Stimulating My Thinking

My school is searching for the perfect books to suggest for faculty and staff to read over the summer so I have been frantically trying to read things to suggest for everyone. Let me list some of them here and hope that other ideas will come our way.

Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms by Gloria Ladson-Billings was suggested by my daughter who is a mathematics teacher in a California high school. She was wise to suggest it for me. While talking more about inner city "at risk" classes than those of a private school in the mid-West, Ladson makes many valid points for every teacher. My favorite quote, "Apathy is not an option," sums up much of what she is suggesting we should all do to get to know each student as an individual, including the role of various cultures in our teaching and learning processes.

The Hardest Questions Aren't on the Test: Lessons from an Innovative Urban School by Linda F. Nathan may at first seem to have little to do with an elementary school in a mid-sized college town, but that misconception is quickly dispelled. Nathan speaks eloquently of what all schools can do and need to do to serve all students. She talks of three areas of focus:

• Structuring a school to give guidelines for establishing a unifying framework and shared values.


• Supporting teachers to help foster good teachers and the good administrators who support them.


• Addressing inequality through how we and why we need to discuss racial issues.

Fires in the Mind: What Kids Can Tell Us About Motivation and Mastery by Kathleen Cushman found its way to me shortly after I read The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Sir Ken Robinson. This proved to be great timing for Cushman shares many of the same ideas as Robinson but applies them to how we reach students in ways that help to put those young learners into their element. I like the idea of finding ways to apply the concepts in real life situations.

Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other by Sherry Turkle keeps appearing in my thoughts these days, perhaps because the new technologies are so ubiquitous in our lives today. This book deals first with the social and psychological impact of using interactive "caring" robots to replace human caregivers or to offer solace to people who are otherwise disengaged. Then it goes into the uses of our social networking capabilities from text messages to Facebook and more. Turkle is quite convincing in her arguments that we need to look carefully at where we are allowing these new technologies to take us.

Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life by Annette Lareau is old enough that there will be an update from ten years later coming out later this year. Lareau presents a sociological study of home life and school success of upper elementary students of varied socio-economic and racial groups. It is important to teachers to think about how one's culture, especially, it appears, one's socio-economic status, affects their approach to working with teachers and the educational system. All parents want the best for their children, they simply have different backgrounds that define both what is wanted and how to seek it. Lareau does a good job of pointing out both the positive and negative effects of each differing approach to child rearing. This is a book that helps one remember that a child is more than the person who a teacher sees for six hours a day.

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass Sunstein looks at both the economic and behavioral side of how it is possible to shape decisions without taking away any of the choices. They dub this "libertarian paternalism", a term which took me awhile to understand enough to embrace or reject. While their topics of discussion range from Medicare benefit selection to same sex marriage, they also have much to offer that could be applied to life and helping students to make improved decisions. At the very least, it makes one more aware of the nudges that we encounter daily as well as how many things could be changed to offer more positive or productive nudging.

Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us by Claude M. Steele is what I am reading right now. At the mid-point of the book, I am totally fascinated by the social psychological findings of how stereotypes affect student performance. Steele is quick to note that all of us are affected by stereotypes and that often those stereotypes can have negative effects on our performance. Does the stereotype that women are not as good at math as men make women more likely to do poorly at math? The studies suggest that it does. Similarly, race, age, class, and much more affect our self-perceptions and thus how we perform. I am optimistic that Steel will provide not only more insight into these differences in the second half of the book as well as some ways that teachers and society can help to counteract this stereotype threat.

These are a good start. I would love to hear what others are reading in these areas.

LOC @ MACUL

Thursday, March 17, found me at the Annual Conference of the Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning (MACUL). Cobo Hall in Detroit was hopping with approximately 4,000 educators from around the state. All of them were interested in the hows and whys of using the latest technology in the classroom. There were lectures and workshops and a room full of vendors all eager to share what is exciting to them.

Of all the things that I heard and saw, the most exciting was a talk by two Michigan school librarians who last summer had the kind of experience that makes any librarian green with envy. They spent a week with other librarians from around the country training and sharing at the Library of Congress (LOC) in Washington, D.C. Their primary goal was to help the LOC improve its website and its outreach to teachers. This site is listed as My LOC and is slightly different from the main LOC site. Both sites are well worth visiting.

