When a book isn’t what you expect it to be

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Abby

This evening I finally had a chance to start reading Mr. and Mrs. Bunny – Detectives Extraordinaire! by Mrs. Bunny and translated from the Rabbit by Polly Horvath.  My first plan was to read The Georges and the Jewels by Jane Smiley, which I’ve been itching to read for a long time, but when I opened my library copy it looked as if someone had peed on the lower right corner of the pages.  Ick.  Guess I’ll be ordering a new copy for the library tomorrow…

At any rate, I was equally excited to read Mr. and Mrs. Bunny, and my plan was to preview it to see if it would be appropriate for the third grade book group.  Not that I personally believe that children’s literature has to be all cute and fluffy, but I have found that for the books I choose to read with my younger book groups, cute and fluffy is a good path to take, considering the variety of readers in any book group.  Mr. and Mrs. Bunny seemed like it would fit the bill.

But I was pleasantly surprised to find that Mrs. Bunny has written a book with some bite to it – humor that appeals to me, and surely will appeal to a lot of kids who are older than third grade.  Mr. and Mrs. Bunny engage in some wonderful spousal repartee, such as their animated conversation after Mr. Bunny comes home with the news that he has bought a new hutch for them without Mrs. Bunny’s input.  Mrs. Bunny ends up with her head down on the table, then comes this lovely exchange:

“Mrs. Bunny, I am sure you are only hungry.  Once you have a little carrot stew in you, this mood of yours will pass in a trice.”

“DON’T TELL ME ABOUT MY MOODS!” began Mrs. Bunny, and that is when Mr. Bunny, in one of his few smart moves that day, pulled out the picture of the hutch and shoved it in her face.

“SEE?” said Mr. Bunny, a trifle hysterically.  “SEE?”    (pages 18 – 19)

And, of course, the hutch is beautiful and perfect and just what Mrs. Bunny would have picked herself.  And I realized that I was holding a book that is far, far better than I had expected – and I’m hooked.  It’s not for my third grade book group, but that’s ok.  I’ll use it with one of my older book groups, kids who have enough life experience to “get” the wry humor, and I’ll be sure to put it into the hands of those library kids who like the quirky and fun and unusual, with a little dash of gory (did I mention that there are foxes who kidnap and are looking to open a canned rabbit products plant?  and that the foxes like to say and write “Mwa-haha”?).  Ah, how I do love a book that’s unexpectedly much better than I thought it would be – especially when I thought it would be pretty good.

Posted in Book groups, Children's book reviews | 2 Comments

A road not taken

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Abby

All of us have things that we could have pursued in life, but haven’t – those roads not taken.  Yesterday I was reminded of one of mine…

Quite unexpectedly, I ran into the mother of one of my former students yesterday, and our conversation made my week (perhaps even month).  I recognized her immediately – especially since I had the advantage of context, as she was working the job where I met her – but it took her a few seconds to realize who I was.  Her face literally lit up as she figured out that it was me, and she said, “Abby!!!!!!” with a huge smile.  And then she started talking about how key I was to her son’s success in life, and that they frequently think of me and are thankful for what I did for him, for, as she put it, I started the ball rolling for her son’s education.

I tutored her son when he was in kindergarten and first grade, and he was the most dyslexic student I ever worked with.  Very sweet, and very, very smart, but very dyslexic, and his school system was not providing anything close to what he needed.  I suspect that that school system had never had a child quite like him, and simply didn’t know how to help him.  My role in working with this student was primarily to get his confidence back, help him with sound recognition, and, when his mother asked me in desperation if her son should attend a school that specializes in dyslexia, to give his parents the name and number of an advocate.  That advocate managed to get this boy into the Landmark School, with the town paying the bill, and the difference in the boy was almost immediate.  He had reached the point where school was unbearable for him, but after he started at Landmark I remember his mother telling me that suddenly he was the first one in the family to wake up in the morning, and that he would get dressed and ready for school and wait impatiently for his family to drive him there.

