All posts by Abby

Book groups, Children's book reviews, Children's literature

White Sands, Red Menace

Once again, my opinion of a book was completely different from the kids’ opinion.  The sixth grade book group unanimously agreed that they LOVED Ellen Klages’s White Sands, Red Menace.  They loved absolutely everything about the book: the characters, the pacing, that it’s historical fiction, the way the book ends…everything.  In fact, they couldn’t have been more enthusiastic about the book.

Which shows why we adults who are in charge of writing, publishing, reviewing, and buying children’s literature need to always remember that while we can have our grownup opinions of a children’s book, we’re not kids and we don’t think or read like kids.  It’s important for us to check our own thoughts from time to time (or more frequently) against the thoughts of the actual and intended reader, the child.  Such a slippery topic, that always incites heated discussion, as evidenced in this recent post on the topic by Roger Sutton.  I’m never able to completely pin down my own thoughts about this, sometimes wavering in the direction of “A good book is a good book is a good book,” sometimes wavering the other way, “But kids do know what they like to read – they’re as capable of having opinions as adults.”

So I’m not going to try to solve the mystery today.  I’ll just suffice it to say that Klages’s book was a huge hit with this book group, and their enthusiasm makes me want to read the book again to see if my own opinion changes on a second reading.

Feltboard, Spare time - Culture, Storytime

Polar Bear, Polar Bear

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And the last three feltboard pieces for Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?, written by Bill Martin Jr. and illustrated by Eric Carle. After putting the walrus on the board, I go back to the book and show Eric Carle’s illustration of the zookeeper, and then the final spread with the children dressed in costumes of the various animals.  Going back to the book made sense in terms of the story, and it also reinforces that the feltboard pieces are based upon a book.

Here are the pieces for the leopard, peacock, and walrus (click image to enlarge):

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Feltboard, Spare time - Culture, Storytime

Polar Bear, Polar Bear…

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Today and tomorrow I’ll post photos of the feltboard pieces I made for Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?, written by Bill Martin Jr. and illustrated by Eric Carle.  I’ve found that illustrations by Eric Carle translate very well to felt pieces, probably because the originals are made of paper collage and are thus more similar to felt pieces than painting or pen and ink drawing.

Here are my feltboard pieces for the first seven animals (polar bear, lion, hippopotamus, flamingo, zebra, boa constrictor, and elephant) – click on image to enlarge:

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Book groups, Children's book reviews

White Sands, Red Menace

Just finished reading Ellen Klages’ sequel to last year’s Green Glass Sea: White Sands, Red Menace.  And I’m sad to say that I really didn’t love it, even though I did love the first book.  The plot drags…and drags…and drags…and the characters didn’t grab me the way that they did in the first book.  There were two many minute details about daily life in 1946 that bored me sleepy (we’ll see on Tuesday if the sixth grade book group had the same reaction as I did), and because of that it took me forever to read the book – seven hours or so, about four hours longer than I’d have expected.  And then there was the odd scene with Ynez offering to shampoo Suze’s hair, and giving Suze a shoulder rub (so out of place in this book, so out of place).  The book is ok, but no where near as solidly and completely conceived as the first.  Some books don’t need sequels, can’t support them for whatever reason, and Green Glass Sea falls into that category.

And now, after spending most of the day reading, it’s time to do something ELSE with my eyes.

Children, Librarianship

A few moments

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A few fun moments from the past week:

During Jennifer’s infant storytime, a brother (age 5) escorted his sister (age 2) to the bathroom while mom stayed in the storytime with the baby.  The brother, less than enthusiastic about being in charge of his younger sister, sat in the comfy chairs outside the bathroom while his newly potty trained sister did what she needed to do.  Sister could have used a little more help – when she was done peeing, she came running out of the bathroom with no pants on.  Her brother sighed,  rolled his eyes and said, “Put your pants on!!!!!”  Which she then did.

In the fifth grade book group, one of the members had a particularly intelligent remark about The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and she asked me if I was going to post her comment on the internet.  Hmmm.  I wonder if that family reads this blog…

Yesterday afternoon two third grade girls were hanging out on the chairs by my desk after school.  It was Friday, and homework wasn’t hanging over their heads, so they whiled away the time writing riddles, which they shared with me.  Some of the riddles were really good, too – I was impressed!

Three of my most enthusiastic children’s room patrons stopped by mid-week, and were intrigued by the stuffed animals sent to us by the World Wildlife Fund as a thank-you for the donation the Friends made to WWF as part of the summer reading program.  The stuffed animals are displayed on my desk with the thank-you plagues and information about the two animals, polar bears and manatees.  But these three kids enhanced the display by making nameplates for the two stuffed animals (the polar bear is now “Snowy” and the manatee is now “Norman”) and pulling books on each animal from the collection. 

During the preschool storytime on Thursday, one little girl started to feel pretty crummy.  She lay down on the floor, rather miserable, and her sweet twin sister sat rubbing her back to comfort her.   (Needless to say, they went home soon after.)

Just a few tidbits from the past few days.

Children, Storytime

Another great art project

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I feel like I’m writing too many posts on the fabulous art projects from MaryAnn Kohl’s book Preschool Art, but we just finished another phenomenonally successful preschool storytime that used one of her projects.  Today’s choice:  “Stomped Foil Sculpture,” chosen because I didn’t have enough time earlier this week to really plan for today’s storytime.  I had foil, I had paper, and I had masking tape, and this seemed like an easy last-minute project.  I have to admit that I was a wee bit skeptical, though, and wondered whether it would hold the kids’ interest.

