The Absolute Value of Mike by Kathryn Erskine

The Absolute Value of Mike 

by Kathryn Erskine
Philomel Books, on shelves June, 2011
ARC provided by the publisher


Remember how much I loved As Easy As Falling Off the Face of the Earth (Lynne Rae Perkins) last year at about this time? The Absolute Value of Mike sits right beside As Easy As Falling Off the Face of the Earth on my brain-shelf of favorites!

The two books are kind of similar, now that I think about it. They both have a main character who sets off in a pretty straight forward direction at the beginning of the book, only to have a series of completely unlikely (and yet completely believable) events explode that journey into epic proportions.

Mike's math genius father is sending him to live with an aunt and uncle he's never met...for the summer...in rural Pennsylvania...because the uncle is working on a project that involves lots of math (building an artesian screw) and maybe being involved in all of this math will help Mike get into the math magnet school...in spite of the fact that Mike has discalculia, a math disability.

When Mike gets there, he learns that there is no artesian screw, but there are a plethora of problems for him to solve, orchestrate, manage, and...ENGINEER in a way that is uniquely his own. Mike learns to make his own rules and follow his own heart, and in the process he learns to accept that his talents are just as amazing as a genius for math.

Each chapter of The Absolute Value of Mike is titled with a math term and its definition. As you read the chapter, you find the narrative metaphor for each term. At the beginning of the book, there are Parallel Lines, a Transversal Line, and Skew Lines. As the story progresses, there are Outliers, Chaos Theory, Functions, Attributes and Variables. In the end, Mike, his dad, and the community of Do Over, PA are all convinced of the Absolute Value of Mike.

Watch for this gem of a book in June and put it at the top of your TBR pile!

(I'd recommend it most strongly for readers in grades 5-8, but you might know someone a bit younger or a bit older who might need to go on a journey of self-discovery with Mike.)

BABYMOUSE: Mad Scientist and SQUISH: Super Amoeba

Babymouse: Mad Scientist
by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm
Random House, May 10, 2011
review copy purchased for my classroom library



Squish: Super Amoeba

by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm

Random House, May 10, 2011

review copy purchased for my classroom library

The Holm siblings have done it again! Babymouse is back, challenged by her dad to enter the science fair and maybe even become the first scientist in the family. There are nods to all the greater and lesser scientists in history (and even to Mr. Spock, the Star Trek scientist), and Babymouse dreams of the great discoveries she might make (Babymousaurus, Babymousillin, the Babymouse Whisker Theorem, and the Pink Planet). Babymouse and her class are introduced to the greatest tool of science -- The Scientific Method, and Babymouse's dad gets her a microscope just like the one he had when he was a kid and he takes her to a pond to collect amoeba to study under the microscope.

Babymouse discovers Squish in a drop of pond water, and a friendship is born. A friendship that is sealed when Babymouse shares her cupcakes with him! Cupcakes and Squish become the second-place stars of the science fair, but you'll have to read the book to find out how they manage that!

In Squish No. 1, we learn more about Squish -- he's a blobby amoeba who loves comics (favorite character: Super Amoeba) and Twinkies. He has a genius friend Pod and  an unfailingly cheerful friend Peggy. His principal is a planarian, his teacher is a rotifer, and the bully of the school is an amoeba named Lynwood.

So you've got a pretty basic storyline of the unlikely hero who has to do battle against the bully to save his friend, and you've got the Babymouse convention of the dream sequence in a contrasting color (this time the book is in green and the dream/fantasy is in black and white...which probably has deep meaning, but I'm not going there). But what else you've got with Squish is an incredible amount of science packed into a 90 page graphic novel. I'm smiling to myself as I imagine a whole generation of students who will hit middle school and high school biology classes with a decent bank of background knowledge about pond life...courtesy of the Squish series!

Some Great Websites for Summer Reading

This week, Loren Scully from the Dublin Library visited our library to talk to our students about the summer reading program offered there. She was accompanied by Miss Val of the library's Homework Help Center.  Our kids are excited and I think many of them will participate.  The program is a great one and one way that we encourage our kids to read over the summer.

As so many of us are getting ready to help our students think about their summer reading, I am trying to expand my own thinking about what "counts" and how to value a variety of reading over the summer.  Along with encouraging the Summer Reading Club, I am sending home information about a variety of summer reading.  I have been thinking about this idea a lot and have recently updated my reading interview to include online reading, etc.  (I wrote about this at Choice Literacy a few months ago.)  As I talk to students about their goals for summer reading, I am trying to make sure that I focus on reading beyond traditional books.  Conversations have included magazine reading, comic book reading and online reading.  I have worked over the year to add several websites to our library site.  I've added websites that give students a place to go for reading.  This summer, I am hoping the students utilize this list of resources for their summer reading.

