Gertie’s Leap to Greatness

Posted on 12/04/2016

 

Gertie Reese Foy has a plan to become the greatest fifth grader in the whole school. And if there’s anyone who can actually pull it off, it’s Gertie.

Her plan starts easily enough. Phase One is supposed to be a breeze. She’ll write and deliver the best summer speech the teacher has ever heard, thereby earning the title of Greatest Fifth Grader. Then, she’ll march herself right over to the housey house on Jones Street where her mother, Rachel Collins, has lived since Gertie was a baby.

When Rachel Collins took off all those years ago, the only things she left behind were a locket, Gertie’s father, Frank Foy, and  Gertie. It was all well and good until just a few days ago, when a For Sale sign popped up on Rachel Collins front yard.

That was why Gertie was on a mission.  “She’d show up on her mother’s front porch, gleaming with greatness, swinging the locket on its chain, and she’d say, breezy as a gale-force wind, ‘Didn’t want you to forget this while you were packing.’ “ And then her mom would know, once and for all, that Gertie didn’t need her anyway.

Throw in a new seat-stealing student, Mary Sue Spivey, a zombie frog, a class play, and handfuls of stolen chocolates and you’ve got a winner.

Full of hope and heart, laughs and love, Gertie’s Leap to Greatness by Kate Beasley, illustrated by Jillian Tamaki, (Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2016) is sure to be a classic.

Maybe Something Beautiful

Posted on 11/30/2016

It’s December! With the turning of the calendar to the final month of 2016, it’s time to look ahead to celebrations and gatherings with family and friends. My suggestion? Kick off the month with Maybe Something Beautiful:How Art Transformed a Neighborhood by F. Isabel Campoy and Theresa Howell, illustrated by Rafael López.

Based on the true story of Rafael and Candice Lopez’s idea to bring beauty and art to their San Diego East Village neighborhood, this is a story of transformation. It’s about how a small idea can grow to become something big and beautiful, a work of art!

From the author’s note: “Maybe Something Beautiful, illustrated by the artist who inspired it,… is an invitation to transform not only the walls and street of our cities but also the minds and hearts of communities.”

Learn more about the book and the Urban Art Trail HERE.

 

 

NATIONAL AMERICAN INDIAN HERITAGE MONTH and THUNDER BOY JR.

Posted on 11/13/2016

NATIONAL AMERICAN INDIAN HERITAGE MONTH and THUNDER BOY JR. by Sherman Alexie

Celebrate National Native American Indian Heritage Month – all November – by celebrating Native American literature. Ask your library or bookstore for books written by Native Americans. See through their eyes. Listen to their voices. Here is a new picture book to enjoy and share with young readers.

THUNDER BOY JR. (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2016) written by Sherman Alexie and illustrated by Yuyi Morales is a charming picture book that speaks to what all children feel – “I want to be me.”   Little Thunder was named after his father, Big Thunder – both are officially Thunder Boy Smith. But the nickname of Little Thunder has become a “storm filling up the sky,” because the nickname feels like being called a burp or a fart.

Thunder Boy laments, “Don’t get me wrong. My dad is awesome. But I don’t want to have the same name as him. I want a name that sounds like me. I want a name that celebrates something cool that I’ve done.” Thunder Boy thinks about several exciting possibilities. “Not Afraid of Ten Thousand Teeth” is a name that tells how he touched a real orca on the nose. “Touch the Clouds” reflects how he once climbed to the very top of a mountain. “Full of Wonder” hints of how he dreams of traveling the whole wide world.

Thunder Boy’s father is indeed an awesome dad. Together father and son create a new name – a name that shouts like thunder and lights up the sky.

One of Sherman Alexie’s inspirations for THUNDER BOY JR. was “The Snowy Day,” by Ezra Jack Keats, published in 1962, the first picture book that focused on an African American child. “I so strongly identified with that,” Alexie says. “I wanted to replicate that experience, because in literature in general, there aren’t many Native American children.”

