beinning reading – Peaceful Reader

Simply Monday

We made chocolate chip cookies at our house tonight. Groovy Girl and I owed Teenage Boy a batch because he walked her and two friends over to the cemetery on Saturday at dusk. We live across from a cemetery and this is a favorite “challenge” activity when friends sleep over. He remembers doing this when he was in middle school with a group of his friends. To thank him for following through we made him the cookies. He’s been eating them while he watches football and reads Inheritance, last in his favorite Eragon series..

I just made the recipe on the back of the Nestle package (yes, every once in awhile non-organic lands in my grocery cart-I don’t know how?) because it was there and easy. I know I have several good recipes but I’ve never hit on one that was so amazing that I have to make that one ALL the time, they all seem to be pretty similar. Do you have a favorite chocolate chip recipe? If so, please share.

My kitchen’s not clean but the cookies are done. Dinner was easy. My kids are happy. Groovy Girl and I had a serious conversation about an article in her Discovery Girls magazine. About bras. Ugh. She’s worried because other girls in her class have started wearing them. Double ugh.

When I went up to get her headed toward sleep she was dancing wildly to one of her Taylor Swift CD’s, lucky for her she was already in her pajamas with her teeth brushed. We read the last half of The Snow Queen by Amy Ehrlich and talked for a few minutes. She wanted to share one of Taylor’s songs with me. It’s a sweet song and it made us hug repeatedly. Listen to it; Never Grow Up, not an official video but still a good.

Hoping your Monday was peaceful and simple.

If The Witness Lied by Caroline B. Cooney

It’s been years since I read any of Cooney’s popular titles but I picked up this title as my husband and I browsed for books for Teenage Boy to take on vacation. I’ve griped about this before but he does not like to GO TO the LIBRARY anymore…!? I hope his senses will return to him one day but as I expect him to read-we get him the books, he picks out a few that he “deems” somewhat interesting and he reads them. He read this one over vacation and when I asked him how it was he looked at me and shrugged very nonchalantly (if you have teenagers you know what I mean) and said it was okay in a very flat line voice. So I had to pick it up and read it just to see what that meant.

And guess what…it was okay but only okay with a shoulder shrug…

The story was predictable.The characters were flat.
The candle on the cover doesn’t fit-Jack Fountain on a bike, a television camera, a little boy in a Jeep-any of these would have worked.
It never fully adds up and Cooney doesn’t give me a good reason for Aunt Cheryl.
It was kind of sad to think no one cared about these kids to look deeper into their tragedy! Come on neighbors down the street!

Can you feel my shoulders shrug?

Read The Compulsive Reader’s post if you want a different perspective.
Benjamin at Teen Reads talks about it .
Goodreads synopsis

My husband tells me that I never read books I don’t like because all my reviews are positive so this one’s for you, honey.

School is Out; the Good and the Bad.

(photo courtesy of Mark Lilly’s travel blog)

Our fifth grade students are now 6th graders and won’t be back next year. (Sob) Over the summer they will grow by leaps and bounds, ready to enter middle school and they will search for book clubs! Hurrah. Most of our other students will be back in the Fall, ready to learn more, ready to check-out more books. I worry about many of them over the summer. A few live in households where they will take a vacation, go to the pool, have play dates with friends and have good old summertime fun. Those are not the kids I worry about. Many of our kids have parents who are less-than-involved who will park their kids in front of a television set and go about their business, not caring exactly what parked child is watching or playing.

While I haven’t been to their homes I do listen when they talk and they tell me about movies (starring Freddy and other gruesome things that slash in the night) that I’ve never watched or dream of letting my own kids watch and the same with video games. I worry that these unwatched kids will not get enough food to eat or anyone to greet them in the morning, giving them the kind affirmations that many of our teachers do everyday. Many don’t have bicycles to tool around on or shorts and t-shirts that fit. It all makes me weary. I know many of them won’t have learning opportunities over the summer like my own children will and I wish I could bring many of them home. They don’t have library cards, (sob) which means they won’t know the joy of weekly visits to the library just to show off how many books they read all week!

When we played with sidewalk chalk at school I was amazed at how many kids don’t have this creative and inexpensive tool at home. I wanted to package some up and give it away. I didn’t get it done but I did give away a lot of books to students. I hope they have healthy food to eat over the summer but my second hope is that someone will take the time to read to them sometime during the week.

