Some Books that Changed My Heart and Mind in 2017

I just went to see Wonder, the movie. So good. I read the book as an ARC years ago and loved it immediately. We just finished reading it aloud in our classroom two weeks ago. The conversations changed our community, I think. Needless to say I was TOTALLY unprepared to see RJ Palacio just sitting in the audience of Auggie's graduation scene near the end of the movie. Like totally unprepared. I got so teary (okay crying) --I was so happy to see her sitting there being part of this next phase of Auggie's journey-so thankful to her for this story. And then I realized how lucky we are to be part of this community of teachers, authors, publishers, children. RJ in that final scene reminded me of the impact one story can have on a world and how lucky we are to be people who share stories like this with children, not knowing how they will change their lives.  

That scene with RJ reminded me how much books and stories can change lives. I was lucky to be part of the NCTE Charlotte Huck Committee for 3 years. During that time I read with a specific lens based on the award criteria. The Charlotte Huck Award "recognizes fiction that has the potential to transform children’s lives by inviting compassion, imagination, and wonder."  So as I read for this award I was always looking for books that had the potential to transform a child's life in some way.  I am no longer on the Charlotte Huck Award Committee but that lens seems to be a part of the way I sometimes reflect on my reading.  Seeing Wonder today and thinking about the power of a single story in a life,  made me think a bit about my 2017 reading and those books in my reading life that really changed me in some way. I believe almost every book changes the reader in some way, but some books stand out a bit.

So seeing Wonder and being so thankful for authors like RJ Palacio, I went back through my reading life this year and found so many books that changed my heart or mind. Here are those that stood out to me--some books that transformed my heart or mind in some way in 2017. 

Elinor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Love

Towers Falling

Little Fox in the Forest

Long Way Down

Windows

When We Were Alone

Her Right Foot

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The Case of R.B.G vs. Inequality

Refugee

Forever or a Long Long Time

Joy Write

The Hate U Give

Orphan Island

Charlotte Huck Award

The winner of the 2017 NCTE Charlotte Huck Award® is

After the Fall (How Humpty Got Back Up Again)

by Dan Santat

Roaring Brook Press, 2017

The NCTE Charlotte Huck Award® for Outstanding Fiction for Children was established in 2014 to promote and recognize excellence in the writing of fiction for children. This award recognizes fiction that has the potential to transform children’s lives by inviting compassion, imagination, and wonder.

This picture book will resonate with all ages. On the back of the book, we are reminded that "Life begins when you get back up." Santat's epilogue of the rather unsatisfying nursery rhyme about an egg that falls down and gets patched up is all kinds of brilliant. My 5th graders gasped aloud at the ending. They were like, "Wait. WHAT?!?!" This book will change your thinking about Humpty Dumpty and it will remind everyone that we shouldn't let our setbacks keep us down.

I am currently serving on the NCTE Charlotte Huck Award Committee. In our deliberations at NCTE this year, narrowing our list of 45 books down to one winner, five honor books, and eight recommended books, we kept coming back to the award criteria as we deliberated over each book. "The potential to transform children's lives" was a phrase we used over and over again when we spoke about this book. Don't miss it. It's an amazing book.

Endpapers That Reward Readers

In Which the Endpapers Explain What Endpapers Are

The Cat, the Dog, Little Red, the Exploding Eggs, the Wolf and Grandma

In Which the Endpapers Make You Laugh

Nanette's Baguette

Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

Carnivores

In Which the Endpapers Make You Wonder

The Book of Mistakes

Professional Crocodile

Ninja Red Riding Hood

In Which the Endpapers Give Away the End of the Story

Rodzillla

XO, OX: A Love Story

In Which You Need the Endpapers 

In Order to Understand the Story

Sam & Dave Dig a Hole

Poetry Friday -- Love Song to Reading

Hooray for a book of poems that celebrates reading...