They began with some basic facts about the nation's library which contains some 147,000,000 items on 838 miles of shelves. LOC resources also include 15 million digitized works with more coming on line all the time. The smallest book in the Library of Congress is Old King Cole fit onto pages measuring just 1/25th of an inch square. The pages must be turned with a needle. More interesting facts rotate on the LOC sites so visit them often if you like trivia.

Teachers perked up their ears when we were presented with examples of the vast array of primary sources available on-line at the LOC. We saw the rough draft of the Gettysburg Address, copies of period sheet music, pictures of great Americans along with copies of their speeches, and just touched the tip of the iceberg.

I encourage everyone who has any interest in American history, to search these sites often, whether for research or just for the fun of it.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to tell you that I have found the perfect book or books to read for St. Patrick's Day? Alas, that will not be the case today. There is not much to get excited about in terms of books for good St. Paddy. There are few stories that directly name the day and none of those that I have seen are good to read aloud.

So, we go to books of leprechauns and Irish lore. Both Tomie DePaola and Gerald McDermott have retold Irish folk lore. Depaola has two tales of Jamie O'Rourke who is said to be the laziest man in all of Ireland. These stories are good for a laugh but are long for the youngest listeners. McDermott's books can also be wordy but it is worth taking a look at Tim O'Toole and the Wee Folk or Daniel O'Rourke. If you like telling stories rather than reading, any of these would be a good choice to fit to your own style.

Clever Tom and the Leprechauns by Linda Shute is better suited to reading to younger groups (kindergarten or first grade) who are excited about leprechauns. Our first grades are visited by leprechauns at this time of the year, so I leave this book for them to share. After all, they are the ones who introduced it to me.

For older students, there is the option of looking at Irish history. While there are many lengthy informational books about Ireland and its history, the best one I can think of for reading aloud in one sitting is The Long March: The Choctaw's Gift to Irish Famine Relief by Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick. This is an illustrated telling of a little known story of American aid to victims of the Irish the Potato Famine. The Choctaw Indians themselves suffered much loss and hardship in 1847, yet the group empathized with the the Irish enough to collect $170 (equivalent to about $5000 today) to send across the seas to help. It is a moving tale of giving even when times are hard.

What will I be doing with classes this St. Patrick's Day? I will pick and choose between facts about Ireland and Irish tales. A to Z Ireland by Justine and Ron Fontes offers colorful pictures and 26 interesting snippets about the Emerald Isle which is a good, quick introduction.
Then we will talk about snakes, which were supposedly driven from Ireland by St. Patrick. (Of course, most people agree that there never were snakes on the island and that the snake is symbolic of evil, but we will not let that stop me from spreading the old legend to the youngest classes.) Older students will learn about the Blarney Stone and we will play a game we call "Blarney" which is loosely based on that great old game show, "To Tell the Truth". Since our school teaches students to prepare for all kinds of careers, I figure knowing how to tell half truths convincingly may someday prove valuable for someone.

I am sad to report that I won't be wearing my giant shamrock earrings this year. I will be a conference on March 17 and my substitute will get the joy of working with the super excited children. I hope she remembers to wear green.

The Joys of Visiting Authors

It is my goal to bring at least one author to the school each year so in my eleven years as the school librarian I have met a number of different authors. It is fairly easy for me to impress the kids with some name dropping, even it is a name they have never heard before. It is fun to meet fellow book lovers, especially those who have written books that are on my list of favorites. Every author has important things to share with the students and with me.

Usually, I am a nervous wreck before the visiting author comes. This year I was much more relaxed. I knew things could go wrong but I also knew the author would take it all in stride. For once I could tell the students that not only was there a visiting author coming but that she was my personal friend. I have known Valerie Scho Carey since her daughter and mine were in first grade together, more than twenty five years ago. We go out for a meal together every so often just to keep track of what the kids are doing and to share ideas. Valerie is a brilliant woman who just happens to have a knack for writing picture books and retelling folk tales. When her very first book Harriet and William and the Terrible Creature was reissued this year, it seemed like the perfect time to invite her to talk to our students.

