Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Christmas Favorites

Hello,
I am not sure which books I recommended for Christmas previously, but I do have some wonderful favorites. Some of these are good read alouds, and others are good picture books. Some are heartwarming and others might be a bit sad in spots, but all are good books for someone.
A Certain Small Shepherd by Rebecca Caudill. I LOVE this story about a family in the Appalachian hills. Jamie, a young mute boy, is thoughtlessly assigned to sing with the chorus in the school nativity play. Soon he is reassigned to play a young shepherd which he embraces wholeheartedly. On the date of the Christmas pageant, a blizzard sweeps in and Jamie is disappointed when the pageant is canceled. Through the snowy night comes a couple in need of shelter. Father takes them to the nearby church and soon they have a baby. When Jamie sees the new baby, he runs back to his house then returns to the church wearing his shepherd costume. For the first time he speaks aloud and gives his own Christmas gifts – an orange and a dime – to the family. Other Rebecca Caudill books you might enjoy are A Pocketful of Cricket and Did You Carry the Flag Today, Charlie?

The Christmas Day Kitten by James Herriot. You may be familiar with James Herriot’s All Things Bright and Beautiful and other books about his experiences as a veterinarian in Yorkshire, England. This story is taken from one of his books and made into a picture book. On Christmas Day a young mother cat brings her kitten to a home where she has experienced friendliness. She is ill and does not survive. The kitten becomes part of the family. Trust me, the story is much better than I tell it here!

Silver Packages by Cynthia Rylant. This is another Appalachian Christmas story about a wealthy man who brings a Christmas train each year to give gifts wrapped in silver to the children. One young boy wishes each year for a doctor’s kit. You likely have heard this story but you will enjoy the wonderful paintings by Chris Soentpiet. (Pronounced SOON pete)

Patricia Polacco is a prolific writer and has a few books about Christmas. Two that are wonderful true stories of her family are The Trees of the Dancing Goats and An Orange for Frankie. Patricia’s family celebrates Hanukkah but the neighbors celebrate Christmas. One year scarlet fever is rampant in the neighborhood so Patricia’s family decorates small Christmas trees with their own brightly painted little wooden toys and deliver the trees to the neighbors. When the neighborhood recovers, they return the gift with one that Patricia’s family appreciates. In An Orange for Frankie, the family is excitedly preparing for Christmas and hoping Father is able to return in time. Father will be bringing the oranges which are a once-a-year treat for the family. When Father brings the oranges, Frankie just wants to hold his and smell it so he stuffs it inside his sweater and the family attends the Christmas pageant. When they return home, Frankie is horrified to realize that he has lost his orange! Mother solves this problem for him in a wonderful way. Most of Patricia Polacco’s books are fantastic, but she has a few that are pure fantasy and might not be a book you wish to place on your shelves. Be careful and read the book first before purchasing it just to make sure it is one you really want.

The Christmas Tree Farm by Ann Purmell. Have you ever wondered where those Christmas trees in the parking lots or grocery lots come from? How do they care for those trees during the year? What happens to Christmas trees in summer or spring? This book answers these questions and more plus includes facts about Christmas trees that your students will find fascinating.

Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto. Tamales are a traditional Mexican holiday meal and Maria’s family makes twenty-four of them in preparation for the family that will be arriving soon. Maria eyes her mother’s diamond ring and wishes to wear it for just a little while, but when she cannot find it later she realizes that the ring is lost in the tamales! She and her cousins eat all the tamales in order to find the ring, but no one finds it. Weeping, Maria confesses to her mother about the lost ring and the tamales, but then sees the ring on her mother’s hand. The family laughs over the picture of the cousins eating so many tamales, and all pitch in to make more tamales.

I hope you enjoy these titles. If you have some Christmas favorites, please let me know and I will include them next week.
Have a good week,
Audrey

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Tips and Ideas

Hello,
I am sorry that I didn’t send a post last week, but I was out all week with a horrible upper respiratory infection. I made it to school this week, but still have some residual symptoms. Anyway, I am doing better, but this post will be blessedly short. Call it a Thanksgiving gift.

While perusing one of my library journals I noticed a few really interesting ideas. Here are some that may be helpful to you.

