Master the ART of Reading

Our theme for the Summer Reading Club this summer is Master the Art of Reading. Our programs and reading clubs this summer are all centered around different kinds of art. Drawing, painting, dancing, singing...

Oh, wait. I must stop myself before I go into the whole Summer Reading Club spiel.

That's right.
It's that time again. Time for our visits to the local schools to pass out fliers and talk about the Summer Reading Club. To be honest, it's one of my favorite things to do! We go to all the elementary schools in our district, send fliers to the middle schools, and I've been scheduling our visits to local preschools as well.

Now, when we go to the elementary schools we do the spiel. We tell them about the Summer Reading Club: how to join, what they have to do, what fabulous prizes they will earn. We also tell them about some of the cool programs we have going on this summer. But when we go to the preschools we do things a little bit differently. We start each visit with a story and then go into a brief spiel about the read-to-me club and a couple of the most appealing programs for preschoolers.

So, my challenge is to find picture book readalouds appropriate for all preschool ages (generally from 2 to 5 or 6 years old) that tie in to our summer reading theme. Last year we did Get a Clue and we brought books that had to do with solving mysteries. This year I needed to find books about art. A couple of favorites jumped to mind, but I turned to the good people at PUBYAC for some more suggestions and, as usual, they did not let me down. I'd like to share a few of our favorite art-related books for preschoolers.

The first book that jumped to my mind was Karen Beaumont's fabulous I Ain't Gonna Paint No More! This catchy picture book can be sung (to the tune of It Ain't Gonna Rain No More) or read and the bright, silly pictures are a surefire hit with the preschool crowd. A boy gets caught painting up his house and vows not to paint anything else... but temptation gets the better of him and he just has to take some red and paint his... head. The rhyming verses encourage kids to guess which body part he will paint next. One teensy red flag is the use of the word "heck". I read this to a Methodist preschool class and one little boy whispered "It said a bad word, it said heck!" So... something to be aware of.

Another hit with our older preschoolers has been Art by Patrick McDonnell. Art is the name of our main character here and Art loves to do art. He paints, draws, doodles, and even his blotches and squiggles all come together in a beautiful, colorful spread that elicits "Ooohs" and "Aaahs". And at the end, Art's art ends up on the refrigerator because mother loves A(a)rt.


For the younger crowd, you really can't go wrong with Mouse Paint by Ellen Walsh. It starts with three white mice on a white piece of paper. Why are they on a white piece of paper? They're hiding from the cat, of course. Well, one day the three mice find three jars of paint. They think it is mouse paint. So they dive right in. This starts our colorful story as the mice discover what different colors they can make by combining red, yellow, and blue. This is a great, simple story for younger preschoolers and they can name the colors that come up on every page. I've yet to meet anyone who is not a fan of Mouse Paint.

Museum 1 2 3 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a really cool way for little kids to look at art. It goes through the numbers 1-10 and invites readers to count objects in art. Although the book is a little small for group readalouds, it would be a great book to peruse one on one. It's an interesting way to expose kids to art. Kids will love to search the pictures to find the objects.

One of the books that jumped immediately to mind is a personal favorite of mine: Micawber by John Lithgow. Upon inspection, this book seemed a little too much for the preschool crowd, but I think it would work great with lower elementary kids. Micawber is a squirrel who loves to sneak into the art museum every day and watch the people copying the great masterpieces. One day he hitches a ride home with an unwitting artist and that night he borrows some of her paints to create his own masterpiece. Micawber continues painting until he has enough art to start his own animal art museum. I love the great rhyming text which has a really rich vocabulary and the sweet story with colorful pictures. I won't forget this one when we start up our elementary storytimes in the fall.

Last, but certainly not least, I want to point out two new favorites that were suggested by PUBYAC members. Art Is and Artful Reading, both by Bob Raczka. In Art Is, Raczka takes famous words of art and creates a rhyming text that points out all the different forms art can take. The rhyming text is simple enough to use with younger kids and Raczka includes additional information about each piece, making the book appealing to older readers as well. In Artful Reading, Raczka has collected art that features readers, again with a rhyming text that presents the art in an interesting way.

