I Love Audio Books!

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Niclas Lindh

Last summer I learned about the Sync (Sync YA literature into your earphones) free (FREE) summer downloads.

Each week, they pair an adult book with a YA book, and it is free (FREE) to download the pair of books for that week.

Check out the pairs they've got lined up for 2013!

How do you get these free (FREE) audiobooks?

1. Download the OverDrive Media Console (computer) or App (portable device).
2. Create a free (FREE) Adobe account.
3. Go to the Sync website.
4. Follow the links and download the books.
5. Listen to the books...whenever! They are waiting there for you in your OverDrive app!
6. Lather, rinse, and repeat every week all summer long! (perhaps you should sign up for email or text alerts to remind you to go back to the site for all the free (FREE) book pairs they are offering)

It's Monday! What are you reading?

A weekly meme from Jen and Kellee at Teach Mentor Texts

Here are my recent reads. Reviews to come...

Gone Fishing: A novel

by Tamera Will Wissinger

illustrated by Matthew Cordell

Houghton Mifflin, 2013

Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin

by Liesl Shurtliff

Alfred A. Knopf, 2013

The Real Boy

by Anne Ursu

Walden Pond Press, 2013

The Center of Everything
by Linda Urban
Harcourt Children's Books, 2013

The Truth of Me
by Patricia MacLachlan
HarperCollins Childrens, 2013

May Mosaic

May, as you can see, was predominantly about flowers.

A couple new colors of iris (ones I brought back with me from Mom's garden) bloomed this year -- the yellow and the rust. I'm thrilled that the Jack-in-the-Pulpit I got at the Clintonville Farmer's Market last summer is blooming!

The squirrels are using our garden gnome as a chew toy. He looks even worse now than he does in these pictures. Is this revenge for all the times in stories when gnomes ride on squirrels as if they were their ponies?

There were two amazing visitations this month. As I pulled up to park one Saturday in the early(ish) morning to work in the Land Lab, a Cooper's Hawk landed on the fence right in front of me. Same one I wrote about in Madness 2013? Perhaps!  And one night when AJ went to put some trash in our trashcan, he realized that the "leaf" on the handle wasn't a leaf at all -- it was a luna moth!

In this set you can also find a piece of pizza with a funny face, a sunset at Goodale Park and documentation of a first-try French Braid. (Next week I'm getting 4-6 inches cut off at my twice-yearly haircut.)

You can see this set up close and personal on Flickr. They've redesigned the site. It is quite lovely!

Poetry Friday -- Chalk-A-Bration -- Casting for Recovery

I have a multi-purpose offering for Poetry Friday this week. 

We went over to the neighborhood park yesterday evening to blow the dust off our casting in preparation for the Casting for Recovery Fish-A-Thon on Saturday. While there, I chalked a poem on the sidewalk:

Now for the PSA:

Casting for Recovery is a leading breast cancer quality of life program. CFR isn't trying to find the cure for breast cancer; the goal of CFR is to empower breast cancer survivors by giving them powerful tools to overcome the challenges of breast cancer.

One of those tools is fly fishing.

I'm involved in Casting for Recovery as a past participant and now on Ohio's retreat team. I teach casting and knot tying.

We're having a Fish-A-Thon tomorrow to raise money for the Ohio CFR retreat. If you'd like to sponsor me on a per-fish-caught basis, or with a one-time donation, send me a message through the blog email. 

"Casting for Recovery is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that relies solely on donations to provide all-expense-paid weekend wellness retreats to 14 breast cancer survivors per retreat. Through your support, we will be able to continue to enhance the lives of breast cancer survivors by providing retreats that promote mental, physical, and emotional healing."

Betsy, the Queen of the Chalk-A-Bration, has the Poetry Friday Roundup AND the monthly Chalk-A-Bration today at Teaching Young Writers.

Walking

It's true. I'm a sucker for #(fill in the blank)-A-Day challenges.

#PoemADay,  #BookADay,  and now #MileADay.

When Paul Hankins mentioned #MileADay (Runners World is calling it #RWRUNSTREAK, but since I'm not a runner, I have taken the liberty of renaming it), I didn't even have to think about it. A mile a day every day from Memorial Day until Independence Day? I'm in!

I'm logging a short note about my walks on FB, and another (shorter still) on Twitter. Because I know that when I go public with these challenges, I am more likely to keep the commitment. Community also helps. Lots of people have said, "That's a great idea," but I only know for sure that two friends are joining me. One is local, the other sees paddlewheel riverboats in New Orleans on her miles! For right now, all I see is my neighborhood waking up.

The book I'm currently listening to fits this challenge nicely.

The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
by Robert Macfarlane
Viking Adult, 2012
audiobook from Audible

The author tells about the walks he takes on "the ancient tracks, holloways, drove roads, and sea paths that crisscross both the British landscape and its waters and territories beyond."

I love his writing (and thinking) so much that I also bought the book on Kindle so that I can go back and highlight favorite passages.

Here's a bit to entice you (click to enlarge):

Great End-Of-Year Teacher Gift

Brontorina
by James Howe
illustrated by Randy Cecil
Candlewick, 2010

Here's a book that says, "Thank you for making school/your classroom fit my child rather than making my child fit school/your classroom."

I hope that's what you'd like to say to your child's teacher!!

(Franki's more complete review here.)

