March Mosaic

March's mosaic features lots of small surprises: a tail and a nose peeking from under birthday wrap, a ladybug walking across the snow, a hawk in the tree across the street, the first spring blooms, geese on a rooftop, tree trunks that look like elephant legs, goldfish in a TV set.

Every month, I've got lots of snapshots and only a few really well-composed, crisply focused photographs. I'm pretty sure that's what it will be like when I roll out April's 30 poems -- there are bound to be some lame clunkers, but I'm hoping for a few I can really be proud of.

Here's the schedule of Poetry Month Events around the Kidlitosphere:

Gregory K. will once again host 30 Poets/30 Days with previously unpublished poems by favorite children's authors.

Tricia Stohr-Hunt will interview 30 children's poets, beginning with Mary Ann Hoberman, the US Children's Poet Laureate. The Poetry Makers list is stellar!

Jone MacCulloch shares Thirty Days, Thirty Students, Thirty Poems: original poems by students. Jone will also again offer the Poetry Postcard Project where original student poems are sent out on decorated postcards. Request yours now.

Jama Rattigan is posting original poems & favorite recipes by some of the Poetry Friday regulars.

At A Wrung Sponge, Andromeda will share a "haiga" (photo and haiku) each day.

Kelly Fineman at Writing and Ruminating will continue the Building a Poetry Collection series she began last year -- selecting a poem a day in a kind of personal Poetry Tag (see Sylvia Vardell's version below) and providing analysis. I call this The University of Kelly Fineman because I learn so much in each post!

Sylvia Vardell will be inviting poets to play Poetry Tag. She will invite poets to "play" along by offering a poem for readers to enjoy, then she will "tag" a poet who shares her/his own poem THAT IS CONNECTED to the previous poem in SOME way—by a theme, word, idea, tone-- and offers a sentence or two explaining that connection. The poets have responded enthusiastically: J. Patrick Lewis, X. J. Kennedy, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Avis Harley, Lee Bennett Hopkins, Joyce Sidman, and more!

Laura at Author Amok is highlighting the poets laureate of all 50 states this month! Fun Fun!

Laura Salas will post a children's poem per day from a poetry book she loves.

Lee Wind is publishing many new Teen voices during April for National Poetry Month. GLBTQ Teen Poetry.

ORIGINAL POEM-A-DAY CHALLENGE

Checks these blogs daily for new original poems by the following people:

Susan Taylor Brown

Andromeda Jazmon

Jone MacCulloch

Elizabeth Moore

April Halprin Wayland

Liz Scanlon

Blog Vacation

For the first time in four years, we're taking a vacation from the blog during our spring break from school. We're setting aside our day jobs and our joint hobby so that we can:

plan our presentations for WLU and Choice Literacy
do taxes
make 90 90th birthday cupcakes
shop for a new kitchen floor
read
read some more
spend time with friends

work on final paper for library course
breakfast and lunch with friends
plan some summer workshops
read
exercise
put lotion on my face twice a day
shop
get a few rooms clean
try to figure out Evernote

Mary Lee will be back with her Poetry Month Original Poem-a-Day About Teaching Or Learning on April 1, and we'll be both be back to work and to the blog on Monday, April 5.

Poetry Friday -- Cake

three-layer from-scratch chocolate cake by Mary Lee Hahn...so's the photo

From CHOCOLATE CAKE

by Michael Rosen

(the whole poem is here)

...you know how the icing on top
is all shiny and it cracks as you
bite into it,
and there's that other kind of icing in
the middle
and it sticks to your hands and you
can lick your fingers
and lick your lips
oh it's lovely.
yeah.

Anyway,
once we had this chocolate cake for tea
and later I went to bed
but while I was in bed
I found myself waking up
licking my lips
and smiling.
I woke up proper.
'The chocolate cake.'
It was the first thing
I thought of.

I could almost see it
so I thought,
what if I go downstairs
and have a little nibble, yeah?

It was all dark
everyone was in bed
so it must have been really late
but I got out of bed,
crept out of the door

there's always a creaky floorboard, isn't there?