I should know better – Kohl’s book hasn’t failed me yet, and today was beyond fun.  I started off by stomping on a piece of balled up foil myself, and talked to the kids about stomping away from your friends so that no fingers or toes would get hurt.  Then I showed how to loop a piece of masking tape (there were several kids who had never done that before), and then let them loose with a piece of paper, a pile of tinfoil sheets, and pieces of pre-torn masking tape stuck all over the edge of the countertop. 

We went through 100 square feet of tinfoil, and the sculptures that came out of that room were inspiring.  Some of the kids stuck to the stomped idea, and stuck mostly rounded balls of tinfoil on their paper.  One girl wrapped her piece of paper in tinfoil, and then built it up piece by piece until there was a tinfoil tunnel and a story to go with it.  A boy went completely freeform, and constructed a tinfoil ornament that he’ll be able to hang when he gets home.  Another girl built a boat out of tinfoil, and made two figures to go in it, a boy and a penguin – inspired by the book I’d read aloud just before the art project, Oliver Jeffers’s Lost and Found.  Yet another girl used a sheet of tinfoil as her base, and attached a tinfoil handle to it.  And a younger boy mastered the art of making tape loops, and had a grand time putting his new skill to work on multiple sheets of paper.

We didn’t finish up until the last piece of tinfoil was gone, and that was an hour after we had started the project.  I’m sure that the creations would have continued if the supplies hadn’t run out.  Yay, yay, yay.  What complete and total fun.

Storytime

Asleep

Towards the end of yesterday’s preschool storytime (a mid-afternoon storytime), one of my regular attendees fell sound asleep.  Completely and totally out.  He had lain down on his belly, head on his arms, to listen to the last story, and before I knew it, he was napping.

He even slept through the fingertasting session, with all the rest of the kids giggling madly at what they tasted like yesterday, and he slept through the raucous closing song, “If You’re Happy and You Know It.”  I didn’t want him to be startled awake, so we switched the last verse to:  “If you’re happy and you know, whisper ‘Hurray!’,” as opposed to our usual “Shout ‘Hurray!’.”  He even slept through the clean up process, as his friends tip-toed around him to put the carpet squares back in the pile.  He finally woke up when his mom came into the room and picked him up off the floor.

Just about the cutest moment I’ve ever seen in one of my storytimes.  (And no, I don’t think he was bored to sleep!)

Book groups, Young adult book review

Peeled by Joan Bauer

Yesterday’s teen book group thoroughly reamed Joan Bauer’s Peeled, a book that I had liked until I heard the teens discuss it.  Peeled also received rave reviews from multiple review journals; that along with its great cover made me feel like this was an excellent choice for the book group (and all of the teen book group books this year have been suggested by one of the teens in the group). 

What did they hate about the book?  The core of the plot felt contrived and unbelievable to this group of teens; they asked why an entire town would fall victim to a developer’s plan to create mass ghost hysteria in order to buy up land cheap and construct a haunted theme park.  The group also felt that the town’s dependence on and faith in the local newspaper was odd – they wanted the townspeople to question the sensationalist articles that were printed there.

And the teen characters were too unrealistic to be sympathetic.  Elizabeth felt too idealized to them, Hildy too juvenile for her age, Zack too boring, Baker’s motives were unclear (“Hello?” said one teen, “If he just lost his job, why isn’t he out looking for a new one?????”).  The group also wondered why these fictional teens had so much free time to pursue their journalistic ideals – why didn’t they ever have to do homework?  Why weren’t they ever thinking of the academic challenges that they faced?

In sum, the book failed for this group on every level.  And towards the end of our discussion, one teen expressed it best:  “This book feels like it’s twenty years out of date, and it was just published.” 

Children's literature, Librarianship, Spare time - Culture

Vacation! And reading!

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I’m nearing the end of five whole days off in a row, and I feel fabulous.  Rested, refreshed, intellectually reinvigorated.  And we’ve even had TWO social engagements in the last five days – huge for us homebodies.  (I don’t count Jim’s band rehearsals as social engagements, since I’m not part of that, but he did have about three band meetings/rehearsals.)

The best part of the last five days is that I had time and space and energy to read.  A lot.  I read Blue Balliett’s Chasing Vermeer and The Calder Game (I’ll get to The Wright Three when I find it at the used book store like the others), Joan Bauer’s Peeled, various magazine articles, and am starting The Prophet of Yonwood by Jeanne DuPrau.  [I’m a slow reader, folks, as I’ve stated before, so this is a lot of books for me to have gotten through while housecleaning and doing laundry and shoveling 10 inches of snow and partying with friends…]  Only one of these books is for a book group (Peeled), and I’ve actually been wanting to read it, anyway, so it didn’t feel like an assignment.

One of the oddities of my job as a children’s librarian is that I need to have read a lot of books, yet that reading can’t really happen in my work hours.  And let’s face it, often our off-work hours are filled with mundanities like laundry and scooping litter boxes, and don’t leave much time for wonderful things like reading.  So, in an odd way, though I read these books for pleasure, I also feel like all of this reading was for work, too.  Now when a child or parent asks me about Chasing Vermeer, I can actually speak with some authority on the topic, not the usual “It’s gotten great reviews.”  I’ll never be able to read all of the books that I order for the library, but I’d like to aim for a higher percentage than I’ve had time for recently.

So it’s been a truly lovely five days.  And tomorrow I’m back to my usual crazy schedule, working full time and tutoring two nights a week, though the Italian class is over now, which gains me a bit more reading time.  But I’ll be going back to that schedule with renewed energy and vitality, and I’m psyched.

Etc.

Happy New Year!

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Now that the social engagements are over, here’s a wish to all – human and feline – for a happy and healthy 2009!  (Click on image to enlarge.)

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(that’s Ophy the beauty queen, who has demanded equal space since Max has appeared on the blog)