Also read Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. This autobiographical story about Alexie’s boyhood on the Spokane Indian Reservation won a National Book Award in 2007. Frequently it is on the list of most-banned books. Fortunately, Alexie Jr. keeps thundering on! absolutely-true-diary

Less than 1% of books for children are written by or about Native Americans. Read them. You will be glad you did. Support diversity in literature. Ask your library or bookstore for books that reflect the diversity in our country.

The Heart of the Matter

Posted on 11/09/2016

 

Heart Maps: Helping Students Create and Craft Authentic Writing (Heinemann, 2016) is Georgia Heard’s newest book and while I haven’t had time yet to dig deeply into my personal copy, it seems an appropriate book to suggest for teachers looking for ways to help students make sense of the events in our world.

Maps have been part of Heard’s life for a long time. She grew up in a home with an antique world map hanging on the wall and her older sister and two cousins actually became mapmakers. It’s not surprising, then, that Heard became, in her words, “a cartographer of the heart: mapping out inner territories with words – and helping others do the same.”

The book provides 20 types of heart maps, from “Small Moment” maps to “Last Time” maps, to “Be the Change that You Wish to See in the World” maps. Doesn’t that sound perfect? In an interview, Georgia says, “I want students to know that words have the power to make something happen. Whether it’s personal change or change in the world.” Wise words for these days.

Each map includes an Introduction, a Try This  section with tips and suggestions to get you started, a Template (with a link to a downloadable master), Writing Ideas for digging deeper, Student Examples, and Mentor Text suggestions in multiple genres.

Check out this short Heinemann PODCAST in which Heard talks about how to use heart maps to inspire students as they dig deeper into the stories they need and want to tell.

“Heart maps are a concrete, visual tool to help writers, no matter what age, discover and ultimately write about what they’ve stored in their hearts. People they love, memories, meaningful experiences. But it’s not just a topic list… that they then check off as they write. It’s the experience of and process of heart mapping that’s really kind of magical and a little mysterious.”

– – Georgia Heard

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” 

                – – William Wordsworth

A Passion for Picture Book Biographies

Posted on 11/06/2016

Real people doing real things. Picture Book biographies provide readers with engaging opportunities to learn about the small and large steps ordinary people have taken to accomplish extraordinary things. Beginning as early as second grade, students are expected to “describe the connection between a series of historical events… in a text.” (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.2.3) What better way to introduce readers to informational books than with one of the many beautiful biographies being published today. Here are two that work especially well.

“Inside an enormous city in a house on a very small street, there once lived a poet I would like you to meet.” enormous smallness: A story E.E. Cummings (Enchanted Lion Books, 2015) by Matthew Burgess, illustrations by Kris Di Giacomo is the gorgeously written and illustrated story of Edward Estlin Cummings. From the first page, readers are immersed in e.e.’s world – from the lively house on 104 Irving Street (where e.e. recited his first poem, at the age of three: “Oh, my little/ birdie, Oh/with his little/toe, toe, toe!”), to the home at 4 Patching Place where he lived for almost forty years.

With snippets of some of e.e. cummings’s poems seamlessly woven into the visual narrative which is represented on thick pages, rich in a palette of muted colors – blues, grays, browns, and greens –  the book is a  magnificently produced collage of the words, heart, and voice of e.e.

six-dots-by-jen-bryant

Jen Bryant has written numerous celebrated picture book biographies. Six Dots: A Story of Young Louis Braille  (Alfred A. Knopf, 2016) with illustrations by Boris Kulikov is her newest. In fact, what makes this book especially fascinating is that it is Bryant’s second book about Louis Braille. (The first was a young adult biography published as part of a series.) Why was Bryant compelled to write a second book for younger readers? She says it was because she’d never read (or written) an account about Braille that let her experience this child inventor’s emotions. “What was it like to BE Louis Braille? This story is my attempt to answer that question.”