The WONDER of reading words

"...that fly like birds
from pages
in your book
to branches
in your brain
where they sing
like soothing
summer rain."

The JOY of learning to read.

"I longed so to read.
This was my hope.
This was my need." 

All the KINDS of reading we do:

Cereal Box
Sports Page
Maps
Road Signs
Field Guides
Google Searches
Birthday Cards
Magazines
Sunday Comics

The ways reading COMPLETES us:

"Every single thing you read
becomes a part of you." 

"A book gives you a double life." 

The ways reading CHANGES us:

"An open book will make you kind." 

"Charlotte taught me what to do." 

"I'm a reader.
I explore." 

Thank you, Amy, for a book that readers of all ages and stages will want to hug and share and read over and over again until it falls apart.

Read! Read! Read!
by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
illustrated by Ryan O'Rourke
Wordsong, September 2017



Carol has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at Beyond LiteracyLink.

For next week's Poetry Friday Roundup, Tabatha has invited us to write/share poems in honor of National Mac and Cheese Day, which falls on Friday, July 14 this year. Start cooking up an oozy, gooey Poetry Friday post!! (It's optional, but it was so much fun when we celebrated Billy Collins at the beginning of his birth month back in March.)

Math Books for the Classroom

How Many Guinea Pigs Can Fit On a Plane? by Laura Overdeck is a fun new book that I discovered thanks to someone sharing on Social Media!  It was released a week or so ago and I ordered it right away. This book is a full of questions you can answer yourself using math. There are chapters that categorize the questions--Animal Math, Nature Gone Wild, Math for Your Mouth and more. Each two page spread poses a question and gives the info you need to solve the problem. It also answers and explains the reasoning for the answer. For example--How many times do dogs take a bath a year?--and then goes on to investigate. I see this as a great book to use for openers for Math Worksop or in a variety of ways to just have fun with math.

Animals By the Numbers: A Book of Infographics by Steve Jenkins is a book of visuals. The infographics on each two-page spread are all about animals and each infographic is very unique.  Reading each page takes time and attention to detail and I can see doing Notice and Wonder thinking routines with these pages. These are great pages to linger over as you talk about data, displaying information, comparing things and more. And of course this book has Steve Jenkins fabulous illustrations so it can be used in coordination with some of his other books like Down, Down, Down.

Finally I need to thank my friend and colleague Maria Caplin for introducing me to this book.  Mind Boggling Numbers by Michael J. Rosen is another one that is great fun!  This is a book that is similar in concept to How Many Guinea Pigs Can Fit On a Plane? as it also asks questions of readers and then goes on to think through the math.  This book also includes great graphics and. visuals....and some humor!


I am happy to have discovered three books that have great ideas for young mathematicians. And these are definitely for older elementary students. Excited about sharing these 3 books with my 5th graders in the fall.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is HERE!

Flickr Creative Commons photo by Greg Wagoner

Playing Checkers With Vincent

Maybe I should have let him win.

He was an honest player,
showing me I could double jump him.

(I had forgotten about double jumps.
That's how long it had been since
my last checkers game.)

I thanked him for the tip
and didn't double jump him that time.

That counts, doesn't it?

He was an earnest player,
thinking through the if-thens of every move,
his strategy as transparent as his joy.
At one point, when I had two kings to his one
but there were still lots of checkers on the board,
he wanted to quit
but didn't.

He didn't flip the board
until my win was inevitable,
laughing gleefully,
no need to concede
because it was time to clean up
for free summer lunch.

Mini corndogs and fries
with two choices from the salad bar.

Maybe I had it all wrong.
Maybe he's the one who let me win.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2017

Welcome to Poetry Friday, the ultimate win-win! You share a poem -- win! -- and read a few others -- win!

There is still ONE slot open on The Poetry Friday Roundup Schedule for July-December 2017 is COMPLETE! Thanks, all!

Leave your link in the comments and I'll round you up into this post throughout the day. Let the weekly celebration of poetry begin!