And I found out yesterday that now he is finishing his junior year in highschool; he owns and operates his own landscaping business; he can read fluently; he plans on attending a two year college; and that he wants to have a career as a tugboat captain.  He is thriving, and his mother very kindly gave me a lot of credit for his success, since I was the first one to recognize the extent of his needs and I helped her find the experts to get him where he needed to be.

This isn’t the first time a parent (or child) has credited me with such grand things, and yesterday I once again worried whether I made the right decision seven or so years ago when I decided to lose my $100 deposit at Simmons and not enroll as a student in the two degree programs in which I had been accepted:  to get my master’s in special education and my education specialist degree in language and literacy.  Everything had been signed and sealed for me to get those degrees and then pursue a career as a reading specialist, but each morning as I got ready for work I’d cry my eyes out and say to myself, “But I want to be a children’s librarian!!!”  And so that’s what I did – I went with the career path that felt right to me.

But was it the right path?  Do I as a children’s librarian have as much potential to positively and profoundly affect kids’ lives as I would as a reading specialist?  I’m not sure.  In going down the path that I knew would make me happy, did I lessen the positive impact that I could make on the world?  Or, as I’ve often told myself, would the fact that being a reading specialist wouldn’t make me happy mean that I ultimately wouldn’t be as good at that job and thus not as effective?  I’ll never definitively know the answers to those questions.  But I do know that it was lovely to see that mother yesterday and to hear how well her almost-grown son is doing, all these years after I knew him.

Posted in Etc., Librarianship, Teaching | 3 Comments

New lesson plans update

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Abby

I’ve been completely and totally neglecting my blog lately, but for good reason:  one of my four work goals for this fiscal year was to create new lesson plans for the Storytime for 2′s & 3′s.  Here is my official goal, as submitted at the beginning of the fiscal year:

Create 16 more lesson plans to add to the curriculum for Storytime for 2’s and 3’s.  Lesson plan creation includes selecting 20 to 30 book titles for each theme, creating weekly handouts, choosing fingerplays, rhymes, and songs, and creating feltboard materials (which is done at home on my own time).  This will bring the total number of lesson plans up to 67, which is enough to get through two full years (including summers) with repetition only occurring a few times in those two years (Halloween/Fall, Winter, Spring, Valentine’s Day, Summer, etc.).  Though two and three year olds actually love repetition, parents are never as keen on it, so it is important to  have enough lesson plans to cover the entire period that a child is registered for this storytime.

I knew that this goal, along with my usual reading-done-at-home for the five book groups that meet each month, would seriously impact my ability to write blog posts.  But I didn’t anticipate that it would mean no blog posts for a huge span of time!  But, I am very pleased with how these new storytime lesson plans are turning out, and very happy that I will have enough plans to cover two full years; good for me as the presenter, good for the folks who attend.

One reason these plans have been taking longer than expected is that I have moved beyond my original source for plans, Storytimes for Two Year Olds by Judy Nichols, and am creating everything from scratch.  In her book Nichols provides fifty themes, with suggested book titles for each theme, as well as suggested fingerplays and songs, follow-up activities, craft activities, suggestions on which books to turn into feltboard stories, and so on.  While I’ve always viewed Nichols’ book as a starting point for me, since I am my own person and like to put my creative stamp on my storytimes, having that starting point was absolutely invaluable.  I’ve been totally on my own for these new lesson plans, and thus bring much of the planning work home (in addition to the feltboard work), since creating from scratch takes soooooooo much longer than using someone else’s template.  And my theme ideas haven’t always worked out, meaning that I’ve had to regroup many times…

I’ve had to trash several ideas for themes that seemed good when I chose them, but turned out to have insufficient books available for this age group.  I gave up on “Dragons and Unicorns” after spending a great deal of time searching for and reading picturebooks on these two mythical creatures; fewer picturebooks exist on them than I thought, and those that I found were far too complex and long for my target age group.

