New Books

Hello,
Here are a few new books you might like.

Tree of Wonder by Kate Messner, illustrated by Simona Mulazzani. This is a book about a tree in the rainforest and the creatures that make their homes in the tree. The book begins with 1 Almendro tree, 2 Great Green Macaws, 4 Keel-billed Toucans, and continues multiplying 8 more times. In the back is more information and websites about the Almendro tree and extra rainforest math problems. One of the problems is this: There are four Great Green Macaws shown in the illustration on pages 4 – 5. When the eggs hatch, how many birds will there be all together? There are also book suggestions and a movie suggestion for more rainforest information.

I chose the poison dart frog page because they are so colorful and I wanted you to see the visual of 256 frogs in the sidebar. I also like that there is easier text and more informational text. Great for a reading buddy situation.

Beatrix Potter and Her Paint Box by David McPhail. A simple biography of the author/illustrator of Peter Rabbit plus many other books for children. Beatrix Potter was born nearly 150 years ago this coming July and her books still remain popular. McPhail has used watercolors to illustrate this book which is a lovely nod to Beatrix’s own illustrations.


Traveling Butterflies by Susumu Shingu. If you study the life cycle of a monarch butterfly, this is a great resource to have. The book begins with a picture of eggs on a leaf, and continues through the different stages of a butterfly through their migration south.


Edible Science Experiments You Can Eat by Jodi Wheeler-Toppen and Carol Tennant. If your kids like science experiments and eating, they will enjoy this book. Each experiment give the science of what is happening. There is a list of supplies needed, a difficulty level, time needed, and instructions. Vocabulary words may be found on many pages. Photographs help to show some of the steps in each experiment and children are shown wearing lab coats and goggles when appropriate.


Clean Sweep! Frank Zamboni’s Ice Machine by Monica Kulling, illustrated by Renné Benoit. Here is the story in picture book format of the Zamboni ice machine and how it came to be invented. Use this in a unit on inventors, the Winter Olympics, ice skating, or just for fun. There are a list of fun facts at the end of the book. One of the is that a Zamboni machine, with a top speed of 9 miles per hour, was driven across Canada from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Victoria, British Columbia, a trip that took four months.


The last set of books I want to share with you today is actually three books that work well together. In a preview box, I found among other things, three different sets of books. One set had six biographies written on a low reading level. The series is found under the title “Amazing Inventors & Innovators. The books in that series include George Eastman, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Samuel Morse, and The Wright Brothers.
Another set of books was titles Amazing super Simple Inventions and each one has projects for children to do. Super Simple Aircraft Projects, Super Simple, Automobile Projects, Camera Projects, Phonograph Projects, Telegraph Projects, and Telephone Projects. One of our 5th and 6th grade teachers was interested in these projects.
The third set of books was about inventions. Aircraft, automobiles, cameras, phonograph, telegraphs, and telephones.
I admit that it took me a while to realize that the three sets were linked to each other. They would make great units. Read the biography of George Eastman, read about the invention of the camera, and then have your class do some or all of the camera projects. The books have different authors, but the publisher is ABDO. I do wish the publisher would have combined these three books into one and published six books rather than eighteen, but apparently they didn’t think to ask me.


I hope you see something that interests you. Have a great week.
Audrey

Currently reading:
A New Song by Jan Karon (Book 5 of the Mitford series)
The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery
Gunn’s Golden Rules by Tim Gunn

Display Ideas

Hello,

When you walk into a library, how do you feel? Do you feel calm, comforted to see so many books and know that there is much to choose from or do you feel intimidated and just grab something quickly or even turn around and walk out? I always loved to see so many books available and felt at peace when walking into a library. I was excited to see what they had in THIS library that other libraries I had been into might not have had. However, many children actually are intimidated by so many books to choose from. What can we do to help these children?

One of the best ways to help children is to make smaller displays regularly of books that they might find interesting, or displays to support your curriculum. When children see displays that are attractive, they are drawn to them and it is much easier to choose a book from a small sample than to try to find the same book on a big shelf. You can also take the time to walk around with a child and help them find the books they want or need.

As children get older, you can start teaching them to use the card catalog (if you still have one) or the computer to find the subject or title they want. Believe it or not, they don’t automatically know how to do this and need to be taught.

I am getting ready to take down a display we had of our Iditarod books we put up in early March. I’m planning three more displays to have in the library and my display case. One will be on Earth Day, one will be on Robotics, and one will be to celebrate Beverly Cleary’s 100th birthday coming on April 12. You can show a very recent clip from ‘Good Morning America’ to your students or find others to show. Check out YouTube for other ideas to promote Beverly Cleary and her books.

