Veteran's Day

This week is book fair and all the craziness that comes with it, but last week and next week I am reading a story for story time that I just love (and WARNING.. it might bring tears to your eyes as you read it) and am a doing a project to celebrate Veteran's Day.

The book is The Imposisble Patriotism Project by Linda Skeers. The book is about a boy who is not too happy about a President's Day project that his teacher has given the class, create something about patriotism. He goes about asking his classmates what they are doing (a paper mache liberty bell, a map of the US, dressing up as the Statue of Liberty) and is still stumped. He finally has an idea at home while looking at a picture of his Dad, who is not at home at the moment. I won't give away the ending, but it is a bit of a tear jerker.

Before I read the book, I talk with the class about what Veteran's Day is and what a Veteran is and also about what Patriotism is. After the story the students are writing/drawing letters to Veteran's with the kids. I have two different templates, one for my Kindergarten students who will be drawing a picture and one for my students in first grade and up who will be writing a thank you letter to our Veteran's and our active service people. Since I see so many students, I am giving these thank you's to a variety of places. I have a few Veteran's that I know (some from WW II) that I will be giving a few letters to. I also have an address for an active army unit that I will be sending some of these to and I will also be dropping some of these off at the Veteran's Hospital in Atlanta.

Today on our schools morning announcement show I showed this video of my son interviewing my grandfather, a WW II vet and purple heart recipient. The funniest thing about this - one of my third graders asked his teacher if my grandfather was from a different country because he sounded like he was - the teacher replied "No honey, he's just from Boston!"

And one good thing about having book fair this week - look what we got in yesterday at the book fair!!!

Book Gifts

I have been thinking about a post on this subject all week, and then of course Jen came up with a perfect post about the gift of reading. 

My thoughts were tied to the book fair I am running this week.  This is a fundraiser for the media center and while I do promote it with the premise of getting books into kids hands, the real reason why I do it is MONEY - yes MONEY.  The book fair is every school librarians nightmare, dealing with parents, dealing with crying kids who break your heart, dealing with money (I had a kid today purchase $56 worth of books, only 45 in ones and the rest was in pennies, dimes and nickles!) but the money is our motivating factor.  With school budgets getting tighter every year I fear that I will have no money to spend on library books and other materials in the coming years, the money I make from book fair will help me out.  This year the money I make will go toward three author visits that I have scheduled - and I am SO excited to be able to offer my students this - I STILL have kids who ask me about our author visits from last year (and even yesterday I had to explain to a 2nd grader why Coleen Salley would not be coming back to our school this year).

So with that in mind, I have started targeting the parents in my school (I am in a fairly middle class school, we do have a reduced/free lunch population that is growing, but for the most part we are in a pretty middle class area) to use the book fair to purchase gifts for the holidays.

But the question I get asked the most is "What do you think Johnny would like, he's in second grade and is an ADVANCED reader?" (ah, aren't they all advanced readers!)

I have learned through the years, not so much from my job, but from my own children that reading material is such a subjective thing and even if Johnny loves to play baseball, baseball fiction books might not get him excited about reading. I find that younger children are easier to buy for than older children.   I do ask if they know the last book the child they are buying for read and then I might find similar books.  I might ask what the child  is interested in and find a non-fiction book about that subject.  Very often, I suggest giving a child a favorite book from their childhood.  While the recipient might not find it THEIR favorite book, kids to do get a kick out of reading books that their parents or relatives or even teachers enjoyed when we were their age. 

 I love to tell people to start a book giving tradition.  I know some families that have a night of Hanukkah be book night, or they give a new Christmas themed book to a family/child every Christmas (I do this).  I am lucky enough to get to meet many authors throughout the year and I always buy a signed book for my nieces, sometimes even including a picture of the author and myself along with the book (I do this for my own children too, but many times at least one of my kids is with me when I meet authors).

Like Jen says in her post, more important that GIVING a child a book is to READ the book to them/with them, even older kids enjoy being read to.  So while the hectic pace of the holidays starts to take hold, take a night to read a book with your kids (or a child in your life), that is the real gift of the season.

Best Sellers at the Rock

ltuwzntzAs my book fair winds down (tomorrow is the last day - WAHOOOO!) I wanted to reflect on what has been the best sellers at this book fair.  I am pretty sure the best sellers are tied to what was on the book fair flyer that went home, but I really think that title plays a BIG part in how/what the kids select.