Even the wiggliest of classes settled down when Valerie began to tell them a story or read from her own works. The kindergarten and first grade classes have asked me about Quail Song several times since Valerie read it to them. Of course they loved the story but they also wanted to know more about how it came to be and to compare other stories. They are also eager to demonstrate a coyote wail for me. The third through fifth grade students enjoyed Tsugele's Broom in a presentation that was made more interesting by the inclusion of pictures of a shtetl. Valerie shared these to show us how her father's memories of childhood in shtetl inspired the story. I enjoyed listening to the students who came to her for advice on how to improve their won writing. Since Valerie has taught writing, she was the perfect person to ask about these issues.

It is indeed a pleasure to have had a friend come to speak as an authority on writing. She is an authority but I could relax and enjoy the presentations because she is also a friend.

There have been many other author visits over the years. Some were wonderful. Some were not. Here are a few of the highlights.

I will forever treasure the wonderful day spent with Naomi Shihab Nye that ended with driving her across the state and sharing a wonderful, relaxed, fun filled dinner with her. Now I not only enjoy her novels (especially Habibi) and her many volumes of poetry, I have that personal experience to read into every word she writes. I think that our students felt the same about her visit several years ago because they were writing poetry for many weeks and months afterward.

Mark Crilley was someone I frankly invited in large part because he lives not far away. I barely knew his books and had had only minor success getting students to read them. He brought his Akiko books to life for me and for every person who listened to him. It was like having a stand-up comedian with a highly polished act come to the school. The fact that we could read his books and learned about the writing process was a wonderful bonus. He, too, inspired many creative stories and fantastic illustrations long after he had headed home. I still can not keep his books on the shelves even though few of our current students were here when Mr. Crilley came but many have heard the legendary tales about him.

Christopher Paul Curtis is as nice, funny, and caring as the characters in his books. I take a little vicarious pride in being able to say that when he visited our school for the second time, he handed me his laptop for self-keeping, telling me that he had the manuscript for his next book right there and did want to risk losing it. That manuscript turned into Elijah of Buxton which is a book I think everyone over the age of twelve should read at least once. Mr. Curtis is a serious author, but he clearly still has a lot of joyfully young boy in him and he channels that into every book he writes.

There have, alas, been some real bombs. These authors will remain nameless here because I know they tried and their writing is much better than their presentation skills. However, I am still haunted by the man who scared several students with his somewhat cross-eyed stare. He drew derision from others when he dozed off almost in mid speech. Another author was just plain B-O-R-I-N-G. My daughter says that she can not remember a thing about that author's book other than that it nearly bored her into a stupor.

There is another author visit coming this year for our middle school students. Again, I am not too stressed. Will Purves is another friend and former co-worker who is eagerly awaiting the finished copy of his first young adult novel. He will be at the school in April. We are all hoping that big box of beautiful books will arrive before then.

Small Persons with Wings

Usually on this blog I try to give you a list of books, but I can't wait to create a list to tell you about a book I just finished reading.

Small Persons with Wings by Ellen Booraem was a true joy to read. The story has it all--humor, school with its many social issues, hints of romance, art, science, French, Latin, and fairies. The first thing you will learn is that the little folks in this story prefer to be called "small persons with wings" or Parvi Pennati from the Latin parvi homines (small persons) and pennati (with wings). Call them parvi, for short. Mellie, who narrates in a voice that rings true, had a friend who was a parvi pennati until one fateful day when she was in kindergarten. It was then that, in an attempt to make friends and get invited to a popular girl's birthday party, she told the other children that she had a fairy and would bring him to school for show and tell. Fidius, her parvi friend, was aghast at the idea and flew off in a huff, leaving behind nothing but memories and a little toy man made of china. Her school friends promptly named her Fairy Fat adding the fairy story to their previous taunts about her weight. They tormented her mercilessly for years in a classic example of bullying at its worst.