These wonderful art-related books are helping us kick off what is sure to be a very colorful summer at the library!

Stuffed Animal Sleepover

What fun was had at the library this Friday! I hosted a Stuffed Animal Sleepover and I think it was great fun for all involved. Here's what we did:

On Friday at 4:00 we had a storytime and invited kids to bring their stuffed animal for a sleepover at the library. We read books about toys and bedtime, then the kids made name tags for their toys (just to ensure that no one's got mixed up), and then they tucked them in for the night.

What did we read for our Stuffed Animal Sleepover? We read Corduroy by Don Freeman, Where's My Teddy? by Jez Alborough, and How Will I Ever Sleep in This Bed? by Della Ross Ferreri. We also did Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed with finger puppets, Teddy Bear Teddy Bear Turn Around, and a felt story about the first teddy bear. The storytime lasted about 25 minutes and then we had the kids make name tags. I had cut out a teddy bear Ellison shape, punched a hole through it, and threaded some yarn through the hole to make name tags the kids could put on their stuffed animals. We asked them to write the toy's name on one side and the kid's name on the other side. (I had visions of things getting horribly mixed up and people taking the wrong toys home, but all went smoothly, thank goodness.)

Once everyone was gone, we librarians got out the stuffed animals and took photos of them "playing" around the library. On Saturday, the kids came to pick up their toy. We printed out one picture for each child to take home and showed them all the other pictures. I wasn't there for the pickup, but from what I hear the photos were a big hit and we got some great feedback. This was a fun, inexpensive program that I will definitely do again in the future. I don't think we even really needed to print out a picture for them. Most kids seemed to be thrilled with looking at the pictures on the computer and I emailed the pictures to any interested families.

Summer Blog Blast Tour

Today's the kick-off for the 2008 Summer Blog Blast Tour and you won't want to miss it. Colleen over at Chasing Ray is organizing and it looks to be fabulous. Already I've learned about R.L. LaFevers's new Theodosia book due out in November (yay!) and Adam Rex's sequel to Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich: Frankenstein Takes the Cake (also yay!). (And I know one coworker's daughter who will be Very Happy to hear about the new Adam Rex.) Different interviews will be up all week long, so make sure you stop by.

Annnd to flesh out this post, I'm doing a meme that Melissa tagged me for awhile ago. I will present 6 incredibly random things about myself:

1. I started my first website when I was in high school. It was on Angelfire and it was called Abby's Place. A guy from the local newspaper wrote an article about kids with websites and he interviewed me for it, but the day the article came out Angelfire crashed and I lost my entire site. It was a bummer.

2. I wrote my first book in Kindergarten for the Young Author's contest. It was about an owl and my teacher helped me cut out pages in the shape of an owl's head.

3. When I worked for a major corporate bookstore chain, I got to dress up in the book character costumes that came to the store. I was Spot, Miss Spider, Froggy, and Clifford. It's not that it's so hot in there, really, but more that it's hard to breathe and it smells bad. It's worth it, though, for how excited the kids get.

4. When my brother and I were little, the whole family would read Richard Scarry books at bedtime and we'd all try to find Lowly Worm and Goldbug on the pages.

5. I totally had a literary crush on Johnny Tremain in the fifth grade.

6. When I was in middle school, I had over 70 pen pals from all around the world. I had a map in my room with pins that showed each pal's location and I would get up to 10 letters a day. It was awesome getting so much mail, but somewhere along the line I lost touch with every single one of them. I think I still have folders full of their letters at my parents' house, though.

There. Now you know some incredibly random things about me. I'm not so into the tagging people thing, so if you want to do this meme, consider yourself tagged. If not, no harm, no foul.

Book Review: In Our Village

In Our Village: Kambi ya Simba Through the Eyes of Its Youth edited by Barbara Cervone. (Grades 3-7.)

(As usual, happy Nonfiction Monday and be sure to head over to Picture Book of the Day for the roundup!)

