It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday!  Here are some recent books I've read that I thought were worth sharing. For the roundup, visit Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers!

I have had Commonwealth by Ann Patchett on my stack since it was published. Ann Patchett is one of my favorite authors (Bel Canto, one of my favorite books of all time). I loved this book. What is amazing to me is that all of her books seem so different at the beginning but then as you keep reading, they are all about relationships and family. I had a little bit of trouble getting into this one but am so glad I stuck with it because I LOVED it.

I am still not a huge graphic novel reader--they are still a bit of a challengeSnow White: A Graphic Novel by Matt Phelan is a brilliant book. Really, how someone takes a classic story and retells it in such a unique way is fascinating to me. I think upper elementary and middle school kids will love this one. So glad that I read it!
for me.

I always love to find a biography about a new-to-me person who made a he difference in the world. Tiny Stitches: The Life of Medical Pioneer Viven Thomas is such an interesting story about his work as a research assistant and the huge impact he had on children's heart surgery.  Such important work and Thomas was rarely recognized for his contributions.

Chester and Gus by Cammie McGovern will be released in April of 2017.
I picked up an ARC at NCTE and one of my 3rd graders devoured it when I got back. She HIGHLY recommended it so I read it over break.  This story is told from Chester's perspective. Chester is a service dog (almost certified) that is adopted by Gus's family. Gus has autism and his parents hope the dog will help him. This is a great story and the dog is one I loved from the beginning. This is perfect for middle grade readers.
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Poetry Friday -- Looking for OLW

Looking
by W.D. Snodgrass

What was I looking for today?
All that poking under the rugs,
Peering under the lamps and chairs,
Or going from room to room that way,
Forever up and down the stairs
Like someone stupid with sleep or drugs.

Everywhere I was, was wrong.
I started turning the drawers out, then
I was staring in at the icebox door
Wondering if I’d been there long
Wondering what I was looking for.
Later on, I think I went back again.

Where did the rest of the time go?
Was I down cellar? I can’t recall
Finding the light switch, or the last
Place I’ve had it, or how I’d know
I didn’t look at it and go past.
Or whether it’s what I want, at all.


That's exactly what it felt like to look for my One Little Word for 2017. Last year's word was a dud -- BEND. It had a great image, but it didn't inform my life at all in 2016. 2015's word was NOTICE, which was not bad, but severely underutilized. 2014's word, BREATHE, has carried me through many days for the past three years. It's my go-to word when I'm feeling stressed...which feels like most of the time these days.

I restarted my morning exercise routine this week, and received a stern warning from the universe that I am of an age where I simply cannot take a couple of months off without severe repercussions. Oh, man, am I sore! How could I lose so much ground in such a short period of time?

As I work to regain my physical strength, I am also striving to be stronger in my beliefs and actions. And so, my word has found me through these two efforts: this year, I vow to be STRONG.



Linda has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at TeacherDance.

Still Learning to Read: Choosing Our Next Read Aloud

This is one of a series of blog posts that continue the conversation around Still Learning to Read--teaching reading to students in grades 3-6.  This series will run on the blog on Tuesdays starting in August 2016 and continue through the school year.

Tiger Boy by Mitali Perkins

January in third grade is such an interesting time. Students come into third grade having just finished 2nd grade. They are young children. Primary children. They aren't much older in January but they seem to grow up a lot during this first half of third grade and they start seeing things a bit differently. I know this happens in every grade but I find it to be the most obvious in 3rd grade as kids move between the primary and intermediate grades.

Up until January, I work hard to choose read alouds that focus on plot, help students build strategies for understanding longer books and holding onto a story over time. I want them to find series they love and to learn to talk and write about their reading. In January, I know they are ready for something a little bit different--something a bit more complex--something that will move the conversation a bit.

