Classroom Resource: Wordless News (and metaphors found in art)

Wordless News. If you don't subscribe and use this resource in your classroom, now's the time to start. Creator Maria Fabrizio has been away for a few months, busy with a newborn and a toddler, but she's back with an image at least once a week.

The images she creates are perfect for "notice and wonder." I noticed that the shadow was actually hands, and I wondered about the lines, but I didn't notice one key thing about the lines until I read the related article. I hadn't heard about this interactive art installation, so when I read the article, I had a huge WOW! moment. I'm saving this one to share with my students even though it will be old news in a couple of weeks. I want to open their eyes/minds to art as a response to current and historical events.

Earlier this week, at the Columbus Museum of Art, I saw this installation and had another WOW! moment:

What looked like a huge barrel balanced on a rope took on layers of deep meaning when I read the explanation outside the room:

We study the indigenous people of the Americas, including the effects of colonialism. So this image will be a great starting point for those studies, and another example of the way art can help us to think about our world.

My NCTE Purchases

I am finally home from NCTE. What a great convention! I learned lots and connected with lots of friends. And I came home with a HUGE bag of books. I promised my class that I'd pick up books and I really lucked out this year. On Sunday of the convention each year, the exhibitors have great sales. So I picked up some older and some new titles. Here are some that I wanted to share.

CHESTER by Melanie Watt is a pretty hysterical new book. Melanie Watt begins to tell the story of her pet mouse but Chester, the cat, interferes with the story. Great humor! (Melanie Watt will be at the Dublin Literacy Conference in February!)

Anthony Browne has a new picture book out called MY BROTHER. The book shares all of the ways that his brother is "cool". He does this with words and great illustrations. Labels really add to each illustration. I have been collecting books on different ways authors write about people so I was happy to add this to my collection.

Something new to add to the SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES--THE CHRONICLES OF SPIDERWICK: A GRAND TOUR OF THE ENCHANTED WORLD NAVIGATED BY THIMBLEWICK is a huge book (a scrapbook) filled with letters, photos and artifacts from the mansion. This one will be fun for students to browse--I think it will be one that would be best after having read the entire series. A pretty fun book with lots to absorb.

I picked up VENOM by Marilyn Singer. It is a pretty big nonfiction book about poisonous animals. It has great photos and is organized by the places you find each particular type of venom. Singer's writing has great humor and her headings are definitely some that can be studied when learning about creative nonfiction writing. Her section on poisonous spiders is titled "A Few Spiders Miss Muffet Should Avoid".

I was thrilled to meet Michale Buckley, author of The Sisters Grimm. A new, fifth in the series, book is out. It is called Magic and Misdemeanor. And it sounds like there are more to come!

I picked up a series that I read about on Planet Esme. There are 5 books in the KEEKER series-a series about a girl and her horse. I am always looking for good new, early chapter books series and this one is perfect. Each book is about 50ish pages long. There are simple illustrations on each page and the stories are perfect for 2-4th graders. I think it will be a big hit since I have so many students who love horses.

I had to pick up THE HOLLY JOLIDAY by Megan McDonald. I haven't read it but it is filled with lots of great color illustrations. It is the first book featuring Judy and Stink. I am happy to see this and hope that she writes more that include both of these characters.

I am always looking for fun, new wordless picture books. So I bought a copy of BOW-WOW BUGS A BUG-- a pretty funny wordless picture book with great, bold illustrations and a great story about a fun dog. Hopefully we'll see more of him soon.

There are others but these are my highlights. I know once I get them to school, I won't be able to get my hands on them again for a while:-)

3 New Picture Books!

I picked up 3 great new picture books last week.

Alphablock is going to be my new go-to Baby Gift Book!   It was on display at Cover to Cover and it became an instant favorite for me!  It is this amazing chunky little alphabet book!  The design of this book is amazing as each letter is cut out as a page of its own.  The text is predictable and the illustrations are more detailed than I realized at first glance.  Really, a pretty perfect book for home and school. The images on the Amazon page will help you see the inside pages.

Outfoxed by Mike Twohy is one that was on my Goodreads "Want to Read" list.  I picked it up at Cover to Cover and laughed out loud.  I am trying to read more books with humor as they are not always my faves. This one is quite hysterical and I know my students will love it.  (Even my daughter, who is 14, laughed when she read it to herself on the way home from the bookstore.)

