 3rd-6th graders.

Reviews: 100 Scope Notes, Dr. Quinn's Book Blog, TheHappyNappyBookseller, Literate Lives.

Kate and Sarah Klise's website.

Author Visit -- Melissa Sweet

Two weeks ago, Melissa Sweet was the visiting author at our school. There are three great things about an author visit: all the learning that takes place before the visit, the excitement of meeting the author on the day of the visit, and the learning that lingers after the author has gone back home!

Second graders learning about Ohio animals made constellations of the animals after reading TUPELO RIDES THE RAILS.

These students wrote about their grandmothers after reading CARMINE: A LITTLE MORE RED.

If you're getting ready to meet an illustrator, you might want to take some sketching lessons online and sketch an illustration to go along with your wolf research.

Third graders practiced letter writing by writing letters to Melissa Sweet.

Fourth graders who read A RIVER OF WORDS illustrated poems in the style of Melissa Sweet, using collage and watercolors.

CARMINE inspired word work...


...and TUPELO inspired mapping the community.

We loved Melissa Sweet's books, and loved meeting her and hearing the stories about how her ideas turned into those books. She is everything her name says she is: SWEET!

GREEN START BOOKS

I just discovered these sweet little "Green Start Books" that I love! I just picked up a few to add to baby presents. These books are little board books, made from 98% recycled materials. They are great little books--about the size of an average board book. The pages are sturdy and the illustrations are quite fun.

Each book deals with some aspect of our Earth. The two that I just picked up are called IN THE GARDEN and BABY ANIMALS. They are both done so well for young children. The text is simple and predictable. The books invite interaction. And even though they are short, they teach so much. As I mentioned, I am buying these for baby gifts but I think they are also perfect for new readers. These would be great for 1st and 2nd graders since the text is supportive and the topics are interesting. Hopefully, they'll add more to the collection. I am excited about this new series.

True Dat

From Indexed

Poetry Friday -- Numbers

Fractions are on stage in fourth grade -- it's that time of year when every skill that's been mastered (hopefully) so far gets a part in the play. Multiplication and division are still the stars, but they wear different costumes and are sometimes unrecognizable at first. The reason for understanding factors and multiples stands proudly in the spotlight with its chest thrust out, and the moment when the audience can anticipate the moves of every character on the stage, knowing almost before they do who's greater, lesser, equal, improper or mixed...oh, that moment...it is among my favorites every year.

Numbers and the four operations of mathematics come to life for Mary Cornish in her poem, Numbers. I give you two stanzas; click through to Poetry 180 for the whole poem.



Numbers
by Mary Cornish

I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.

.

.

.

There's an amplitude to long division,

as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.

The whole poem is here; the round up is at Teaching Books.

More Read Across America Fun

From SchoolTube.

Celebrating READ ACROSS AMERICA with Song!

We had a great READ ACROSS AMERICA Celebration today at school. Last year, we had a type of "carnival"--lots of activities for kids to do around books. It was a fun day and we all had a great time. This year, we decided to celebrate in a different way and it was even more fun!

The band RMT came to our school today to celebrate literacy through song. I had heard about what a great show this band does and I thought that reminding kids that songs tell stories made sense for the day. The band is a popular Central Ohio band and they have an amazing program called Songs of America. The show is almost an hour long and it tells the history of America through song. It was a GREAT way to celebrate literacy. First of all, the energy was amazing. The show has the feel of a very fun concert! The songs were put together to show the history of our country. As the band played, they told the pieces of history that were needed to understand the importance of the music they were sharing. Giant wall-size slides played behind them--showing the times and events in history that they were sharing.




Kids and teachers sang along, clapped along, and danced along. There was such a good balance of types of music shared. My favorite was the last song of the show that they wrote themselves called "American Song". (This is the last song on the clip below and also one that I am buying from iTunes next time I shop there.) The kids left smiling, laughing and, of course, dancing.

My ten-year old daughter saw this same show on Veteran's Day last year. I must say that this is a great show to celebrate any day. A great holiday show or a great show for anytime of year. This is a fun show for kids of all ages and for adults. The YouTube video below shows clips of the show but imagine 500 smiling, singing, dancing children in the audience when you watch it. If you have any money left for a show like this, I would definitely recommend getting them to your school or library.

