It's Monday! What Are You Reading? December 17, 2012

This time of year is one of my favorites as far as reading picture books.  There is just something about Christmas/Winter books that make me want to snuggle in with my two little boys and read just a few more of them on these cold December nights.  The following are just a handful of the Christmas/Winter books that I've shared with my elementary students and/or my boys and they were big hits with them!

Living in Wisconsin, all my students know that winter is definitely NOT the warmest season here, but after I read the book, they had to admit that the little boy was right about how winter CAN be the warmest season.  The warm winter illustrations in this book really added to the text.  I loved how the little boy stated that his coat puffed up with feathers and warmth and how his hands get to wear warm sweaters over them in winter.  Images of hot cocoa and grilled cheese made this a book a true winter gem.

My elementary students are in LOVE with Charlie the Ranch Dog!  Charlie claims he's such a help on the ranch, but we all know the truth.  Charlie lives for two things: naps and bacon!  When a kitty arrives at the ranch for Christmas, Charlie isn't sure how this is all going to work out, but he's pretty sure it isn't going to be good.  After all, what are kittens good for?

Children love to help with Christmas things and Olivia the pig is no different.  She is always trying to help out be it by feeding her brother William, setting the table for Christmas Eve supper, or checking on Santa.  While not all of her helping plans work out as planned, it's the thought that counts.  Readers will smile at everything Olivia does and it may even remind them of ways they've tried to help out, too!

These are just a few of neat picture books that I've shared with my classes over the past couple of weeks.  I hope that you're able to share some of these with your classes or children before the holidays are over.  Happy Holiday Reading!

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? July 2, 2012

Now that school is out, I have been reading a lot to my two young songs ages 4 and 5.  With the weather as warm as it has been, it has been perfect to stay in the air conditioned house and enjoy a wide variety of great books!

This summer we are participating in the Read to Lead in Wisconsin State Parks program.  Children ages 5-9 can read or have books read to them from the list.  If they read 20 or more and turn in their form, they are entered in to a drawing for a Kindle Fire or one of 10 other eReaders.  How exciting!  For more information on this program, please see my link above.

Books we have recently enjoyed from the list are as follows:

We have quite a few more of the titles from the list on reserve at the library, so what we'll read next week all depends on what comes in via interlibrary loan!  

We Want Your Summer Reading Pictures!

This summer the Kickapoo Library is again having a photo submission opportunity where students and staff can show off all the cool places they're reading over summer vacation.  This is the third consecutive year for the photo submissions and it grows every year.  Students and staff are welcome to submit more than one picture to me of their summer reading and I'll feature it on our library webpage along with the display cases for our annual All School Spaghetti Supper in August.  I get many compliments on these photos and can't wait to see all the places you're reading!

Jake and his cousin Claire reading on the Nooks last summer

Braeden and Brock reading while on vacation last summer

Book Spine Poetry

April is National Poetry Month and in honor of that, I thought that I'd have some of my elementary classes create Book Spine Poems.  I had never done this activity before, so I figured I'd better create some book spine poems of my own to show the students when they came in.  Here are just a couple of those that I created.

A Garden Poem

A Camping Poem

After introducing my poems to the students, I turned them loose in the library.  I told them that they could use any books in the library from Easy Books to Fiction Books to all kinds of Non-fiction.  I had the students pair up as I thought this would make it a little easier for them.  It was very interesting to see the topics that they wanted to create their poems about.  There were poems about the Titanic, poems about lots of animals and poems about food.  The kids did a great job creating some real imaginative poems.  Take a look at their work!

Ryne & Becca's Poem

Tava and Ally's Sweet Poem

Daniel and Wylie's Sharp Teeth Poem

Mitchell & Ruger's Poem

Ingrid & Kayla's Poem

A Farm Poem by Ryan and Ayden

Amber & Molly's Tasty Poem

A Seussical Week

Last week at school we celebrated Dr. Seuss' 108th birthday in a big way at Kickapoo!  We were doing activities of various kinds daily.  There were dress up days all week including Hat Day, My Many Colors Day where each class wore a different color, Wacky Wednesday which was cancelled due to our Ice Day, Wear red in honor of the Cat in the Hat, and finally, Pajama Day on Friday.  It was so fun to see all the kids dressed up for the different days.  Elementary kids eat these kinds of activities up!