Fossil is a new wordless book from Bill Thomson, author of one of my favorites--Chalk !  I was happy to see this from him and know that kids will make some connections between the two. This one is similar to Chalk with some important differences. Definitely one I am glad to add to my collection of wordless books.

Circle by Jeannie Baker

I have been a fan of Jeannie Baker's wordless picture books since the beginning of my wordless picture book obsession. Her art and the messages in her books are always powerful.

Circle is a different kind of book for Jeannie Baker but I loved it and can't wait to share it with our 3rd graders next year.  We have a basket of bird books in our classroom and I've try to create a basket with a variety of topics within the bigger topic of birds. I know kids often begin their reading with bird guides as they want to learn to identify various birds. But I've noticed that some readers move on from the basic identification of birds to bigger issues. The book Circle takes us on a journey with the bar-tailed godwit ("who undertake the longest unbroken migration of any animal") as they migrate from Australia/New Zealand to the Arctic and back again.  Baker creates text that helps us understand time and distance as well as the amazing thing that this journey is.  And her illustrations help us appreciate the various places on Earth that are part of the godwits migration.  Not only does she help readers understand all of that but she also invites them to understand the bigger idea of how connected our world is and that changes to one part of the world can have consequences for another. The map in the back of the book showing the migration is also fabulously helpful.  There are so many layers of conversation and learning that I think can happen because of this book and I am excited to add it to our classroom in the fall.

(Another book about this journey is The Long, Long Journey by Sandra Markle. Pairing these two would invite even more great learning.)
SaveSave

Another Great New Wordless Picture Book

I just picked up another great new wordless picture book at Cover to Cover yesterday.  It is called WELCOME TO THE ZOO by Alison Jay.  This is one about a day at the zoo with bright, colorful pictures.  There is lots going on in the illustrations and I couldn't quite get a handle on what was going on until I got to the end.  At the end of the book, the author gives you a few things to do. She gives you one page of "can you find" pictures.  Kids always like that. But my favorite is her list of "What else can you find?" On that page, the author gives you hints to all of the stories going on in the book.  For example, "What happens to the hat?  Can you follow it through the whole book?' She gives us several questions that invite us to go back through the book following that item.  It was in that way that I discovered so many stories going on in the pictures that I hadn't noticed the first time.   There is also a map so this book would be a fun one to use for mapping.  This is a great book to add to your library--I think kids will have lots of fun with it.

Fun New Wordless Book

Chalk

by Bill Thomson

Marshall Cavendish, 2010

review copy provided by the publisher

I'm always on the lookout for new wordless books for my collection. They are great for limited English speakers and for small group work on making inferences.

This one tells the story of some children who find a gift bag full of chalk hanging from a playground dinosaur's mouth on a rainy day. The first girl draws a sun on the sidewalk, and lo and behold, the sun comes out.

The kids try out one fun possibility after another, but things get a little out of hand, until someone gets the idea to draw the rainstorm they started out with so that the chalk drawings wash away.

The kids carefully hang the bag of chalk back on the dinosaur's mouth and walk on (with a final, wary glance back -- reminiscent of JUMANJI).

A Wordless Book for All Cat Lovers

Franki and I were just talking about how much we both love wordless books. The possibilities for use in the classroom are endless, spanning from enjoyment and appreciation of the ability of the artist to communicate the story without words, right through differentiation for students who are striving text readers and ELLs.

I have been a fan of the Simon's Cat videos on YouTube since the first one came out in 2008. You've never seen them? Okay, take a minute and watch this:





Simon Tofield, the cartoonist, does so much with gestures, facial expressions, and, of course, a deep and personal knowledge of cat behavior.

Tofield, who struggled with dyslexia as a child and who was constantly urged to quit drawing and focus on getting a "proper job," created the first animation when teaching himself to use some animation software. He is now adding new videos to the Simon's Cat website on a monthly basis, and there are all kinds of Simon's Cat items for purchase, a soft toy and a newspaper strip. And there are books.

Simon's Cat in Kitten Chaos  

by Simon Tofield

Akashic Books, on shelves April 16, 2013

review copy provided by the publisher

In this book, Simon finds a kitten, abandoned in a rainstorm in a cardboard box. He brings it home and every manner of chaos ensues. There is the getting-to-know-you phase, the competing-for-attention phase, the I-terrorize-you-you-terrorize-me phase, and finally, the I-guess-we-can-get-along phase.

As much as this book is about a single-cat family with a new kitten, this can probably also be read as a single-child family with a new sibling. Kids will be able to relate; parents (and cat owners) will giggle, chortle, and sometimes laugh until tears stream down their faces.

