Kristine’s website is packed with a plethora of activity guides, teacher’s guides, and coloring pages to serve as companions for her long list of wonderful books. She has even included a clever interactive mini-web activity in which Kristine demonstrates how writers work to capture writing ideas because, as she says, ideas can be sneaky. Play Kristine’s Tips for Young Poets by clicking HERE.
If this weren’t enough, Kristine has included a webpage in which students can listen to poetry being read aloud, explore various writing tips, and read poetic excerpts from her fabulous work. To access this informative web page click HERE.
In short, Kristine not only knows how to craft amazing poetry, she knows how to partner with those who desire to inspire the poetry that resides within every boy and girl by giving them richly creative, multi-sensory tools with which to do so.
Learn more about Kristine O’Connell George on her website HERE.
This week in the Book Room, we take a look at a few more of the many and varied forms of informational text for K-5 readers.
SAND TO STONE AND BACK AGAIN, by Nancy Bo Flood, photographs by Tony Kuyper is a stunning introduction to a unit on rocks and minerals and to the larger theme of “Change.” Nancy Bo Flood’s poetic language, paired with photographs by Tony Kyper, carry readers through the canyons, caves, and cliffs of the American Southwest. Sandstone – sometimes desert, or “soft dune resting, or tough old butte”- is always changing, much as we ourselves, change and grow and change again.
One benefit of the variety of informational books available for children is how different formats can open a reader’s mind to a new way of “seeing” what, at first glance, may seem to be a somewhat ordinary subject.
Eggs, for example. A topic most kids would think fairly mundane. Until, that is, they are introduced to Dianna Hutts Aston and Syliva Long’s AN EGG IS QUIET, a lovely, poetic invitation to “see” eggs in a new way – quiet, shapely, clever, giving.
A SEED IS SLEEPY introduces children to seeds of all shapes and sizes, with interesting tidbits of information, such as “the oldest seed to sprout came from an extinct date palm tree… unearthed from a long-ago king’s mountaintop palace in Israel.” This particular seed sprouted 4 weeks after a scientist planted it!
And forthcoming soon, readers of these books will want to find the newest book by the author/illustrator duo, A BUTTERFLY IS PATIENT (May 2011).
What kid (or adult) wouldn’t be fascinated to learn the story of how Walter Diemer became intrigued by the secret experiments going on at the company he worked for. Why would an Walter, an accountant, become involved in making a new bubble-blowing gum after his boss had given up? Because Walter was inspired, and when he finally discovered the secret of bubble-blowing gum, his Dubble Bubble became an instant success. End notes include more information about “The Man Behind Bubble Gum” as well as additional interesting facts about gum.
Having no independent bookstores nearby and a big box store that continues to narrow down the selection of actual BOOKS for sale, KAKAPO RESCUE and Houghton Mifflin’s “Scientists in the Field” series might have slipped my attention entirely if not for winning the 2011 Sibert Medal – one of the sad, but true, realities in these times of no money for book-buying in schools and libraries.
What a loss that would have been! For on one small piece of land off Southern New Zealand – Codfish Island – fourteen people – the entire human population of the island at the time the book was written – worked to ensure the safety of “the only living Kakapo chick in the world … – one of just eighty seven kakapo on the planet.”
It’s a fascinating story with its own share of heartbreak and triumph as the scientists and volunteers work to save a beautiful bird from extinction. This is a book and a series not to be missed.
I’m a huge fan of Joyce Sidman’s poetry and also a fan of the way each poem in DARK EMPEROR is paired with sidebar information relevant to the topic. The poetry invites children to “know” and pay attention to creatures of the night and the small bits of additional information included in the sidebars expand on the topic, encouraging children to investigate even further.
Animals, geography, history, adventure. This book has a little bit of everything. Chock-full of photos, fun facts, homework help and more, the almanac is a book just about any child will want to pick up, read, study a while, and share with a friend.
The following guide created by Chronicle Books combines activities created for Dianna Hutts Aston’s charming AN EGG IS QUIET and A SEED IS SLEEPY. You may access the innovative activity guide created for children ages K – 5 by clicking HERE.
This guide presents multi-level, age appropriate science, language arts, creative writing, reading, and art activities complete with recording grids and beautifully illustrated instructions. And, for an added bonus, there is a link to a dynamic website resource packed with interactive activities designed to excite and inspire your inquisitive, science-loving child. Why not take a peek at what’s happening at the Howard Hughes Medical Center’s Cool Science for Curious Kids website?
Click HERE to download a rich, multi-sensory Teacher Guide to compliment Nancy Bo Flood’s dramatic Sand to Stone and Back Again. Desert landforms such as hoodoos and slot canyons, buttes, and mineral jackets are artistically replicated as the child creates sand paintings, sculptures, and plaster-crafted sedimentary rock casts. Vocabulary skills are enhanced as the child engages in a word/picture matching activity. In conclusion, the young geologist is lead through a series of word games ending in the creation of a cinquain written with the intention of celebrating the transformation of a biome from sand to stone and back again.
Two intriguing and satisfying tastes in nonfiction are books that present culture and – very different – an “arm-chair” experience of natural disasters, past and current.
