school – Page 3 – Peaceful Reader

Time flies…

It seems absurd to me that I’ve not written since the beginning of the month. I feel like I’m in the middle of about a hundred projects both at school and home.

And so quickly two weeks sped by…

I’ve been reading A prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving and it is taking me forever. I’m enjoying the story and I’ve read other Irving titles yet I can’t help but feel I’d like to cross out a couple of hundred words for him. Excellent story though and I constantly feel a little anxious worrying about Owen.

I’ve been reading it seriously since the beginning of the month which is making me feel a bit book-backed up. I have a 6th grade group reading Prodigy by Marie Lu and I’ve fallen way behind them. Two students have already finished and I’m on, like, the 3rd chapter. What kind of discussion leader will I be? Hmm.

I also finally got a new copy of The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen that I’m anxious to get back to and finish. {If you’re wondering why that’s important read here } I have three books I need to read and be ready to discuss with two friends in Arkansas by the time Spring Break rolls around. I have quite a few still checked out from the library and even more recently downloaded from Net Galley. I also need to read Ghosts of Graylock to see if it is too scary for some of our students. See what I mean by book-swamped! I can see the headline: Librarian found buried alive under mountain of her own books!

Reading is not a chore; it’s one of my greatest pleasures. I just need more real time to do it in. I’m grateful for the books that surround me, the stories they share with me, and the true joy it brings me to discuss books with kids and adults alike. The laundry and recycling will just have to wait. I’ll be spending my day with Owen.

I hope you find time for all your favorite pleasures on Valentine’s Day!

Even librarians make mistakes…

You know it’s easy to lose a book in a house full of books even when you are a librarian! My friend Tina and I have often joked how we are terrible examples of library book care as we’ve both had to pay not only overdue fines but for lost books as well.

Today I opened up several boxes from Scholastic that I ordered using our book fair $$. Inside one of the boxes was a copy of The False Prince by Jennifer Nielson and I cringed a little. My school library had a copy of this book when I started the year off-mind you this IS my very 1st year here-and I was reading it at school as my “I’m reading” example book (loosely translated to the book I read a page or two out of to demonstrate to students what a good reader looks like as they read near me; trust me it works). I’d gotten to the half way point in the book and was pretty engaged so that Friday I stuck it in my backpack and carted it home with high hopes to finish it that weekend.

Saturday (way back in November) I toted The False Prince with me in my little “31” bag as I went off to work our church Christmas bazaar, where I am in charge of the used book sale. When we finished setting up I set it on the counter because I thought for sure during a lull that I would be able to read a chapter or at the very least a few ~~pages~~ paragraphs. That lull never came and at the end of the bazaar after Teri and I counted the money and closed up shop I went to pick up my book (more accurately my library’s book) and lo and behold all heck broke loose because it was GONE! Now I must be completely honest here and admit that the table I had set this book on was also the table where we exhanged money for books and bagged sold books up for happy buyers. Really, really a poor choice on my part.

So when I pulled this new copy of The False Prince out of the Scholastic box I felt sad that I’d lost the first copy. This is why when students come to us with the crazy excuses they have for losing a book I have to look at them with total empathy. I’ve walked in their shoes.

Somewhere out there is a copy of The False Prince sitting in the bottom of someone’s Target bag of books, waiting to be found. Maybe someday it will be returned to our church or to our school as it is stamped inside. Maybe it will even be returned with my book mark sticking out. Who knows? More than likely the book buyer will just shrug their shoulders and think “I don’t remember buying this one but it looks good!” and they’ll proceed to move the book mark back to the beginning.

Maybe every year I could lose a book to remind myself to stay humble and remember how tough it is for most kids to come in and admit that their new puppy chewed their chapter book to cardboard bits.
And I still need to finish the rest of Jennifer Nielson’s excellent book.

The Book Fair is here!

I know this will sound like one big fat commercial from a woman who isn’t into commercialism but I love the book fair! Too me it is one more way to get good books into the hands of unsuspecting kids. And this book fair is the biggest book fair I’ve ever watched get unloaded which means it took me several hours on Friday + several more hours on Saturday for me to set up. It was a lot of work. I even enlisted my husband’s help for part of the day on Saturday. He created a castle front out of my little sketch for the front of the library. The them is “The Kingdom of reading…”

So excited to introduce Hansen students and staff to the fun of an amazing Mrs Holt book fair. There are so many good books scattered throughout the fair that I will be hard pressed to get any work done all week long. I’ll be reading…

Elementary Non-fiction love

One of my goals for this school year is to up-date our nonfiction selections. This will be a challenge for me as I prefer fiction. I need to get over this though as I read great reviews and found lots of cool nonfiction on the shelves of the public library, where I go for all my hands-on research. Nonfiction has so much more pizazz than it used to; my general feeling of NF is droll pages of way too much information with not enough pictures. Not so with nonfiction of today; it is bright, lively, and perfect for a read aloud.