Another theme that I thought would be terrific, but didn’t work out at all, was “Royalty.”  Queens, kings, princesses, princes, knights – surely that would be a great topic, right?  Not so much.  I found a few books, but ultimately gave up and completely nixed the theme after deciding that the books I had found (both in my library and other libraries) were either too long or too dull or both.

And “Snakes.”  Great idea, especially since we have a couple of terrific snake puppets that I’ve been dying to use.  But a total washout in terms of books that are available.  I finally had the great idea to take the snake idea and broaden it out to “Pets.”  The snake puppets still got used, and I found a tremendous number of great books.

Why so many books, you ask?  Partly to include in the weekly handout, which I know many parents use as a source for age-appropriate books for their children.  Partly so that there is a stack of books available for checkout by the kids and their parents on the day of the storytime (which many families love).  And partly so that there are thirty or so books on display in a ring around the carpet squares in the room; these books are there for the Quiet Time section of the storytime, as recommended by Nichols.  I’ve grown quite fond of the Quiet Time section, and love seeing the caregivers each reading to their children – it’s a terrific way to take the reading skills learned during the storytime and bringing them back to their everyday one-on-one at home usage.

And on that note, I think that I had better get to work on the handout and lesson plan for Monday’s storytime, theme of Spring…wish me luck!

Posted in Spare time, Storytime | 5 Comments

Three quick things

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Abby

Thing number 1:  I really enjoyed Silverfin by Charlie Higson.  I had expected it to be purely an action story, but Higson takes the time to establish the character of James Bond at age 13.  He also gives us a good sense of what it would have been like to be a student at Eton in the 1930′s.  And then, of course, the story moves away from Eton and into some good fun Bondish action.  Definitely a good book for any of you James Bond fans.

Thing number two:  yesterday’s Book Gobblers program was interesting for me.  Usually we have fourth and fifth graders who attend this read aloud program for older kids, and they have really enjoyed hearing selections from Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories.  Given that past history, yesterday I decided that I would read “The Cat That Walked By Himself” to them.  But there was a little change in demographics yesterday, with mostly second graders attending.  They mostly liked the story, but they didn’t love Kipling’s language like the older kids have; the older kids have literally sat in rapt attention, almost devouring Kipling’s words as I read them.  But the younger ones looked slightly puzzled at times.  The second story I read them, though, was a huge hit:  Ghost Hands by T.A. Barron.  As you may remember, T.A. Barron spent the early years of his life in the town in which I work, so I always love sharing his books with kids at my programs.  And Ghost Hands, which provides an imagined reason for paintings of hands in a real cave in Patagonia, really grabbed their attention – total focus from the group as I read, and lots of great questions and discussion after the story was done.  I’ll definitelly be reading this book to kids at the school when I do summer reading visits in June.

Thing number 3:  Last but very definitely not least, the third grade book group had an exciting and wonderful meeting on Monday as we had a Skype visit with author Sara Pennypacker.  I will be writing a full post on this visit over the weekend to do it full justice, but wanted to mention it here in brief to whet your appetite.  Ms. Pennypacker is an incredibly generous, kind, open, and engaging speaker, and I believe that this Skype visit was a really transformative moment for several of the kids in the group.  More on this visit in a day or two…and now it’s time to get ready for work!

Posted in Book groups, Children's book reviews, Storytime, Teaching | Leave a comment

Before I talk about Silverfin…

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Abby

I’m in the midst of reading Silverfin by Charlie Higson (“A James Bond Adventure”), in preparation for the 6th grade book group meeting on Tuesday, and I’ll be writing about the book here once I’ve finished it.  But until then, here are photos of my two latest jewelry creations.  The necklace with the red crystal beads is a prototype of my own design, rather flawed – but it was a great learning experience, and great fun to create my own woven design.  The copper diamond pendant necklace is currently wending its way to my sister’s house via first class mail (click on images to enlarge):

Posted in Jewelry Making, Spare time | 4 Comments

More woven jewelry

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Abby

It’s official: I love making woven jewelry.  I’m still using designs and instructions from Jodi Bombardier’s book Weave Wrap Coil, but I’m just about ready to strike out on my own with my own designs (I even woke up this morning with a great idea for a star pendant, which I promptly sketched out for future reference).