I hope you had a great spring vacation.

Audrey

Currently reading:
Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit
A New Song by Jan Karon (Book 5 of the Mitford series)
Jane of Lantern Hill by L. M. Montgomery

Biographies

Hello!

What does your biography section look like? Do you have a lot of the Childhood of Famous Americans series and not much else? Are they beat up and unattractive?

Check out the biography section and see what grade levels are represented. When you study science, make sure you have science biographies. Some schools have large sports biography sections. It can be hard to know WHO to put in the biography section. Here are some guidelines and then some suggestions.

Guideline 1: Make sure you have a number of presidents of the United States represented. I would hope that most (if not all) of them are represented.

Guideline 2: Check that there are biographies on all reading levels, even beginning readers.

Guideline 3: Look for biographies on people who are good role models and who will be known throughout the years. Think about Malala, Mother Teresa, Mark Zuckerman, Bill Gates, etc. It may be that your community has someone who is important. There might be a biography written about them.

Guideline 4: Sports people are fine, but many of them are short term as far as popularity goes. If you have a lot of sports biographies, you may need to weed often and purchase often to keep it updated.

Guideline 5: There are sets of Christian biographies that focus on Christian leaders. We put the Trailblazer series in our biography section. Also look for the Heroes of the Faith series. The ones we have in our library are white with a maroon strip at the top. People included in this set are John Bunyan, Fanny Crosby, Jim Elliot, Billy Graham, C. S. Lewis, David Livingstone, Martin Luther, D. L. Moody, Samuel Morris, John Newton, Charles Spurgeon, Corrie ten Boom, Mother Teresa, Sojourner Truth, and John Wesley. There are more, but this list will give you some ideas of what the series is like.

Guideline 6: Check to see if you have biographies on Ellen G. White. There may also be biographies on other SDA leaders to include, too.

Suggestions: If you need to update your lower reading level biographies, I would urge you to consider a set we have gotten this year. Brad Meltzer has begun to write biographies for young readers. He started writing them after going to the store with his young daughter and finding lots of ‘princess’ shirts and clothing. He began to wonder where the strong women role models were for his daughter. When he didn’t see what he wanted, he began to write them. His series is titled “Ordinary People Change the World”. Titles so far are “I Am Amelia Earhart, I am Lucille Ball, I am Abraham Lincoln, I am Rosa Parks, I am Albert Einstein, I am Jackie Robinson, I am Helen Keller, and I am Martin Luther King, Jr.” Coming next September will be “I am George Washington, and I am Jane Goodall.” The illustrations are cartoonish and there are speech bubbles in the text, but the information is solid and our first and second graders love them. I have also given them to lower readers in third and even fourth grade.



Another set we got is published by Scholastic and is called Rookie Biographies.




I hope you enjoy your biographies and consider updating them from time to time.

Have a great Spring Vacation!

Audrey

Currently reading:
The Indiscretions of Archie by P. G. Wodehouse
The Millionaires by Brad Meltzer
Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit
These High, Green Hills by Jan Karon (Book 3 of the Mitford series)

Ideas to Promote Use of the Library

Hello!

A few years ago I found some ideas for encouraging reading that sounded pretty easy and fun. Some of these ideas are things that you could have parents or students set up for you which also promotes ‘buy in’ to reading. I found these ideas in some of my library journals and books.

Enjoy them. If you have other ideas, please let me know and I’ll add them to this list.


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. You could let students record book talks for books. A great book report idea! You can buy just sound chips from various resources if you are interested.

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. Vendors’ catalogs have small pictures of the covers of their books. Cut out all the pictures of books that the library owns or just books that you feel would be appropriate, laminate them and glue them to clothes pins or large paper clips. 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.

6. If your school allows students to use their cell phones or tablets, try using QR codes. You can type a book report or record a sound byte for a book, then attach a QR code to the URL. Readers can just aim their phones at the QR code and get the information. You may have seen these in magazines where an advertisement has a QR code to direct you to their websites. If you don’t know how to do this, let your older children figure it out. Once you’ve done a few, it will be very easy to do.


I hope you have a great week.

