The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman is an amazing feat of storytelling. But what do you expect from Gaiman? The guys has stories coming out his ears. I didn't think he could top the Sandman stories, then he started writing amazing novels. I didn't think he could top those, then he started writing for children. He takes the best of Carroll, Kipling, Poe and Harlan Ellison and just goes on and on and on telling one fabulous tale after another.

You've probably heard the summary. A baby boy's family is murdered (off stage) and he happens to crawl through the open door and across the street to a graveyard. He is protected and raised by a wonderful assortment of ghosts, a vampire and others.

Gaiman is fantastic reader as well. I read the actual book, but I've heard him enough to have his voice in my head as I read this. (Don't worry, it's a pleasant experience.) You can see him read it here on his video book tour of the book. (I'm just not patient enough to sit and watch them all in front of the computer.)

There are few flaws. The bad guy(s) aren't as freaky as first built up, but that's not his point anyway. It's a bit too episodic for me, but that's okay. It's his riff on The Jungle Book and a wonderful one at that. It may not quite reach the powerful heights of the His Dark Materials trilogy, but again, it's okay. This stands with some of the best children's fantasy's around.

The writing is graceful and lighter than air. The humorous touches are expert. The emotional touches even more so. You know it's a classic when you get to the end and you couldn't be happier with it or sadder that it's come. It does what the best stories do: makes you happy to be alive.

Jacquie Henry On Paperwork

I received some great comments on my previous post on paperwork. I haven't had much time to comment or post as this is crunch time for my FINAL project for grad school. Luckily it's a team project and my team is doing all the heavy lifting while I mostly add the jokes. (Get it, heavy lifting. Broken wrist? Ah, never mind...)

Anyway, the always amazing Jacquie Henry has been doing a series of posts in which she is basically mentoring librarian noobs such as myself. So she bravely took on the task of answering my question about librarian paperwork in a full on post of her own!

She gives this warning, however:

Warning! Reading the above post might cause extreme drowsiness. Do not read if you plan to operate heavy equipment.

But seriously, it's great. I love what she says about never forgetting how hard it is to be a classroom teacher. Like the great George Clinton sings, "Teachers work harder than you do. No matter what you do."

(Oh, and I got the cast off but man does it ever still hurt. I start physical therapy this afternoon. Fun, I'm sure.)

Paperwork?

My wife's elementary school does something brilliant. Yesterday was the final day of their state-given standardized testing and they had a huge "Family Fun Night" to blow off some steam in the evening. DJs, face painting, inflatable playground thingees, and pizza. They even had a "Power Shower" where the kids could pay to throw balls at a target and get a chance to hose down staff members (including the principal) with freezing cold water. My daughter had the biggest smile on her face I've seen since Disney.

I got the chance, however briefly, to meet and chat with a couple of my fellow bloggers. They are brilliant and interesting and I only wish we'd had more time (and that I could hear better in an environment like that). While chatting with one of them, we were discussing the possible perks of my new job. "There will be less paperwork!"

I wondered aloud if that was true and was accused by my lovely bride of being a nattering nabob of negativism. Since she's always right, it has gotten me thinking. Is there really less paperwork? Or at least less of the onerous kind?

In my current job I have some grading but a whole lot of persnickety data entry and checking. I have to work on "modification plans" with teachers on all these students and create and maintaing "testing accommodation plans" and have everything signed and double checked and signed again and checked again and again. I also have to "code tests" which means canceling classes and spending an afternoon in the prison-like testing room bubbling in just the right mix of information on pain of losing my job if not correct.

So I'm thinking that once again, my lovely bride is right. I imagine being the librarian will have a lot of paperwork related to the ordering, but I've done that as a special orders person at a chain bookstore and I've even been the bookkeeper at such a bookstore. So that part doesn't seem too bad.

I'll be teaching two classes a day so will still have lesson planning but if I understand the schedule correctly, it'll basically be two lessons a week replayed five times, so that's not too bad. I don't know how much grading will be involved.

What other paperwork is involved in being a school librarian?

image:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/practicalowl/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Assassination Vacation

I've had Sarah Vowell's voice in my head for the past month and it's been a snarky, insightful treat. First I read The Wordy Shipmates, and for last night's rousing Guys Who Read meeting, Assassination Vacation.

In this one she travels the country visiting all the historical sites related to the first three presidential assassinations: Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. It's part history documentary and part Roadside America. She even visits the Mutter Museum!

She's hilarious as usual, calling Robert Todd Lincoln "Jinxy McDeath" since he happens to be nearby during all three assassinations. But she also takes the time to connect what she learns to our modern struggles, particularly the dark similarities in McKinley's empire building and our previous administration's.