Mellie did not give up easily. In face, she talked so much about her small person with wings that she was sent to the school counselor to talk about her "issues". When her parents were called in to drive home the point that fairies were only in one's imagination, Mellie felt she could no longer trust herself and fell to memorizing lists and learning interesting facts about artists in attempt to no longer worry about her social problems or her memories of Fidius. These facts appear throughout the rest of the book. I learned artist trivia that I am sure I will be sharing for years. (Did you know that Vincent Van Gogh had a sunflower named after him or that someone made a portrait of Queen Elizabeth out of 1,000 tea bags?)

Things change when Mellie is thirteen and her family quite unexpectedly inherits the tavern that had been run by her paternal grandfather who no one in the family really liked. The family moves to the tavern where they meet a cast of interesting characters and Mellie learns about the family pact with the Parvi Pennati that must now be addressed some 1300 years after first came to be.

There is so much to this book that I could go on for pages. Girls in grades five and up should especially enjoy this book, but I can not imagine anyone not finding something to enjoy here. Find it! Read it! You will believe in small persons with wings--or at least hope that they have more stories to share.

All School Read In

Yesterday, February 18, the school was amazingly, beautifully quiet as all students, teachers, and administrators spent half an hour reading. It was almost magical.

Also almost magical was the introducing of books by African American authors to the students. Wednesday afternoon a fifth grade class came to me. During their check out time, the kids looked at my displays of books by African Americans and picked out ones that they thought they would like to read. I was so glad I had put out my multiple copies of The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis because two girls chose copies to read. Later in the day, they came back with two classmates who wanted to read the same book. "We are going to read it," they said, "and then have our own book discussion." This was all on their own. I am proud and hope to hear soon of the success of their book discussion group. It could lead to even more discussions.

Other children have already come back to me to tell me how much they enjoyed what they read and asked for similar books to read over break. I was thrilled when an eighth grade boy rushed over to put dibs on a biography of Spike Lee. Another brought back The Old African by Julius Lester and stopped to tell me how interesting it was.

The only drawback to the day came with the realization (I keep forgetting this obvious fact) that if I pull out 200 books for display they will eventually all need to be put away. Although many of the books will go home with kids over the break, I put away an awful lot of books yesterday afternoon.

Books by African Americans

The morning of Friday, February 18, will find a hush falling over our school as we engage in an African American Read In sponsored by the Black Caucus of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). The goal is to have everyone in the school from the youngest kindergarten student to the head of school take 30 minutes to Drop Everything and Read. The NCTE encourages us to take this time during Black History Month to read a book by an African American author.

The goal of finding reading material for each member of our school community got me thinking about many issues. Last spring when I heard Christopher Paul Curtis speak at a luncheon, he pointed out that there are still only two widely published male African American authors for young men in grades three to eight, Curtis and Walter Dean Myers. As I found books in our collection that comment kept coming to mind.

Our middle grade fiction by African American authors is something that I think about often as a part of collection development. Pulling books by African American authors makes clear how difficult it is to find good books--perhaps any books--that fit in this category.

Bud, Not Buddy, The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963 and Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis are all popular in our collection though his Mr. Chickee books are a bit harder sell, perhaps because they do not have the historical aspect and the more intense stories or simply that they are aimed at a big younger audience. I have met Curtis and listened to him talk several times and he seems to be just what we want as a model for our young men. He is caring, thoughtful, philosophical, and filled with energy, enthusiasm, and humor.

Walter Dean Myers is amazing but harder to get young men in our school to read. I am not sure why. My favorite of his books is Monster, but that is only for the oldest of our students as it is a difficult topic, dealing as it does with a young man standing trial for robbery and murder. Fallen Angels and Handbook for Boys are also good titles that I clearly need to promote more actively. Myers has a wide array of titles in addition to his fiction. Poetry, history, picture books, and even a memoir (Bad Boy) are brought to us by this talented author. Don't miss Walter Dean Myers son Christopher Myers' exciting adaptation through illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. It is a book that any basketball player will love.