Eva with her cute hat

In the Library, we did all sorts of fun activities during the week, too.  I had a Seuss Trivia Contest for every day of the week with one question for students in grades 4K-2 and one question for students in grades 3-5.  The kids couldn't wait to hear what the question for the day was so they could submit their answers in the jars in the Library.  For every question, I had winners from each grade level so that more students were winners. I was able to get some really cute Seuss pens off of Amazon and some Seuss buttons/tattoos/bookmarks.

3rd graders answering the trivia question

Perhaps my favorite Library Activity last week was making the Cat in the Hat cookies I saw on Pinterest out of Oreos, Gummy Savers and frosting.  The kids had a blast making the hat cookies and they told me they tasted so good!  It was fun to watch their faces as they concentrated so hard in putting together the cookies.

Dylan putting the frosting on his Cat in the Hat cookie

We had a very fun week and can't wait for next year to see all the fun, new things we'll be doing to celebrate Seuss again!

I Miss My Free Reading Time!

This semester I am a college student again taking an online class called Leadership and Administration of Library and Technology Programs through the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater as part of my 902 Professional Licensure Program.  While I love taking classes, meeting new people and learning new things, I must confess that I miss my free reading time.

As a mom of two little boys, much of my free reading time was spent reading picture books to the boys and watching them develop a love of books just like both their father and I have.  While I still am reading to them, I must admit, it isn't as much as it was just a mere short month ago when I had all sorts of time to devote to this and I miss it.

Is there an end in sight?  I'm afraid not unless you can fast forward the calendar to December 2013 when I will be done with all 6 courses.  Until then, it will be classroom readings for me and the reading I do with my students at school and that will have to pacify me until December 2013 when I'll be able to devour books again.  Until then, I'll keep reading blog posts, my Twitter feed and other posts on great books and add them to my TBR pile until I can actually get to them.

Now, off to bed to sneak in a little bit of reading...I think tonight's reading will be The Fault in Our Stars.

Digital Learning Day at Kickapoo

February 1, 2012, was designated as Digital Learning Day across the country and we definitely celebrated at Kickapoo!  While I knew that our teachers, for the most part, are quite avid technology users, I was pleasantly surprised to see and hear about all the fun digital activities taking place in our building on this day.

My 4th graders have been researching their favorite authors the past few weeks and on Digital Learning Day, the students took their information and began creating Glogs using Glogster.  This is a new program to them and they had a blast putting their information into the interactive posters.  It's fun to watch my students' creativity juices flow using a program like this.  I can't wait to see what their final projects will look like in a week or so.

A new to me Web 2.0 tool is Study Blue.  I was introduced to this by a colleague of mine who is using it frequently in her classroom.  When I saw the flashcards that the students were creating with Study Blue, it gave me an idea.  I could create flashcard sets for my Battle of the Books team and they could have access to these all the time to help them study their authors/titles.  It has been fun watching my team practice on the SmartBoard using their digital flashcards that I created.  My team has thanked me numerous times for creating these flashcards for them because they really have assisted them in memorizing their information.

My 6th grade book club met on Digital Learning Day, too, and they used Edmodo, an online safe social networking site to share their thoughts on the book that we're reading.  We use Edmodo some after our book club meetings and more so to communicate with each other on those days we don't meet.  It has been a tool that has worked well for us and the girls in my book club like having a safe site they can go to for our book discussions.

Along with what I was doing in my library, there were Mystery State Skypes taking place, students using apps on our NOOK Colors, teachers and students using Mimios in the classroom, teachers using digital cameras, and Yearbook students using Jostens software to create their yearbook.  Are these activities something that only take place on Digital Learning Day at Kickapoo?  Absolutely not!  They are taking place every day and technology is becoming something that is integrated into every classroom/subject area we have.  This is great for our students!

Now that you've read how we celebrated Digital Learning Day, I'd love to hear how you spent the day learning digitally!

Thank You, Kate Messner

For the past month, I have been reading Kate Messner's book, Marty McGuire, to my 3rd graders and they have really enjoyed listening to the story.  It's always neat to read about another class with students the same age and grade as yourself.

