Reading Log

I have actually gotten in some good reading time lately, which is amazing considering how crazy my life has been of late. There is a mix of middle grade, picture books, YA and adult titles, something for everyone!

Picture Book
Henry Aaron’s Dream by Matt Tavares
I have known about this book for sometime (Matt is going to be my guest author in May) and it was worth the wait. It is not only a beautifully illustrated book, but the story about Aaron’s journey to the major leagues (it ends with Hank’s first major league at bat) is inspirational and something that my baseball fanatic students will love. For elementary schools in Georgia, this will be a must purchase for the study of famous Georgians (2nd grade). Check out Matt’s website for a REALLY cool story that he uncovered while doing the research for this book. Also, if you are local, Matt will be at Little Shop of Stories on May 2nd and he will be doing a signing at the Gwinnet Braves game on May 4th (against the Pawtucket Red Sox!!) I will be at both!!

Middle Grade/YA
The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z by Kate Messner
I bought this book for my media center and read it over the weekend. It is a great story of a middle school girl who is grappling with passing science (by finishing a MONSTER leaf project), going to the sectionals for cross country, the aging of her grandmother who lives with her family, her feelings for her best friend , who happens to be a guy and dealing with your typical middle school group of mean girls. With a 6th grade daughter of my own, I thought this book was so true about many of the things that girls this age are dealing with. I think it is a great title for fifth graders (and middle schoolers) who will be dealing with all these issues all too soon!

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
As luck would have it, I had this book checked out from the public library when the announcement was made that it had WON the Newberry! I LOVED this book! There have been LOTS of reviews, and you can read one here and here, but I will say this, I wonder how much kids who read this book will understand the 25,000 Pyramid storyline – or even, for that matter the talk about Dick Clark. Monica at Educating Alice is reading this to her fourth grade class and I think it would make a great read aloud, and in that case, you could explain (and maybe even show a clip) of the show. And I just LOVE how the book ends (you willhave to read it to find out!)

My Life the Musical by Maryrose Wood
I gave this book to my daughter, the budding Radio City Rockette, for Christmas. If you have a middle school age girl (or her mom) who loves musicals and Broadway, they will LOVE this book. It is about two teenagers ( Phillip and Emily) who live on Long Island and they are in LOVE with the musical Aurora. When they find out that the musical is closing, they are on a quest to find tickets for the last performance and also the identity of the elusive author of the musical. The book is peppered with lots of musical trivia and lyrics and sub story lines of family, identity and usual teenage issues of fitting in. This made me want to go out and see a musical!

Adult
The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir by Elna Baker
This book was HYSTERICAL! This is a memoir of Elna Baker trying to grip with the fact that she lives in NYC, is young, an aspiring actress and Mormon. She tells of how she deals with dating or rather trying to date in NYC and keep her Mormon values. Her one tale of meeting a famous older actor is hysterical and I have spent WAY too much time trying to figure out WHO it is (she does not reveal his identity, but tells us he is as famous as Newman, Redford, Beaty). It was a quick read, but one worth the laughs!

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.

Dear Mr. President....

As many of you know, President Obama's 2011 education budget does NOT include any additional funding for libraries or specific funding to put certified school librarians (that is what we are suppose to call ourselves these days, right?) in schools.

Buffy Hamilton of the Unquiet Librarian wrote an AWESOME letter, which I shared with all the media specialists in my county. AASL also has a sample letter that you can use to write to your local paper and your local congressional delegates. One last thing you can do, at 5:45 today, Organizing for America will be hosting a conversation with President Obama. You can submit your questions for him at their site here. If we flood the site with questions about why he has excluded libraries and school librarians in his 2011 education budget, maybe he will realize how important this issue is to schools across the country.

If any legislator has any questions about how important it is to have a certified school librarian in a school, I would like to invite them to come out and spend the day with me and see what I do for my school and I am sure that any school librarian would extend the same invitation! (just please don't come during book fair!) President Obama, I have the welcome mat out for you!

Diversity

I found this TED video from Amy Bowllan of the SLJ blog, Bowllans blog. This video is a talk by story teller Chimamanda Adichie from the 2009 TED International conference. Adichie talks about how people can have stereotypes just from the stories that they read and hear. This REALLY made me think about what kind of books I use for story time and how I need to diversify what I read to the students. Our school population is increasingly becoming more diverse, not just more Hispanics and African Americans, but more Asian students and we have quite a few students from Slavic countries as well. It is worth it to take 20 minutes to watch this.

Library Day in the Life

Today I participated in round 4 of Library Day in the Life - started by Bobbi Newman. I created a slide show (below) to document the day and I also wrote a play by play below. It was kind of a strange day in my library today because it was science day at our school and the library was being used for some special science programs all day, but then again, that is what sums up a day in my library, no day is EVER the same, which, I think is what I LOVE about my job!

Day in the life of an elementary school media specialist: January 25, 2010

~ I start out my day checking my Twitter account online at home while I eat breakfast (key lime pie yogurt & juice, if you must know) Twitter is blocked at school, so I get my "fix" in before I go.

~ When I get to school I have to unlock 7 doors in my media center - but I guess I should be so blessed that I have such a LARGE library.

~ E-mail - especially on a Monday my in-box is usually pretty full. I first try and e-mail out my schedule for the day to the teachers at my school as a reminder if their class is scheduled to come in to the media center that day. Today I only had one scheduled class because of science day activities happening in the Media Center.

~ I get my son off to class (he is in 3rd grade) and run around to buy a milk from the cafeteria and a Sprite from the teachers lounge as part of my lesson this morning (more on that later).