Past Mum and Dad's room,
careful not to tread on bits of broken toys
or bits of Lego
you know what it's like treading on Lego
with your bare feet,

yowwww
shhhhhhh

downstairs
into the kitchen
open the cupboard
and there it is
all shining.

So I take it out of the cupboard
put it on the table
and I see that
there's a few crumbs lying about on the plate,
so I lick my finger and run my finger all over the crumbs
scooping them up
and put them into my mouth.

oooooooommmmmmmmm

nice.

Then
I look again
and on one side where it's been cut,
it's all crumbly.

So I take a knife
I think I'll just tidy that up a bit,
cut off the crumbly bits
scoop them all up
and into the mouth

oooooommm mmmm
nice.

Look at the cake again.

That looks a bit funny now,
one side doesn't match the other
I'll just even it up a bit, eh?

You know the rest, right? Go ahead and admit it, you've straightened up your share of cakes in your life!!! :-)

Today, the first day of spring break, in between reading poetry posts, I'll be baking this cake for a friend's birthday party tonight. The roundup is at The Drift Record this week.

ToonDoo Spaces

My fourth graders have been creating cartoons at school and at home in our password protected ToonDoo Space for several months now. It has given them an alternative way to publish their writing in a "public" space where their classmates can comment on their work. They have made toons about themselves, about their theme, about how to have good sportsmanship in P.E., about their cat, and about books they've read. They've made up stories about ninjas, space travel, the Oscars, superheroes, and the Olympics.

We've had great conversations about Internet safety, commenting etiquette, and appropriate social networking behavior.

Recently, the staff at ToonDoo Spaces asked if my class would create a testimonial for them to run on a loop in their booth at a conference in Singapore. When I pitched the idea to the class, the response was a unanimous "YES!"

Each child created three slides in Keynote, created some toons especially for their slides, and worked to clearly communicate what they like best about ToonDoo. Having an authentic audience outside of our class lifted the level of their work in a way I never would have expected.

My favorite story from our testimonial project is the slide that shows the graph. The student who created it found a slide with a placeholder graph in the masters for the theme he had chosen. He was going to use that slide in his set. "You can't use that slide," I told him. "That's fake data. That doesn't say anything real about ToonDoo. If you want to have a graph, you have to gather some data."

So he did.

He interviewed the class, tallied up his results, went back to the slide with the graph, and with just a little help from me, got it to show his REAL data. How often do we get to hand a child a challenge that perfectly matches their skills and their will to meet or exceed our expectations?

Fun stuff.

Here is a short version of what we sent to our ToonDoo friends:

Artsy-Fartsy

Artsy-Fartsy

by Karla Oceanak

illustrated by Kendra Spanjer

Bailiwick Press, 2009

review copy provided by the publisher

Greg Heffley and Ellie McDoodle, move over -- Aldo Zelnick is here!

Aldo's grandmother, an artist, gives him a sketchbook at the beginning of summer break so he can keep track of all his artsy-fartsy ideas. Aldo does plenty of sketching, but he's also interested in words, thanks to his neighbor (a retired English teacher), Mr. Mot. It's Mr. Mot who gets Aldo started keeping track of all the interesting "A" words he uses, beginning with "artsy-fartsy". There's even a word gallery at the end of the book with all of Aldo's "A" words. Most of the words are defined (except for words like "antidisestablishmentarianism," which he has no idea what it means but likes it because it's so long), and some are illustrated (like the toilet beside "ad nauseum").

In this first book in the series, we meet 10 year-old Aldo's family -- his grandmother the painter, his mother the birder, his father, whose hobby is baking, and his 14 year-old athletic brother. Aldo's best friend Jack is a rock hound. They all live in Colorado.

Aldo and Jack make a fort at the edge of the park near their house, under a big blue spruce whose branches grow almost all the way to the ground. Aldo leaves his notebook in a crook of the branches. When he comes back, he finds drawings in his notebook! Someone has found their fort, found his notebook, and DRAWN IN IT!

Finding the culprit (who strikes again at least once more) is the main story line in ARTSY-FARTSY, but there are plenty of entertaining sub-stories. In one, Aldo, who would rather watch TV and play video games, is forced to play baseball. It starts badly (and humorously) but has a surprising turn in the end.