Yesterday Jim and his band were at an all-day recording session – the CD they cut sounds great – which meant that I had an entire day, minus two hours to watch the season two finale of Downton Abbey, in which to make jewelry.  Fran’s birthday was a couple of days ago, so I thought I’d make her a ring, which of course means making a prototype/test model first (never give someone the first version of a piece of jewelry, unless you’re really really good, which I’m not).  The two rings that I made are vastly disappointing; one, a coiled ring with a bead between bead caps, looks cute on the table but a bit odd on the hand.  The second, a knotted woven ring, frustrated me beyond measure.  I made a long straight stretch of perfectly woven wire (best weaving I’d ever done), which I then wrapped around a ring mandrel, then took the two ends and tied them in a knot as instructed.  The ring looked great…but the flaw of the design (or perhaps, to be fair, my execution of the design) became clear once I snipped the ends of the knots on the underside of the ring.  No amount of filing could smooth those ends sufficiently to keep my finger from being cut by them, and the more I worked on making the ring smooth, the more screwed up my formerly beautiful weaving became.  It’s a mess, and way too sharp to be worn.

So then I decided to finish with a pair of earrings to match the necklace and pendant I made two weeks ago.  And I LOVE those earrings!  In my stash of beads I found small white freshwater pearls that dangle perfectly and add the right spark of brightness to the deep purple of the wire.  And my weaving looks terrific on these earrings – even and flawless.  I’m thinking that perhaps a pair of these earrings, in silver with black freshwater pearls, would be the better solution for a birthday gift for Fran…and I’m guessing my sister will probably want a pair, too…and Judy’s birthday is today…and then I’m hoping to have a booth at the farmer’s market this summer, and I would wager that these earrings would be a big seller, if I can make enough of them.

Here are the photos of yesterday’s projects – click on images to enlarge, and please leave feedback for me (good and bad, I’ll take it all).  Also note that some of the photos are a bit dark because I used the macro setting on my camera to show more detail.  Update at 3:15 PM:  Just finished – hot off the pliers, so to speak – the earrings in silver with black pearls:

Posted in Jewelry Making, Spare time | 3 Comments

Leviathan

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Abby

At last Tuesday’s Teen Book Group meeting, we discussed Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld.  I have to admit that I was unable to finish the book myself, much as I usually like Westerfeld’s writing, because I think I have read the maximum amount of steampunk fiction that my brain can handle and absorb.  Maybe I’m just a little too old to “get” steampunk, or maybe my taste has never gone down those lines, but by half-way through Leviathan I was done – fed up – annoyed.

Luckily, all seven of the book group members who came to Tuesday’s meeting were enthusiastic about the book (whether they had been able to finish reading it or not), and the conversation was terrific.  We discussed the book for an entire hour, and probably could have gone on for much longer if we’d had the time available.

All of the teens enjoyed the steampunk genre, and several of them had already read a few other steampunk books.  And the ninth graders in the group had an additional attraction to the book, since it is an alternate, steampunk style version of the events leading up to and the beginning of World War I: the ninth graders had been studying WWI in school, and their test on WWI was earlier in the day on Tuesday.  I was blown away by their intelligent comparison and contrast of the real history of WWI and the version presented in the book.  Smart, smart kids.

And I loved hearing the enthusiasm they all felt for the steampunk style.  Things that I found rather revolting and hard to visualize (like the giant genetically modified jellyfish that exhale hydrogen and thus are used as hot air balloons) greatly intrigued the members of the book group, and I was able to better appreciate certain aspects of the book after hearing their perspective.