1. Inside some gift cards these days there is a little cell that can be used to record a message. You can use this technology to do ‘book talks’. Print a small cover of the book and place the cell with the recorded message behind the cover to make your own book talks. Students just push the button and hear a short book talk about the book. Or you could let students record book talks for books.

2. Signage for libraries can be very expensive, but you can make your own with a large coffee can, a yardstick, pebbles or rocks, spray paint, and paper. Spray the outside of the coffee can and both sides of the yardstick. Fill the can partway with the pebbles or rocks. Attach a sign to one end of the yardstick and stick the other end into the pebbles. Put these types of sign on table or shelving or wherever works in your library. These can be changed easily when needed.

3. Have a hard time getting your boys to read? Try what one school did. They took pictures of the adult males on campus reading a book and made a bulletin board titled “Real Men Read Books”. This really increased interest in reading and the boys began asking the men about the books they were reading. What if you are a small school and don’t have many adult males on staff? Use pastors, parents, or older siblings. I would advise that you have these males hold books from your library, possibly books that they enjoyed as a young person.

4. Encourage reading by using vendor’s catalogs. Cut out all the colored pictures of books that the library owns, laminate them and glue them to clothes pins. They can be used for bookmarks, genre sorts, library skills games or whatever you can think of. Don’t have vendor’s catalogs? Try using the book jacket. I usually cover the book jacket in plastic and affix to the book. But if you don’t use those book jackets, cut the cover off, then laminate and hang with clothes pins along a line in your library to call attention to the books and promote them.

5. One school had a Junior Prom Etiquette check day. Students were invited to bring their lunches to the library and different situations were reenacted such as introducing their date to their parents, table manners, and tips for awkward situations. We might not have the same situation, but our students can still profit from learning more about manners. Showcase books on manners and etiquette and have students act out etiquette tips and situations.

I hope these ideas were helpful to you. I was inspired when I read them and thought that you might be, too.

Have a great week and a very happy, safe, and warm Thanksgiving!
Audrey

Monday, November 8, 2010

Weeding Guidelines

Hello,
Today I will be tackling the difficult subject of weeding in the library. No matter what size your library is, you must periodically weed out books that are no longer useful. This can be a problem in most schools. Parents, church members, or even other teachers might criticize when you throw away books. Comments you may get are, “Why are you throwing away perfectly good books?” or “You ask for money for books, then you go and throw them away!” The best response is to have specific guidelines for this procedure that you can refer to as to WHY this book or that book has been discarded. Here are some guidelines that will be a good starting place for you.
General guidelines for weeding:
1. Information in the book is outdated, inaccurate, false information or obsolete. Imagine having a book on space travel written in 1960! Things have changed drastically since then.
2. Mediocre writing style or repetitious series– you likely have books in your library that were churned out to meet a popular interest which has passed and is not longer popular. Some of these may still be popular with your students, but if no one reads them and you cannot generate interest in them, they are taking up valuable real estate on your library shelves.
3. Material containing biased, racist, or sexist views or terminology. These don’t need to be kept for ‘historical purposes’. This kind of thinking is wrong. Is this what you want your students to learn? If not, then get rid of it.
4. Unused sets of books. Check these carefully to make sure they are useful to your school. If they aren’t something that you need, and they fit one in criteria #1 above, toss them out.
5. Duplicate books – if you have more than one copy of a book, consider if it is needed or not. If not, then get rid of the duplicate.
6. Superseded editions – it is usually not necessary to keep older editions if you have the newer one. Keep in mind that if your library is using all editions, then by all means keep them.
7. Weed out any material is worn out, ragged, shabby, dirty, warped, bug-infested, marked up, mutilated, missing pages, poor quality pictures or illustrations, or ‘edited’ by patrons.
8. Has the book been sitting on the shelf without circulating? Maybe it is no longer useful.
The guidelines above are just that - guidelines. It may be that you discard a book, while another school chooses to keep the same title. It will depend on your school and your particular needs. If you are having a difficult time with the idea of throwing away ‘good books’, keep in mind that you are improving your library and making it the best place for your children to study and learn. How can we do this with old, useless information?
Discard Process
Books may need to be discarded in a particular way. Delete them from the computer or shelf list if you have one. Black out the school name, spine label, and any other information that may bring the lost sheep home once it leaves. If you truly will be criticized heavily for removing them from shelves, put them in a black trash bag, drive to another town, and find a dumpster.
If you have older books that are in good condition that aren’t circulating, try a trick I sometimes use. Pull a student aside and ask them in a confidential way if they would be willing to help you with a problem. Give them the book and ask them to read it and let you know if they think it is a good choice for the library or if they think it should be discarded. Most students are willing to do this. I have also pulled out a shelf of books that look like they might need to be discarded and asked a class or two of students to help me decide if these books are worthy of shelf space.
I also have designated a shelf and titled it “Lonely Books: Please Read Us”. Then I do my best to sell these to the students.
What do you do with discarded books? If they are in truly deplorable condition, find a dumpster and dump. If they are in decent reading condition, I put them on a ‘Sale’ shelf and sell them for a quarter each. Parents even come in a check the sale shelf for books. It puts a little bit of money in the library kitty. You may have a better idea of what to do with discarded books.
If after all this you STILL have reservations about weeding in your library, tell me and I will come there myself and weed! Well, I probably won’t, but I hope you will see the importance of improving your library and making it the best it can be.
Last school year I discussed weeding in specific Dewey Decimal Classification areas and we went from the 100’s into the 500’s. If you weren’t a part of the email list or if you want to be reminded of what kinds of things to weed in those Dewey Decimal Classifications, you can check my blog at sdalibrarian.blogspot.com for that information.
Have a great week,
Audrey

