Coming Soon: March

It looks like March is going to be an expensive month! So many great books I am looking forward to!

**click**

That click in the title is the sound of us pressing the "pause" button on our blog.

We'll be back in a week.

We just need some time to THINK and REFLECT on yesterday's Dublin Literacy Conference, and some time to READ and WRITE ABOUT all these books that are piling up around us!

Poetry Friday -- Lit Conference Preso

Maria (Teaching in the 21st Century) and I are going to be presenting about Poetry Friday at the Dublin Literacy Conference tomorrow. If your ears are burning, now you'll know why!

Sheri has the round up at Sheri Doyle: reading, writing, reflecting on children's literature.

Starring Jules (As Herself)

Starring Jules #1: Starring Jules (As Herself)
by Beth Ain
Scholastic, on shelves March 2013

Jules is a list maker, a worrier, and a girl with a whole lot of pizzazz. Her friendship with Charlotte is on shaky ground, but she is hopeful that she'll become friends with the new girl from London.

Jules' pizzazz is spotted by a talent scout and she is given a chance to try out for a mouthwash commercial. The only problem is that that mouthwash is orange flavored, and Jules has an irrational fear of the flavor of oranges.

This is going to be a fun series for readers who love Clementine, Frankly Frannie and Just Grace. Although Jules has an artist mom, a chef dad, an apartment in New York City, and a teacher from Cuba ("...her English sounds like the music they play on the beach in Florida."), Jules is ordinary enough to strike a chord with all kinds of readers.

White Fur Flying

White Fur Flying
by Patricia MacLachlan
Margaret K. McElderry Books, on shelves March 2013

Alice and Zoe's family in White Fur Flying is involved in Great Pyrenees (Pyrs) rescue/fostering. They have enough space and time and love to take in Pyrs until the right home can be found for them. They even have a rescued parrot named Lena who is quite the talker.

In a parallel/opposite story, the new family next door to them consists of a stiff aunt and uncle and very scared and silent nephew, Phillip, who is staying with them while his parents work out some difficulties.

The patience and insight of the girls and the unconditional love of the dogs work together to bring all the threads of this story to a satisfying conclusion.

#DubLit13

It's almost time for the Dublin Literacy Conference!

Hope to see you there!

Watch for tweets all day Saturday at #DubLit13.

Like Bug Juice on a Burger

Like Bug Juice on a Burger
by Julie Sternberg
illustrated by Matthew Cordell
Abrams, on shelves April 2013

This sweet little novel in verse is the sequel to Like Pickle Juice on a Cookie.

In this book, the main character, Eleanor, is going to go to summer sleep-over camp. Her grandmother gives it to her as a gift, remembering that Eleanor's mother loved it when she was Eleanor's age.

Eleanor does NOT like camp -- the food is bad, she's the only one who can't swim, and she misses her parents and New York City.

Luckily, she makes a new friend. Joplin is VERY tall and VERY different from Eleanor, but she winds up making ALL the difference to Eleanor.

Poetry Friday -- Take a Deep Breath and Count to Ten

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Claudio Vaccaro

SOME DAYS ARE LIKE THAT

My teacher’s sitting in her chair,

her head between her hands.

She’s mumbling and muttering…

I think she just said SAND!

This really isn’t like her.

I know she lives to teach.

But that was unmistakable…

my teacher just said BEACH!

© Mary Lee Hahn, 2013

It's been a rough week. Sometimes the only thing that kept me sane was my poetry writing goal. 

Linda has the roundup today at TeacherDance.

Happy Valentine's Day! I Haiku You!

I Haiku You
by (Ohio author) Betsy E. Snyder
Random House Books for Young Readers, 2012
review copy from my classroom library

What (or who) do you love? Betsy Snyder's twenty haiku love poems will definitely make you want to write a few of your own.

Here are some my students came up with to share with you today -- Happy Valentine's Day!

cute little faces
hopping around behind me --
look, it's the bunnies!

I love chocolate!
It melts on my tongue so slow.
Chocolate is the best!

Delicious, sweetness!
I share my cookies with friends!
Cookies are my world!

I love monster trucks.
They do front flips and back flips.
They go really high.

They're with you always --
annoying you, comforting...
but they're still family.

Buzzer beater: SWISH!
I really like basketball --
the best game ever.

Pizza, I love you.
Pizza, pizza, you're so good.
Pizza, so good and juicy.

Dance, dance, I love it!
Every day my body moves.
I cannot stop it!

Japan is the best!
Japan has yummy food, so...
Japan is the best!

Dark carmel chocolate
with a little bitterness --
it's really creamy.

Your chocolately taste
is really really yummy.
Brownies are awesome!

Your music is the best.
You guys are so funny.
Oh, One Direction!!

I love oatmeal,
brown sugar especially.
It smells really good.

I so love bacon!
So yummy in my tummy!
So, so delicious!

The Goodreads Playground

I mentioned in a post last month that some of the Columbus Dispatch Kid Readers (with the help/supervision/blessing of their parents) have joined Goodreads.

Let's back up a minute and just talk about the ways we adults keep track of what we've read. My mom has a little notebook where she writes down titles and authors. She's a voracious mystery series reader, and she needs to keep track of which books in which series she's already read. My friend Lisa is the keeper of our book club's history of reading. She's got a list that goes all the way back to our club's first book together, Lucy Calkins' THE ART OF TEACHING WRITING, which we read when it was new. I was inspired by a fellow writer for the (now defunct) OSU publication THE W.E.B. to read a children's book a week (or if not a book every week, then at least 52 children's books a year). That was back in the mid-1980's. I have a whole shelf full of notebooks listing all of the books I read for about 25 years. Then, in 2007, Goodreads came on the scene. For a few years, I kept both my notebook and my Goodreads listing, but my reading record is now completely digital.

Okay. So we keep track of what we read.

But what if we'd been doing that since we were 10 or 11 years old?

It's been amazing to watch these kids explore and play on Goodreads. First they entered just the book they were currently reading. But that soon expanded. One girl keeps a list of her 5th grade reads in her Take Home folder as well as in her Language Arts binder; she entered all 50+ books she's read this year. After that, I saw other lists expand all the way back to favorites from their early reading years. They've started creating bookshelves -- learning the power of tagging -- and they're marking books as "To Read" -- planning ahead for future reading.

I heard from a parent that sending messages is a popular facet of Goodreads -- the account was created through the mom's email, and her daughter is now getting more emails than she is -- many with the sole content being, "Hi!"

That might be a somewhat trivial part of the way the students are using Goodreads, but they are also following authors' reviews, becoming fans of authors, collecting quotes, setting reading goals, and creating book quizes. Not just taking quizes, creating them and inviting the other Columbus Dispatch Readers to take them!

Up until now, Goodreads has simply been a place for me to log the books I've read. These kid-readers have explored it like a playground, finding every interesting nook and cranny and trying it all out for themselves. I can't wait to watch their reading habits change and evolve as they move through middle school, high school, and beyond. (We'll just assume for the sake of argument that there will still be both an Internet and a site called Goodreads that will last that long as well...)

Columbus Dispatch Kid Readers blog is here.