Nonfiction reading seems to be the one that kids need help with for the summer. So, I've tried to compile a short list of good sites for nonfiction reading--sites kids will want to revisit.  We've spent a bit of time learning to go beyond skimming and to build stamina with nonfiction.

I'll be sending home a paper with each student as part of their summer reading packet. The packet will include information from the Dublin Library as many of our students participate in the library's summer reading program. The packet will also include a few pages of information on websites worth visiting over the summer. For some of our subscription sites like Tumblebooks and PebbleGo, students need the username and password so these papers will compile all of these.

But the page will also include some screen shots of a few other sites that I hope kids visit over the summer. I have found a few that they have explored a bit this spring in hopes that they revisit them regularly.  Below are some of the sites I'll be including in my students' summer reading packets:

Wonderopolis's tagline states, "Where the Wonders of Learning Never Cease". Each day on Wonderopolis, a new wonder or question is answered. The questions cover a variety of topics and many come from kids. The wonders are accompanied by related videos and a solid article about the topic. Related links and other wonders are included.  The fun of this site is that you never know what you will find when you get there. A favorite question on Mother's Day this week was, "Do Moms Have Eyes in the Backs of Their Heads?"  The site is very kid-friendly and interesting to kids of all ages.  Readers can visit each day to read an article per day or they can visit the archives to find topics of interest.

DOGOnews is one of my favorite current events sites for kids.  The site adds a new article almost daily. A few articles are accompanied by videos but most are text and photos.  The headlines and topics engage kids. Some topics are world topics that you'd find on any news site and others are topics that might be specifically interesting to kids.  This site has an interesting feature in that you can search news on a map --kids can see the news happening on a map feature.  As with Wonderopolis, kids can also read by topic and visit the archives.

Meet Me at the Corner has grown incredibly over the past year.  This site is filled with great videos for kids and done by kids.  The site defines itself as "Virtual Field Trips for Kids takes you to meet fascinating people from all over the world."  Each short video (about 5 minutes long) takes us to learn about an interesting topic complete with interviews.  This is a favorite site for our students.  The videos give so much interesting information.

TOONBOOK Reader is my favorite part of The Professor Garfield Site. This reader allows kids to read and reread favorite graphic novels.

I think I've shared the site KidsReads before. It is a site I have loved for years. This site gives kids information on books, authors, series, upcoming titles, etc.  A great resource for finding new books and other things connected to reading. This site is packed and updated regularly. It is not only a great site for kids to keep up with books-it is also a great site for teachers to get the latest information on books.

Poetry Friday: Hurray for J. Patrick Lewis!!!

from HAPPINESS by Raymond Carver

(read the whole poem here)

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

We're THRILLED that our very own J. Patrick Lewis has been selected as the third U.S. Children's Poet Laureate!! What an unexpected happiness! Here are some fireworks just for Pat!

Jama has the Poetry Friday roundup at alphabet soup. Go check out the STEAMIN' poem she's got today! ...And of course, stick around to check out all of the poetic offerings of the week!!

Favorite Series: Dragonbreath

Dragonbreath: Lair of the Bat Monster
by Ursula Vernon
Dial Books, 2011
review copy purchased for my classroom library

I love this series.

Maybe we should start with the three reasons I love this series:
1. The humor. (This reason encompasses characters, setting, plot, plot twists, a magic bus that isn't driven by Ms. Frizzle, and recurring themes -- "Can it skeletonize a cow in under two weeks?" They are all FUNNY!!)
2. The way every book is better than the one before it.
3. The design of the book. (This reason encompasses size, shape, illustrations, colors, and its hybrid graphic novel-ness.)

So. That pretty much covers it. I love everything about this series.

In this installment, Vernon blends graphic novel, fantasy novel, humor, and NONFICTION ABOUT ENDANGERED RAIN FORESTS AND RAIN FOREST ANIMALS AND MAYAN MYTHOLOGY all in one book. Brilliant, no?

Danny Dragonbreath and his sidekick Wendell rescue a bat from the swimming pool. They ride the magic bus to the rainforests of Mexico, where Danny's cousin Steve is trying to discover a new species of bat in order to save bat habitat in the rainforest. Steve teaches them about the bat they saved, and then invites them to see the bat cave he's discovered. They see the bat cave, with bats pouring out of it at dusk, but something odd happens -- all the bats fly back into the cave.

