Congrats to ReaderKidZ very own, Stephanie Greene! Her book, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SOPHIE HARTLEY, was just named to Horn Book’s 2010 Fanfare List, the magazine’s selection of the best children’s and young adult books of the year.
Read more about Stephanie Greene on the following ReaderKidZ posts:
This holiday season, any child’s life would be made richer if they were given a present of one of the wonderful books by Katherine Paterson. Books that speak to the small, yet powerful, emotional moments in the life of any child, anywhere in the world. — Nancy Bo Flood
The first Katherine Paterson book I ever read was THE MASTER 
PUPPETEER published over thirty years ago. I was transported to 18th Century Japan and didn’t want to leave the world of puppetry and intrigue, even after I’d read the last page. What power to open the window to another world, another culture, another time and offer insight and compassion.
As a mother and teacher, I read BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA to my children, my college students (teachers in training) and to myself. With each reading, I discovered a new understanding of what it meant to be lonely, to have a friend, and to lose a friend.
Katherine Paterson is our country’s National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Her message is simple and important: “Read for your life.”
In the October/ November 2010 issue of Reading Today (an International Reading Association publication) she offers these thoughts to those who guide and encourage young readers:
Never stop reading to your students.
Share your love – let them see that you love reading.
Read what you love – not what you think you should read.
Have students read books they’ll like.
Give students permission not to finish a book if they don’t like it.
Tell them it’s okay to read books they won’t be tested on. (28)
Katherine continues to write contemporary stories that present issues important to today’s readers. War affects families in many ways. DAY OF THE PELICAN is a book about a refugee family who must leave their home country, Albania, and begin again in the United States.
Katherine Paterson’s books are a gift, “a reciprocal gift between writer and reader: one heart in hiding reaching out to another” – her own words from her essay “Heart in Hiding.”
This is my gift for you.
Debbie Gonzales here, proud ReaderKidZ contributor, with a list of four great books that I’ve given away as gifts this year, all very well received.
Desire to buy a book for the active, energetic young man in your life? A book that will both engage his full interest while tickling his funny bone? Looking for a book written by authors who know what a boy really likes? Then Guys Read: Funny Business edited by Jon Scieszka is just the book for you.
Guy’s Read: Funny Business is a collection of ten short stories written by some of today’s best kid-lit writers, each loaded with laughs, surprises, and a whisper of a life’s lesson to be learned.
Funny, yet profound, Fiona Finkelstein, Big Time Ballerina will suit your delightful dancing diva to a T. Shawn Stout’s Fiona must overcome the strangle of stage fright to pursue her dream of dancing in The Nutcracker. In her quest to do so, Fiona encounters the ridicule of three girls in her dance class, discovers creative techniques to overcome self-doubt, and in the end becomes a television star!
Eventually, Fiona learns that constant focus on her problems only makes things worse. To quote Madame Vallee, Fiona’s ballet teacher, “Worry gives the small things a big shadow…It’s best to stay in the sun, Fiona dear .”(6)
On a more somber and sublime note, The Underneath written by Kathi Appelt is a marvelous choice for a mature reader. Any child who has known a dog’s soulful, unconditional love will fall in love with lonesome Ranger, you just can’t help but to do so.
The Underneath is a masterful tale of an unconventional family comprised of a soulful hound dog and two orphan kittens, as well an oppressive master named Gar Face, ancient shape-shifters Hawk Man and Night Song, a hungry alligator, and a mother’s love that runs as deep as eternity.
Compellingly written, this is a book that will stay with a reader long after the last page is turned. Keep a box of tissues nearby. They just might come in handy.
Lastly, All the World written by Liz Garton Scanlon and illustrated by Marla Frazee is a picture book that the entire family can enjoy.
In it, Scanlon’s poetics ribbon through Frazee’s illustrations creating an illusion of strolling through life’s peaceful pleasures. Families at play. Vividly colored sunrises and sunsets. Stormy weather surrendering to the triumph of sunshine. Babies and children, mamas and daddies…a world of different types of people marvelously laced together with love.
This holiday season all of us at ReaderKidZ hope you will consider books such as these as gifts for the young readers in your life. Whatever book you choose, we hope that, amidst the busyness of the season, you will find the time to sit with a child and share in the delight of a great story.
All the very best to you and yours,
Debbie
GUYS READ: FUNNY BUSINESS is a special feature on Scieszka’s informative-yet-oh-so-wacky website Guys Read.
Take some time to peruse this fantastic website, particularly if you desire to find the perfect book for that delightfully energetic, intuitive boy in your life. For listings of great guy-friendly books categorized in groupings such as “Ghosts”, “Dragons”, “Robots”, “Scary”, “People Being Transformed into Animals,” and much more CLICK HERE.
The teacher guide created for Stout’s FIONA FINKELSTEIN, BIG TIME BALLERINA is the perfect compliment to an earlier ReaderKidZ post, Book Trailers as Educational Tools by Analine Johnson.
In the post Johnson states, “In creating book trailers, the components of reading are also addressed. Creating trailers requires the effective use of story elements. In addition, students have to be able to read the book and effectively capture the tone and mood of it through a nominal amount of images, text, and music – all the while being mindful of not telling the whole story.”
Stout’s guide contains the analysis of a story arc using manipulative plot point cards based on the story of Cinderella. Following this fairy tale’s analysis, the reader is guided to do the same with Fiona’s story. What’s to stop a reader to then take the analysis a step further and create their very own book trailer like Johnson suggests?
Linger upon this lovely book’s lyrical magic by accessing an activity guide HERE created by Natalie Dias Lorenzi.
Take the time to enjoy pre-reading exercises, activities such as “Strike the Band”, “Vocabulary Boost”, “Take a Book Walk,” and many more.
Your child will never tire of reading and rereading Scanlon’s poetics…and neither will you.
“Summer fading, winter comes–
Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs,
Window robins, winter rooks,
And the picture story-books…”
Excerpt from “Picture Books in Winter,” A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
This month, we share some of our best book gift ideas. They may be our favorite books as children. Or new books we think any child will be richer for having discovered.
Give a book this year, and start (or keep) a child on a lifetime of reading discovery!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
