New On the Job

Terrible cover, but this is a good solid overview of the stuff you need to be aware of going into your first year as a school librarian.  I hope they update it in the next year or two but it's not way out of date or anything.  It's short, sweet and full of all the things you need to at least be aware of for year one.

I especially like that they make you think of your philosophy/vision first and base everything from there.  Keeps you focused.  It's a good handbook for getting and keeping organized, advocating your practice, and general grounding information.

I'll definitely be referring to it for advice often when the crazy hits!


New On the Job by Ruth Toor and Hilda Weisburg

Professional Reading: More Wonder and Books!

I've read a couple of great teacher books recently that have no direct correlation with school librarianship but I'm going to be keeping them in my library and putting them under teachers noses, quoting from them and using some of their ideas as much as possible.

Georgia Heard and Jennifer McDonough's  A Place for Wonder grabbed me the instant I heard about it.  I set up a "Wonder Wall" bulletin board in my classroom last year and recorded some of the best student-generated questions throughout the year, some of which we researched.  Many of them were about science and astronomy along with some crazy 2012 mythology that was fun to find out the truth about.

Their book takes that idea and just adds more.  More question-generating, more research opportunities and more ways to connect it to the student's own nonfiction writing.  It's written for the K/1 crowd, but the ideas of pursuing an inquiry-based approach to student reading. writing and research are great for any age.

I completely agree that the best and most motivating research we do is from questions we have on our own.  Whether it be about buying a car, finding a suitable mate, or trying to find out if that myth about full moon fever is really true (it's not, of course but it's fun to read about).

Donalyn Miller takes the same idea toward reading in The Book Whisperer.  It's much more motivating when it's self-selected.  This is hardly a new idea.  Stephen Krashen, Frank Smith, Jim Trlelease and Nanci Atwell have argued in favor of it for years.  But Donalyn Miller pushes the idea even further and writes so well about it I ate the book right up.  She lets her students read read read and has them taking and giving book recommendations like nobody's business.  At the end of the year when the dust settles, her kids blow away the state test but that's not why he does it.  Her goal is to "show students how to embrace reading as a life-long pursuit" (p. 4) and this just happens to be the best way to create better readers, students (and it shows on the tests).

She bemoans the dry-as-chalk-dust way reading is taught in schools and the boring whole class novel approach.  She asks, "are we teaching books or are we teaching readers?" (p. 85)

Heck, yeah!  It's a highly motivating book.  I could go on an on about it, but I'll leave you with this quote, from page 112:

"Your love of reading is the best part of you."

The Book Whisperer book and blog

Lunar Effects (Full Moon)

A Place for Wonder

The Lost Thing Trailer

Oooh, Saun Tan and Tim Minchin.  Two of my favorite Aussie's.  Can't wait.

http://www.thelostthing.com/

 (via Podblack)

Done With 3D

Went with my girls to see Toy Story 3 today.  It was fantastic, of course, but I think it was our last 3D movie.  I didn't realize when we snagged the tickets online that you could choose to see it in 3D or 2D and since we don't go to the theater often, were cool with ponying up for the 3D experience.

I realized a great movie will be just as good without the 3D stuff (as this one was) and a mediocre film isn't much improved by the effect.  I remember hearing a story once that the band Aerosmith would take a tape of an album they were working on and play it in a old, crappy car stereo figuring that if it sounded decent in there, it would sound good anywhere.  It's the same with movies.  If it needs 3D to sell tickets, then it's probably not very good.  Pixar movies are excellent in every way, even without some extra artificial "dimension."

Roger Ebert has thought about this much more than I have and I always recommend taking him into consideration.  This isn't about being against the new popular trend.  It's just an instance of noticing that the emperor needs some new threads.

Why I Hate 3-D (And You Should Too) by Roger Ebert

It's Summertime and the Reading is Easy...

I was going to start off saying I'm sorry for not posting, but I'm really not.  I'm enjoying my summer and I hope you are as well.  I'm finishing up a couple of professional titles I hope to be posting on soon, but this week I had a couple days of in-services and I have family visiting for a number of so and doubt I'll get much screen time.

I don't get out much, so don't be surprised when I say I saw my first Kindle and iPad out in the wild this week.  Today I took my daughter to her swim team thingee and couldn't help doing the scout out for readers.  Is there a name for this move?  You know the one.  When you're walking down the aisle on a plane, bus or train and you're checking out all the books people are carrying or reading.  It was moderately busy at the pool so I did that today.

Young boy next to me was engrossed in The Melted Coins, a Hardy Boys mystery.  I seriously doubt that's on a summer reading list, but you never know.  There was a dad enjoying an old copy of Prince Caspian which was interesting.  A woman was reading the actual physical newspaper (which I don't think I've done in four or five years).  Little kid next to her had a picture book.  A tweenaged girl was reading a book called Lola at the Library to her little sister.  A woman was reading a hardback novel.  The woman next to her was reading a trade paper nonfiction health title.