This is such a great book group, and I really look forward to their meetings each month.  And it will be sad when we bid good-bye to the ninth graders at the end of this school year – they’ll be moving on up to Lisa’s 10 – 12th grade book group – all of the ninth graders have been in my book groups for many years, and I’ll miss their insights and enthusiasm.

Posted in Book groups, Young adult literature | 2 Comments

Woven wire jewelry

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Abby

Since last November, I’ve been carefully studying the book Weave Wrap Coil: Creating Artisan Wire Jewelry by Jodi Bombardier.  Bombardier’s projects are so cool, so unique, and so beautiful, and I couldn’t wait to try out a few.  But then, as these things go, the more time I spent studying the instructions and the photos, the more impossible the projects seemed.  I hit a wall – a wall of intimidation – and it looked like I wasn’t going to ever try to make any of these rings or bracelets or necklaces, especially not with expensive silver wire.

But then I realized that I could purchase “Artistic Wire” in the two required gauges, 16 and 26, for a mere $10.00…and probably have enough wire for two entire projects.  And so today I finally got up the guts to try the first project in Bombardier’s book, the Diamond Pendant and matching handmade chain, using purple wire.

Progress was a little rough at first, as I tried to figure out how to weave with wire, but I was amazed by how quickly I caught on to wire weaving.  It’s a bit like sewing with wire, and as long as you’re careful not to kink the wire, it’s actually pretty easy.  The weaving style required for this Diamond Pendant reminds me of the technique used to create my favorite Greek leather wrap bracelets; wrap once around one side of the frame, then over and under and back to the other side of the frame.  Very fun.

And so, after about two hours, I had finished my first wire weaving project and its matching handmade chain and clasp.  And it doesn’t look too amateurish, either.  I’ll wear it to work with pride tomorrow!  (Click on images to enlarge.)

Posted in Jewelry Making, Spare time | 3 Comments

New storytimes

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Abby

I’ve been working on adding some new lesson plans to my collection for the Storytime for 2′s & 3′s, and have been very happy with the three I’ve just added.  A couple of weeks ago I added a singing theme lesson plan, and it went over very well; I was pleased by how many books I was able to find that are either songs turned into picture books, or picture books that feature classic nursery rhymes, or picture books that can easily be either read or sung.  The three books that I used with the group were The Wheels on the Bus by Paul O. Zelinsky, Boom Bah! by Phil Cummings, and Today is Monday by Eric Carle.  In addition, of course, there were twenty-plus other books that I pulled and placed around the room for the quiet time (when each adult shares a book with their child).

Then last week I debuted my Monster storytime, which was a huge hit.  I was very careful in planning this one, and especially in picking the books that would be featured, because I didn’t want to create a fear in these kids that didn’t already exist, since these kids are so young and impressionable.  Best of all for the Monster storytime were the two Folkmanis puppets that inspired it:  Blueper and Twickety.   The kids absolutely LOVED the puppets, and came up and gave them hugs and gentle pats on the head – and asked to have the monsters taste their fingers instead of our usual Zebra puppet fingertaster.  The two books that I read aloud were Leonardo the Terrible Monster by Mo Willems (one of my all-time favorites), and Jeremy Draws a Monster by Peter McCarty.  Both are just the right combination of silly and didactic – yes, there’s a lesson in each, but it doesn’t hit you over the head, and the humor in each keeps the lesson from being cloying.

Tomorrow I’ll be debuting my new Mouse theme storytime, using two mouse puppets from Folkmanis.  This afternoon I’ll be making some feltboard pieces for the story All For Pie, Pie For All by Valeri Gorbachev; there will also be another book – no feltboard pieces – that will precede it: Inside Mouse, Outside Mouse by Lindsay Barrett George (I like that George’s book features mice that live in the wild and mice that live in our walls).  And each child will taste like a different kind of cheese when Zebra tastes their fingers at the end.