Aldo is a character I like a lot, and I think kids will like, too. The second book in the series, BOGUS, is due out this spring, and promises to be filled with "more hand-drawn comics, rock-candy B words, and accounts of his everyday adventures." Looks like Aldo's dad's baking will be a key part of the story in BOGUS.

Feeding the Sheep

Feeding the Sheep

by Leda Schubert

illustrated by Andrea U'Ren

Farrar Straus Giroux, 2010

review copy provided by the publisher

This is a seemingly simple story with lots going on. A great book to read and re-read, over and over.

On one level, it's the story of how a sweater gets made, from the feeding of the sheep, to the shearing, cleaning, drying, carding, spinning, dying, and finally the knitting.

It's also a story with satisfying repetition. "What are you doing?" the little girl asks, over and over again, and her mother patiently tells her each time.

It's is a story that has a rhyming phrase on every page of text: "Snowy day, corn and hay," when the sheep are being fed; "Deepest blue, messy brew," when the wool is being dyed.

There are lots of parallel stories going on in the pictures of this book -- what are the dog and cat doing? Is the crow in every picture? Does the little girl ever slow down and rest? (Yes, and the reader takes a deep cleansing breath along with the mother in the full page spread midway through the book where dog, cat and little girl are all quietly napping!)

And this is a story about farm life throughout the seasons. Careful attention to the details in the pictures reveals that the seasons are changing from winter to spring, summer, and fall. It's snowing again by the time the little girl is wearing her new sweater and feeding the sheep for herself.

Like I said, seemingly simple, but with LOTS going on. Dare you to read through it just once!!

Congratulations, Philippa Stratton--NCTE's Outstanding Language Arts Educator

I was thrilled when I heard that Philippa Stratton is this year's Outstanding Educator in the Language Arts. This award is given each year by NCTE's Elementary Section Steering Committee. The recipient is celebrated at the Annual Convention's Elementary Get-Together--a great way to kick-off the conference each year.

Every year, when the NCTE Outstanding Language Arts Educator is named by the Elementary Steering Committee, I want to cheer! Every one of them has impacted my learning and thinking in some way. We are so lucky in the field of elementary literacy to learn from so many amazing people.

This year's award winner, Philippa Stratton, is the editorial director at Stenhouse Publishers. We LOVE Philippa. Mary Lee and I both know her through our work with Stenhouse but, before we began writing and before we knew Philippa, we learned so much because of all that she did for our learning as teachers. The announcement on the NCTE website states, "In many ways, Philippa essentially created the idea of the 'professional book' for teachers, an innovation that has had an enormous impact on how teachers learn and view themselves as professionals for nearly three decades." Philippa has worked with many authors including Donald Graves, Lucy Calkins, Ralph Fletcher, Georgia Heard, Harvey Daniels, Stephanie Harvey, Marie Clay, and Regie Routman.

Anyone who has worked with Philippa feels very lucky to have worked with her. She seems to bring out the best in people and has worked her whole life to bring the voices of teachers out into the world. Her belief in teachers and teachers as learners and professionals drives all that she does. And the philosophy she has about classrooms is clear in all of her work. If you have ever read a professional book, you've most likely been impacted by Philippa. I have learned more from professional books and teacher-authors than I have learned from anything else throughout my teaching career. Before Twitter and Facebook, these professional books connected me with the people who were thinking about the same things I was thinking about in the classroom. These professional authors became my first Professional Learning Network--one that I continue to rely on.

Can you imagine the world as teachers without professional books as we know them? Can you imagine your classroom without the influence of people like Regie Routman, Donald Graves, Lucy Calkins and Ralph Fletcher? Can you imagine your professional life without the anticipation of the next professional book that will help you grow as a teacher? I certainly can't. Philippa has had an incredible influence on my work and the work of almost every teacher I know. Her work has helped us stay grounded in what we believe and helped us to trust ourselves as learners and professionals for the last 3 decades.