I am trying to figure out how to do things like this on a smaller level in the school library having bands, artists, speakers, scientists, etc. in for school library events. A few whole school events like this one but then grade-level or interest-type events through the year during lunch recess, etc. So much learning and fun from events like these.

I think this was, by far, my favorite celebration of READ ACROSS AMERICA since the tradition began!

Of Fractiousness and Fractions

The Lion's Share: A Tale of Halving Cake and Eating It, Too

by Matthew McElligott

Walker & Company, 2009

review copy provided by the publisher

It's the time of year in 4th grade for fractions and fractiousness. I prefer the fractions. The Lion's Share is a great fable that gets readers to think about fractions AND good behavior.

The Lion hosts a dinner for all of the animals. Ant is on time; the other animals are not. Ant is shocked at the appalling table manners of the other animals. When it's time for dessert, the Lion serves a cake and says, "Please help yourself." The Elephant sets the tone by taking half the cake as his serving. Each animal in turn takes half of what is left, and then criticizes Ant when the crumbs she's left with fall apart, leaving none for the Lion. Ant apologizes to Lion and offers to bake him a special cake from her grandmother's recipe. Not to be outdone, each animal in turn offers to bake double the number of cakes of the animal before him, leaving Elephant with quite a task!

In the end, Lion and Ant share the special strawberry sponge cake...half and half.

Matthew McElligott's website.

Interview with the author at Classroom Book of the Week.

SPOT IT: FIND THE HIDDEN CREATURES

As you know, we have great children's librarians at the Dublin Library. This week, George came in to share books and songs with our K-2 students. As usual, he was a hit . George actually has Rock-Star Status with our K-2 students. It was a fun afternoon as he got kids excited about our upcoming Pajama Party Story Time at the Dublin Library. George shared many new books, several that I hadn't seen. One that he shared was SPOT IT! FIND THE HIDDEN CREATURES by Delphine Chedru. I have already had requests for it so I ordered one right away.

Kids love the I SPY books and I love new and unique ways that authors create seek and find books for kids. A favorite newer series of mine is SPOT 7. In the SPOT 7 books, readers have to spot 7 differences between two seemingly identical photos.

There are lots of things to like about this new SPOT IT! book. First of all, the hidden items are fun to find. Instead of photos, the illustrator creates a colorful pattern on each page. The pattern/illustrations repeat across the page but when you look more closely, you find what is hidden. The text is very simple. The book starts out telling the reader to "Find the owl who needs her glasses..." and then continues this list type book with a new item to find on each page. Some pages are easier than others but it is quite a fun book. I can see kids of all ages liking this one. I can see why George chose to share it and why it has been the most requested book since his visit!

February Mosaic

Almost half of this month's pictures feature snow and ice. We begin with a photo I call, "Art Imitates Life," and end with the drift of snow beside my car in the school parking lot. (A plow-made drift that was beautifully sculpted by the most recent few inches of snow that were delivered with a brisk biting west wind.)

My desk full of piles stressed me out on the day of our Valentine parties.

(Remember, that was the week I was out on Monday for mentor training, we had snow days Tuesday and Wednesday, we came back for Valentine madness on Thursday and then had PD all day on Friday?)

My desk full of piles stressed me out again the following Friday.

(That was the Friday that followed the week described above and then Presidents' Day off and another snow day on Tuesday (thank goodness because I was stranded in NYC) and the author visit on Friday and the Dublin Literacy Conference on Saturday.)

Remarkably, there are also flowers this month. You can see them in the desk piles (how about that stunning orchid that a student who moved to another school gave me?!? I hope I can keep it alive...I've never had an orchid before...) and as a centerpiece for the author visit breakfast. My favorite, though, is the crocus that a squirrel must have transplanted into the geranium that lives on my front porch in the summer and my classroom windowsill in the winter. In spite of the piles of snow outside the window, we had a sign of spring-to-come.

Last year's February Mosaic was quite different from this year's. Sigh. And with March just a day away, it seems completely unlikely that we will EVER see buds and blooms and sprouts again. But since the crocus in my classroom can believe in spring, I guess I can, too!