No monkeys, no chocolate by Melissa Stewart, Allen Young and Nicole Wong (2013); Told in a backwards format I learned how the rainforest eco-system helps cocoa beans thrive and grow. Students will love knowing that maggots, lizards, and aphids all help the cocoa bean tree grow. Luckily we have a special store downtown that sells truly good rainforest fair trade chocolate because this book made me hungry for good quality chocolate not that waxy stuff that will fill Halloween buckets next week. This wonderful nonfiction is a must order for my new library and if you have curious ones at home this would make a perfect purchase. Excellent Melissa Stewart website.

S is for Sea Glass; a beach alphabet by Richard Michelson and Doris Ettlinger (2014); This is an alphabet book filled with wonderful poetry and lovely illustrations. A wide variety of poetry styles are featured and this book will be loved by both students and teachers. My favorite poem:

Q is for Quiet

The sun as it’s rising

The drift of a cloud

Spiders spinning webs

Crabs scuttling

Across the ocean floor

The swimming of fishes

The wishing of wishes

The opening of a door

The thoughts in my head

These are things I can hear

When it’s quiet

As I lie here in bed.

My second favorite is from a dog’s point of view as he runs along the beach. What joy! This book pulls me back to our family beach vacations and makes me feel happy. We definitely need this one for our poetry collection; it holds a mini vacation between the cover.

Animal Teachers by Janet Halfmann and Katy Hudson (2014); This book is exactly why I take my research seriously. This is an amazingly fresh look on animal behavior. The illustrations are gorgeous! Who knew I could find such joy over a nonfiction title. Groovy Girl loved the cover and came near to read this one with me. Each animal has something unique it learns from its parent and then Ms. Halfmann asks the reader to put it in their terms. For example the chicken teaches the chick to peck for seeds specifically and then the question is posed “who taught you what’s good to eat?” “Did you ever try to bite your toes?” Other animals included are otters, dolphins, kangaroos, beavers, elephants, and cheetahs; just to name a few! A huge list in the back of the book provides even more unusual facts for us to marvel over. We were astounded that “beavers have a set of see-through eyelids that work like goggles underwater.” Yes, yes I will order this one as well and can’t wait to hand it off to a teacher when animal books are requested. After years of doing animal research with students this one motivated me!

Picture Book Frenzy

I went to the library and picked up a so many delightful picture books off the shelf my bag was packed. I usually think I have to be with my friend Tina to overfill my bag but I guess I’ve proved that I can do it all by myself!

I was looking for ideas for school. The collection at my school library is still new to me so I go to the public library to look at the new shelf to see if it is worth buying and maybe it will work its way into a lesson plan.

That’s what happened with Monsters Love School by Mike Austin. What a delightful picture book. I read this to all my kinder and first grade students. It covers the exciting part of going back to school as well as the fears in a fun Muppet-kind of way. We compared monster’s school experience with their own here at Hansen. The illustrations are filled with color and the writing is all over the page. We all loved Ms. Scribble the art teacher with her very clever head of hair. Please Mike Austin bring us more Monsters…they could love Halloween, or Winter, or the playground. Anything. Monsters and students say “more, more, more!”

I also loved Dog Days of School by Kelly DiPucchio and Brian Biggs. Charlie does not like going to school (we all know someone just like this right Groovy Girl…) because he is tired of all the work. One Sunday night Charlie wishes he were a dog so he could stay home and lay around instead of face another week of school work. The next morning Charlie’s done the “freaky friday” thing and is laying on Norman’s dog bed instead of in his own. Norman gets ready for school and Charlie stay home to sleep with adorable results. This will have everyone wishing they could trade places just for one day. An interesting side fact-Brian Biggs is from Little Rock, AR. He also has a a series out called Everything Goes.

Arlo Rolled by Susan Pearson and Jeff Ebbeler; Arlo is a pea and he doesn’t want to be eaten; he wants to grow up. He escapes from his pod and rolls through the yard finding bugs and slugs and dogs until he’s exhausted. While he takes a nap something marvelous happens to him. This is a perfect spring book to talk about plants and how they grow. It also makes a fun anytime read aloud with a lot adventure for one cute little pea.