I can't wait to join in the celebration at NCTE's Annual Convention in Orlando this coming November! I am pretty sure it will be a standing-room-only event!

I'm Gonna Verse You!

POETRY MONTH

I'll verse you in checkers,

I'll verse you in chess.

It's me versus you

to see who's the best.

I'll verse you with verses

I'll write one a day

It's me versus verses:

You observe while I play.

by Mary Lee Hahn, copyright 2010

I can't quite believe I'm going to do this: I'm challenging myself to write a poem a day about teaching and/or learning during Poetry Month (April). If so many of you can do a Slice of Life every day in March, surely I can write something that will pass for poetry every day in April!

You can be a casual observer, you can join Franki and put on a cheerleading skirt, or you can verse me and write your own poem about teaching and/or learning. I'll post it here, or link to your post.

Stacy has the roundup today at Some Novel Ideas.

The Night Fairy

The Night Fairy

by Laura Amy Schlitz

illustrated by Angela Barrett

Candlewick, 2010

review copy provided by the publisher

I wish I could send this book back to my 9 year-old self. I would have loved everything about it -- its small size, its thick pages, the shimmery end papers, the illustrations, the dedication to ME!!! ("This one is for Mary Lee..."). I would have set aside THE BORROWERS (after all, I would have been in my 10th or 12th reading of it) and made a space in my imagination for fairies. Flory, the spunky, prideful, demanding, brave night fairy whose wings are accidentally (we find out later) crunched by a brown bat, would have become one of my Favorite Characters Of All Time.

The garden in this book would have been as exotic to me as a night fairy who learns to survive without wings. I grew up in a small town in a very dry region out west, and although we had trees and green grass in town, I never experienced lushness until I was an exchange student to Germany in high school. There were only a few squirrels in our town at that time (living in the big old elms near the elementary school in the center of town) and I had never seen a hummingbird like the one Flory so wants to ride, nor a preying mantis like the one she fends off with a big thorn.

I smile to think about my young self reading this book, because I envision my old self as the old woman who tends the garden. I'm pretty sure young me couldn't have imagined growing up to become that old woman! My garden isn't as big as the one in this book, but it's got the squirrels, the flowering tree, the bird feeder, hummingbirds that visit, if not nest, and occasionally a preying mantis. And I like to think there's a spot out there where a night fairy could survive until her wings grew back.

The Night Fairy Website

Other reviews:

Book Aunt

Fuse #8

Educating Alice

The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary by Jeff Kinney

We are having a Selections Book Fair at our school this week. What great timing because today, the newest book-THE WIMPY KID MOVIE DIARY by Jeff Kinney was released! Love having a hot-off-the-press book! Especially this one.

I have to admit that I have not read all of the books in this series. To keep up with reading for a K-5 library, I tend to only read 1-2 books in most series. I've read one to two and enjoyed them. But this book is different and I think it is my absolute favorite!

This is not really a book about Greg. Not totally. Instead, in this book, Jeff Kinney tells about the process of turning his book into the upcoming DIARY OF A WIMPY KID movie. I have not yet read the book--it just arrived at 2:30 Tuesday. But, I did spend lots of time looking through it and I am really excited about the possibilities.

To have a resource like this about how a movie is made--what could be better? I have been doing a bit with movie-making, stop motion, etc. in the library and kids are doing amazing things. This new Wimpy Kid book will be a fun addition to the things we know about movie-making.

The book begins at the beginning and how Jeff Kinney created the book. Actual journal pages and drawings are included. It also tells the story of how the actor who plays Greg, got the part. Then the story goes on from there.

This book is packed--199 pages packed--with color photos, pages from scripts, call sheets, Jeff Kinney's illustrations and more. Whether you are a fan of The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series or not, this is a GREAT book!

So far, my favorite pages are pages 40-43 where we learn the secret of the moldy cheese in the movie. I won't give away the movie secret but you will definitely want to read those pages soon after you get this book.

I am excited to dig into this book and read it cover to cover. So many great pieces to share with kids about the characters, the process of this movie and movie-making in general. I imagine we'll see a lot of transfer from this book to the kinds of possibilities our kids see in their own movie making.