Thanks for listening to my rambles as I begin my summer, happy, but pensive about the grumpy faces I see everyday who rely on a teacher to cheer them up.

February Recap

It was a good reading month for me. I’m off to a better start on all my reading challenges. I had promised to fulfill last year’s 100+ challenge before I started anew and I accomplished that this month. I’m feeling pretty happy about that

1. The Reluctant Tuscan by Phil Doran; old ARC from my favorite deceased bookstore in Little Rock, made the move with me here. I finally read it and need to pass it on. Anyone interested? Good story about trying to settle in, well, Tuscany. Reading from my own shelves project challenge.

2. Sophie the Hero by Lara Berger (elementary fiction)cute story about a young girl trying to find her own special talent. Read it with Groovy Girl.

3. Milo; Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze by Alan Silberberg-best middle grade fiction book I’ve read in a long time, so innovative and personal. Everyone should experience Milo!! Library Project Challenge. Click here for my review.

4. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters-book club read for Feb., spooky but filled me with questions. Waters is an exceptional writer who I plan to read more of. Click here for my review.

5. Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella-bought this at our local used bookstore when Tina suggested I read it. I surprised myself by enjoying the heck out of it. Plan to read more of them. Perfect summer sitting-by-the-pool-read. Last year’s Reading from my own shelves project. Need to review.

6. Clara’s Kitchen by Clara Cannucciari– great Depression-era memoir cookbook. Food and Library Project Challenge. Click here for my post.

7. Come to the Table; The Slow Food Way of Cooking ed. by Katrina Heron-Lovely California farm stories withe recipes. Food and Library Projects Challenge. Click here for my review.

8. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison-I bought this one when it first came up, my mom borrowed it and “lost” it. I rebought it at the used bookstore one day and decided this was the book to read from Reading from my own shelves project for this month. Reading from my own shelves project. Need to review.

P.S. While I was feeling all spunky about reading 8 books this month my reading/blogging/librarian friend, TINA, commented that she had a good reading month with like 16 books!! How does she do it??

I also had a great month of Rodale Plastic-Free thinking. While I am already neurotically earthy this challenge did make me consider packaging more…I couldn’t buy a few favorite items and well, I lived through the month so I guess I don’t need my fancy orange juice, every month. Perhaps it will make it a rare and delicious treat. I did point out to my husband that I at least reuse the plastic orange juice jug time after time.

I do have a large collection of ball jars and Pyrex dishes for food storage. This challenge did make me think creatively outside the box, digging deeper for solutions.

I hope February was filled with innovative solutions, good cooking and lots of reading.

Franklin vs. Hulk Hogan

Today I had one of those fantastic moments when the planets align perfectly and rays of sunlight filter right into a child’s brain! This epiphany occured during a second grade class checkout time and I had oodles of students pawing through the “wrastling” biographies. Several students really wanted to check them out but I went through the five finger rule and they discovered they really could not read these biographies.

One of the young students then went to the paperback area and came back with a Superhero comic book. He went to check it out and my amazing volunteer asked him about being able to read this comic. He said something to her and she brought him to me out in the stacks so he could repeat what he had said. This is what he said: “Well, I can’t really read because nobody’s ever taught me. I wanna read but I just can’t! [in a almost ‘near-tears’ voice] We both smiled at him and I said “Well then you have come to the right place!” and promptly showed him the easy reader section of our library. It took about two tries before I found one that he liked but when we did he read the first page so proudly! He was so happily excited to see they were books with chapters and he could read the whole page. He left with his class, smiling, and hugging his book.

     Now I know there are two schools of thought on this and many are scratching their heads going, but why do they have to be able to read a book to check it out? By second grade they should be able to practice their reading skills, we think. I know it can be wonderful to just have a book to look through but that doesn’t work through the week and it doesn’t give them a true feeling of success that comes from actually reading the book-even if it is a Franklin book instead of a Hulk Hogan biography. The proof is in the smile.  What do you think?

     I’m glad Franklin took Hulk Hogan down and for me, the bigger question is Why do I have to even have “wrastling” books in the library? And that is a whole nother post because when I first came to this school they were a mainstay of every check out but not so much anymore-except suddenly for this one class!