Creamed Tuna*Fish and peas on Toast by Philip Christian Stead; Amazing illustrations, funny story. Kids will think it is funny. I wanted him to try the creamed tuna fish and peas on toast first before discarding it; it’s just the mother in me. I was hoping he’d end up liking it like green eggs and ham. Nope. Didn’t happen that way but the layered illustrations and the bird antics make it worthwhile anyway. Philip’s website has some beautiful and free music for your listening pleasure.

Little Lola by Julie Saab and David Gothard; Lola starts her day with a to-do list and the last thing on the list is to have an adventure (as every day should). Heading off to school for the day her adventure is perfect until she spots a mouse in the classroom. Hilarious. I hope to see more of Little Lola as she has the right attitude that will have little ones thinking. Brand new husband and wife illustrator/writer team.

If you buy for a school, for yourself, for your lovely grandchildren-any of these would be amazing additions for reading over and over again.

What did you read this weekend?

What I'm reading…the number might amaze you.

How many books do you read at one time? Usually I prefer just one but often I have more than one going at a time depending on circumstances. For most of the year I’ve been able to balance my student book club books with a few that I’ve already read so I can discuss without the need to read.

I did have to read most of the Gregor series with my boy’s group and I’ve read most of Christopher Paul Curtis with another group and we are reading The Mighty Miss Malone right now. It is an amazing and intellectually stimulating book for all of us. I’m so happy Curtis turned to writing as he is a talented story teller. If you haven’t read his new historical fiction about The Great Depression you should. Next up for this group is Shannon Hale’s The Princess Academy, one of my favorite girl power books. Luckily I’ve already read it 3X’s so I can just re-skim and ask good questions. I blogged about my boy’s group in my weekend cooking post and I did make the cranberry oatmeal cookies, they were tasty but flat. Sadly two of the boys were missing from our meeting today. Suspended over a fight they had with EACH OTHER. This is the horrible hard part of where I teach. I think I reach them and then things like this pop up. My soul cries almost every day for the kids I work with at school.

Onward.

Monthly I have my own adult book club to keep up with and we are reading Anthony Mara’s lengthy novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. I downloaded this to my Kindle as the price was right and I am interested but it is not a quick read. I have to kick it up a notch though as we meet next week. Maybe I should look for the Cliff Notes on this one.

I also started something easy the other night as my Kindle needed a charge. The Lying Game by Sara Shepard has been on my to-read pile for awhile and I picked it up and read three pages. I will finish but those 3 pages were all I needed to fall asleep. No reflection on the rest of the book I hope.

I also started The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin about a week ago to help me get in the mood for Spring cleaning and reorganizing my house and my thoughts. I am anxious to get back to it but it will have to wait until the book club book is done.

While I was upstairs reading (Daughter of Winter by Pat Lowry Collins) to Groovy Girl I realized I am “reading” another book on my phone through Audible as I drive back and forth to work; Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss. It has me so hooked that I listen to it as I make dinner. I’m only on the fourth chapter and yet still quite disgusted how the food industry works. I am someone who cooks almost all meals from scratch and still I shake my head at the mystery of it. How can people go to work every day to purposely make people sick. Why worry about real drugs when they are giving them to our children daily in pre-packaged form. Yuck.

Seven books. Can you beat me? Let me know your total.

Seven Wild Sisters by Charles De Lint

This charming fairy tale will make a perfect way to introduce young readers to a good fantasy story. Sarah Jane and her sisters live very near Tanglewood Forest and she’s curious about what resides there as her elderly neighbor Aunt Lillian shares stories of the forest creatures with her as they do chores.

The stories come alive for Sarah Jane when she rescues an injured tiny man by bringing him to Aunt Lillian. The two attempt to return him through Lillian’s old friend, the Apple Tree Man. Once Sarah Jane is involved the fighting fairy realm kidnap her six sisters to hold as ransom. None of the girls are capable of using or performing magic but use their heads and hearts to help them out of their trouble. While they witness creatures they never thought real their biggest thought is to get back to mama before she misses them.

Told in 260 pages this is an easy read and will hopefully help many of my beginning fantasy readers transition from the Rainbow Magic series to this as I plan to order several of Charles De Lint books for my school library. I love fantasy yet this was my first introduction to his writing. I’ve already downloaded to my kindle The Cats of Tanglewood Forest which is set several decades before this one. I hope Mr. De Lint has plans to write many adventures with this lively and adventuresome set of sisters.