Our top 5 sellers

Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Rodrick Rules

Swindle by Gordon Korman

Nims Island by Wendy Orr

How to Draw the Newest Pokemon

Curse of the Campfire Weenies by David Lubar

I tried to talk up Cornelia to quite a few kids and that has sold fairly well too. Of course the good old Guinness book of World Records has sold out as have the many sports non-fiction books that we have had. I was so glad when we sold out of Pokemon and I had a student buy a READING book instead!!  

For those of you who do book fairs, we did ours with Scholastic and I requested BOOKS ONLY - we did have one tray of pencils and bookmarks near the register in case we needed to make "change" (we can't give change for checks and many parents write checks for $10 and the kid buys a book for 8.99) I have had SO many compliments from parents and teachers for doing it this way, I was thinking of just doing it this way once a year, but I am thinking of doing it this way EVERY time.

I can't wait until it is ALL over tomorrow!

What makes a book a book?

One of the things that I struggle with every book fair is what the kids buy from the book fair. The book fair ultimately helps me, for every dollar someone spends at the book fair my media center receives money from the sale. Money that I will convert into author visits or more books for the media center. It doesn't matter if someone spent $10 on good, quality books or $10 on pencils and a Pokemon book - BUT - as a media specialist, it makes me CRINGE every time I have to ring a student up and all they have bought is "junk". I think what makes it worse for me are the things that parade as "books". Pokemon books and comic books (NOT graphic novels, but books like the Simpsons). Books written after TV shows such as Sponge Bob and Fairly Odd parents. I guess you can call me a book snob, but you can spend $3.99 on a Sponge Bob book or $3.99 on a Magic Tree House book or Charlotte's Web. I guess in the end, both books have words and if a child is actually READING the books and not just looking at the pictures, it is a win-win, but STILL, how many people claim that reading a Strawberry Shortcake book when they were nine changed their life??

I try and steer the students toward "good" books, things that *might* just change their lives, but I guess all a teacher can do is lead their students to water and hope that they take a sip.

I for one do not purchase "character" books for my media center. I have noticed that their are some Nickelodeon character books in my media center now, but I can assure you that there will be no more purchased, at least while I am there. Of course, I do have a HUGE collection of Captain Underpants books, and for some reason, I don't mind those as much, maybe because there is not a Captain Underpants TV show?

busy days in the media center

School has been in session for about six weeks now and I am really feeling how different it is to be in public school, especially the difference in SIZE. I went from a school of 575 students to a school of 1100 students. Last Friday the book fair rolled into the media center and it is non-stop! Of course the fun part of the book fair is looking at all the great books that I will get for the media center off the fair. Number one on my list - Knuffle Bunny Too by Mo Willems

Starting tomorrow the 2nd annual Cybil's awards will begin taking nominations for your favorite children's and young adult books. Check it all out at the Cybils site!

Count down to Summer!

After today we have 22 days left of the school year. Since my school is a K-8 school, the last month of school is hectic, we have Kindergarten graduation , 8th grade graduation, award ceremonies for each grade level, the annual talent show and field days for each grade. Not to mention field trips! So my schedule is so jumbled up for the last couple of weeks that some days I don't even know who is actually coming into the media center for classes, this makes planning anything kind of hard!

Our school has a required summer reading list for grade 3-8, but I am thinking I would like to highlight some "fun" summer reads for my students and also some ideas of how to make summer reading "fun". ANY suggestions for either of these would be greatly appreciated!

I am also starting to clean out my office. I am leaving this school to go work at a public K-5 school next year. I am excited for the challenge of being somewhere new (and HUGE, 1100 students - WOW!) but I am also sad to leave here, especially since they have yet to find a replacement for me (if you are a media specialist looking for a job at a Catholic school in GA, let me know!!) I have come to realize that I have treated this media center as a child and I am feeling a little sad about letting it go.

On good note, our book fair was last week, and even with me being out the first couple of days of the fair, we took in over $3000 more than last spring and almost took in what we did at the fall book fair (spring fair is always lower in sales for some reason) so I am really excited! Scholastic provided the fair and this year they really worked with me to get our school's summer reading titles on the fair, titles that they would not have stocked otherwise.