Becoming a writing teacher

I have admitted on this blog before that I do not feel like a writer. Someone at work recently commented that the love of reading pours out of me, and it is impossible for the kids not to see it. I enjoy teaching my library classes and feel highly competent in that area. I know that being a reader is the reason why I excel as a librarian. Co-teaching writing each morning from 8-8:30 is not an area where I feel as strong. Fortunately, the classroom teacher I'm working with has put a great deal of trust and faith in me. She is a leader (in her classroom and the school) and has put me at ease about jumping into new territory as a teacher.

I feel so honored to have these students, many of which I've seen grown from age 5 to age 10 (or 11), share their stories with me. One student shared a time when her older sister scared her on an amusement park ride. Another shared about the time she met her best friend in 2nd grade. That I knew the characters from these stories made me smile, thankful for the years of connections I have had with these students. I am also learning things I didn't know, that one student's sister has seizures and that another's greatest triumph was the time he defeated his dad in a basketball game.

Some might view this time as a chore, and would rather focus their energy on their main role at school. I see it as a time to grow. I get to strengthen my bond with my students. And, who knows, in the process of teaching writing, I may just become a writer myself.

Rediscovering Old Favorites: Frog & Toad

A month ago, if I were prompted to recall favorites books from childhood, Frog and Toad wouldn't have made the list. I had a general recollection of the books, but I couldn't remember any of the stories. A few weeks ago, I decided to use the Frog and Toad books to help teach character analysis to first grade. I could have chosen a "newer book," but for some reason Frog and Toad caught my eye. Now I find myself searching out more Frog and Toad books to read, for me. My favorite story is "The Story" from Frog and Toad Are Friends. Frog is sick so Toad decided to tell him a story. The problem is that he can't think of one and does ridiculous things like pour water over his head. I laughed along with the kids while reading it.

Then I discovered that their was an animated film, Frog and Toad Together. I never saw it as a child, but Frog's voice reminds me of one of the Fraggle Rock characters. My favorite story is "The Dream."

10 Impact Books

I was recently challenged to participate in a social media meme to list 10 books that have had an impact on my life. Talk about hard choices! Listing 100 would even be a challenge. After a lot of thought, here are my choices:

1. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White - My favorite book from childhood and a perfect model on how to be a friend. I named my daughter Charlotte after the main character; yes, she was named after a spider.

2. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery - Anne Shirley is such a kindred spirit. I always wish I could find a "bosom friend" like her.

3. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - I still have the copy of this wonderful book that my Aunt Connie bought me when I was 11 years old.

4. Paradise Lost by John Milton - I was not a fan of poetry in my high school English classes. I read this in college and loved it, probably because it was poetry that told a story.

5.  The Wizard and the Glass by Stephen King - This is Volume IV of the Dark Tower series, and my favorite by a mile. Roland's story could be read as a standalone, and if you do not want to commit to the whole series, I encourage you to do just that.

6.  Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris - A book that made me laugh like no other. Whenever I have a bad day, I think of Rooster's advice. Read this book to find out what it is.

7. We Are In a Book! by Mo Willems - Willems is a genius! He makes listening to beginning readers enjoyable, a great feat indeed. These are perfect to share with an entire class or one on one with a child. 

8.  The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller - This book represents everything I am passionate about - sharing the love of reading with students. It also represents my online professional learning community that I have found through the Nerdy Book Club.

9. The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate - Winner of the 2013 Newbery Medal, this book will make you cry. It is based on a true story of a gorilla living on display in a mall.

10. The Giver by Lois Lowry - Do you like The Hunger Games and Divergent? Lowry did dystopian fiction long before Collins and Roth, and in my opinion, she did it better. This book won the Newbery Medal in 1994.

Newbery Challenge 1998

My Newbery challenge is to read every medal and honor books starting with the present and going backwards. Because the enormity of this challenge, I'm electing not to reread books that I have read since 2004.

For 1998, I had already read:

This left two honor books to read:

Lily's Crossing is set in 1944, during World War II. Lily's father is sent to build bombs in Detroit, leaving her to spend the summer with her grandmother at Rockaway Beach. Lily is not a saintly protagonist; she lies, sneaks into movies and is disrespectful to her grandmother. Her lying becomes problematic when she meets a Hungarian refugee, Albert, and promises to help him return to Europe via boat to help rescue his sister.

I obviously know what the verb "wring" means, yet I still found the idea of wringing the necks of pigeons, injured from gunshots, shocking and quite horrifying. The main character, Palmer, would agree with me. He seems to be suffering from PTSD, haunted by memories of Family Fest, a festival that includes a shooting contest involving 5,000 pigeons. Palmer is conflicted with his desire to fit into a gang of friends and his feeling about participating in acts of cruelty, including bullying a girl who is his neighbor and friend, as well as becoming a Wringer. 

So both of these books were beautifully written, and I was sure I would be rating them both as five stars. Then I got to the endings. Both suffer from the Okay For Now problem. Both start as straight-forward historical/realistic fiction, but their endings move them to the realm of implausibility. I found myself thinking, "Really? That would never happen." I realize this is an adult perspective, but it did damper my reading of the book a bit. They were excellent despite this turn so I rated them both 4 stars.

On to 1997!

Newbery Challenge 2000

I had not read even one of the books from the year 2000, so this was an interesting challenge.