Move over, Garfield. Simon's Cat is the new funny fat cat in town!

Favorite Series: Fox and Hen

Fox and Hen Together
by Beatrice Rodriguez
Enchanted Lion Books, 2011
review copy provided by the publisher

The surprise in Chicken Thief (a PW Best Book of 2010), the first book in this trilogy (watch for Rooster's Revenge in September), is that when the fox steals the chicken, the outcome is happily ever after and not chicken feathers at the corners of fox's mouth. In this book, Chicken leaves Fox in charge of her egg while she goes out to catch a fish for dinner. The adventure that ensues for Chicken takes up the rest of the book, except for the part at the end where there's a surprise with that egg.

I'm not telling. Sorry. You'll have to read it for yourself.

Why I love this series:
1. It's more than just the Fox and the Chicken, it's a whole series of wordless books that Enchanted Lion is doing called Stories Without Words. (see also my review of ICE by Arthur Geisert)
2. The size and shape of the books -- they are different from other books -- long and skinny.
3. Wordless picture books are "just right" books for EVERY reader in my classroom.

Book Clubs

Wednesday is Book Club Day in Room 228.

Before we get deep into Book Clubs that address specific skill needs, we are getting used to thinking with partners, and digging deeper than the surface.

We started with fractured fairy tales last week.

This week, we will read wordless picture books.

I have Chalk on Kindle on all of my personal devices in the classroom, so one lucky group will read digitally.

The two newest wordless picture books in my collection are

Journey
by Aaron Becker
Candlewick, 2013

and

Zoom (Picture Puffins)
by Istvan Banyai
Puffin Books, 1998

I'm not sure how Zoom fits with the narrative work I want my students to continue with...perhaps I can find several more in my collection that are simply visually stunning and we can do some compare/contrast work with books that tell a narrative story and books that simply help us to see the world with new eyes...

It's Monday! What are you Reading? and Summer #Bookaday

(Visit Teach Mentor Texts for the It's Monday! What Are You Reading? round up.)

I love Donalyn Miller's idea of #Bookaday Challenge. Each summer, she puts out a challenge to herself and to others to read an average of a book-a-day over the summer.  I know I read a lot, but I also know that many of my teacher friends read far more than I do.  And summer is a good time for me to catch up. This summer was a busy one so I knew lots of my books would be short reads. I counted the days of summer and set my goal for 82 books.  I met that goal easily once I got started.  Last week, I was at 99 books. (For the most recent list, you can check out my goodreads account.) Here is how my numbers ended up last time I checked:

57 Picture Books
2 Wordless Picture Books
1 Poetry Books
16 Middle Grade Novels
2 Young Adult Novels
2 Adult Novels
16 Nonfiction Children's Books
3 Graphic Novels

Since Donalyn started this challenge years ago, I have realized how important summer and vacation reading are to me as a teacher and a reader. That extra time to read is critical and it takes far less time every day than I imagine it will.  Setting a goal of a book each day was overwhelming at first but I've discovered that it is very doable.  I have used the library lots and I spent many mornings reading a stack of new picture books.  It doesn't take long to get through a stack of picture books and discover a few gems. At the end of this summer #bookaday, I am reminded again of how important it is for me to read and keep up with new books, I believe strongly in the power of Teacher as Reader and always have.  I need to be a reader myself in order to teach reading, but I also need to read lots of children's books so that I have a menu of books to share with students each year.  (Lucky for me, I LOVE reading children's books as I believe they are the best books out there!) As I choose books and share books with students, I know that knowing 99 more books will help me be a better teacher. It is probably the most important work I do each summer.

Even with all of this summer reading, I still have a huge TBR stack. Seems like the more I read, the more I want to read! But I have so many more possibilities when I make choices about books to share with students in read aloud, mini lessons, conferences and small groups. I can't imagine going into the year without all these new titles in my head.

Some highlights from my summer #bookaday that I haven't blogged much about already:

Picture Books

Dad's First Day

Little Elliot, Big Family (coming October 6!)

To the Sea

Early Chapter Book

Francine Poulet Meets the Ghost Raccoon

Nonfiction

Swan: The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova

Untamed: The Wild Life of Jane Goodall

Middle Grade Novels

All the Answers

Echo

Paper Things

Crenshaw

The Truth About Twinkie Pie

The Thing About Jellyfish

Graphic Novel

Sunny Side Up

Wordless Picture Book

Sidewalk Flowers