"Something burst out of the trees.

...it was huge. It wasn't an animal sort of huge, it was the huge he associated with cranes and bulldozers and building equipment.  The elephants at the zoo were big, but this was the size of a house, and it wasn't moving like anything he'd ever seen.

Then it stepped forward, and he thought of a gorilla the size of a building, like King Kong, because that was how it moved, big shoulders and arms crashing down, and smaller hindquarters swinging forward.

Except that it wasn't a gorilla.

'Holy crud,' breathed Danny. 'it's a bat.' "

Turns out, it's Camazotz (Mrs. Camazotz, to be exact) of Mayan Mythology fame. And she grabs Danny to keep as her pet. And Steve and Wendell have to save Danny. And Wendell is a self-proclaimed scaredy cat. ("They had a system. Danny was fearless and Wendell was terrified, and it worked out between them.")

And now I'm going to stop writing so you can go get the book and read it for yourself.

THE PULL OF GRAVITY

We don't often review Young Adult novels on our blog but I have been trying to read more adult novels this year.  After attending ALAN this fall, I was happy to see so many YA novels appropriate for some 5th graders.  And it is fun to read books that my 11 year old daughter is also interested in, now that she is starting to read YA. I don't have time to read lots of YA so I make sure that the only YA I read are the great ones.

Today, THE PULL OF GRAVITY by Gae Polisner will be on shelves in bookstores and libraries. What a great book it is. Even if you don't read too many YA books, I would definitely recommend reading this one.  As with almost every book that I love, I LOVED the characters in this book.  I am sure that Nick Gardner and Jaycee Amato will stay with me for a long time.

This starts out as the story of Nick.  He is going through a hard time.  His next door neighbor and good friend, Scoot, is dying of a rare disease that has made him age prematurely.   But this reality is hard for Nick to believe.  Nick's father, who has become depressed and overweight over the past several years, has decided to walk to NYC, leaving the family behind. Nick can't believe that his father won't be coming back and ignores all of his calls and emails. All that is going on around him seems to be too much to deal with.  Then he meets Jaycee, a friend of Scoot's who has an idea. An idea that is totally out of character for Nick, but one that he agrees to. The adventure turns out to be more difficult than expected (as most journeys are) and doesn't go quite as planned, but it seems worth the difficulties in the end.

I loved so much about this book. First of all, it isn't an overly long book-it is about 200 pages. I am getting a little tired of really long books that just seem to be long for no reason. This book tells a great story and shares a powerful message in 200 pages. Don't get me wrong--I would have loved another 800 pages about these characters.  I loved the characters. They were very believable and very timely. Both characters have very real home issues they are dealing with, just as so many of our kids are. And I loved that the book didn't have all the answers. But mostly, I love these characters. I love who they are individually and who they are together.  My very favorite stories seem to be about people coming together to become more themselves and THE PULL OF GRAVITY is one of those stories.

There are references to Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck throughout the book.  I have not read the book in a very long time but the author does a great job of filling in the missing connections for readers who are not familiar with the book.  The way this piece of literature weaves through this story is pretty brilliant.

I love the premise of this book, the story, the characters and the writing.  So excited to have finally gotten a copy of this book as I'd been hearing about it for months. Now that I've read it, I so understand what all the buzz was about.  This book is sure to be a hit with middle school and high school kids.  Whether you read much YA or not, I'd recommend reading this one.

And I am already looking forward to Gae Polisner's next book.

A Great New Alphabet Book-ABC KIDS

I have been weeding books in the library this week and have found lots of great ABC books that I had forgotten about.  Such an added bonus of weeding--looking at every book and remembering the books in the collection that you've forgotten about.  Although we have lots of great alphabet books, some are outdated and I find that there can never be too many great alphabet books.  Not only are they great for beginning readers who are learning the alphabet, but they are great to use as mentor texts, to go along with word study, etc.

I found ABC KIDS by Simon Basher today and I love it. I was drawn to the cover immediately. The colorful happy illustrations will definitely be a hit!  I so wish I had had this book for our POETRY PICNIC for the word play area.  I can see lots of great conversations around letters, words, great verbs and nouns, etc. happening after reading this book.