Imagine, then, being the young Louis Braille, a clever boy who loses his sight at the age of five. Even though he’s given a chance to attend a very special school in Paris, the Royal School for the Blind didn’t feel so special to Louis. The other boys teased him and he missed his maman. Still, he persisted because somewhere in that school was a library with books.  He longed to read, but these books were large and cumbersome, with waxy letters and words as large as his hand.

Louis was determined to find a better way and, at the young age of fifteen, inspired by a secret code invented by a French army captain, he devised an easier code that used just six dots. Many kids will know about Braille, but I’m guessing most will not know Louis’s amazing story of determination and grit.

Thankfall for Fall

Posted on 10/30/2016

WONDERFALL by Michael Hall (Greenwillow Books, 2016)

Fall comes as a gentle breeze that jiggles an oak tree full of leaves in various shades of green. Acorns fall from the tree: Plink. Plunk. Plop. “Peacefall.”

The days grow longer, the colorful oak more beautiful, with bright pops of orange, red, and the changing colors of the season. “Beautifall.”

Digitally-rendered shapes, reminiscent of cut-paper, are sure to catch the eye of young readers. I imagine teachers will use the book as a springboard for “Wonderfall” displays of poems and student art.

 

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YELLOW TIME by Lauren Stringer (Beach Lane Books, 2016)

A look at the cover and you know this book is going to be delicious. Open, and the end pages are splashes of yellow that exude a bright warmth, immediately making the reader happy and ready to dive into the poetic text that follows.  Here’s a snippet from early on :

“Just before yellow time,

the air smells different.

Like wet mud and dry grass

with a sprinkle of sugar.”

Yellow Time swells with movement and the joy of all that yellow dropping from trees and catching in hair and  sweaters, pooling in gutters, and decorating sidewalks. The book is a glorious song of praise to the world turned yellow when the ash trees lose their leaves. Don’t miss this beautiful book.

little-blue-trucks-halloween

LITTLE BLUE TRUCK’S HALLOWEEN by Alice Schertle, illustrated by Jill McElmurry

I’m in love with Alice Schertle’s poetry, and even through this post goes up on Halloween, too late for some to be interested in Schertle’s newest Little Blue Truck book for *this* year’s holiday, I can’t let it go by without at least urging readers to track down the book for next year’s preschool or Kindergarten class.

Like all the Little Blue books, Schertle’s rhyme is impeccable and this book – a lift-the-flap – makes use of that rhyme to encourage readers to anticipate which animal will be hiding under the flap.

Schertle has many wonderful poetry collections for older readers, but this series is the perfect marriage of poetry and picture book in the hands of a pro.

What are some of your favorite books for FALL? Share them in the comments.

ONE NORTH STAR, A COUNTING BOOK

Posted on 10/26/2016

ONE NORTH STAR, A COUNTING BOOK  By Phyllis Root and illustrated by Beckie Prange and Betsy Bowen

ONE NORTH STAR is so much more than a counting book, it is visual and poetic trip through Minnesota’s “bog and marsh, along river and lake, across prairie and into woods.” The images and words compliment each other as we count our way through several ecosystems and seasons – their plants, animals, earth and star formations. High up in the sky the one North Star is our starting point and our guide. Then pull on your boots, take along backpack and binoculars, and get ready to hike, fly, swim, perch, and even take root! Onward to FIVE:

Five walleyes fin near wild rice

four blue flag irises flower

three mudpuppies wriggle

two loons call

one porcupine sleeps in a jack pine tree

all along a lake

under one north star.

The pages are filled with accurate illustrations and the book is brimming with facts and details about these Midwestern ecosystems highlighting the plants and animals that make their homes there.

This picture book is the creation of three talented women: Phyllis Root is the author of more than forty books including Plant a Pocket of Prairie and One Duck Stuck. Beckie Prange is a biologist and printmaker and illustrator of the Caldecott Honor winner, Song of the Water Boatman. Betsy Bowen has authored and illustrated a number of books including Phyllis Root’s Big Belching Bog. The University of Minnesota Press, publisher, has given children and adults another engaging, beautiful book to learn from and enjoy.