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

Kat at Katwhiskers is first up, enjoying autumn in Melbourne (in contrast to Queensland's quick shift from summer to winter).

Laura at Writing the World for Kids had her poem "The Genre Chant" published in the Journal of Children's Literature!

Irene at Live Your Poem brings us Five for Friday -- a delightful hodgepodge of poetry!

Jama at Jama's Alphabet Soup is sharing a picture book from Hawaii called 'Iwalani's Tree.

Linda at A Word Edgewise has created an amazing concrete poem for Laura Shovan's Daily Poem Project.

Violet at Violet Nesdoly | Poems shares a senryu to celebrate parade season.

Brenda at Friendly Fairytales has written a stunning affirmation of self and becoming.

Linda at TeacherDance shares her original take on the 10 words from Laura Shovan's Daily Poem Project.

Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone had me at Ted Kooser, but wowed me with her partner poem set in Maine.

Carmela at Teaching Authors has written a tectractys in honor of the woman who is the subject of her upcoming biography (along with fascinating process notes about the writing of her book).

Robyn at Life on the Deckle Edge is back, and she's sharing two recently published haiku.

Matt at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme is celebrating several beginnings today.

Tabatha at The Opposite of Indifference looks inside a mermaid's pocket and makes some amazing discoveries.

Donna at Mainely Write is...avoiding joy???

Michelle at Michelle Kogan is having fun with fairies -- in both art and poetry -- this week.

Carol at Beyond LiteracyLink is visualizing joy as she awaits the arrival of a new grandbaby. Be sure you check out her joy-filled poem-video.

Tara at A Teaching Life had me at Mary Oliver and then again at peonies. Ahhh...

Mandy at Enjoy and Embrace Writing shares Haiku #4 (and some process notes) in her ongoing series.

Jane at Raincity Librarian shares the "tip of the verse novel iceberg." Be sure to weigh in with YOUR favorites!

Iphigene at Gathering Books has written the fourth poem in her series "Open Spaces" which pairs her original paintings with poems. Number four is stunning!

Ruth at There is No Such Thing as a God-Forsaken Town shares two original poems written in her first week of summer break.

Margaret at Reflections on the Teche wrote an "I Spy" poem from a Poets&Writers prompt.

Christie at Wondering and Wandering has a heavy heart today. Many will be able to share her sorrow.

Diane has a pair of offerings. At Random Noodling she's got a new project that will make all of you (cat lovers, especially) laugh out loud, and at Kurious Kitty, a tribute to Cole Porter.

Catherine at Reading to the Core shares a "most perfect" poem for the day!

Laura at Laura Shovan celebrates Meg Eden's upcoming debut YA novel with a fascinating "% Questions" interview and an accompanying poem.

Carol at Carol's Corner spotlights a couple of poems from OUT OF WONDER, a fabulous new-to-her collection of tribute poems.

Amy at The Poem Farm is raising some future stars for Diane's Katkus!

Little Willow at Bildungsroman shares a poem about grit and perseverance.

Kiesha at Whispers from the Ridge wrote another haiku this week.

Kay at A Journey Through the Pages tried a charita for the first time, writing about her community theater experience.

Poetry Princess Sara at Read Write Believe is a little late with her golden shovel, but wowser, has the wait been worth it!

Elaine at Wild Rose Reader wistfully shares a Naomi Shihab Nye poem upon her granddaughter' graduation from preschool.

Jone has a pair of offerings. At DeoWriter she shares a double cinquain that's shaped like a teardrop of sorrow, and at Check it Out, more joyous second grade poetry.

Amy at YMATRUZ Instinct shares a quote and three summery snippets of poetry. Cricket Booze Night made me laugh!

Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe has been a bit busy recently. She has some "lyrics as poetry" to celebrate all the endings in her house.

