Platypus Police Squad Blog Tour

We are thrilled to give you a sneak preview of Jarrett Krosoczka's art in his new book, Platypus Police Squad: The Frog Who Croaked

Look like fun? Here's the book trailer:



Want to know more? Here's an interview with Jarrett:

TTI is a production of Franki's Fourth Graders

How did you think of writing Platypus Police Squad?

I was actually trying to write a book called "Penguin Police Squad," but then penguins were just everywhere, so I began to search for another animal that started with the letter "P" and I came to the mighty platypus! But it all started in 2004 when I drew a character from Punk Farm a year before that book was published. A kid guessed incorrectly that my next book was about a bunch of farm animals that were cops. So that stuck with me--a book about animal cops who wore aviator sunglasses!

Why did you make the characters platypuses instead of humans?

When you work with animals, you can get away with more things than if the characters are humans. Also, platypuses are way funnier than humans! 

Why do the place and the time from each chapters change?

Each chapter represents a different scene in the investigation. It's almost as if the chapters were pulled from a case file that the detectives needed to file after the case was solved!

How many books will be in this series? Can you tell us anything about upcoming books?

Right now we are planning on four. The second book is called “The Ostrich Conspiracy” and it takes place in the newly built Kalamazoo City Dome. (There's a teaser for this at the end of book 1.)

How did you get the Idea to write the Lunch Lady series?

After a chance encounter with my old lunch lady, I began wondering about her life. One led thing to another and I started writing a graphic novel series about a lunch lady who fought crime!

Why are the tools used as weapons in Lunch Lady?

Well, if you saw your lunch lady walking the halls with nunchucks, you'd begin to ask questions, now wouldn't you? And Lunch Lady simply can't have her cover blown, which is why her nunchucks are disguised as fish sticks. Besides that, she does spend her entire time in the cafeteria, so she is surrounded by resources to create crime-fighting gadgets!


Still want more? Check out the Platypus Police Squad Virtual Launch Party on May 23 -- chat with Jarrett and win prizes!!

Finally, on Saturday, we will draw one name randomly from all of the commenters on this post to win one copy of Platypus Police Squad!

Poetry Friday -- Vacation

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Freddie Boy

THE VACATION

by Wendell Berry

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation.

(the whole poem is at The Poetry Foundation)

It's not that I'm already thinking about vacation (well, maybe a little). I went looking for Wendell Berry to share and I found this reminder to be in the moment, really BE in the moment.

Anastasia has the Poetry Friday Roundup today at her poetry blog.

(edited to add today's cartoon from Hugh MacLeod at Gaping Void, which seems to fit nicely with Mr. Berry's poem...)

P.S. Be Eleven

P.S. Be Eleven
by Rita Williams-Garcia
Amistad (HarperCollins), on shelves May 21, 2013

In this sequel to One Crazy Summer, the focus is on Delphine, the oldest of the three sisters, who is beginning sixth grade. Delphine has to deal with not having the "right" clothes, not getting the teacher she wanted, and not being able to go to the Jackson Five concert. She's learning to understand her father and grandmother, and she gets to see a part of her sister Vonetta that she didn't know existed.

Periodically, Delphine gets letters from her mother in L.A. Each letter includes, "P.S. Be eleven" at the end, and through the letters, the reader gets to know a softer part of Celine, the girls' mother, than we saw in One Crazy Summer. It's pretty amazing how much of a presence Williams-Garcia creates for Celine with just those letters.

Readers who loved One Crazy Summer will definitely want to spend the school year after that summer with these likable characters.

2013 CLA/NCTE Notable Children's Books in the Language Arts

2013 Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts

The charge of the seven-member national committee is to select thirty titles each year that best exemplify the criteria established for the Notables Award. Books considered for this annual list are works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry written for children, grades K-8. The books must meet one or more of the following criteria:

• deal explicitly with language, such as plays on words, word origins, or the history of language;
• demonstrate uniqueness in the use of language or style;
• invite child response or participation. In addition, books are to:
• have an appealing format;
• be of enduring quality;
• meet generally accepted criteria of quality for the genre in which they are written.

43 Cemetery Road: the Phantom of the Post Office, by Kate Klise, illustrated by Sarah Klise, published by Houghton Mifflin.

A Leaf Can Be, by Laura Purdie Salas, illustrated by Violeta Dabija, published by Lerner.

and then it's spring, by Julie Fogliano, illustrated by Erin Stead, published by Macmillan.

Bear has a Story to Tell, by Philip Stead, illustrated by Erin Stead, published by Macmillan.