Again: I dearly wish I'd been able to read this kind of thing in my high school history classes. Kids today. They have no idea how good they have it!

Earth

This week's Booking Through Thursday is about Earth Day. I've already seen a ton of Earth Day-related posts about what to read with kids. My seven-year-old daughter even bought The Lorax on her own with her own money last weekend! That was pretty cool.

(A brief proud Papa diversion here: she belongs to her school's Earth Patrol which might not sound impressive until you realize it's only for 4th graders and she's in 1st. I can't wait to see the group shot in the yearbook. They had to order a special small T-shirt for her! She'll be the only first grader on their field trip to the recycling center next week! She's awesome!)

So instead of that, here are some Earth-friendly books I noticed as I was just scanning my TBR (to be read) pile:

Earth: An Intimate History - Richard Fortey

Endless Forms Most Beautiful - Sean B. Carroll

The Future of Life - Edward O. Wilson

Suburban Safari: A Year On the Lawn - Hannah Holmes

I'm also interested in the amazing looking The Atlas of Global Conservation recently released by The Nature Conservancy. Great maps and information for a geek like me!

The Conservancy also has a great Earth Day site. Do check it out.

Oh, and be sure to catch Oceans this weekend!

School as Reality-Free Zone

This essay showed up in my local paper this morning: 2 limit txtN, jst taK awy ph. (English Translation: To limit texting, just take away phone).

Here is the comment I posted:

"I think it would be far more interesting and useful to use the phones for instant polling, backchannel responses, and finding other ways to embrace and teach ethical use of a technology they are clearly excited about than to simply try to remove them. Why should school be a reality-free zone? Think of the phones as an opportunity in information technology teaching and ethical use. Plato made the same disparaging remarks about new-fangled book printing technology thinking it would lead to the inability of students to remember anything or to be indoctrinated with dangerous ideas. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future we will look as absurd for wanting to try to ban a ubiquitous communication tool in our schools."

Which Conference?

Okay, as a new school librarian I obviously want to go to some conferences next year. I'm definitely hitting the Georgia Children's Literature conference in the spring. It's been far too long. But which one for the fall?

The ALSC in September or Georgia's own Council of Media Organizations (COMO) in October?

COMO is probably cheaper, but they have that one every year. The ALSC one is more expensive, but it doesn't always come right into Atlanta.

Hmm...

Jacquie Henry Looks to the Future

In this post on ebooks for students, I was responding to the great Jacquie Henry's post on ebooks for students. Here is her thoughtful response.

When I wrote my ebook post - I was thinking mostly in terms of non-fiction books, not text books. I have a library full of great non-fiction that our kids ignore for the most part. If our non-fiction books were in ebook format, and as easy to use as a web site - they might have a chance with the net generation. If they were in ebook format and searchable via the computer, I wouldn't have a student coming the the desk saying - "you don't have any books on "Albrecht Durer". We actually DO have MANY books with lengthy chapters on Albrecht, which is what this student really needed. What if the catalog could have led that student to the books and allowed him to look at the various chapters and then decide which one of our many books about Renaissance artists he wanted to take out? That would be great.

As for novels...I have a lot of avid readers and they want no part of ebooks. However, I also have several friends with Kindles who love it, and now tend to avoid print books. To each his own. I've tried both and still prefer a real book. That said, I need to really know where my kids are if I am going to provide them with resources they will USE.

As for textbooks - they are just plain boring. Not sure if ebooks can help with that. The content is the same - whether read in ebook or print form. Still - maybe some clickable pictures that would bring up a video, along with a "read to" feature might help the net gen or struggling readers trudge through the material with a little less pain.

She's been adding articles like the ones mentioned to a list she calls The Future of Reading. Do check it out.

Her comments on the catalog go along with this post, Catalog Companies - Can You Hear Me Now? which describes a kind of Net Generation library catalog with features she'd like to see. They definitely need to step up the searching in this Google Era, but I don't know about printing chapters. Seeing excerpts a la Google Books would be a great feature though.

What do you think?

Critical Thinking Sunday: Muppet Labs Edition

I GOT A JOB!

I've just found out that next year I will be an actual school librarian at a lovely little elementary school here in the Atlanta suburbs. A Title I school with a 530 or so enrollment with a mixed schedule and no AR.

It's going to be quite an adventure.

So much to do...

So much to learn...

Where to begin?

Whew!