About halfway through the book, I got an idea to bring Kate to my students via a Skype visit.  I follow @KateMessner on Twitter and contacted her about visiting with my students and she was happy to oblige.  We got a date all set up which was a few days after we finished the book, so it was perfect timing!

Yesterday, January 31st, was the date of our Skype visit and you should have seen the 3rd graders before school.  They were coming into the library asking me, "Mrs. Malphy, is this the day of our Skype visit with Kate?" and when I told them it was, they just started jumping up and down and screaming.  It's not many days that a famous author takes time out of her busy schedule to talk to students in rural, Wisconsin so needless to say, the kids were ecstatic!

The students came to the Library Technology Room where we conduct our Skype visits shortly before noon, armed with notebooks full of questions for Kate.  Do you like frogs?  How long does it take you to write a book?  Why did you make Marty a tomboy?  Is Veronica Grace modeled after someone you know?  Would you be friends with Marty?  Oh, they had lots of them!  And Kate was gracious enough to answer all the questions that my students had, making each one of them feel special. 

My students went and blogged about our Skype visit as soon as we were finished and while I have yet to take a look at the blog postings, I know they're going to be real positive based off the comments I was hearing in the computer lab as they were blogging. 

Kate Messner, I would like to thank you so much for taking the time to Skype with my students.  Being able to bring an author right into the walls of our school via technology was absolutely wonderful!  I know that many of my students will never meet anyone famous, but through your visit, they were able to actually talk to a famous author and realize that maybe someday they, too, could become an author just like you and write about things they love.  They so enjoyed your visit, as did I, and I'm hoping more of my students can get to know you through your books and our visits in the coming months and years! 

Today is the Big Day!

Today is the day that many of us who work with children's literature wait for with much anticipation all year...the day that the American Library Association's Youth Media Awards are presented.  To be on a committee such as the Newbery or Caldecott would be a DREAM, but I don't know if I'd like all the pressure.  And the fact that you have to choose just one as the best of the best...I'm not sure I could do it as there are so many great books out there!

Having said that, I'm going to be bold and make my predictions as to what books I think would win the Newbery and Caldecott if it were up to me! 

For the Newbery Award, I am hoping that Kirby Larson's The Friendship Doll  takes this honor.  This book was a pure joy to read.  I laughed, I cried, I cheered for the girls and this is a book I HAVE to order for my own school library.  It was a beautiful book and I hope author Kirby Larson gets the recognition she so deserves.

For the Caldecott Award, I know there is a lot of buzz about Me...Jane being the runaway winner, but I'm really pulling for Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet.  I learned so much from this book and as is the criteria for the Caldecott, the illustrations just blew me away!  I absolutely loved this book and have shared it with my elementary students and they have loved it as much as I have.

The winners are being announced in under two hours and I can't wait to hear who gets the awards!  So glad we have a 2 hour delay for school this morning so that I can hopefully catch the live stream here at home before leaving!

Good luck to all those authors out there waiting for the call this morning!

And Our Next Read Is...

My 6th grade book club met today and discussed the book Esperanza Rising as the students just finished it up over the weekend.  Most students really enjoyed this book and I must admit, we had some great discussions on this novel.

While I was looking forward to today's discussion, I was most excited to see what the girls would choose for their next read!  Last week at our meeting, they were tossing around such titles as Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment, It's Raining Cupcakes and Al Capone Does My Shirts.  I gave little book talks on all the books and told the girls to take a week to think it over & we'd talk about it this week.

Well, after much debate, the girls decided on a title and our next read is...Al Capone Does My Shirts!  I'm so happy that the girls chose this title because it really is a great book.  I have read it numerous times and even though I know how everything is going to turn out in the end, this book never gets old for me.  Characters like Piper, Moose and Natalie are ones that I've never forgotten since my first read of the story.  They are characters that resonated with me and I'm hoping the same for my students.

We have our next meeting on Wednesday and I'm so excited to hear what the girls have to say about the book.  I have already had one student comment tonight on our Edmodo site that she really loves the book, so that's great to hear!  I'm hoping we can arrange a Skype visit with author Gennifer Choldenko as that would be a great experience for my girls to hear how she chose this topic to write about, how she came up with the ideas for the characters used and so many other things.  Connecting with authors is a great way to promote reading!

