AND THEN THERE WERE GNOMES

Guinea Pig Pet Shop Private Eye #2: And Then There Were Gnomes
by Colleen Af Venable
illustrated by Stephanie Yue
Graphic Universe, 2010
I bought this book because I'm a sucker for series books, and besides, you just can't have too many books with a guinea pig main character in your classroom library. Plus it's a mystery and a graphic novel all in one.

Sasspants the pet shop guinea pig who, in book one, was called upon by Hamisher the hamster to solve a mystery because the g on her cage label had fallen off, making her a GUINEA PI (private investigator, get it?), is once again needed to solve the mystery of where all the mice are going to. The pet shop is down to just one mouse, the pet mouse of the chinchillas, and the store is being haunted by a ghost to make things even more complicated and creepy.

In spite of the clueless (pardon the pun) pet shop owner, the airhead goldfish, the vain chinchillas, and the rabbits who borrow one of the mystery books from Sasspants' personal library but need to be told what books are for: "READ them, don't EAT them!" Sasspants manages to solve the mystery of the missing mice.

BINKY TO THE RESCUE

Binky to the Rescue
by Ashley Spires
Kids Can Press, 2010
my cat Willie Morris (who looks a lot like Binky except he's orange and white) made me buy this book

Last September, Franki reviewed the first of the Binky Adventures, Binky the Space Cat, and as soon as I laid hands on that book I was in love. This summer at the Kids Can Press booth at ALA (I'm beaming a million more thanks toward Canada even as I write), I got a Binky the Space Cat lanyard for my ID, which I've faithfully worn since the beginning of the school year. Imagine my chagrin when one of our reading support teachers came dancing in my room with HER copy of Binky to the Rescue before I had gotten MINE!

As soon as Willie Morris was done reading his my copy when it arrived, I took it to school. I immediately gave it to the overworked Instructional Support Teachers in the office next to my classroom. They looked like they needed a laugh. One started reading it and giggling out loud and the other insisted on a read aloud. Soon I could hear the healthy sound of laughter coming from their office.

Just about the same thing happened in my classroom. One of my most serious, get-down-to-business students was grinning (GRINNING!) and chuckling over Binky's belief that he's keeping the house safe from aliens (which are really just bugs), that when Binky falls out the window, he thinks he's in outer space, that he digs a tunnel to rescue his mousie Ted from the wasps, and that the story might not be quite over at the end of the book.

You look like you need a laugh today. Go get your (cat's) copy of Binky To The Rescue!

EMILY'S FORTUNE by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Emily's Fortune
by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Random House (Delacorte Press), 2010
review copy provided by the publisher

When we finished Clementine, Friend of the Week (my review here), our first read aloud of the year, I asked my class what kind of book they wanted to hear next. They wanted action, adventure, scary and longer than Clementine.

My pick? Emily's Fortune.


Action? Tree climbing, stagecoach rides, near-drowning...Check.

Adventure? Orphaned girl disguised as a boy running away from an evil uncle who wants her ten million dollar inheritance...Check.

Scary? "The man at the bar wore black boots up to the knee, brown britches, and a brown shirt. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to the elbows; his large arms bulged out of his sleeves, and on one of the huge arms was...a tiger tattoo."  Well, probably not scary by ten year-old standards, but it will have to do.

Emily's Fortune is only 147 pages, so it won't qualify for longer than Clementine, but it takes a look at friendship and trust that will make a nice compare/contrast with Clementine, Friend of the Week. It will also give us more cliffhangers than one book should be allowed to have, as well as some extra-"juicy" words and phrases for our word wall:

"Who in flippin' flapjacks..."

"Where in tumblin' tarnation..."

"What in the hokie smokies..."

"How in the ding-dong dickens..."

Word Study

Locust, or cicada, is chicharra in Spanish. I know this because as we were looking at the shells and corpses of cicadas that one of my girls brought in (you go, GIRL!), one of my Spanish-speakers walked up and said with an authority that he does not have yet in English, "Chicharra." We all tried to roll our r's as well as he did and the more we said chicharra, the more we sounded like a bunch of cicadas in the trees. Say it! See what I mean?!?