It’s a lot of work to add these new storytimes to my repetoire, most of which work is done at home, but it is so fun to have some fresh new material and new themes.  Storytimes are only as good as the level of excitement brought by the presenter, and I’m always more jazzed about something new and fresh than something I’ve done too many times before.  At some point, though, I’ll run out themes and ideas…but that’s ok, the older storytimes will then seem fresh again.  And now I’d best get going on those feltboard pieces:  a cat family, a mouse family, an ant family, and a rapidly disappearing divided pie.

Posted in Feltboard, Storytime | 2 Comments

Reading, reading, reading

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Abby

On my weekends lately, I’ve been doing a LOT of reading, mostly for book groups, but also for fun (not that book group reading isn’t fun, because it is), and I’ve also been creating a lot of new storytime lesson plans.  I’ll talk about the storytime lesson plans in an upcoming post, but meanwhile, here is an update on the books that I’ve read this fall for the various book groups at the library:

  • For the 3rd grade book group:  Dying to Meet You by Kate Klise, The Talented Clementine by Sara Pennypacker, and The Year of the Dog by Grace Lin.  All great books for this age group, and all were quite successful with the 3rd graders in the group.  I love each of these books, and for quite different reasons.  The Klise book is approachable and funny; the Pennypacker book has a wonderful, true-to-life main character, and the Lin book is poignant and lovely.
  • For the 4th grade group:  Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief by Wendelin van Draanen, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo, and Dominic by William Steig.  DiCamillo’s book remains one of my all-time favorites, but I very much enjoyed the Sammy Keyes book and was glad to have finally read Dominic, though I’m not sure that I’d want to use Dominic again for a book group (the kids were a bit baffled by it, and it didn’t make for the best discussion we’ve ever had, despite this being a group of Readers who love to Discuss).
  • For the 5th grade group:  White Sands, Red Menace by Ellen Klages, The White Giraffe by Lauren St. John, and Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator by Jennifer Allison.  I enjoyed The Green Glass Sea much more than its sequel, which disappointed me, and I was a bit taken aback by the Gilda Joyce book, having expected it to be more juvenile than it was.  And I enjoyed my re-reading of The White Giraffe, of course, a book that is unique today in its brevity, considering its intended audience of upper grade readers.
  • For the 6th grade group:  Whales on Stilts by M.T. Anderson, The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, and The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen by M.T. Anderson.  After having connected with M.T. Anderson at the Simmons College Children’s Literature Summer Institute this year (see my posts on the Institute here, here, here, and here), I was delighted to be able to bring two of his books to the 6th grade book group this fall.  I’ve also been reading The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing (Volume I – The Pox Party) in my free time – it’s a terrific book, one of the best I’ve read in a long time.
  • For the Teen Book Group: Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin, Uglies by Michael Scott, and The Alchemyst by Michael Scott.  This group is still quite large, which means that we can’t read the hottest new young adult books, since we wouldn’t be able to get enough copies of the books for everyone in the group.  But I presented the group with one of my favorite books, Elsewhere, and they all loved it (and none of them had yet read it, even better), and with a book that had been a success with this group in past years, Uglies.   Surprisingly, none of the group members had read Uglies yet, and it too was a huge hit.  As for The Alchemyst – I had very high hopes for this book, and it didn’t quite live up to those hopes.  But, once again, none of the teens had read the book, and many of them have gone on to read the rest of the series (or, at least, what’s been published so far in the series).

It’s been a good fall and early winter for reading, and I’m now looking forward to the next batch of book group books that are sitting next to me, waiting to be read:  Toys Go Out by Emily Jenkins (3rd grade), The Fairy-Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley (4th grade), Spy Mice: The Black Paw by Heather Vogel Frederick (5th grade), Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism by Georgia Byng (6th grade), and The Prophecy of the Stones by Flavia Bujor (teen book group).  The last three of these books were all chosen by kids in the book groups, which makes the whole process – reading and discussion – that much more fun.  Happy reading to me!!

Posted in Book groups, Children's book reviews, Children's literature, Young adult book review, Young adult literature | Leave a comment