So this week, we'll start the new year with Tiger Boy by Mitali Perkins. This is one of my favorite new books published in 2015. (It was an NCTE Charlotte Huck Honor book last year and has received several other honer and awards.) I read this book aloud last year and it was definitely an important book for our class and a favorite for many students. This book is perfect as a read aloud for 3rd and 4th graders . It is a plot that they can carry over the course of the book. The character is one they will come to know and understand. We will watch the character change over the course of the book. The book also introduces readers to an issue they may not know much about. The story is set in the Sunderbans and thinking about a setting which they are unfamiliar will start lots of conversations. This book has a plot that young readers will love and it also has layers of depth and invitations to think about a variety of issues in our world. And the book does so in a way that is accessible and appropriate for 3rd graders.

In a school year, we only have so much time for read aloud. We can read aloud a book every 3-4 weeks so I now I have to be very picky about the books I choose to read aloud. I want them to be books that will be loved by most of the students, that will grow conversations and understanding of the world, that will expand comprehension strategies in a comfortable environment and that will continue to grow our community. I am excited to see where the conversation goes with this read aloud!

(Our new edition of Still Learning to Read was released in August!  You can order it online at Stenhouse! You can follow the conversation using the hashtag #SLTRead.)

3 New Series Books!

There are some great new series books out in late 2016 or early 2017.  These are a few I recently discovered!


The Bad Guys by Aaron Blabey

I was looking forward to the new series The Bad Guys and was able to read the first book over winter break. What a fun book!  A few bad guys, led by The Big Bad Wolf decide they want to change their reputations and become Good Guys.  In this first story, we meet the characters and follow them as they rescue dogs from the local dog shelter.  The humor in this book is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.  It is a clever concept with pretty funny lines throughout.  There is a lot of visual support so this will be a good series for transitional readers and beyond. The second book in the series is due out in February!

King and Kayla and the Case of the Missing Dog Treats by Dori Hillestad Butler
I was happy to see that the author of The Haunted Library has a new book/series out. My 3rd graders are HUGE fans of The Haunted Library series.  King and Kayla is an early mystery series--great for readers new to chapter books.  I think mysteries are hard for young readers but this one is perfect. A perfect mystery (missing dog treats), some clues and great visual supports.

A Boy Called Bat by Elana Arnold is more of a middle grade novel that is set to become a series according to a blog post I read recently.  The main character in this series is Bixby Alexander Tam (BAT). In this story, BAT's mother, a veterinarian, brings home a baby skunk. They need to take care of it until the shelter can keep him and release him back into the wild.  But BAT wants to keep the skunk as a pet.  BAT is a great new character.  He is on the autism spectrum which makes this series unique. It is a great series and I think a lot of kids will love this one. Looking forward to the next in the series already!


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Happy Birthday to Us!

A Year of Reading is celebrating its 11th Birthday today!  We had no idea how many amazing people we would meet and how much we would learn when we started this blog. Thank you all! And Happy New Year!

Poetry Friday -- One Last Word

One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance
by Nicki Grimes
Bloomsbury, January 3, 2017
review copy provided (thankyouthankyouthankyou) by the publisher

There is so much to love about this book!

First of all, it is a tribute to the Harlem Renaissance poets. A brief history of the movement begins the book, and there are short biographies of each of the featured poets in the end matter.  The importance of this literary movement, in light of current events, should be one we remember and study and celebrate. 

"These literary lights, writing at a time when the lynching of black men filled the news, were more than familiar with racial profiling, racial violence, and every variety of injustice imaginable. Yet they ascended to great heights in spite of it all...Above all, they understood how to make the most of their freedom, despite living in a nation that had not then, and has not yet, fully realized its promise of freedom and justice for all." --Nikki Grimes, in the forward "The Harlem Renaissance"

Also of note are the gorgeous illustrations. Fifteen illustrators contributed to make this book as vibrant in pictures as it is in the words. Short biographies of the artists in the end matter highlight the talents of these illustrators.

Far and away the most amazing thing about this book is the unique (and challenging!) form in which Nikki Grimes writes her poems of tribute -- the "Golden Shovel." For each of Grimes' poems, she takes a line (or sometimes the whole poem) and uses each of the words as the last word in her poem. Hence, the title of the book.