We All Have Scars

I have been reading rave reviews of the book The Scar by Charlotte Moundlic over the past few months, so I decided to interlibrary loan the book so that I could take a look at this book for myself.  I was thrilled to get the call from my public library the other day telling me the book was in! 

For those of you who aren't familiar with the book, here is the summary from Indiebound.org.

"A little boy responds to his mother's death in a genuine, deeply moving story leavened by glimmers of humor and captivating illustrations.

When the boy in this story wakes to find that his mother has died, he is overwhelmed with sadness, anger, and fear that he will forget her. He shuts all the windows to keep in his mother's familiar smell and scratches open the cut on his knee to remember her comforting voice. He doesn't know how to speak to his dad anymore, and when Grandma visits and throws open the windows, it's more than the boy can take--until his grandmother shows him another way to feel that his mom's love is near. With tenderness, touches of humor, and unflinching emotional truth, Charlotte Moundlic captures the loneliness of grief through the eyes of a child, rendered with sympathy and charm in Olivier Tallec's expressive illustrations."

The book is really well done.  You could feel the emotions the little boy was going through on every single page.  I was crying after reading the first page and did a lot of thinking about "scars" I, myself, have and how they have made me a stronger person for them.

Perhaps the biggest scar I carry with me every day which can't outwardly be seen is the scar of divorce: my parents'.  This happened to me when I was 5 and still at the age of 40 it affects me.  It's the reason I dated my husband for 4 years before we even talked about getting married.  It's the reason I want my boys to see their parents together having fun because I never saw that.  And this scar is the reason my husband and I would fight tooth and nail for our relationship because we never want our boys to go through what we did as children of divorce.

Of course, I have physical scars, too, which remind me of various events in my life: the malignant breast tumors I had removed, the scar across my stomach from two c-sections.  Both were very painful at the time, but I wouldn't trade them for the world because I'm better for having them.

As the little boy in the story moves on with his life, so must we all, but the scars are a reminder of what we've been through to make us the people we are today and I, for one, wouldn't trade my scars for the world.

Choices...Choices...Choices

My 6th grade book club is nearing the end of their first read, Esperanza Rising, so now they will collectively need to make a big decision.  What book are they going to choose to read next? 

I have purchased quite a few books for my club over the years and I've read almost all of them, but I'm trying to guide the girls to pick a book that is going to work for them.  They are typical tweens: they like stories about girls with just a hint of romance, they like reading about students their age, and they like the book to include a lot of action to keep them reading.  Keeping all of these things in mind, I've suggested the following books for them:

Set in 1935, when guards actually lived on Alcatraz Island with their families, Choldenko's second novel brings humor to the complexities of family dynamics.

(Description via Indiebound.org)

Twelve year old Isabel is dying to get out of Willow, Oregon (population 39, 257) and experience something other than her small town. It seems that everyone gets to travel except Isabel--even her best friend, Sophie. When Isabel's mother decides to open up a cupcake shop across town, Isabel is once again stuck in Willow for the summer as she tries to help her mom get the shop up and running. But when Isabel learns of a baking contest where the finalists get an all-expense paid trip to New York City, she realizes this is her chance to finally get out of Willow. Except there are two major roadblocks to this plan: Sophie, who also is entering the contest and is always the best at everything, and her own mom, who wants her to enter the contest on her terms.Can Isabel manage to finally do something for herself, without losing her best friend and further straining her already tenuous relationship with her mother? In this sweet coming-of-age story from popular teen author Lisa Schroeder, Isabel discovers that it's not about where you go in life as much as it is about enjoying the view wherever you are.

(Description via Indiebound.org)

In James Patterson's blockbuster series, fourteen-year-old Maximum Ride, better known as Max, knows what it's like to soar above the world. She and all the members of the "flock"--Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gasman and Angel--are just like ordinary kids--only they have wings and can fly. It may seem like a dream come true to some, but their lives can morph into a living nightmare at any time...like when Angel, the youngest member of the flock, is kidnapped and taken back to the "School" where she and the others were experimented on by a crew of wack jobs. Her friends brave a journey to blazing hot Death Valley, CA, to save Angel, but soon enough, they find themselves in yet another nightmare--this one involving fighting off the half-human, half-wolf "Erasers" in New York City. Whether in the treetops of Central Park or in the bowels of the Manhattan subway system, Max and her adopted family take the ride of their lives. Along the way Max discovers from her old friend and father-figure Jeb--now her betrayed and greatest enemy--that her purpose is save the world--but can she?