I love that my students are bringing their passions to school already in the third week, and I love that we are adding first-language words to our "juicy" words we're collecting. When the one-third of my class who were gone for Eid on Friday return this week, we'll see if there are words from their language and their celebration that we can add to our list and learn.

Here's where we collect our "juicy" words:

This is the best solution for covering our classroom's mirror that I've ever come up with -- "Reflect on These JUICY Words." The classroom assistant has a pad of sticky notes, and whenever anyone come across a "juicy" word in the book they're reading or I'm reading aloud, in class discussion, overheard in a conversation, etc., they help the assistant put it on a note and post it on the mirror.

Every so often, I type the newest juicy words onto a blank page in the SmartBoard software. This is our electronic Word Wall! I've made each of the words on the word wall a piece of movable text so that we can sort the words, looking for similarities and differences, categories, parts of speech, prefixes, suffixes, etc.

Soon we'll need to make a second page, we've collected so many words. I can't wait to see how this Word Wall project develops. Out of all the ways I've tried to integrate my new SmartBoard into my teaching, this is my favorite so far.

Making Lemonade

Good thing our phone was on the fritz a couple of weeks ago. That meant we didn't have Internet access on a Tuesday night when all my work depended on getting online. Needed to pay bills. Little stuff like that.

We packed a book to read (him), a computer (her), and went to Scotties, the nearest Free Internet With Your Cup of Coffee joint that we could think of.

I was (more than) just a little tired and crabby about not being able to work at home in my jammies and then fall right into bed. As we walked into Scotties, my ears went, "Is that LIVE music?" and the crabby started to leak right out of me. Four old guys were playing 1940's-60's tunes on electric guitars that were amped but not cranked. They sounded like my childhood guitar teacher, Rudy Schlichenmayer. They sat slouched over their guitars in a wide half-circle so they could watch each other and riff off each other. When they sang, their voices sounded like the records my parents used to play. My crabbiness left me. I started noticing that they weren't really all that old, now that I'm on the near side of old myself. They were probably in their 60's. They obviously liked each other and enjoyed getting together to have a public jam session.

I got my work done. We checked the schedule. They play every Tuesday night. I'll be there whenever I can.

Poetry Friday -- Butterflies

One of the Butterflies

by W. S. Merwin

The trouble with pleasure is the timing

it can overtake me without warning

and be gone before I know it is here

it can stand facing me unrecognized

while I am remembering somewhere else

in another age or someone not seen

for years and never to be seen again

in this world and it seems that I cherish

only now a joy I was not aware of

when it was here although it remains

out of reach and will not be caught or named

or called back and if I could make it stay

as I want to it would turn to pain.

I took the pictures. (It's the same butterfly, showing off her outer and inner beauties.) I found the poem at The Writer's Almanac and couldn't figure out a way to divide it. Hopefully the copyright police will allow me this rare indiscretion.

The roundup today is at Picture Book of the Day, hosted by Anastasia Suen.

Happy Friday! And, hey, don't let your happiness get away from you like a butterfly that doesn't sit still for a picture -- pay attention to your happiness and enjoy it NOW, while it's right there in front of you!

3 Picture Books for Young Readers

THE BOSS BABY by Marla Frazee is hysterical.  The story starts out with these words, "From the moment the baby arrived, it was obvious that he was the boss."  The story goes through those typical things new parents go through dealing with the demands of a new baby 24/7.  The illustrations really make the book what it is. The baby is dressed like a top executive--in a suit and tie. He sets up his office in his bouncy seat and "calls meetings" from his crib.  You will LOVE this baby!

I bought KIKI's BLANKIE by Janie Bynum because I immediately fell in love with Kiki the monkey.  She is ADORABLE.  And she LOVES her polka-dot blankie. (My favorite page is when she is using it as a beach towel, laying out wearing sunglasses.)  Kiki never goes anywhere without her blankie and then she loses it. She has to have courage to get it back.  She so loves her blankie! This would be a fun companion book to Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems.