Book of Animal Poetry, edited by J. Patrick Lewis, published by National Geographic.

Cat Tale, by Michael Hall, published by HarperCollins.

Chopsticks, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, illustrated by Scott Magoon, published by Disney/Hyperion.

Each Kindness, by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by E.B. Lewis, published by Penguin.

Encyclopedia of Me, by Karen Rivers, published by Scholastic.

 

Endangered, by Eliot Schrefer, published by Scholastic. 

 

Forgive Me, I Meant To Do It: False Apology Poems, by Gail Carson Levine, illustrated by Matthew Cordell, published by HarperCollins. 

Hades, Lord of the Dead, by George O'Connor, published by Macmillan.

His Name Was Raoul Wallenberg, by Louise Borden, published by Houghton Mifflin.

House Held Up by Trees, by Ted Kooser, illustrated by Jon Klassen, published by Candlewick. 

I Have the Right to be a Child, by Alain Serres, illustrated by Aurelia Fronty, published by Groundwood.

I Lay My Stitches Down, by Cynthia Grady, illustrated by Michele Wood, published by Eerdmans.

Lions of Little Rock, by Kristin Levine, published by Penguin.

Moonbird, by Phillip Hoose, published by Macmillan.

No Crystal Stair, by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, published by Lerner. 

Obstinate Pen, by Frank Dormer, published by Macmillan.

Sadie and Ratz, by Sonya Hartnett, illustrated by Ann James, published by Candlewick.

See You at Harry's, by Jo Knowles, published by Candlewick.

Snakes, by Nic Bishop, published by Scholastic. 

The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate, published by HarperCollins.

Unbeelievables, by Douglas Florian, published by Simon & Schuster. 

Unspoken, by Henry Cole, published by Scholastic.

 

Walking on Earth & Touching the Sky, by Lakota Youth at Red Cloud Indian School, illustrated by S.D. Nelson, published by Abrams.

Water Sings Blue, by Kate Coombs, illustrated by Meilo So, published by Chronicle.

Wonder, by R.J. Palacio, published by Random House.

Z is for Moose, by Kelly Bingham, illustrated by Paul Zelinsky, published by HarperCollins.

Tracy Smiles, Chair; Donalyn Miller, Patricia Bandre, Yoo Kyung Sung, Barbara Ward, Shanetia Clark, and Jean Schroeder.

Fun With Dictionaries

Advice to Little Girls
by Mark Twain
illustrated by Vladimir Radunsky
Enchanted Lion Books, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

I glanced at this book when it came in the mail, but what really caught my attention was this article on Brain Pickings that told how this book came to be published in the United States. Go ahead and click over to take a look. You'll get to see several spreads from the book, which will give you a feel for the quirkiness of the illustrations and the archaic language of Twain's text.

How to share this book with modern children, though? Here's what I came up with:

There are eight bits of text in the book. Perfect for eight groups of three. I told my students a bit about the scrapbook-feel of the book, about when it was written, and about Mark Twain. Working with a dictionary, I challenged each group to "translate" their bit of text into modern English. When they were all finished, I read each page, followed by the group reading their translation.

I was pleased with how much of the humor my students were able to understand, once they'd plowed their way through the language! Fun with dictionaries!!

April Mosaic

At the beginning of April, the sun was just rising as I left for school. Now it's well up.

It was a month of acronyms: CFR (1st row #2), IRA (1st row #4-6th row #2),  PFA (4th row #4-5th row #4).

You can see the photos (bigger, with titles and sometimes captions) on Flickr here.

My photos on Flickr are all labeled with a Creative Commons license. That means you are free to use them (non-commercially), as long as you provide attribution that they are my photos. If you do use a photo of mine, stop back and leave a comment (and a link, if possible) on Flickr so that I can clap my hands with glee that something I've made has inspired your creation!

Poetry Friday -- Cats

Photo by Yathin S Krishnappa, on Wikimedia Commons

THE CAT'S SONG
by Marge Piercy

(excerpt)

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,
says the cat, although I am more equal than you.
Can you leap twenty times the height of your body?
Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs?

(the whole poem is here)

"QUICK! QUICK! ..."

by Anonymous

Quick! quick!
The cat's been sick.

(the whole poem is here, but be forewarned, it includes a disgusting but accurate description of cat behavior)



The Poetry Foundation has a whole collection of cat poems here.


Liz Steinglass has the Poetry Friday roundup today.

Chalkabration!