MIRACLE: The True Story of the Wreck of the Sea Venture by Gail Karwoski. Readers may feel a bit seasick while reading about the storm that almost sunk the nine ships sailing from Plymouth, England, on June 2, 1609 to Jamestown, Virginia. The book is packed with information, sketches, diagrams, and maps. The author tells of the adventure she had researching the Sea Venture when she traveled to Bermuda with her daughters and – like the Venture’s tale – discovered dark alleys, sunny roads, and scary, high-speed “chases.” A great read for young and old!
A very different experience is NO ROUZ: Our Persian New Year by E.S. Zameen. This book presents a lyrical and visual celebration for readers and shares with them the importance of the Persian New Year for the Iranian people. Soheyla, six years old, invites the reader to join her Iranian-American family as they prepare for and celebrate No Rouz.
Natural History: Birds, “Beds,” and Dragons. Sometimes the most mysterious and amazing stories are the true ones, the ones about the creatures we see – or would like to see – everyday.
WATER BEDS: Sleeping in the Ocean, a very different nonfiction book by Gail Karwoski, illustrated by Connie McLennan is a bedtime story about how marine mammals sleep in the ocean without drowning. The first tough question Gail had to explore was – what is sleep? And how do scientists study the brain waves of “a blue whale that is bigger than a bus and lives in the deepest ocean and is never kept in captivity?” Amazing, sometimes quiet, information is what makes this nonfiction presentation a delight.
If birds are what tickle your brain, here are several unusual new books about birds which you might find singing or buzzing in your own backyard.
WHAT BLUEBIRDS DO by Pamela F. Kirby is an award-winning visual delight. Photographs by the author bring the reader right into the home and family of some very busy bluebirds.
HUMMINGBIRDS: Facts and Folklore from the Americas by Jeanette Larson and Adrienne Yorinks, illustrated by Adrienne Yorinks. This unique book offers a mixture of facts and stitches. The “illustration quilts” are true works of art, a combination of needlework embroidery and free form quilting that motivates one to examine the pictures through a magnifying glass – such creative talent! And the legends are priceless.
“If you come to the Big Bog, you might think you have come to the loneliest, quietest place on earth.”
But the bog is not as quiet one might imagine. There are surprises bubbling just under its surface. Pitcher plant mosquitoes, “butterflies that flit from bog flower to bog flower.” Tamaracks and black spruce, “the almost silent footsteps of an eastern gray wolf.”
The Big Bog has a secret and if you go, be sure to go slowly. Listen, too. If you are very lucky, you may be the first to hear the bog’s biggest secret of all… !
ReaderKidZ is pleased to welcome our mid-month Author-In-Residence, Phyllis Root. BIG BELCHING BOG is her most recent picture book, a beautifully written and fascinating introduction to a unique ecosystem that can be found in many countries and on several continents around the world. End notes include “Bog Facts,” “Plants in the Bog,” and “Animals in the Bog.”
Learn more about Phyllis and the bog by visiting her website, HERE.
Enjoy “What’s Your Story, Phyllis?” HERE and “Your Friend, Phyllis (A Letter to Readers)” HERE.
If you weren’t a writer, what would you like to be?
If I weren’t a writer, I might be a farmer, or a naturalist, or a singer (if I could carry a tune). Maybe an explorer, or a dancer (if I didn’t trip over my own feet). So many possibilities! What I love about being a writer is that when I’m writing I can be all of those things for a time—a sailor who’s never seasick, a polar explorer, a lighthouse keeper. I get to enter into these imagined lives and live them while I’m writing about them. What could be better than that?
Have you ever thrown a manuscript away?
I throw lots of things away, or else I file them under “practice.” All writing is practice, all writing makes us better writers, just as practice allows a basketball player to sink those three-pointers or a musician to hit all the right notes. Sometimes a story that I end up discarding will give me a word or a phrase that leads me to other stories, sometimes I let the whole thing go. That’s not even counting the writing I do just for me, without any end goal of a finished story or book. That’s just playing, and it makes me so happy when I can do it.
What’s the hardest part of writing a book?
For me the hardest part is finding the heart of a story. Something might draw me in, make me want to write about an event, or a character, or a place, but unless I can find some emotional connection, some reason why this person or place or happening matters to me, then I can’t really make it matter to a reader. If something matters to me, my job is to make it matter to readers, too.
Quick picks:
Soup or salad:I love both—soup in the winter, salad (especially from my garden) in the summer. After a snowy winter, what could be more beautiful and tasty than the first spinach, lettuce, or peas coming up in the garden?
Revision:I love revision because the hard work of finding the story is done, and now I get to figure out how to tell it better. And I hate revision when the story refuses to do what I want it to do.
Early bird writer:I’m definitely early bird. I’m often up and writing at 5 or 6 a.m., and by ten o’clock most nights I’m sound asleep in bed.
Longhand or computer:Sometimes I use one, sometimes the other. A lot depends on where I am and what I’m writing. I mostly use computer these days, but I’ve writtendrafts with crayons and on the back of church programs—whatever is handy when the story strikes.
LIZARDS