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Books and Such

Hello,
Don’t you need more ideas of books to get? I have a few good ideas again this week.

A friend of mine is a vet and has written a book about his experiences. Ask the Animals by Bruce R. Coston is one that you will enjoy. Bruce relates stories about his practice and his clients. Think James Herriot and add a Seventh Day Adventist point of view.

Dewey, The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron and Bret Witter is about a tiny kitten that was put in the book return slot one wintry night. Vicki Myron found the kitten the next morning, cleaned him up and fed him not realizing that Dewey would claim the library as his home. The original book is wonderful and there are some picture books for younger readers about this cat named Dewey Readmore Books.

We have a popular series in our library called the ‘Dear America series’. These books are written in diary format by a fictional character but the reader learns about a particular event or time in history. If you don’t’ have any of the books in this series, consider getting them. One of the newest in this series is “The Fences Between Us: Seattle Washington, 1941”. The story revolves around Piper Davis, a young girl whose father is the pastor of a Japanese Baptist Church in Seattle. When his congregation is incarcerated in an internment camp, he follows them taking Piper with him. This could be a good introduction to this period in US history. The Dear America books are all diaries written by girls, but boys who aren’t interested in reading a book by a ‘girl’, might enjoy reading the series called “My Name is America” which are journals written by ‘boys’. I was visiting family in British Columbia and found three books called ‘Dear Canada’ which I bought and put in our library here. Lastly, “The Royal Diaries” written by historical royals are quite popular here, as well. All of these are published by Scholastic.

Another series that is loved by the same group that loves the Dear America books is the Sisters in Time series. I am about to place “Lydia the Patriot’, ‘Maria Takes a Stand’, ‘Nellie the Brave’, ‘Betsy’s River Adventure’, and ‘Meg Follows a Dream’ on our shelves. In a fashion similar to Dear America, these books help to chronicle a period of history through story format. ‘Lydia the Patriot’ is about the Boston Massacre, ‘Maria Takes a Stand’ is on the battle for women’s rights, ‘Nellie the Brave’ is about the Cherokee Trail of Tears, ‘Betsy’s River Adventure’ tells of the westward expansion, and ‘Meg Follows a Dream’ is on freedom for slaves. There are many more; just choose the subject or area of history you would like to have in your library.

I have heard that some of you print out and save my weekly posts. Some save them in a folder on their computer, and I am sure that many of you delete them. If you ever find yourself needing to refer to something that I have written or just need to check back, remember that I have each post on a blog. You can check back to each post dating from January 2009. (The blog was actually started in February and I posted January’s posts at that time, so you won’t see any posts for January, but they are there. I promise!) The blog is sdalibrarian.blogspot.com.

I hope you have a wonderful week. The sun is shining here and it is lovely weather. I hope the weather is good where you live, as well.
Audrey