There was a woman across the pool reading what looked like a Kindle in a case, but she seemed pretty paranoid when the kids came around all wet and dripping and kept wrapping it up in a thick towel.  A guy sat down next to me with an iPad and played a few hands of solitaire.  A kid at another table was playing it the old fashioned way, with a deck of cards.  I wonder which one would have been more chapped if they got splashed?

I was switching between my nonfiction professional book and my audio fiction book.

My daughter finished a Magic Tree House book she's been reading when we got home.

Tonight I go to my book club to discuss Plainsong, among other things.

Enjoy your summer reading!

Critical Thinking Sunday: 2012 Edition

Neil de Grasse Tyson debunks the silly 2012 doomsday myth in a provocative video from the World Science Convention.  And he does it well.

"As an educator,it's my duty to empower you to think so that you can go forth and think accurate thoughts about how the world is put together inoculating you against the charlatans out there who'll exploit your ignorance on anything they possibly can."

Plainsong

This is  the June pick for the book club I'm in.

I've heard this book has been made into a TV movie, but I have no desire to see it.  In my mind's eye it was long, meandering and gorgeously shot feature film either directed by Badlands era Terrence Malik or The Last Picture Show era Peter Bogdonovich.

It concerns a man and his two sons whose wife/mother has left them; a pregnant teenage girl kicked out by her own mother; and two old crotchety but kind confirmed bachelor brothers running a farm.  These folks are all brought together by a young teacher who knows them all and gently pushes them together into kind of an extended family of damaged, but strong people doing the best they can to help each other out.

It's written in a Hemingway meets Fred Chappell style that really picks up when the McPheron brothers show up about sixty or so pages in.  They are strong, sincere, and unintentionally hilarious.  They reminded me of Matthew Cuthbert in the Anne of Green Gables book but with a brother like himself and no Marilla to balance him out.

It's pain spoken, but poetic.  An example, from when the two young boys are waiting for a train to come along and run over some coins and jewelry they've laid on the tracks:

There was a grasshopper on the weeds, watching them, chewing its mouth.  Ike threw a piece of dirt at it and it hopped onto the track.  The train came on from a distance, whistling sudden and long at a mile crossing.  They waited.  The coins and her bracelet were out on the track.  After a time they could see the train, dark-looming in the haze.  It came on and got louder, bigger, and appeared as terrific as if it were dreamed, shaking the ground, the grasshopper still watching the two boys, and then the train was on them.

If you like books like Cold Mountain, this is definitely for you.  And if you do like this, you might also enjoy the similar, but more playful style of Fred Chappell (if you can dig his flights of fancy and magic realism the way I do).

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

Books by Fred Chappell

Online Reading Focus

Jacquie Henry and others have been talking a bit about a certain book that is pointing out things I've been saying all along.  I don't have a problem with digital tools, but I definitely think a balance needs to be struck.  Along with these discussions have come a few links to some great tools to help you focus as you read online.  I've been an avid user of Readability for some time and can highly recommend it.  I'd never heard of Instapaper until this week but it's a similar tool.

Readability takes a colorful and flashy site with all the links and ads and small type and makes it, well, readable.

Instapaper does the same thing, but ironically it's not for instant reading like Readability is.  It's for capturing something you find online to read at a later date, but with a similar clean, uncluttered format.

These posts, like Jacquie's, also point to a thought-provoking post by the author of the book, Nicholas Carr who posits that all the embedded linking online changes the way we read.  Now, he says, as we read through a typical online article or blog post, we have to make a decision every time we come to a link on whether to keep reading or to hop on over to the link.  He's not advocating losing links altogether, just putting them at the end of an article so the reader can focus on what they're reading and then check out the links at the end at  their leisure.  Laura Miller, the Salon book critic, tried out this very thing in her article of the book being so discussed.

I like this approach and believe I will adopt it from now on if you have no objections.

Check the links out for yourself, but do add Readability and Instapaper to your toolbar first, if you haven't already.  You'll be glad you did.

Jacquie Henry's wonderful post, Your Brain on Computers

Readability

Instapaper

Nicholas Carr's Experiments In Delinkification and his much-discussed book, The Shallows

Laura Miller's review of The Shallows with links at the end and an updated commentary she's written on this practice.


(image cc flickr)

Death from the Skies!

Finally got around to reading my personally signed copy of Death from the Skies! by the one and only Phil Plait.  It was all that and more.