Each two-page spread in the book focuses on one letter of the alphabet.  One page has a large upper case and lower case letter, some illustrations, and a sentence that uses lots of words starting with the featured letter.  The opposite page has a word and illustration related to the sentence.  The sentence on each page begins with a child's name which makes it a fun book to use early in the year with a name chart. One of my favorite pages is H. The sentence is "Henry's horrible hairy hat has huge holes." Kids will crack up at many of the sentences and accompanying illustrations.

The illustrations are perfect for young children. The pages are done in bright and pastel colors with varying backgrounds.  Lots of happy and unique illustrations are part of each page.

This is really a perfect alphabet book because there are so many ways in.

Poetry Friday -- Experience

875 

by Emily Dickinson

I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch—
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.

The Poetry Friday round up is at Family Bookshelf (formerly Scrub-a-Dub-Tub). Go check out Terry's new digs and all the poetry for this week!

This Plus That: New Book From Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Amy Krouse Rosenthal's visit to our school last month was definitely a highlight of the school year.  She was amazing and her books are always checked out of the library. When she visited, we got a sneak peek at her newest book that came out last week. It is now one of my very favorites.

Amy Krouse Rosenthal loves words and she loves to have fun with words. That is what this new book, THIS PLUS THAT: LIFE'S LITTLE EQUATIONS is all about. In this book, Rosenthal plays with word equations. She builds this idea for the reader, beginning with simple equations such as "Yes + No = Maybe"  As the book continues, the equations become a little more tricky and a lot more fun.   I love the way Amy Krouse Rosenthal thinks.  One of my favorite equations in the book is "somersaults+somersaults+somersaults=dizzy". How fun is that?  I love the way that it invites readers to play with and think differently about words.

 Illustrated by Jen Corace, who also illustrated the Little Books by Rosenthal (LITTLE OINK, LITTLE HOOT, and LITTLE PEA), the book has a happy feel!  The colorful pictures help readers solve the equations and get into the spirit of the book.  The white background and colorful illustrations are a perfect match to the text.

I love this book for lots of reasons. I love the relationships Amy finds between words and I love the relationships she finds between the word equations. I like the whole idea that she played with word equations. I think this is another great invitation from Amy Krouse Rosenthal. She is all about invitations and this book will invite readers to give word equations a try.  Such a great book for word play and so many other things.

Favorite Series: Aldo Zelnick Comic Novels

Cahoots
by Karla Oceanak
illustrated by Kendra Spanjer
Bailiwick Press, May 1, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher


This is the funniest book in the series so far!

Aldo's mother is fed up with the amount of time that Aldo and his older brother Timothy spend inside, on the couch, with their digital gizmos (Game Boy, cell phone, iPod, TV...). She bans electronics before she goes to the grocery store, but by the time she gets back, both boys (and even their dad) are back on the couch in front of the TV. Aldo has grabbed the laptop and is playing Farm Town. Little does he know that all of his misconceptions about farm life are soon to be cleared up.

"I'm level 18 now, so I'm a Master Farer. I have a farmhouse, a giant garden, chickens and a rooster, cows, and lots more farmish stuff. My goal is level 59--Zenith Farmer. That's when you can get a swimming pool because really, what's a farm without a swimming pool? 

One farm lesson I've learned the hard way is to ALWAYS hire other people to harvest your crops. It's way too much work to do it yourself! All that clicking makes your arm sore."

Mom declares that they will be going for a week of vacation to the family farm where she grew up, where her brother, Aldo's Uncle Odin and his wife and twin boys live -- a week of ELECTRONICS FREE vacation.

There are a few good moments -- epic farm breakfasts with lots of BACON -- and lots of bad ones, almost always having something to do with the chores. There is a ghost (maybe) and there is the constant pranking by the twins.

If I had been paying closer attention to the title of the book -- CAHOOTS, hint hint -- I wouldn't have been as surprised as Aldo by the ending. But then again, it was fun to be as surprised as Aldo by the ending!


Why I love this series:
1. Each book features fun words, starred with an asterisk, and amusingly defined in the back of the book. In ARTSY FARTSY, the first book, they were A words, BOGUS had B words, and now CAHOOTS has C words. The definitions are fun enough that if you peek just once, you'll know they are worth your time, either while reading or at the end of the book.
2. Aldo is such a lovable antihero -- very easy to relate to!
3. There are 23 more books in the series to look forward to! One of my students from last year has come back to borrow BOGUS and CAHOOTS, and students from this year's class who have fallen in love with Aldo are planning to come back to my room next year to borrow DUMBSTRUCK and EGGHEAD! Keep them coming, Karla and Kendra!!!