Books and eBooks

Going Paperless: Not as Green as You May Think from GreenBiz

Some Thoughts About E-Reading from the NYT

eBooks in Libraries from Wanderings makes Jacquie Henry think we need to get ebooks into libraries fast, but it just makes me remember how badly we teach history and how boring most of those textbooks are.  I don't think they'd be much improved or comprehension would increase just by migrating the same crap onto an e-reader.  I fail to see how--if the book did all the things these students were joking about--their understanding of the content would increase.  Feel free to enlighten me!

The #101-120 Best Children's Novels (as chosen by Fuse #8 readers) and the "Whaddaya MEAN it's not on the list" list

Poland In Mourning

Poland In Mourning - The Big Picture

Which Ones Have You Read?

So which of the Top 100 Children's Novels have you read? I put mine in bold. Got some work to do...

100. The Egypt Game - Snyder (1967)

99. The Indian in the Cupboard - Banks (1980)

98. Children of Green Knowe - Boston (1954)

97. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane - DiCamillo (2006)

96. The Witches - Dahl (1983)

95. Pippi Longstocking - Lindgren (1950

94. Swallows and Amazons - Ransome (1930)

93. Caddie Woodlawn - Brink (1935)

92. Ella Enchanted - Levine (1997)

91. Sideways Stories from Wayside School - Sachar (1978)

90. Sarah, Plain and Tall - MacLachlan (1985)

89. Ramona and Her Father - Cleary (1977)

88. The High King - Alexander (1968)

87. The View from Saturday - Konigsburg (1996)

86. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Rowling (1999)

85. On the Banks of Plum Creek - Wilder (1937)

84. The Little White Horse - Goudge (1946)

83. The Thief - Turner (1997)

82. The Book of Three - Alexander (1964)

81. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon - Lin (2009)

80. The Graveyard Book - Gaiman (2008)

79. All-of-a-Kind-Family - Taylor (1951)

78. Johnny Tremain - Forbes (1943)

77. The City of Ember - DuPrau (2003)

76. Out of the Dust - Hesse (1997)

75. Love That Dog - Creech (2001)

74. The Borrowers - Norton (1953)

73. My Side of the Mountain - George (1959)

72. My Father's Dragon - Gannett (1948)

71. The Bad Beginning - Snicket (1999)

70. Betsy-Tacy - Lovelae (1940)

69. The Mysterious Benedict Society - Stewart ( 2007)

68. Walk Two Moons - Creech (1994)

67. Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher - Coville (1991)

66. Henry Huggins - Cleary (1950)

65. Ballet Shoes - Stratfeild (1936)

64. A Long Way from Chicago - Peck (1998)

63. Gone-Away Lake - Enright (1957)

62. The Secret of the Old Clock - Keene (1959)

61. Stargirl - Spinelli (2000)

60. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle - Avi (1990)

59. Inkheart - Funke (2003)

58. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - Aiken (1962)

57. Ramona Quimby, Age 8 - Cleary (1981)

56. Number the Stars - Lowry (1989)

55. The Great Gilly Hopkins - Paterson (1978)

54. The BFG - Dahl (1982)

53. Wind in the Willows - Grahame (1908)

52. The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007)

51. The Saturdays - Enright (1941)

50. Island of the Blue Dolphins - O'Dell (1960)

49. Frindle - Clements (1996)

48. The Penderwicks - Birdsall (2005)

47. Bud, Not Buddy - Curtis (1999)

46. Where the Red Fern Grows - Rawls (1961)

45. The Golden Compass - Pullman (1995)

44. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing - Blume (1972)

43. Ramona the Pest - Cleary (1968)

42. Little House on the Prairie - Wilder (1935)

41. The Witch of Blackbird Pond - Speare (1958)

40. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Baum (1900)

39. When You Reach Me - Stead (2009)

38. HP and the Order of the Phoenix - Rowling (2003)

37. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry - Taylor (1976)

36. Are You there, God? It's Me, Margaret - Blume (1970)

35. HP and the Goblet of Fire - Rowling (2000)

34. The Watson's Go to Birmingham - Curtis (1995)

33. James and the Giant Peach - Dahl (1961)

32. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - O'Brian (1971)

31. Half Magic - Eager (1954)

30. Winnie-the-Pooh - Milne (1926)

29. The Dark Is Rising - Cooper (1973)

28. A Little Princess - Burnett (1905)

27. Alice I and II - Carroll (1865/72)

26. Hatchet - Paulsen (1989)

25. Little Women - Alcott (1868/9)

24. HP and the Deathly Hallows - Rowling (2007)

23. Little House in the Big Woods - Wilder (1932)

22. The Tale of Despereaux - DiCamillo (2003)

21. The Lightening Thief - Riordan (2005)

20. Tuck Everlasting - Babbitt (1975)

19. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Dahl (1964)