This is an overview of all the ways the world could possibly end due to various astronomical phenomena.  Astroid collisions, gamma ray burst, rouge black holes, devastating solar events, that kind of thing.  But it's not depressing at all.  Not to me, anyway.  If you've ever seen Phil give a talk you know that he is infectiously excited about learning and sharing all the amazing things that he's learned.  I'll link to his Why Science Is Important video below so you can see what I mean.  He loves science and is a great explainer of all things astronomical.

But he doesn't just explain.  He gets you enthused as well.  He bounces around making hand gestures and saying "really cool" and "amazing" and his face just lights up even as he's telling an audience about gamma ray bursts for the millionth time.  (Mostly because gamma ray bursts really are that cool).

As Daniel H. Wilson so aptly put it: "Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan.  Frightening, yet oddly exhilarating."

I could hear this enthusiasm as I read the book.  It's a shame there's no audiobook for it.  He could record it himself.  Or maybe Wil Wheaton or Adam Savage would be a good stand in.  Get on that, Penguin!

Even if you don't read his book, read his blog (also linked below).  He is by far the best science and skeptical blogger.  Period.

Why Science is Important

Death from the Skies: The Science Behind the End of the World by Philip Plait, Ph.D

Bad Astronomy at Discover Blogs

My Man Jeeves

Just finished the last topping installment of my first, delightful book of P.G. Wodehouse's book, My Man Jeeves which I've been reading for free from Daily Lit.  It was jolly good.  I needed something this light and fun towards the end of the school year and no matter how bust you get, you can always read an installment on your email and be happy to have read something that day if all else fails.

I've never seen the Fry and Laurie episodes of Jeeves and Wooster, but I was thinking of them the whole time.

It's your typical comedy of manners but with the lightest of touches.  I'm going to sign right up for the next one, Right Ho, Jeeves!

Critical Thinking Sunday: Manga Edition

Meant to post this a while ago, but just re-found it.  What I know about manga wouldn't fit in a thimble, but I love this because it shows that you can really do just about anything and promote critical thinking.



(via Phil)

Kenny and the Dragon

Kenny and the Dragon is Tony DiTerlizzi's modern update of Kenneth Grahame's The Reluctant Dragon.  See how he gets the original author's names in there?  He gets a few mentions of the author himself and his works into the story as well as other literary works.  In fact, the power of stories to influence us as civilized beings is a strong thread in the book, along with chess, conversation and excellent food (especially desserts).

Kenny the rabbit discovers a nonviolent and thoughtful dragon living on their property just outside the village of Roundbrook.  Of course the book he has borrowed from his friend George describes dragons as scourge that must be met with "imminent extermination" and, of course, the king calls upon Kenny's chess-playing old pal George to come out of retirement as, you guessed it, a dragon-slaying knight in armor!

What's to be done?  Especially when the townsfolk are expecting a battle to the death.  No surprises here but a great good time and a fantastic read-aloud for my daughter.  Her only complaint?  Not enough illustrations of the love interest, Charlotte.  She really wanted to see one of Charlotte dressed up as a lovely damsel in the end, but while there are many gorgeous illustration throughout the book, there is only one featuring the doe-eyed Charlotte who makes Kenny go red in the cheeks.

This would make for an excellent old-school animated film.  Somebody, get right on that.

Read as part of my county's Reader's Rally book challenge.

"Must be a good book"

I'm just not fond of that phrase.  Talk about a non-sequitur.

This past school year I had afternoon bus dismissal duty.  I had to stand at the intersection of school hallways and make sure there was some semblance of order as the kids rushed to get to their bus.

Since our elementary school has over 1400 students and since the land is cheaper for building schools out in the middle of nowhere, we're talking more than 30 busses.  So there would be waves of chattering kids punctuated by long lulls during which the next phalanx of busses motored into position.

So I usually brought a book for theses down times.  Nearly every adult who happened by at one of these times would invariably say, "Must be a good book."

What does that even mean?

How the heck do I know if it's good if I just started reading it?  How do they know it's good no matter where I am in it?  But saying it must be good just because I'm standing there reading it seems ridiculous.

I admit: most of the books I read are good because I only pick books to read that I've heard good things about and am reasonably sure I'll like.  But every so often I'm wrong.  Not often, but it happens.  And sometimes I have to read something for my book club I wouldn't have otherwise chosen and don't necessarily like but feel compelled to read for the conversation we'll have.  Sometimes I read kids books out of some obligation or other that I don't always enjoy.

I mean, just because someone is reading, why does it necessarily follow it's a good book?  I could be reading pap like this or like this for all they know.

These people might have a point if I was reacting to the book in some dramatic way as they walked by.  Gasping or laughing or weeping openly.  It happens.  But not usually in the hallway between bus calls for crying out loud.

(image cc flikr)