Great New Titles

Greetings!
I have a few new wonderful titles to share with you this week.

The first book is a true story about the American Revolution titled Henry and the Cannons by Don Brown. In the winter of 1775, the British held the city of Boston and the Americans were none too happy about this. General Washington wanted cannons, but he didn’t have any. However, Fort Ticonderoga had some cannons Colonel Benedict Arnold had captured from the British. The problem was that they were 300 miles away from Boston and the terrain was difficult and it was winter. Henry Knox said he could bring the cannons to Boston and Washington believed him. I really like the vocabulary in parts of the story. One part says “the modest American army had scant chance against the world’s best soldiers.” What a great opportunity to discuss the meanings of the words “modest” and “scant”. The simple illustrations help make this a book to span the younger elementary grades while the story will be very appropriate for the older students when studying the Revolutionary War.





Red Kite, Blue Kite by Ji-li Jiang, illustrated by Greg Ruth is a story of a small boy and his father who are living during the Cultural Revolution in China. They love to fly kites together and when Baba, the father, is taken away to work in a labor camp, the small boy is sent to live with a friend, Granny Wang. Each week Baba travels many hours to visit his son and they continue to fly their kites. One day Baba tells his son that he won’t be able to visit for a long time because he would be very busy and they come up with a plan. Each morning the son will fly his red kite and Baba will see it from the other hill. Each evening Baba will fly his blue kite and the son will see it. They will have a secret signal and be able to see each other every day. One day the small boy does not see the blue kite and after three days he wants to go find his father. In the night Baba comes to see him. Baba had escaped and run to see his son before being sent to another labor camp much farther away. Baba hurriedly gives his blue kite to his son and asks him to fly it for him because he wouldn’t be able to fly it for a long time. One day Baba does return and the father and son are reunited.
Many books like this have an author’s note that really helps to flesh out a story and give more meaning to it. The author is telling the story of a family friend who had to follow his father to a labor farm during the Cultural Revolution.




Too Hot? Too Cold? By Caroline Arnold, illustrated by Annie Patterson. This book helps explain body temperature, warm-blooded, cold-blooded, fever, sweating, sweat glands, goose bumps, hibernation, migration, and ways to keep warm or cool in just 32 pages! There is so much information in this book. Many small watercolor paintings help to illustrate each bit. This book also is appropriate for nearly all grades. Younger children will enjoy just looking at the pictures and older children will appreciate that the text is not too large and childish. Also, there are inset illustrations to further explain things like sweat glands.



I hope you enjoy these books. I also hope you have a great spring vacation and come back refreshed and ready to finish the school year with a bang.
Audrey

Bookmarks

I don’t know if you have priced bookmarks lately, but they can be quite expensive. I like to put bookmarks out for the students to take and even purchasing them from Demco or another library source can still run in to some money.
One of our classroom teachers had her students make bookmarks for a project a couple of years ago using Powerpoint. I watched, took notes, and have made a number of bookmarks for the library since then. The cost to you will be mostly your time, plus a little paper and printer ink.

Here’s how to do it.

Step 1 - Open up Powerpoint and choose a blank slide. If you don’t know how to do this, click “Layout” and choose “Blank”.

Step 2 – Draw vertical lines at the zero mark, and also at the 2 ½” mark on either side of the zero mark. Now you have four evenly spaced bookmarks.

Step 3 – Design the bookmark. Insert text boxes, clip art, or other images. Don’t forget to cite your sources if you get any images from the internet. Either print the sources on the back of the bookmark, or have students hand in their sources along with the bookmark.

Step 4 – Print on cardstock or your choice of paper. I find that cardstock works well, goes through the printer well, and holds up for quite a while.

If you don’t have Powerpoint, you can do this in Microsoft Word also. It takes a little more math, but it can be done. Just choose a “Landscape” layout and draw the vertical lines at the 2 ¾ mark, the 5 ½ mark, and the 8 ¼ mark. Then design the bookmark and print.

Wouldn’t this be a nice book report idea? Students can make either one bookmark and copy it on the other spaces or make four different bookmarks. Kids like getting bookmarks that other kids have made. This also makes the bookmark look more professional. I’m sure you will find other uses for this great bookmark idea.

Have a great week.
Audrey

Dewey Classification Question

Greetings!
I had a good question from a reader recently and I thought it might be something that many of you would find helpful.

The question was regarding the Chicken Soup type of books. These are inspirational short stories or stories of encouragement. They are similar to a devotional type book. You likely have seen Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover’s Heart, Chicken Soup for the Golfer, Chicken Soup for the Teen and the list goes on and on. Other similar books include Taste Berries for Teens, Stories for a Teen’s Heart. If you look on the imprint page, you can find Dewey numbers from the publisher. (Get out your magnifying glass!)

My reader found that there were vastly different Dewey numbers for some of the books. Taste Berries for Teens - says 248.8'3; many of the Chicken Soup books say 158.1; and Stories for a Teen's Heart says 242.63. So where do we put these books? She would like to keep the books together so her kids can find them more easily.

I looked up each Dewey classification and found that the 158.1 section is for books about personal improvement or successful living. The 242 section is for devotional literature and the subheading of 242.6 is for prayers and meditations for specific classes of persons. 242.634 is for college students. I am guessing that the publisher left off the ‘4’ and designated 242.63 for teens. The 248 section is for Christian experience, practice, life. By adding the ‘8’ after the decimal it subdivides the category to Christian experience for specific persons and the ‘3’ means young people.

So if you want to keep these kinds of books together in the library, where should you put them? If you were going to choose one of the above suggestions, you might pick the one that seems to fit best, then give each of them the same Dewey number.

However, I have another option for you. They are basically a collection of stories, so why not put these books in the collected stories under the Dewey number of 808.8? This is what I suggested to my reader. That is where we have them in our library.

Do you have any Chicken Soup books or any books like this? Where do you put them in your library? I’m curious.

I have an announcement. I got some money from the Don Keele Award to add e-readers to our school. I just found out a few days ago and have been doing more research on what to add. I plan to add Kindles from Amazon. So which Kindle should I get? What are the pros and cons of each? I have been researching them to decide and will be talking with our faculty to get their input.

As we go further along, I will update you on my progress on the Kindle project.

I hope you have a great week.
Audrey