I found out that the author of DEAR TYRANNOSAURUS REX, Lisa McClatchy, lives in Columbus.  I had so many kids looking for books with dinosaurs this week in the library, that I am sure this will be a popular one.  It is a cute story of a little girl who sends a letter to the dinosaur in the museum, inviting him to her birthday party. The book is actually her letter.  She tells him all of the great things that will happen if he comes. Each page begins with, "If you come to our party...". I think this would be a great mentor for writing.  Each page uses the repeated phrase to give a detail about the birthday party.  The ending is a fun surprise!

THE ROBIN MAKES A LAUGHING SOUND: A BIRDER'S JOURNAL by Sallie Wolf

A colleague at work shared THE ROBIN MAKES A LAUGHING SOUND with me and I ordered it right away. I loved this book for lots of reasons--even though I know almost nothing about birds and I am not a bird-watcher.  Our library overlooks a courtyard and it would be a great place for bird watching if I can figure out how best to set up feeders to attract them. Until then, I am picking up great bird books for kids. This one may be my favorite.

The intro of the book is a note from the author, telling us that her 7th grade teacher introduced her to bird watching and describes some of the work that she did in that class. She has been hooked ever since.  The rest of the book is a birder's journal. It is filed with poems, sketches, observations and more.  The pages are made to look like a real journal--with some things taped in, etc.  There is a variety of writing and I can see kids learning so much from this book--both as a writer and as a scientist.

When I was in the classroom, I always looked for great books that showed how writers worked in the real world. This is a great example of a "writer's notebook" to share with students if you use notebooks in your classroom. It might invite kids to try new things in their own notebooks.

Another Great Song Book--IF YOU'RE A MONSTER AND YOU KNOW IT

Now that the kids in the library are totally excited about books they can sing because of PETE THE CAT, I am on the lookout for new books with downloadable songs.  I so love the work of Rebecca and Ed Emberly that I was excited to see IF YOU'RE A MONSTER AND YOU KNOW IT just in time for the Halloween season.

This is a new version of the classic song, "If You're Happy and You Know It."  But it takes on a fun twist asking kids to do things like "smack your claws" and "twitch your tail".  Just as with other books that are coming with songs these days, there is a fun song that can be downloaded for singalongs or just listening.  It is at Scholastic's site along with other information on the book.

As with their other books, the illustrations in this one are bright and colorful and set against black.  I think if I put bright paper out, kids will have a great time trying to create some of their own monsters using Emberly's art as a mentor.

A PIG PARADE IS A TERRIBLE IDEA: Great Mentor Text For Persuasive Writing, but More Importantly, A GREAT, FUN READ ALOUD

I have been waiting patiently for my copy of A PIG PARADE IS A TERRIBLE IDEA by Michael Ian Black. Since I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED CHICKEN CHEEKS, when Bill at Literate Lives shared this new one, I ordered it right away!

A PIG PARADE IS A TERRIBLE IDEA by Michael Ian Black is a crack up! This book would make for a great fun read aloud. This is a great book about all of the reasons that a pig parade is a bad idea--my favorite reason is that "pigs absolutely refuse to wear majorette uniforms". There are many, many reasons that the authors give us, but that one was my personal favorite. The humor is quite sophisticated and I will have to try it out but I am pretty sure it will make my BOOKS I COULD READ A MILLION TIMES list.

I could see using this book in writing workshop as a great mentor text for persuasive writing. (If you do use it for writing workshop, please, please, please make sure to read it aloud to your kids a few times first--just for the fun of it.) The authors begin the book with a great lead about thinking that maybe a pig parade might be a good idea. Then they go through point by point and explain why this is a terrible idea. At the end of the book, they summarize again why this is so bad. When I did units with upper elementary kids on persuasive writing, finding great examples was often a little bit difficult. I'd find a few things online and lots of op ed pieces, but there weren't many great picture books that kids could study to learn about persuasive writing. This book is one of the best pieces of persuasive writing I have seen. Readers are clearly convinced by the last page, that a Pig Parade is definitely a terrible idea!