A quote:

He came out from the far side of the tree and if it hadn’t been for the ‘sangman I’d found, I’d have said he was the strangest man I’d ever seen. He was as gnarled and twisty as the limbs of his tree, long and lanky, a raggedy man with tattered clothes, bird’s next hair, and a stooped walk. It was hard to make out his features in the moonlight, but I got the sense that there wasn’t a mean bone in his body-don’t ask me why. I guess he just radiated a kind of goodness and charm. He acted like it was a chore, having to come out and talk to us, but I could tell he liked Aunt Lillian. Maybe missed her as much as she surely missed him. (69)

And now you’ve met the Apple Tree Man and you probably want to keep reading…
I received this ARC from Little, Brown and Company which in no way influenced my honest review of this delightful tale. Publication date: February 2014, just in time for a sweet little Valentine gift.
I look forward to checking out a published copy as this copy had only little sketches.

Cold Day~No School Day!

The temps have dropped to an alarming number of -11 degrees. It is super, super cold. The dogs don’t want to go out to potty and the wind whistles through several of our old windows.

Our traditional snow day breakfast is chocolate chip pancakes with all the toppings and hot chocolate. Today we substituted hot cider leftover from the holidays. There were no complaints…

Yesterday Groovy Girl went to the video store with my husband. He was on a quest to find the next Game of Thrones and she was “just looking.” She came back with 2 games; an olympic event game and Little Big Planet 2 so we’ve spent some of our morning pretending to be Olympic athletes in archery, swimming, and gymnastics. The results tend to be hilarious as the only true gamer at our house is the teenage boy and he slept until it was pancake time.

I have two books I’m trying to finish today; an ARC of Seven Wild Sisters by Charles de Lint, which is excellent and one of my favorite authors Paulo Coelho’s The Witch of Portobello. I’m trying to finish it so I can pass it on to my friend Jen in Colorado. Teenage boy can take it to her tomorrow when he leaves us again for the balmy state.

I love a day off yet I have a lot of work to get done at school plus I feel like it can be a hard day for many of our students who are left unattended and don’t have delicious pancakes for brunch or even a bowl of cereal. What’s the temperature in your neck of the woods?

Back-To-School Story Ideas

I’ve been back to school for two days now, attending meetings, planning with teachers, and cleaning up the library. On Monday I was exhausted by 10 am and ready for a nap. No kidding. Even though I’ve worked in my house over the summer somehow back-to-school wore me out.

How do you think the kids are going to feel those first few days? Worn out. Ready for a nap. Itching for their handheld electronics or endless amounts of television viewing. Teachers have to have their game on as kids enter their classrooms. Kids might come in thrilled for the new year yet it won’t take much to lose them if we aren’t centered and focused.

Here’s a short list of books that I think are perfect for the first few days of school.

1. First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg: I love this story as it has a bit of a twist that will make kids smile, maybe even giggle and the conversation after reading it is always enlightening. Sharing this book will show your students that YOU, the teacher, has a sense of humor. Busy Teacher’s Cafe has activities for this book-click their name to pull up website. And if you want a digital tie-in here is a video clip. The video ends just short of the surprise ending which leaves a window for students to make predictions. Find more teaching resources for this book at Unique Teaching Resources.

Pete the Cat; Rocking in my school shoes by Eric Litwin and James Dean: This jazzy title gives a quick and fun rundown of what the school days will be like and shares a quick trip around the school. It does not matter what your school shoes look like because once I introduced Pete the Cat last year and I plan to keep him rocking this year as well. The positive message won’t be forgotten. Video to share:

The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn: This one is nearly a classic to teachers and children alike. Every year though I’m surprised by students who’ve never, ever heard the story. This is especially appropriate for pre-k, kinder, and first grade students who may have trouble letting parents go on the first days of
school. In my home copy I was lucky enough to have a page of heart stickers inside the book so every time I read it with my own kids I could grace their palm with a sticker. Make Learning Fun has activities to compliment this title. Share this collection of videos.

I hope everyone has a cheerful school beginning-we all deserve that, teachers and students alike. As teachers we have the ability to lift our students up and bring a positive message to their education.

Back-to-school

Usually my school begins before Groovy Girl so I miss the first day send-off. This year it is reversed so I was able to be here and take just a few photos. Allow me to share my little love:

{this is about when she got tired of the paparazzi}

{6th Grade Beauty}

Now I have three days to get a summer’s worth of work done!
I can honestly say though that this has been a very relaxing summer and
I’ve spent a lot of my time hanging out with her. #love