Story Time This Week: A Tribute to Coleen Salley and Mardi Gras

This week in honor of one of my FAVORITE people of all time, Coleen Salley and as a warm up to Mardi Gras my story time combined a Louisiana folk tale by Ms. Salley and the making of Mardi Gras masks!


I love Ms. Salley's Epossumondas books, even if I STILL can't the Lousiana accent right when I read them! Coleen's last book (published in October, a year after she passed away) Epossumondas Plays Possum , was my choice to read this week. This is the story of little Epossumondas, he once again goes into the swamp, forgetting that his Mama had warned him of the terrible loup-garou who live in the swamp and will swoop a nice little possum right up with his nasty claws. So Epossumondas gets lost and encounters all sorts of nasty swamp creatures, but isn't scared at all because they are not the loup-garou. In the end, his Mama finds him i the swamp and she is surprised because he DID indeed use the "sense he was born with" in dealing with the nasty swamp creatures.

This book NEEDS to be read in a southern accent, I try to summon my best, Steel Magnolias accent when I read this book, and I think for a good ol' girl from Massachusetts, I think I do ok with the accent. If you ever want to hear how the Epossumondas books SHOULD be read, get a copy of the audio book for any of Coleen's other Epossumondas books, she read them and is FABULOUS.

For our craft this week, I am having the kids make Mardi Gras masks, the kids are LOVING this, the bad part, I am having to cut out the eyes of the mask before the kids come in - I need a mask die cut if I ever do this again!

Check out some pictures from our story time this week.

Coleen Salley

As most of you know by now, author Coleen Salley passed away this week. I had the pleasure of being her very last school visit - and let me tell you, how lucky I was.

Many people who knew her better than I have posted tributes, here, here and here but I just wanted to reiterate the importance of author visits to schools.

When I announced to the staff about Coleen's passing so many people told me how touched they were by her visit her and how touched their students or their own children were. You can read about my adventure with Coleen here, and I will repeat, she is one person who made such an impression on me that I will remember our time together the rest of my life.

Coleen, I know you are up there in heaven having a drink and telling stories - thank you for making an impression on so many people!

Coleen Salley

What an incredible woman - I had SO much fun on Friday, I don't know where to start!

For those of you not familiar with Coleen Salley, she is 78 years old, she lives in the French Quarter in New Orleans. She is a retired teacher/school librarian and college professor. She published her first book after she retired, when she was 72!  She is a story-teller extraordinaire. Not only were the students excited by her performances, the teachers were as well.

Then after her performances, there were the STORIES - the ones form her life and travels - she is s straight from the hip kind of gal - and I LOVED it - I can only hope I am like that when I am 78.  Anyone who rides in a shopping carriage in a Mardi Gras parade has chupah!

Here are a few pictures - the hats are right out of the Epossomundas books - Coleen's hat is the hat she travels with, our hats were made by one of our kindergarten teachers. She was truly an inspiration in so many ways, she is one of those people that I will never forget meeting, and I really hope that I have the chance to cross paths with her again (a few teachers are already talking ROAD TRIP to New Orleans!)

Great Week!!

What a GREAT week it has been, not only have I had a BLAST doing the SLIME in the media center this week, I got to see Bon Jovi at Phillips arena on Wednesday night - and I just have to say it again - that man (Jon Bon Jovi) just gets better with age!

I took yesterday off as a recovery day and it was a beautiful spring Atlanta day - ate sushi outside, it was FABULOUS!

Today I am welcoming author Coleen Salley to my media center. She is in town for the IRA conference and she will be speaking to Kindergarten and 1st graders. I talked to her on the phone the other day and I just can't WAIT to meet her!

Does it get any better than this!

(photo of JBJ from http://www.billboard.com/)

Author Visits

This week my library had an author/illustrator/musician visiting our school and he was just AWESOME!  

Before I tell you about our guest, I wanted to point you to a FANTASTIC  post by Camille at Bookmoot  about hosting and BEING a visiting author/illustrator.  I have hosted a few authors and illustrators in my five years of being a media specialist and the one thing I have come to learn is, I do not book ANYONE unless I have heard them speak before or I have gotten at least two or three endorsements from other media specialist or teachers.  There is nothing worse than bored kids listening to an author who is not exciting them to go out and read or write or draw or do all three. Actually there is something worse, knowing how much you PAID for this person to bore your students!

Now I get to brag on the guest I had in my media center the past three days - Chris Rumble, the Reading Guitar Man.  He is a local GA author/illustrator/musician and he wrote and illustrated a series of books about a mountain man named Uncle Stinky, think Captain Underpants meets a Southern Mountain Hillbilly - Uncle Stinky likes the word YEEHAW a lot!  He is not a world-famous, well known award winning author, but he got my students so fired up and excited to read and write that you would have thought he just won the Newbery and the Caldecott!  He starts his show with his guitar and sings songs to the kids about reading, taking classic songs (My Girl, Sweet Home Alabama) and changing the lyrics to lyrics about reading.  He gets the kids involved singing - and even the teachers (I had the camera the whole time, so I got out of subjecting anyone to my singing!) Then he puts the guitar down and talks about his books and about writing.  He changes it up, depending on who his audience is, my favorite part was when he showed a group of fifth graders a story that he wrote in fifth grade, complete with illustrations (note to self, make sure I save ALL my kids work, in case someday they are a published author!) he usually finished with another song and then sends the kids back to their classrooms a little hyper, a little loud and really jazzed about reading and writing.

I am VERY lucky that I had a PTA who paid for him to be at my school for three days and every student got to see his presentation (even our special ed students, and he was GREAT with our special ed pre-k students!). I am also lucky that I have two more authors coming in this year, Melinda Long, author of How I Became a Pirate will be visiting for one day in March and Coleen Salley, author of the Epossumondas books will be visiting in May. I hope these visits go as well as the ones this week went.