I stumbled upon this title while I was weeding the 900s section. It's a project created by Awet Secondary School in Tanzania and an organization called What Kids Can Do. This book gives us a look inside a small village in Tanzania.

In Kambi ya Simba life is much different than it is here in the States. Nearly half the people in Tanzania live under the poverty line, which is $180 a year. Access to electricity is scare in some places, in particular rural areas. Farming is the livelihood of many people, tying their lives to the whims of nature. Although education is improving, only one in ten kids continues on to secondary school which they have to pay tuition for.

This book was created by students at the Awet Secondary School and many of the photos were taken by them. They chose what they wanted to share with the world, what they would want the world to know about their village. And it's an enlightening look into the dreams and realities of one small African village. Some information is added by Tanzanian professionals such as doctors and agricultural experts who comment on some of the problems faced in the village. But the book is not all about problems. The children of Kambi ya Simba are friendly and ambitious. Some dream of being doctors, lawyers, and presidents. Here's a chance to look at the world through someone else's eyes.

The preface gives information about how Cervone came to start this project and how she met the kids at Awet Secondary School. The bulk of the book contains short chapters about many aspects of village life: cooking, farming, raising livestock, going to school, riding bicycles, singing, building houses, making clothing, etc. A section at the end gives additional information on Tanzania, including a map and a fairly lengthy glossary of Swahili words.

I thought it was a wonderful book, though not perfect. I wished the photos had captions. I'd like to know which were taken by students and which weren't. The text is edited together rather than presented as separate essays. Although Cervone gives a reason for doing this (wanting to make the book as coherent as possible and avoid communication breakdowns because of differences in English), it would have been neat to at least see some excerpts of essays from the kids to get a sense of their voices and get to know them.

Still, I think it's a great idea for a book and I think it would be interesting to use it as a class project. If kids in Illinois (or Hawaii or New York or wherever) could create a book to show other kids the important things about where they lived, what information would they include? What pictures would they take to show the world their hometown?

Book Review: Larklight

Larklight: A Rousing Tale of Dauntless Pluck in the Farthest Reaches of Space by Philip Reeve. (Grades 4-8.)

I'm a bit late to the bandwagon on this title. Larklight's gotten rave reviews all over the place, it was nominated for a 2006 Cybil, and now it's being turned into a movie. But better late than never, eh?

This book is fabulous.

It's set in space... kinda.

In the world of Larklight, Sir Isaac Newton discovered the secrets to space travel and Britain has colonized many of Earth's surrounding planets and moons. Arthur and Myrtle Mumby live with their father in a ramshackle, space-traveling house called Larklight. Mother has died and Arthur is concerned about his father who's withdrawn into his study and only seems to care about collecting specimens for the Royal Xenological Society.

And then the spiders show up.

These aren't just any spiders. They are huge white spiders that travel in a spiny black ship and seem intent on capturing the Mumbys and spinning Larklight into a cocoon. Arthur doesn't know why they've come, he just knows they've got to get out of there, so he grabs Myrtle and they take off in the escape hatch. They end up on the moon where they meet Jack Havock and his roving band of pirates, a mish-mash collection of space creatures from all over the galaxy. And their adventures only get wilder from there.

Things you should know about Larklight:

1. It's funny.

2. It's set in an intricately developed alternate Victorian world where there is most definitely life on other planets and creatures travel through the aether to reach said other planets.

3. It has great, great illustrations.

4. There is a sequel out now - Starcross: A Stirring Adventure of Spies, Time Travel, and Curious Hats. And there is a third book due out in the fall - Mothstorm.

Larklight reminded me of a cross between Alice in Wonderland and the TV show Firefly. If you like fantasy with wonderfully crafted worlds (a la His Dark Materials), you should pick up this book. If you like your fantasy funny and with lots of adventure (a la Peter and the Starcatchers), you should pick up this book. I don't think you'll regret it.

Let me introduce my friend Sally...