~ my 5th grade news crew comes into the media center and we go into our tv studio to prepare for the morning broadcast. The broadcast is only 15 minutes long (at most) and only takes about 15 minutes to prepare, but the 5th graders who are involved love it. I had a new crew today, so the broadcast is a little shaky, but they did a great job for their first day.

~ After the news show, I finish getting set up for story time. I am doing a science story time with a non-fiction book Under The Snow by Melissa Stewart then I am making snow with the kids using instant snow from www.stevespangler.com. We take the science thing a little further by trying to guess which will make better snow, milk, soda or water (the water is the winner). This morning I am dong this with a third grade class. I usually do not do story times with third graders, but the teachers love when I do science and try and sign up with me, the kids love it too.

~ After the story time class leaves, my assistant and I finish setting up the media center for the special science programs planned for today.

~ As the science programs are going on the media center, I go into my office and try and get some things off my desk:

~ finish creating a web page for a 5th grade research project I am starting with two classes tomorrow on famous African Americans

~ I finish revising my evaluation goals that my Assistant Principal (AP) had given back to me last week with notes on what to fix.

~ Worked on my Media Plan goals for the next two years , this is another part of my evaluation that my AP had wanted me to finish.

~ I talked to the t-shirt company about customized t-shirts that we are having made for our Reader's Rally team. We finalized art and made a deadline for having the orders in (the design is SOO cool)

~ Ate lunch at the circulation desk (as usual) but because of the science programs, I actually got to eat in some peace instead of in between checking books in/out for students. (italian wedding soup & a diet coke)

~ unpacked new book order - YEAH, I love new books, but boo to the company because they forgot one of the books in the order. E-mail my rep to find out what happened.

~ Planned story time for next week, was going to do Mo Willems (love him!), but am going to do the new Coleen Salley book instead and since she was from New Orleans, we are going to talk about Mardi Gras and make Mardi Gras masks, found mask template, now just need to find paper. Maybe we can use the masks to cheer on the Saints (but my Principal is a HUGE Colts fan, might have to rethink this...)

~ Bus duty (my least favorite part of my day)

~ After school we had a Readers Rally meeting. Readers Rally is a competition that my county puts on each year. It is similar to a Battle of the Books competition. The county competition is open to fourth and fifth graders, but we just have fifth graders participate at our school. The competition is less than a month away, and the practice didn't go so well today, gotta get the kids motivated to READ READ READ the books these next three weeks!

~ I leave school to go to my other job - the Mom job, where I cart my three kids around to dance and sporting practice, make dinner, finish laundry and get ready to start it all over again.

A tragedy this weekend

This is not a book or library related post, but one I felt I needed to share.

This past weekend, in my neighborhood in suburban Georgia, three teenage boys fell through the ice in our neighborhood pond (see news story here and here). One of the boys got out, the other two boys were under water for over 40 minutes before the fire department could rescue them and they died later at the hospital. These were friends and football teammates of my son, they were in the eighth grade.

One of the things I have noticed in the past few days that DOES relate to this blog, is the way social media, games and texting have helped these kids go through this tragedy. On Saturday night, when the media wanted some pictures of the kids, about 7 football players got on the boys MySpaces and found pictures to print to give to the media. It was a great way for the kids (and the parents that were there too) to talk about the boys and remember them. That night, the kids were all texting each other and we found out about a church service that was being held on Sunday morning for the boys. About 50 kids (mostly football teammates) showed up to grieve and pray together. Later that day, the boys texted and Facebooked and MySpaced about meeting up at the pond for a memorial to the boys – within 2 hours, well over a hundred people turned up, not only kids, but neighbors, teachers from the middle school and classmates. Late Sunday night, I heard my son playing his Xbox 360 live – I could hear him talking with some of his teammates/classmates on this game and they were remembering the boys and talking about them - a way for my son and his friends to grieve and heal that I never would have imagined. I have also been told that some kids have set up a memorial Facebook page for those that knew the boys to write messages and remembrances on. I am sure that not only will this help the boys friends grieve, but also their families as well.

This has been hard for everyone in our community and something that those of us that live in the neighborhood feel like it could have happened to any one of our kids. They were all curious about a frozen pond, this doesn’t happen in Georgia (I have NEVER seen this pond frozen in the four years we have lived there) and many of the kids (mine included) had tried to test out the ice on Friday (a snow day from school).

Please keep the families of these boys in your thoughts and prayers in the next few weeks.

Now back to our regular programming…

JFK & Twitter ?

I am so glad the main stream media (and it is funny, I wonder if we are not far from "main stream media" having a totally different meaning soon, and I am saying this also as a person whose husband works for a main stream media outlet) has seen that Twitter is not just for the living anymore!

This story in the Boston Globe lets us know that the JFK Library in Boston has a new Twitter stream (is that the right terminology?) to replay scenes from JFK's bid for the presidency 50 years ago! I can't wait to sign up!

I had an interesting conversation with a teacher the other day about Twitter - so many people think that it is just another social site, just for "the young" and I was trying to convince them that my Twitter activity is mainly of a professional nature (although most of my tweets lately have been about how darn COLD I am) and how much useful information I have gotten via twitter (not to mention PRIZES, I have won 3 Twitter contests this year!). If non-believers of Twitter realize that historic things like this are being put on Twitter maybe people will see the value, and dare I say it.. maybe even SCHOOLS would see how useful this would be... of course in my district, I am not holding my breath for that one!