book basket

Another Basket of Books… this one donated to the Longfellow Elementary School auction. I always love to come up with a collection. It's exciting to imagine who will "win" the books and what children will get to read them. This time I tried to find books that would appeal to a wide range of elementary school tastes, either to be read by kids or as read-alouds.

Here's what I came up with:

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

Flora and Ulysses by Kate DeCamillo

Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy by Karen Foxlee

The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp by Kathi Appelt

Battle Bunny by Jon Scieszka and Mac Barnett

Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made by Stephan Pastis

The Real Boy by Anne Ursu

Wonder by RJ Palacio

The Year of Billy Miller by Kevin Henkes

In addition, I attached my thoughts on the joy of reading. Of course, anchoring them with a quote from Donalyn Miller, the Book Whisperer herself.

Reading belongs to readers. If we want children to see reading as anything more than a school job, we must give them the chance to choose their own books and develop personal connections to reading, or they never will.
Readers have the right to read below their Lexile level and beyond their ATOS score.

“Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travelers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education. Through characters – the saints and the sinners, real or imagined – reading shows you how to be a better human being.”

― Donalyn Miller

The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child

  

Cliché… a once lovely phrase now worn out from use.

I was following #tctela on twitter this weekend. It was the Texas Council of Teachers of English Language Arts conference. Teri Lesesne (@ProfessorNana) was presenting, and though I was 1,500 miles away, I was hoping to learn from a distance.

I was following Donalyn Miller's tweets (@donalynbooks) of professor nana's slides when she tweeted:

Donalyn Miller ‏@donalynbooks  Feb 2

Excited about Once, Twice, Thrice Told Tales. Writing advice for young writers. #tctela

So, of course I had to order Once, Twice, Thrice Told Tales by Catherine Lewis.

It is not exactly a writing manual, but Lewis tells the story of the three blind mice in the most creative and educational ways. It's amazingly clever and every middle school and high school needs to own this book. 

Once, Twice, Thrice Told Tales is a crafty, artful retelling of the familiar nursery rhyme. It ingeniously teaches readers about literary terms which are then defined in a brief “snip of the tale.”

The APPENDIX alone is worth the price of the book.

Some of my favorite parts were the retelling under STYLE:

Dickens Mouse… They were the best of mice, they were the worst of mice, they lived in a cage of despair, they lived in an age of wisdom, they had everything before them in the lab, they had nothing before them in the wild, they were all going to survive, they were all not going to - in short, their lives were so far like the present period of our own.

Homer Mouse… Sing to me of the mice, Muse, the mice of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once they had torched the Love Labs of Inc.

Hemingway Mouse… Three mice. Woman with knife. No tails.

The Snip of the Tale… It's not just the idea, but the author's way of putting it. Style begins on the level of the sentence, including things like vocabulary, imagery, word order, and length.

I also loved the bit on SENTENCE DIAGRAM. The Snip of the Tale declared: 

Depending on your optic, diagramming sentences is an old form of torture or a delightful way to play with language.

I have always found diagramming sentences delightful... #nerd.

It would be a wonderful idea for every Language Arts / English teacher to use pieces and parts of this book. Not only will students be learning something – they’ll also be laughing as they enjoy learning something.

she was reading a book

In a house full of books...



...there is creative reading.

the trailer is here...

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.” ― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

How easy it would be for any of us to fall out of the nest.

Ransom Riggs is an author of young adult literature. He wrote Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, and just released book 2 Hollow City.

He also makes films. You can watch them on his YouTube page: www.youtube.com/ransriggs.

Here's one I adore...

"a scar beneath the sleeve that will never disappear. We are so breakable; our bodies so easily pierced. Our bones so easily crushed. How easy it would be, I often think, for any of us to fall out of the nest."

awesome book list requested by my pal Jessie ...

The Daisy List…

Here's a great list of books for those 12 and up:

Counting by 7's by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Navigating Early by Claire Vanderpool

The School for Good and Evil 

by Soman Chainani

Rump by Liesl Shurtliff

A Tangle of Knots by Lisa Graff

The Real Boy by Anne Ursu 

(or, you know, anything by Anne Ursu)

Wonder by RJ Palacio

Liar and Spy by Rebecca Stead 

(or When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead)

One for the Murphys 

by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

May B by Caroline Starr Rose

more teen-ish options:

The Unwanteds by Lisa McMann

Divergent by Veronica Roth

The Selection by Kiera Cass

Matched by Ally Condie

Scorched by Mancusi Mari

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

The Diviners by Libba Bray

The Wally List…

Here's a great list of books for 4th grade 

boys and up:

The One and Only Ivan 

by Katherine Applegate

Timmy Failure by Stephan Pastis

The Amulet Series by Kazu Kibuishi

Treasure Hunters by James Patterson

I Funny by James Patterson (again)

Big Nate series by Lincoln Pierce

(and, of course, Diary of a Wimpy Kid 
by Jeff Kinney)

The Templeton Twins by Ellis Weiner

(book one and two)

The Familiars 

by Adam Epstein and Andrew Jacoson

Justin Case by Rachel Vail
(and book two too)

A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz

Cardboard by Doug Tennapel 

(or Ghostopolis or Bad Island)

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle 

(the graphic novel)

Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger 

(or anything by Tom Angleberger)

Stick Dog by Tom Watson

The Name of this Book is Secret (series)

by pseudonymous bosch

the people who have seen too much

I saw this amazing advertisement from the Dutch organization KNGF -  service dogs for veterans...



… and I couldn't get it out of my mind. 

The translation: 'We teach our dogs to wake up people with a trauma when they are experiencing a nightmare, because we don't only help people who cannot see, but also the people who have seen too much.'

Then this weekend I read The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson. The Impossible Knife of Memory uses contemporary young adult literature to shed light on the growing, devastating, complex effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Hayley Kincain, our heroine, is in her senior year of high school. She lives with her dad, Andy, an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran. Andy has PTSD; he is tormented by memories of his tours of duty. The chapters told from Andy's point of view provide a glimpse into the chaos and despair that is war.

This book is intense, but has a lot of heart. It is a beautiful look into a dark but ever relevant topic.

Teens will love the cynical, smart, disillusioned, rebellious Hayley. She has just enough wit and hope to tackle such a painful story.

Get this book for yourself, for the teens you know, and for anyone who loves good writing that pulls you in from page one.

For more information on service dogs in the United States, check out The Humane Society program called Service Dogs for Veterans or another program called Operation Freedom Paws.