We have a few fiction works by Julius Lester (Days of Tears, This Strange New Feeling), but, once again, they are for older readers and a hard sell for me. Lester has done one of the most beautiful versions of an African American legend in The Old African and has some history and even a picture book discussion of race, Let's Talk about Race, in our collection. I have great admiration for everything that Lester has created and urge you to seek out his writings.

Other fiction African American fiction for middle grade readers is almost exclusively written by women--Virginia Halmilton, Pat McKissack, Jacqueline Woodson, Mildred Taylor and Sharon M. Draper. All of these authors well deserve the accolades that they have received for their many works of fiction.

We have more non-fiction by African American authors than we do fiction. Not surprisingly, I suppose, many of them deal with the civil rights movement and the history of slavery. There are a few titles that I must mention that fit in this category. Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High by Melba Beals is a just what the title promises. Being among the first to integrate a hostile high school was an honor of sorts but also a horrible experience. Picture, if you will, being escorted to high school with the National Guard not always willingly being called in to protect you from jeering and threatening fellow students.

Toni Morrison offers a somewhat gentler look at school integration in Remember: The Journey to School Integration though the stunning black and white photos will grip at your heart on each page.

Two other historical works that are worthy of your consideration: Harlem Hellfighters: When Pride Met Courage by Walter Dean Myers which looks at the the 369 Infantry of World War I, an African American regiment that had to fight both the war and the battles of racism. They stood up for democracy when few American would stand up for them. Black Hands, White Sails: The Story of African American Whalers by Patricia C. McKissack and Fredrick L. McKissack looks at another under-recognized group when they look at the impact of African Americans on whaling ships and how they helped shape the abolition movements.

Non-fiction by African Americans is not limited to history and social movements. Wynton Marsalis has a beautiful book about jazz called A-B-Z Jazz which uses poetry and modern art to present brief looks at 26 jazz musicians. This is not a simple picture book, but a work of art and biographical collection for readers with the time and interest to pursue it in detail.

Sports lovers will find that many of their favorite athletes like Tiki Barber and Venus Williams have written about their sports. Other people have written biographies of some of the greats. Walter Dean Myers has written ultimate boxing biography in The Greatest:Muhammad Ali. The most beautiful sports book I have ever seen is We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson. Pick it up just for the pictures and you will soon be drawn into the narrative.

There are some beautifully illustrated works of some poetic greats. The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes is beautifully illustrated by E. B. Lewis in a book which drew accolades when it was published in 2009 and has drawn many to discover this moving work. Maya Angelou's Life Doesn't Frighten Me is perfectly suited for the bright and powerful paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat. I wish I had Angelou's voice to read this aloud with the proper impact, but whatever your voice it cries to be read out with emotion. Ntozake Shange uses poetry to remember growing up in presence of African American leaders like W. E. B. DuBois, Dizzy Gillespie, Paul Robeson and others. It is history told with love and lyricism.

The most beautiful new art book is an award winner this year (Coretta Scott King Award, Caldecott Honor Book). Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave by Laban Carrick Hill uses amazing illustrations by Bryan Collier to supplement the text about a slave who created beautiful pottery. Dave has no last name because he was a slave, but he left his simple poems on each pot he created so historians are able to trace a bit of his story. This is a must have book for anyone who loves pottery, especially those who have had the chance to use the wheel.

Don't forget the beautiful folk tales by such people as Verna Aardema (Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears, Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain), Ashley Bryan (Beautiful Blackbird), Virginia Hamilton (The People Could Sing, Her Stories), and John Steptoe (Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters). There are many, many more that fit in this section, but this will give you a start.

Finally, look to the picture book section. This section offers much from which to choose, so I will simply list a few of my favorites. My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me by Maya Angelou, The Big Box by Toni Morrison, Precious and the Boo Hag by Pat McKissack, Dear Mr. Rosenwald by Carole Boston Weatherford, and Sweet Music in Harlem by Debbie A. Taylor, an Ann Arbor author.

While the number of African American authors for young people is slowly growing, the books that are currently available will offer something for every reader and listener. Consider joining us at 8:30 on Friday, February 18, 2011, to take some time to enjoy some fascinating writing by an African American author.