Regrets

For the next half of National Poetry Month 2017, 

Malvina will Sing It, and I'll write a poem in response.

Another unifying topic in Malvina Reynolds' songs is the environment. The next few days will feature songs written in the 1960's and 1970's, but which are fresh and topical today.

Today's poem is a Golden Shovel. The last word in each of my lines reads down, like an acrostic, and is a line from today's song by Malvina Reynolds, "Let it Be." Last month, I buried the story of the loss of two beautiful and magical places inside a book review, and when I set out to write today's poem, it became a lament of the most recent replacement of magic with convenience. Clearly, I'm not over that yet.

Regrets

You do the best you can until you

can do no more. You think

about the choices that

you made and you

wonder if your love

could ever have been enough for her

survival. You planted and

weeded and you

hoped someone else would want

to become caretaker to

this magical place where kids could discover

the workings of nature -- how

intricately she's

designed -- made

with milkweed, for example, expressly so

there can be monarchs. Because you

loved that plot, you take

it personally that they leveled her

and undid all your work; took apart

a piece of what made this world good and

right, wild and free. Your regrets threaten to break

 your belief in yourself, but her

 beauty remains whole in your heart.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2017

Sing It, Malvina!

April 1 -- Working for Change
April 2 -- A Lifetime Filled With Change
April 3 -- Red
April 4 -- Little Red Hen
April 5 -- Childhood Dreams
April 6 -- Lonely Child
April 7 -- Quiet

April 8 -- Storyteller
April 9 -- Troublemaker
April 10 -- Girl Power
April 11 -- Choices
April 12 -- My Gal, Mother Nature
April 13 -- Not a Joke
April 14 -- I Don't Mind Failing

April 15 -- What is Feminism?

April 16 -- Holes

April 17 -- They Can Have Their Cake and Eat it, Too

April 18 -- We Won't Be Nice

April 19 -- Grass is Persistent

April 20 -- Ticky Tacky

April 21 -- Regrets

Tabatha has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at The Opposite of Indifference.

The Day the Bulldozers Came

Me and Marvin Gardens
by Amy Sarig King
Arthur A. Levine Books, January 2017
review copy from the public library

Obe Devlin is watching what used to be his family's farm developed into neighborhood phases, with street names that are ironic because they describe what was destroyed to create the development: Oak Trail, Pheasant's Nest, Orchard Way.

He struggles with identity (he cannot be the kind of masculine his father wants him to be), bullies, nosebleeds caused by a sucker punch from his former best friend in a turf war over what's left of the woods and the creek near his house. And he finds an amazing new breed of animal that could be the answer to all our problems, or the source of a problem as enormous as the worldwide environmental problems the human race has already caused.

But, there's a great teacher. A great science teacher. A teacher who really listens and who helps. Ms. G. goes on our list of 100 Cool Teachers in Children's Literature.

"Ms. G said I'd make a great scientist...I could be anything I wanted to be. But really, I knew I wanted to be a teacher like her. Finding Marvin Gardens had taught me so much. I wanted to pass it on...One hundred years from now, teachers would be teaching about things we would never guess. I wanted to do that. I wanted to find other kids like me and make them care about where they lived and how to make things better."

I loved this book, gave it a 4 on Goodreads for the writing. It got a 5 from my heart when I read in About the Author, "The day the bulldozers came to dig up my field was the day I started my dream of having my own farm. If you've ever seen something beautiful and magical be replaced with something more convenient, then you know why this story took me thirty years to write."

Twice this has happened to me. Most recently just this month. The first was the field and woods and creek behind the school where I taught more than 20 years ago. Where we called owls on night hikes, saw turkey buzzard eggs in a ground nest in the hollowed out tree we liked to think of as Sam Gribley's tree, caught and released garter snakes, reenacted Lewis and Clark's scientific expedition, hosted Ron Hirschi, read and wrote poetry, sang John Denver songs, identified trees, cleared paths, dreamed big dreams. The corn/soybean field is now a football field. I haven't been back to see what's become of the creek. It's entirely surrounded by subdivisions, that much I do know.