For example, the line "A thousand hearts echo the sigh" from Clara Ann Thompson's poem, "The Minor Key" is followed by this poem by Nikki Grimes:

COMMON DENOMINATOR

by Nikki Grimes

Anger is a hard itch to scratch; laughter a

secret tickle we let out in a thousand

sneezes, sometimes to camouflage cracked hearts;

love, envy, fear--we all hear their echo.

Peel us to the core, we're indistinguishable. Press the

solar plexus of any, you'll hear the selfsame sigh.

I gave this form a try, using the poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost. I liked adding to a poem of submission an element of strength and endurance. 

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

by Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold. 

Her early leaf’s a flower; 

But only so an hour. 

Then leaf subsides to leaf. 

So Eden sank to grief, 

So dawn goes down to day. 

Nothing gold can stay.

WE ARE HERE TO STAY

by Mary Lee Hahn

We'll begin again from scratch, with nothing.

There is not enough gold

in all the coffers of the world that can

stop us. We are here to stay.

Buffy has the Christmas Eve Eve edition of the Poetry Friday roundup at Buffy's Blog. Happy Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza to you!

The Importance of History

My Name is James Madison Hemings

by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Terry Widener

This is the story of a boy who has been born into slavery, but whose father is also his master. His mother tells him that his father is an important man and that someday he will know just how important. 

Eventually, the boy's father keeps his promise and frees the boy and his siblings, but not his mother. She walks away from the plantation and is not pursued. 

The boy's siblings change their names and, passing for white, take on new identities. James keeps his place in the African American community as a well-respected carpenter.

James has a few items that belonged to his father, including an inkwell. He wonders if his father, Thomas Jefferson, used ink from that inkwell to write the Declaration of Independence, or if he used it to record the names of his slaves on his lists of property.

Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life

by Ashley Bryan

In the author's note of Freedom Over Me, we learn that Ashley Bryan acquired documents of slavery, including the plantation estate inventory listing the eleven slaves in this book.

Pairs of free verse poems tell about the slaves' lives and work in one, and about their true names, their dreams, hopes and talents in the other.

This important book will help readers understand that there is not one story of Slave or of Slavery. Each and every enslaved person was a unique human being, priceless in ways that no one else could ever own.

These two books can help lay a foundation for a study of the Civil Rights Movement and the importance of holding our nation accountable for the freedoms set forth in our Constitution.

Still Learning to Read: Text Sets That Deepen Conversation Around an Issue

This is one of a series of blog posts that continue the conversation around Still Learning to Read--teaching reading to students in grades 3-6.  This series will run on the blog on Tuesdays starting in August 2016 and continue through the school year.

For the next few weeks, I'll be sharing text sets I've been using to deepen conversation and to help students understand topics and issues more deeply.  One thing I notice about third graders is that they are all about facts. So starting an informational unit of study in reading is tricky as they sometimes think that reading nonfiction is about facts and restating them.  I want them to know that informational reading is far more than that. I want them to move beyond isolated facts and to discover that understanding an issue is different from knowing facts. I want them to see the power of thinking in different ways because of the conversations different texts invite. I want them to see that topics are often the small information of a bigger issue.  I want them to see that the more they read and learn about a topic, they more they will wonder and want to learn more.

So I am pulling together small text sets that help students think in a variety of ways about a "topic". The topics connect to our content requirements and I've thought a bit about the order of the way I introduce the texts. I find that I can introduce a topic or issue in 3-4 days by sharing a text a day and tracking the way our thinking changes over time. Then as the year goes on, I'll continue to bring in books that connect back to that topic in some way, building and growing our understanding of issues as we also grow as readers.

Last week, we read 3 books about water.  One of our science concepts in 3rd grade is that some of Earthy's resources are limited and the understanding of that.

I started by sharing the book Water is Water by Miranda Paul. This is a great picture book that explains the water cycle and the way water changes  in a simple and inviting way. As an added bonus, Emily Arrow has a song (with hand motions) to go along with this book. So we started there.  The conversation was fine.