The medal winner:

Christopher Paul Curtis is one of those authors whose work is something I'm always going to read. I read and loved The Watson's Go to Birmingham - 1963, Elijah of Buxton and The Mighty Miss Malone. Bud Caldwell is an orphan living in Michigan in 1936. The story opens with an awful experience in foster care. Then Bud decides to travel from Flint to Grand Rapids to find the man he thinks is his father, based on flyers his mother had advertising a jazz band. I loved the same things @MrSchuReads mentions in his #nerdbery video.  I was so excited when Deza Malome showed up! Bud, Not Buddy is definitely on my top 10 list of Newbery winners.

Newbery Honors

I loved Tomie dePaola's picture books growing up. This is the beginning of a biographical series. It reminds me of a beginning reader book because of the short chapters and overall length of the book. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to meet Tomie dePaola in September at Scuppernong Books.

This book is so, so sad. Two girls lose their baby sister, and are sent off to live with their aunt, who has no children of her own. The younger sister refuses to speak, traumatized by what happened. Their grief and getting fed up with their aunt leads them to climb up on the roof (as seen on the cover), refusing to come down. The story begins there and everything else is told in flashbacks. It is set in a North Carolina, which is interesting, but the sad topic made it hard to read.

I blogged about this book in this post.  @colbysharp referred to this book in his #nerdbery video for Bud, Not Buddy.

I have already read Holes, the 1999 Newbery winner, and A Long Walk to Chicago, the only Honor book for that year so on to 1998!

#booksmiles #1

My twitter friends started a hashtag called #booksmiles. You write a blog post about a book that makes you smile and post it with the #booksmiles hashtag on Twitter.

A book that makes me smile:

 

Why?

1) Ana is a middle schooler I could identify with growing up. Very shy, having a few close friends.

2) Ana's family is interesting.  Her parents work at a zoo. She has a twin brother who is social and outgoing. Her grandfather is a star, and comes to town with his reality tv show film crew in tow.

3) The romance is sweet, without being over the top.

4) I love what happens to one of the bullies.

5) Book 2, How to Outswin a Shark Without a Snorkel will be released on January 6, 2015. Plus, there will be a Book 3!

6) Finally, the author, Jess Keating, is friendly and awesome! We struck up a friendship on Twitter in June, and I got to meet her at #nErDcampMI. She was one of 12 authors who gave their time to work with kids at Nerd Camp Jr. 

My visit to Naperville

One of the reasons I was excited about #nErDcampMI was meeting Twitter friends, and Twitter celebrities. @MrSchuReads falls into the latter category for me. He is a school librarian from Naperville, IL. He was on the 2014 Newbery Committee that helped select Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo as the winner of the greatest prize in children's literature. He blogs at Watch.Connect.Read, featuring interviews with author/illustrators, author visits, book trailers and more. My biggest obsession is the #nerdbery challenge he started with @colbysharp, a 3rd grade teacher from Parma, Michigan and organizer of #nErDcampMI. Colby is a Twitter celebrity too, and another person I was also excited to meet. He and Colby read every Newbery winner from 1922-present. They are currently working on a Newbery Honor challenge where they each choose one Honor book to read, starting with 2014 and going backwards. The videos are posted every Saturday, and watching them is a part of my weekend routine. I created a post here with all the videos.

I'm not sure if anyone else ever feels this way, but I kind of felt like a creepy stalker on Twitter, following Mr. Schu's every Tweet, favoring and retweeting most of what he posted. My opinion of him as a celebrity made me nervous to meet him.  I should not have been nervous.  He knew who I was immediately, and after talking to him for just 20 minutes, I could tell that he was a kind and wonderful person, definitely living up to his persona online. He even signed my copy of The One and Only Ivan. I found out about this wonderful book from Mr. Schu and he is definitely an ambassador for the book. Read his Nerdy Book Club post today where he introduces the trailer for the nonfiction companion, Ivan: the remarkable true story of the shopping mall gorilla.

After leaving Michigan, we planned to travel to Wisconsin for a wedding, stopping by Chicago for one day on the way. What a perfect opportunity to visit Mr. Schu's hometown, Naperville, IL.  The weather when we got there was perfect, especially for a North Carolina girl used to 90+ degrees and extreme humidity.

Anderson's Bookshop is the store where Mr. Schu buys all his books. I can't tell you how excited I was to see this sign.

Children's book display on pirates.

I decided to bring everyone back books as souvenirs. I wanted to find Squish #6: Fear the Amoeba for Charlotte. Sadly, they didn't have a copy.  Of course being at Anderson's made me wonder about Mr. Schu. I did tweet very excitedly that we were there.  I was going back to the children's section and who did I see? Mr. Schu.  And he gave me a copy of the Squish book I had just asked for in the store!  Of course, everyone knew Mr. Schu, and I found out he even gets mail at Anderson's! 

Carolyn and I both read Squish on the way home. I knew my 8-year old would LOVE it and we wouldn't get to read it once she had it. When we got home and I gave it to her, Charlotte jumped up and down yelling, "It's Squish."

I am very lucky because Mr. Schu is scheduled to present at the North Carolina School Library Media Association conference in October. The conference will be held in Winston-Salem, NC, where I was born and grew up. I know Mr. Schu will be busy, but I hope to treat him to lunch or dinner, and spend some more time talking with him. He is definitely still a Twitter celebrity, but he is also a friend.