18. Matilda - Dahl (1988)
17. Maniac Magee - Spinelli (1990)

16. Harriet the Spy - Fitzhugh (1964)

15. Because of Winn-Dixie - DiCamillo (2000)

14. HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban - Rowling (1999)

13. Bridge to Terabithia - Paterson (1977)

12. The Hobbit - Tolkien (1938)

11. The Westing Game - Raskin (1978)

10. The Phantom Tollbooth - Juster (1961)

9. Anne of Green Gables - Montgomery (1908)

8. The Secret Garden - Burnett (1911)

7. The Giver -Lowry (1993)

6. Holes - Sachar (1998)

5. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - Koningsburg (1967)

4. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - Lewis (1950)

3. Harry Potter #1 - Rowling (1997)

2. A Wrinkle in Time - L'Engle (1962)

1. Charlotte's Web - White (1952)

The Wordy Shipmates

I'm supposed to be reading This American Life contributor Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation for my book group this month but they didn't have it at the library so I got this instead.  I'll get around to the other one because I just love her style.  It'll be ok.  My book group meets at my favorite pub so they're a pretty laid back group.

If only my high school history books had been like this, I would have eaten the subject up rather than snoozing through.  History made fun and readable: what a concept!

Vowell takes up the subject of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the influence of the ideas of John Winthrop and Roger Williams upon our country for both better and worse.

She's frankly hilarious and scathingly witty, but doesn't treat these subjects lightly.  She respects the good ideas and writings, and is unafraid to excoriate the intolerant and bad.  John Winthrop is both embraced for writing some of the most beautiful and inspiring sentences in the English language and held at a distance for inspiring the dangerous idea of American exceptionalism.  Roger Williams is ridiculed for some of his narrow-minded and dogmatic religious ideas but praised for his staunch belief that violence (at least against other white men) was never the answer and that the separation of church and state is essential for both.

Highly recommended.

I'll definitely be getting her other books.  Who could resist the idea of Assasination Vacation: A field trip to all of the sites of presidential assassination sites.  Wheee!

In Memory of John Schoenherr

John Schoenherr in Wikipedia

In Memory of the Great Bear of Locktown by Carl Zimmer

He obviously did Dune and tons of amazing science fiction illustrations, but he also did the perfect Owl Moon, and illustrations for books like Rascal, and Gentle Ben, and Julie of the Wolves, and The Barn and many many more.

No, Carl, John will not be forgotten.

Gooney Bird Greene

See? This is why I'm going to love being a school librarian so much (if I can ever find a job). Here's a little masterpiece published in the years between my working at the bookstores and having a seven-year-old that picks cool books from the book fair. Yes, I'd heard of this title but just hadn't had one of my own students bring it up. This kind of new-to-me review will probably be a regular occurrence on this blog as I catch up with children's literature.

A masterpiece, as I've stated. Gooney Bird just happens to be an excellent storyteller who moves into Mrs. Pigeon's second grade class on a Wednesday in October just as said class is discussing what makes a good story. Her first telling, aptly enough, is "How Gooney Bird Got Her Name." There are many more.

She has a thing about stretching the meanings of words in her titles but promising that "I tell only absolutely true stories." For example, "How Gooney Bird Came from China on A Flying Carpet" is about her family moving from a small town named China and the "flying carpet" turns out to be more like falling...with style. It's part of the delight of the tales.

Now this is, of course, perfect read-aloud and it has the added bonus of making a great introduction to storytelling and narrative writing. I just hope teachers don't beat it to death and take all the lighter-than-air joy out of it. (It's been known to happen).

Now I need to go catch up with all of the equally wonderful sounding sequels!

Steven Strogatz

Have you been reading Steven Strogatz's column about math in the NYT? It's a lot of fun, especially for someone like me who was interested in math but hated the homework and missed the good stuff in school. His 28 March column was on functions. Sounds boring, right? Wrong.

Like the best teacherninjas, he makes it fun and interesting. There's a clip from Moonlighting, a gorgeous video of parabolas at play at the Detroit airport and a discussion if the amazing feat then high school junior Britney Gallivan who created a paper folding theorem (above) which put her in the mathematical history books. (When I was a junior I was taking Algebra II for the second time...) She proved it by folding 1200 meters of toilet paper in a mall. It was verified at Caltech, but even better it was replicated by Mythbusters!

Steven Strogatz is amazing and fun. You can find him often on Radiolab. A couple of filmmakers made this video based on a story he told on this episode of Radiolab. And this is also a cool episode about math and our number sense that he's in as well.