The next day we moved to The Water Princess by Susan Verde, Georgie Badiel and Peter Reynolds. This story is based on the Georgie Baddiel's childhood and shares the hardship of getting clean water to a village each day. Stories-Especially stories about real people matter for our young children to make sense of topics and issues.  When I read this book aloud, something in the room shifted as kids realized that this long walk to get water was a daily occurrence for children around the world. Instead of talking about what they learned, the conversation was filled with questions and wonders and "How can this still be happening in the world?".  They wondered why it was so hard to get a well. They wondered if children could ever go to school. They wondered why we had such easy access to water. They wondered about wasting water. They wondered how this problem could be fixed.  They talked and wondered and contemplated the issue of water as something they had never considered.  They went back to the water cycle conversation and the idea that there was only so much water in the world and that meant different things to different people.  That we took water for granted and they had never really thought about it. The conversation could have continued all day.

On the third day of this conversation, we watched Ryan's Story from the Ryan's Well Foundation.  Seeing what can be done to help communities and how a well can change so much about a community started another conversation.  The kids were also interested in the fact that Ryan started this work in first grade AND that he has continued it into his adult life.  This conversation centered around the difference that the well made for the community with questions about how many communities needed a well.  

One goal for our nonfiction study was for students to see how our thinking changes and grows the more we learn.  So we tracked some of our thinking and looked back to see how thinking changed and grew the more we knew.  We realized that we had more questions after the 3 texts than we had at the beginning. I worry that often we ask kids to wonder before they know enough to have genuine questions. But after reading and thinking together, they have more questions than any other kind of thinking.

I am collecting texts of all kinds to keep in a mental file of books that can fit into this set. Some seem better suited to older kids or for kids who end up digging more deeply on their own.  Others that we might visit later in the year or that I'll keep in a mental file to build on the conversation and to connect this with other topics we read about are:

One Well: The Story of Water on Earth by Rochelle Strauss

A Cool Drink of Water by Barbara Kerley 

A Drop Around the World by Barbara McKinney

All the Water in the World by George Ella Lyon

The Georgie Badiel Foundation

How to Make Filthy Water Drinkable (TED Talk by Micael Pritchard)

Depending on where the conversation goes, there are some articles about water from NEWSELA that might connect to our conversation and learning. Current events around water issues (Flint, Michigan and  the Standing Rock protests would connect to this idea also.)

I think in the past, I found books about a topic and it was no wonder my students were interested in facts.  Now I try to find compelling books that go beyond sharing information. I want to tie in not only information but real stories that bring issues around topics to light.  As readers I want my students to see the power of reading widely and I want them to see how their thinking changes across time and texts.

(Our new edition of Still Learning to Read was released in August!  You can order it online at Stenhouse! You can follow the conversation using the hashtag #SLTRead.)

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Poetry Friday

Wikimedia

fifth grade --

teaching parrots

to think

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2016

One of the many hard things about these times we're living in is how to teach about or talk about our government with fifth graders. 

(Insert several carefully worded and then deleted paragraphs here.)

I'll just leave it at that. I'm sure you can imagine.

Tabatha has the round up at The Opposite of Indifference.

Crabby Characters

Penguin Problems

by Jory John, illustrated by Lane Smith

There's one in every crowd, isn't there? Look at that cover. Everything's just fine with the entire raft (rookery, colony, and huddle, waddle) of penguins. Except that one.

Thank goodness for the walrus, who talks some sense into our crabby, dissatisfied penguin friend. Except in the end...

Hungry Bird

by Jeremy Tankard

Here's another whiney, dissatisfied character (with a bunch of REALLY patient friends). Bird hasn't packed a snack for the hike, but he also doesn't want anything the other animals have to offer. In the end, he does taste their snacks, but when his favorite shows up (a worm)...sigh...

Leave Me Alone!

by Vera Brosgol

Grandmother has had it with all of the bothersome, interfering grandchildren. One day she packs up her knitting and walks off yelling, "Leave me alone!" This is her refrain over and over again as different characters in different settings hamper her ability to sit in a quiet spot and knit. She finally finds peace and quiet in a black hole. Then, in the end...ahhh, finally a character who recovers from a bad case of the crabbies.