The second was a little strip of barely-tamed wild between my current school and the playground. This Land Lab was started by teachers who have since retired or moved on, and left in my trust. It was the place where we planted native grasses and flowers. Where there were wonders to taste (a few blackberries in the summer, and lemon mint leaves to chew), and touch (soft lamb's ear and waxy sedum and prickly rattlesnake master), and see (black swallowtails and monarchs, preying mantises and goldfinches, and the cup plant that captured water in its leaf-cups and had a square stem), and hear (stand in the middle of those tall native prairie grasses and listen to the wind and imagine Ohio before the Europeans got here). I was just about the only teacher with any real investment in the plot, and because of that, just about the only one who worked to keep it from going completely wild. I knew that when I retired it would go away, so when the district offered to take care of the maintenance, I let it go. I thought they would keep the trees (one so tall it shaded my second story classroom window). They did not. They leveled it. They didn't even give enough notice for those who had offered to rescue as many of the plants as they could take -- the coneflowers, yucca, iris, catnip, daffodils, hyacinths, strawberries, and lilies. I wonder what they did with the goldfinch feeder the second grade teacher left outside her classroom window when she retired?

I feel like I've failed this small strip of wild, but perhaps it will be of more use in the long run as a grassy sward. It will certainly be more convenient. And although it's gone, nothing can erase the good it did with so many classes of students and groups in Environmental Club. Maybe I could have fought harder to keep it, and that would have been one lesson to teach by example. But maybe there is much to be taught through the pain of losing of a small piece of wild, seeing as we are on the verge of (in the MIDST of) losing so much of our beloved and wild Mother Earth.

Thank You, Amy Krouse Rosenthal

http://www.whoisamy.com

As many of you, we were heartbroken when we read Amy Krouse Rosenthal's piece in the New York Times last week, You May Want to Marry My Husband. Chronicle books had a short tribute on their site this week. And others, like Malcolm Mitchell, have shared the ways she impacted their lives.  We are joining the world in sending love and prayers to Amy and her family.

Amy has given us all so much over the years. She has given so much to children, teachers and the world.  When I reflected on Amy's impact on our worlds, I searched her name on our blog. She has been the focus of 26 blog posts over the years.  We love her work and celebrate it here often. Her visit to our school in 2011 is one none of us will ever forget.  As preparation for that visit, her work inspired our 4th graders to do something to make a difference in the world.  We were lucky to have her at our Dublin Literacy conference that same year. 

I keep looking back at the list of children's books that Amy has written over the years. She brought love and joy and kindness to all of her work  Each book amazing in its own way.  Each one teaching readers important life lessons in a playful way.  In Duck! Rabbit! she taught us how to see things from different perspectives, In The OK Book, she reminded us that you don't have to be the best at everything you do, and in The Wonder Book she celebrated the magic of wondering.  The list goes on and on.

And, if you have not read her adult book, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, it is a must-read.  This books says so much and the creative way in which she puts it all together is brilliant.

For me personally, Amy's Beckoning of Lovely Project (inspired by the video 17 Things I Made) is what I think of every time I think of Amy.  For me, this project is the anchor that ties all of Amy's work together and the message is the reason we all love her so much. It is a project I go back to a few times a year when I need to remember what it is that is important in this life.  In all of her work Amy teaches us all to celebrate life and all that is part of life--all that is good in this world. This project was all about that.

We are heartbroken by the news of Amy's illness and cannot imagine a world without Amy Krouse Rosenthal.  We are grateful for all the ways that Amy has impacted our lives and the ways we have been changed  because of her work over the years.  We are better people because of Amy.

Amy's website says, "Amy Krouse Rosenthal is a person who likes to make things."  We think that making the world a better place is what she does best.  Thank you, Amy.

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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