Inspired by Ms. Yingling's post about her BLF (Best Literary Friend), I'd like to post a bit about one of my own BLFs. When I was a kid I often read the same books over and over again. They were my favorites. I loved the characters. I loved the stories. I could pick them up and immediately be somewhere familiar. Fifteen years later, nothing has changed. I can still pick up those books and be transported to a familiar place with characters I love to revisit. This week, yearning for the familiar, I picked up one of my childhood favorites: Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself by Judy Blume.

Sally is ten years old and lives in New Jersey in 1947. The memory of the war is fresh in her mind and it's especially relevant because Sally is Jewish; her aunt and cousin died in a concentration camp. When Sally's brother Douglas gets sick, the doctors think the best thing for him would be to spend the winter in a warm climate. So Sally, her mother, her grandmother, and Douglas pack up and move into a tiny apartment in Miami Beach. At first things are really crummy.

Sally's new school is huge compared to her New Jersey school. She's sure she'll never find her way around. On her first day she wears the wrong shoes and her hair is totally different than everyone else's. It's taking forever to get their phone line hooked up, she has to share a room with her brother, and worst of all is that her father had to stay in New Jersey to work. Sally's trying to be brave and think about her time in Florida as an adventure, but it's not always easy...

There's so much to say about this book that I'm not even sure how to summarize it. I think I liked Sally so much because I was a lot like her. I always made up stories just like Sally does. She pictures herself getting cast in movies alongside her favorite actors (Margaret O'Brien and Esther Williams). She doesn't always understand what grown-ups are talking about, but she'll be darned if she'll admit it. She's a little too inquisitive for her own good, but it's only because she doesn't want to be left in the dark.

I haven't reread this book since I was in grade school and I thought about some things that I never thought about before. Like what happened to Sally's Florida friends when she moved back to New Jersey? Did she stay in touch with them or did she never see them again? When she got back to New Jersey, were things back to normal with her old friends? Did she miss Florida or was she glad to be home?

If you're looking for a new literary friend to get to know, I highly recommend picking up Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself. It's still one of my favorites and it's comforting to know that she'll always be there when I want to feel like I'm ten again.

Book Review: Stanford Wong Flunks Big Time

Stanford Wong Flunks Big Time by Lisa Yee. (Grades 4-7.)

STANFORD A. WONG
Loving Son
Great Basketball Player
Rotten Student

Those are the words Stanford envisions on his tombstone (page 4). He's just gotten an F on his final book report in Mr. Glick's English class and now he has to go to summer school instead of basketball camp. And if he doesn't pass the class, he'll fail the sixth grade and worse! He'll be kicked off the A-team, the best basketball team in the school. The basketball team that a sixth grader has never made before.

Not only does Stanford have to endure summer school, but his parents have hired the annoying, geeky genius Millicent Min to tutor him. Stanford's grandmother is moving out of their house and into a retirement community (a change she's NOT happy about). And Stanford's dad is working so much he's hardly ever around. When he is around, he's just yelling at Stanford about his grades.

Obviously, this summer stinks.

Stanford doesn't want to tell his friends (teammates on his park district basketball team The Roadrunners) that he flunked English, so he makes up a story about having a summer job. And when the sweet and pretty Emily Ebers starts showing up with Millicent, Stanford worries that she won't like him if she knows he's stupid, so he tells Emily that he's the one tutoring Millie. And after that, well, things just get way out of control.

Stanford Wong Flunks Big Time is a great, great book to pick up for your summer reading pleasure. Once I got into Stanford's story, I couldn't put it down. It was great to see him grow and change and to see the changes that happen to all of his friends, too. A lot can happen in one summer. The story's told in a diary-like format that really kept me turning the pages.

I think the neatest thing about this book is that it's a sequel to Lisa Yee's Millicent Min, Girl Genius. It tells the same story, but from the perspective of Millicent's arch nemesis Stanford. You don't have to read Millicent Min first, so if you enjoy Stanford's story, pick up Lisa Yee's other books to see other characters' points of view. I've really enjoyed Millicent's and Stanford's stories and I'm looking forward to reading Emily's in So Totally Emily Ebers!

Be sure and check out Lisa Yee's blog and visit her over at Fusion Stories.