Check out all of his columns at NYT. They stat with muppets counting and will continue on through calculus, which I'm sure he'll find a way to make fun and entertaining.

Steven Strogatz: teacherninja.

Pollen Isn't Just for Making You Sneeze

"There's an invisible beauty all around us."

Snopes Strikes Again

In this article in the NYT, "Debunkers of Fiction Sift the Net" we get another insightful look at the work of Barbara and David Mikkelson of Snopes.com (previous post) along with mentions of Factcheck.org and Politifact.com which are becoming more and more necessary as partisan sniping seems to get worse all the time with facts being the first victims.

For the Mikkelsons, the site affirms what cultural critics have bemoaned for years: the rejection of nuance and facts that run contrary to one’s point of view.

“Especially in politics, most everything has infinite shades of gray to it, but people just want things to be true or false,” Mr. Mikkelson said. “In the larger sense, it’s people wanting confirmation of their world view.”

Today in Teacherninja History

It's a busy day in history. In 1614, a native american woman nicknamed Pocahantas married the Englishman John Rolfe, got baptized and was from then on known as "Mrs. Rebecca Rolfe." Doesn't have the same ring to it. And for those of you wondering about John Smith, well you have to remember that the story of her saving him was only reported by him and written down years after the alleged event. At the time he described her as "a child of tenne years old" so I doubt they were romantically involved, no matter what Disney has to say.

In 1621 the Mayflower set sail. I heard it was a rough ride.

But as for teacherninjas, it was the birthday, in 1856, of Booker T. Washington! There are a million biographies of him and his own work to check out, but the kid's book everyone seems to like is a fictionalized but inspirational story of him working in a salt mine and desperately learning to read. More Than Anything Else by Marie Bradby, illustrated by Chris Soenpiet.

"The longer I live and the more experience I have of the world, the more I am convinced that, after all, the one thing that is most worth living for-and dying for, if need be-is the opportunity of making someone else more happy."

-Booker T. Washington

Children Do Not Read Horoscopes!

(via PodBlack)

via onegoodmove

Google Wave invite, anyone?

I still have invites for Google Wave for anyone that doesn't have one and would like.

Rob T. over at Science-Based Parenting sent me one in October and I posted my initial reactions back in November.  Then I got too busy to really do much with it.  Now I've installed notifier extensions in my browsers and am using it for a four-person group project we're doing in a grad school class.  I figured out how to embed a Google Doc in the wave we're working on as well, so now all our chat, notes, and the draft are all in one place.  Nice.


I haven't had much time to look for public waves.  I connected with one or two random librarian/kidlit waves, but am clearly missing out on the good stuff.  That's ok.  I need to keep my head down and plough through the next couple of weeks and finish up.  I'll worry about making more connections after I'm graduated and can maybe maybe possibly find a librarian job out there.

Let me know in the comments if you'd like an invite and I'll send it off!

Today in Teacherninja History

Today is the birthday, in 1805, of Hans Christian Anderson, Danish author and poet most known for his over 150 fairy tales. These didn't always have happy endings. I know people who still haven't gotten over The Little Match Girl. Of course, Disney changed the ending of The Little Mermaid so there's always that route.

He didn't really look much like Danny Kaye, but probably couldn't have sung "Thumbelina" as well, either. (Great, now I've got that stuck in my head.)

Because of Christian's fame it is also known as International Children's Book Day.

There are many great editions of his work, but this would be a good place to start:

The Annotated Hans Christian Anderson translated by Maria Tatar.

There are also, of course, many single editions of his tales. I like Zwerger's The Little Mermaid and Thumbeline.

What are some of your favorites?

The Top Three Children's Books!

You know those strict dates they have for big bestselling books, like a new Harry Potter book?  Those are called "laydown dates" and they're not always strictly enforced unless it's a big book like the HP series.  There is no "laydown date police force" or anything.  The publisher might cut you off if you sell the books before that date if you're a bookseller.  But wasn't it fun to read about the three or four kids who got their hands on that last Harry Potter from stores (usually not bookstores--other stores that also sold books on the side) that accidentally sold them before the correct date?

Well my friends, you will get that same thrill here today.  I have a nefarious friend who has helped me hack into Elizabeth Bird's email account and I have discovered the identities of the TOP THREE CHILDREN'S BOOKS on her list that were to be released in the coming weeks.

I may be sued, but you, my friends, will have the satisfaction of knowing the top three before anyone else!  How could you resist?

Not to be too much of a spoiler, I will let you decide if you want to click on the links.  (But I'm pretty sure you will!  Bwa-ha-ha-ha!)

Number Three!

Number Two!

Number One!