Poetry Friday -- Think For Yourself

This week, I've done a series of 3 reviews of books on the theme THINK FOR YOURSELF. (Day Two comes with a bonus -- a link to WordEyes, a site that teaches vocabulary using art. Check it out.)

• We need to make decisions based upon what we know to be right, rather than letting others tell us what to do.
• We need to think for ourselves, rather than listening to what others tell us to think. 
• We need to love our friends for who they are, rather than believing what others tell us about them. 

Flannery O'Connor said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd."

Emily Dickinson advised

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---

And Gerard Manley Hopkins famously championed all that is unique in the world:

PIED BEAUTY

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                  Praise him.


What's your favorite book, quote, or poem that says to you, "THINK FOR YOURSELF!" ?


Jama has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Jama's Alphabet Soup.

Think for Yourself (Part 3)

Odd Duck
by Cecil Castellucci
illustrated by Sara Varon
:01 First Second, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

Theodora believes that she will never be friends with her new neighbor, Chad. They are too different in too many ways. When winter comes and neither flies south, they discover that they both love star gazing and also that "...even though they were very different, they felt the same way about most things."

Then one day, they are walking in the town, and they hear someone say, "Look at that odd duck!" They each try to console the other for being called odd, then, realizing that the other thinks they are odd, have a complete falling out...which ends when they admit to themselves, and then to each other, that perhaps they are each a bit odd.

But, "It's not so bad to be odd," Theodora thought, "not when you have an odd friend."

If you dial back balance-a-tea-cup-on-your-head-while-you-swim "odd" and hang-upside-down-from-a-tree-to-grill-out "odd," you can find all the ways we each are different, and you can celebrate both differences and oddnesses! But most of all, THINK FOR YOURSELF -- don't listen to what others say!

Think For Yourself (Part 2)

The Chickens Build a Wall
by Jean-François Dumont
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

Life in the barnyard was business-as-usual until the hedgehog showed up. No one had ever seen a hedgehog before. Rooster capitalized on the fear and suspicion of the stranger and rallied his hens to begin building a wall to protect them from the hedgehog. They worked and worked, built higher and higher.

Finally, when winter came and the wall was so high that they could just about not see the sky, Rooster declared the wall to be high enough to protect them.

Then, rustling out from under a pile of hay in the corner of the walled-in barnyard where he had been sleeping through the wall-building, came the hedgehog. And the hens discovered they had forgotten to build a door in the wall.

Can you guess what happened when the hens and the hedgehog had to spend time together and get to know each other? Can you guess what happened to the wall?

~~~   ***   ~~~          ~~~   ***   ~~~          ~~~   ***   ~~~

Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris are the amazing duo behind Burkins & Yaris (check out the Common Core (blog) and Early Literacy (Think Books) resources on their website) who have created LiteracyHead and WordEyes -- sites that teach, well, Literacy and Words (Vocabulary) through the arts. They have created a shiny new group of vocabulary words from The Chickens Build A Wall on WordEyes.

Click here to check out this freshly minted batch of vocabulary words-taught-through-art.

You'll see the word, with the definition hidden, but just a click away. Then below the word are four works of art in order from the most concrete representation of the word to the most abstract, with the fourth picture being a non-example. Click on the first work of art and it will come up in a hover-window that allows you to navigate directly to the next work of art.

Life has gotten complicated and busy in 5th grade this week, so I haven't shared either The Chickens Build a Wall OR the WordEyes words with my students. Stop by next week for a follow-up post about how my students reacted to/interacted with WordEyes and The Chickens Build a Wall.

Think For Yourself (Part 1)

This review is the first in a three-part series. All three books tackle the theme of "Think For Yourself" in very different ways. This first book is about a traditional character in Middle Eastern stories named Nasreddine. The historical note in the back of the book reads, "Stories about Nasreddine are told throughout the Middle East and beyond. They are often said to be based on a real man who lived in Turkey during he Middle Ages. The stories have been changed and added to over the years, but Nasreddine has never lost his ability to offer both wisdom and delight."

Nasreddine
by Odile Weulersse (translated from the original French by Kathleen Merz)
illustrated by Rébecca Dautremer
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

This story starts simply enough -- Nasreddine and his father load the donkey with dates to take to the market. Nasreddine's father rides the donkey and Nasreddine walks behind with his slippers off because the road is muddy from the last rain. In the city, someone comments that the father is lazy and irresponsible to let his son walk shoeless in the mud behind the donkey. Nasreddine's father, Mustafa, is unperturbed by the comment, but Nasreddine is embarrassed and wants to go home. The next week, when they take the wool to the weaver, Nasreddine convinces his father that his ankle is twisted so he can ride the donkey while his father walks behind. Some women they pass comment on the lack of authority of a father who lets his child ride while he walks.

Nasreddine continues to listen to what others say about the way he and his father and the donkey are traveling to market until finally he proposes to his father that they carry the donkey to market. At this point, Mustafa intervenes and guides Nasreddine to the understanding that he shouldn't listen to what others say. "It's up to you to decide if what you're hearing is wise, or if it's only a silly and hurtful remark." When Nesreddine declares, "I understand! You can't be afraid that other people will judge you or make fun of you," Mustafa (wryly? ironically?) expresses his pride in a son who can reason so well.

This may be an old story, but the message is timeless.