Betsy, at Teaching Young Writers, is hosting a Chalkabration on the last day of April, May, June, July and August. Here's my poem:

Here's a close-up of that yellow haze of oak pollen (and some CUTE little oak leaves):

Now multiply the pollen from those three bundles of oak flowers by an entire tree full, in a neighborhood filled with mature oak trees...

...and you'll understand why my red car has a distinct yellow tinge to it!! (AH--CHOO!!)

Common Inspiration--Uncommon Creations.30

Animation by DemonDeLuxe (Dominique Toussaint), from Wikimedia Commons

Z IS FOR THE END

The month has zipped by,

although some days

the writing was

much zippier than others.

Like the teeth of the zipper

we writers came together,

locking ideas to make a chain.

The prompt was our slider.

I thank you, fellow poets,

for joining me

in binding word to word, 

thought to image.

This common daily work,

putting one word after another,

has brought us close,

will link us forever.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2013

From Kevin (Kevin's Meandering Mind):

Where it ends is where it begins,
our words entwined like wires
moving with electricity through the world
from our fingers to our ears
to the universe beyond.

Where it ends is where it begins,
a spark of creativity and connectedness
and shadows of worlds unfolding on the page
from our fingers to our eyes
to our thoughts settled inside.

Where it ends is where it begins,
poems as stories as memories
as thinking, as sharing in this space
where time and distance are immeasurable
and where our words collide
forever.

©Kevin Hodgson, 2013
The podcast is here.


From Linda (TeacherDance):


Tasty Pleasure

Baby poems zipped, enthusiastic group.
This was our own alphabet soup:
dashes of some humor, facts there, too;
thought-filled words together - eclectic stew!

©Linda Baie, 2013


From Carol (Carol's Corner):

"Zipper"

I crouch down

take your down jacket

in my hands

fumble with the frayed

late winter zipper

until it catches

I draw the zipper

to just below your chin

tie your hood and

stuff your hands

into mismatched mittens

hoping this 

little bit of love

will be enough

to protect you from

a frigid unloving world.

(C) Carol Wilcox, 2013

The theme of my 2013 National Poetry Month Project was 

"Common Inspiration--Uncommon Creations." 

I used the media to inspire my poetry, but I invited my students to use my daily media picks to inspire any original creation: poems, stories, comics, music, videos, sculptures, drawings...anything!

Here are some of my students' creations:

Inspired by the fire breather

Inspired by the fire breather

Inspired by the fire breather

Volcano cake inspired by the fire breather

The above three inspired by Le Silence

Foodscape/sculpture of the Broadway Tower with an imaginative landscape surrounding it!

 
To go with the Rubik's Cube animation

And the poems that were inspired by the harp music:

that sound calms

me down every

time I hear

it going past

nice and fast

just the

way I

dream 

it

--B

SOUND OF BEAUTY

The brush of a harp.

The melody.

The sound.

The feeling.

The beauty.

--No

ANGELS

It feels like

angels are flying

over me,

playing their soothing harps,

sounds relaxing.

--Na

FLOWERS AND HARPS

When I think of flowers

    I remember the

sound of harps. They are

    both peaceful and

relaxing. They make me feel

              safe.

--Jo

peace    harmony

freedom

happiness

Litmus

Lozenge

vengeance    sorrow

pain              agony

honor    courage

respect

--Re

TWOs

Two harps

play

two beautiful

sounds

like two flowers

twirling around and

around

like two friends

caring for

each other

like two blue jays

singing

sister and brother

like two people

giving gifts on special days

like two children

wanting 

to play

like two angels

watching 

for us

like two harps 

playing

two

beautiful 

sounds.

--Ra

Had to remember

A loved one.

Running my fingers on the strings making 

Peaceful music.

--M

NICE SOUNDS

That sound, what is that

it's so...peaceful.

It makes me calm down,

overjoyed, I went to where

it came from.

It was at a church

it was a girl playing 

her harp.

I walk in and 

she stops, she looks

at me then looks away

and starts playing

again.

--G

HARPS

The music from heaven

letting us know the right way

like a rainbow in the clear sky

it is quiet music that

makes us feel safe.

--Y

HARP

The music is peaceful

like crickets making music.

All the sounds come together

like every feather of a bird.

This piece had harmony

like a two instrument symphony.

Playing my harp

making beautiful music.

Plucking the strings,

playing something inspirational.

Inspiration,

that made this poem.

--J

no stopping

back and forth, forth and back.

no stopping; for there is no

time in this new world.

back and forth, forth and back.

as i lean against ellis,

i try to remember those days.

back and forth, forth and back.

one year more until

this war is out of my head.

back and forth, forth and back.

my life is full of melodies,

and i need them to live.

--S