(Description via Indiebound.org)

The girls have a week to think their choices over as we're going to vote next Monday when we have our next meeting.  So, if you were in our club, what book would you want to read next?  I can't wait to see what the girls pick!

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 1/9/2012

This past week was my first week back to school after Christmas Break and my #bookaday challenge on Twitter.  I'm sorry to say that my reading definitely slowed down this week.  It's amazing how work, school and family commitments can get in the way of our reading! :-)

While I wasn't able to read as much as I wanted to, I was able to finish up a great read, Amelia Lost.  Wow!  I'm not normally a lover of non-fiction reads, but this one kept my attention from start to finish.  I love how the author alternated chapters with information from the day she went missing and then back to her biography.  I felt like I knew quite a bit about Amelia before reading the book, but I definitely learned a lot more!  This book even made me want to find out other information about her, so I figure if it got me interested in the subject, this book definitely did its job!



Seeing as I'm participating in the Caldecott Medal Challenge called #nerdcott on Twitter, I figured it would be a great week to start getting my hands on those Caldecott Medal and Honor Books that I haven't seen/read before.  I had to do quite a bit of reserving at the public library, but it has been interesting to compare books that won many years ago to some of those most recent wins.  I must say that I'm partial to those newer titles.  For some of the books that I have read, I wonder if there were very slim pickings the year this or that title won the award as the illustrations really weren't anything that special.  Some of those that I've read this week include the following:

This week I'll be concentrating again on the #nercott challenge with more Caldecott winners due to arrive for me.  The books I plan on reading this week include but are not limited to:



My 6th Grade Book Club

Last year, I had some 5th grade girls approach me about forming a book club that would meet during their lunch hour.  I was ecstatic that they wanted to read for fun in addition to the work that they were doing in their classrooms.  We ended up reading some really good books including Kate Messner's Sugar & Ice and some of The Shadow Children series books by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

With this year came a change for those students:  middle school!  They moved upstairs in our school building and started having new classes, new teachers, and involvement in extra curriculars that weren't available to them last year.  I never said anything to the girls about continuing on with our book club now that they were in middle school because I know things change and they were now busier than they have ever been.

Well, it seems they hadn't forgotten about our club!  A few weeks before Christmas Break, two of the students approached me and asked if we could start our book club up again.  Imagine my excitement!  They told me that they missed reading books together and talking about them.  I did, too, and I told the girls that.  We set up a meeting during their lunch and I had 9 girls interested in being in the club.  That is the perfect number for a group like this!  We talked about when they'd like to meet, books they like to read and fun things like that.

The girls decided on reading Esperanza Rising for their first book and they are really enjoying it.  We had a book club meeting yesterday and it was so interesting to get their take on Esperanza and her mother's journey to California after leaving Mexico.  While the girls don't always share the same view on the books, they are willing to listen to each other and agree to disagree.  It's fun to see them interact this way.

We're almost finished with our book, so it will be interesting to see what book the girls want to read next.  No matter their choice, I know for sure that we'll have fun reading it!

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 1/2/2012

This morning I was reading my Twitter feed and noticed quite a few tweets entitled, "It's Monday!  What are you reading?" so I decided to check those out.  I learned from reading the Teach Mentor Texts blog that this is a weekly posting where people sum up the books they read the previous week and talk about those they'd like to read this week.  Seeing as I'm new to blogging and always looking for topics, I figured, "This is definitely something I can do!"

I have been on Christmas Break since December 23rd, so I've been reading a lot lately and it has been so nice!  I hope to continue this even after school is back in session tomorrow and I start taking classes again at the end of January.  Reading time is so precious and it's time I can share with my two boys or by myself, depending on what I'm reading.

Books I read last week and really enjoyed:

and my favorite book of 2011...



Books I will be reading this week:



I am also participating in the #nerdcott challenge, so I will be reading a variety of Caledecott winners this week, but I'm not sure which ones yet.  I have to see which ones are in my school library before I order them through my local library system.

Now, off to do some reading!