Audrey

Currently Reading:
The Indiscretions of Archie by P. G. Wodehouse
The Millionaires by Brad Meltzer
Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit
These High, Green Hills by Jan Karon (Book 3 of the Mitford series)

Making Bookmarks

Hello,
I like to have bookmarks on hand for the students to take when they come to the library. It can get costly, though. Tammy Worcester gave a presentation at a conference and one of the ideas was how to make your own bookmarks using Powerpoint slides.
Open up Powerpoint and change the slide to a blank slide. (Enjoy the pictures on the side. I have dual monitors and when I capture a screen shot, it also captures the second monitor picture.)



Next, click and turn on the ruler option. Mine looks like this. I went to the View tab and clicked Ruler.



Draw a line down the center. Go to the Insert Tab, and click Shapes. Choose the Line or the Line with an arrow and draw your center line.



Then, draw two more lines on each side dividing them equally making four equal sections.



Next, insert text boxes into one section and design your bookmark. Use clip art and students won’t need to cite sources. Copy and paste your bookmark into the other sections, or design each bookmark to be different.





I like to print them onto cardstock and then cut them apart on the lines. This is a good idea for book reports, too. Students can make bookmarks to encourage others to read the book they read.

At times a book I read has a recipe in it and I am usually asked for the recipe since only one student can check out the book. I have put the recipe on bookmarks for students to take. What information do your students need to study? Make a bookmark or have them make one.

If you want double-sided bookmarks, just add a second slide divided in exactly the same place, create your second side and print it double-sided.

I hope you enjoy this creative idea and also an extra day this year. Happy Leap Year Day!

Audrey

New Books, and I Mean NEW

Hello!
I have some new books for you. I told you about the Sunflower Award that I do here at Rogers. I only have a handful of students who are actually reading the books, but I’m glad to have some great stories for those few readers. I am now reading the books I plan to use for next year. All of these books have been published in 2016.


Pax by Sara Pennypacker. I just finished one called Pax by Sara Pennypacker. You might recognize her for her Clementine series, which are fun books, too. This book is very different from those, though. I was curious about it because there is a lot of buzz in the library publications about it. When I first saw the book, I thought it looked nice, but not my style. After seeing it multiple times and having a friend who teaches English ask me about it, I finally decided to order it and read it. I am so glad I did.
Pax is about a fox and a young boy. War comes to the area and the father enlists. Mother has died, so Peter, the boy, is sent to live with grandfather. Grandfather won’t tolerate a pet fox, so father makes Peter release Pax into the wild. Pax has been raised as a pet dog, so he isn’t accustomed to being alone in the wild, and Peter knows this. The story moves chapter by chapter between Pax and Peter. While I read a chapter about Pax, I was wondering how Peter was doing, and then reading about Peter, hoped Pax was OK.
If you decide to get a copy, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.


The Skeleton Tree by Iain Lawrence. For those who enjoy a good survival story. This takes the story of Hatchet by Gary Paulsen to a new level. In this story, twelve-year-old Chris starts on a sailing trip with his uncle. He discovers that an older boy, Frank, is also along. Within 48 hours, the boat sinks and Chris and Frank are the only survivors. They have no radio, no food, not much of anything. Frank seems to hate Chris but they need to get along if they are going to survive. In the wilderness of Alaska, there are many problems to overcome, the least of which is the weather. This book has a twist that I wasn’t expecting which makes things really interesting.


Ruby Lee and Me by Shannon Hitchcock. The year is 1969 and integration has come to Sarah Beth Willis’ town. Her best friend in the summertime is Ruby Lee, a black girl, but when school begins, their friendship will not be the same. Black children and white children are not best friends at school. Sarah just doesn’t see how or why this should be. But there are a lot of changes for Sarah this year. Her little sister, Robin, has been in a very bad accident and Sarah believes it was her fault. The family has to sell their home and move to a smaller one in town in order to pay hospital bills. Sarah has to adjust to all these changes plus a new school and a new teacher. At the end of the book, the reader discovers that the story is true. It is the author’s story.


Lizzie and the Lost Baby by Cheryl Blackford. During World War 2, children who lived in London were sent to the country to stay with strangers there in order to keep them safe. Lizzie and her brother end up in a foster home where the people aren’t unkind, but don’t really want them. One of the people they stay with appears to be crazy. Nearby are a family of Travelers, or gypsies. They have their own problems and due to one problem, a baby is left alone. Lizzie finds the baby and tries to help by taking the baby to her foster parents. The crazy lady believes this is her baby who died a few years before, and she keeps the baby. Meanwhile, the gypsies are searching for their lost child. Soon, Lizzie meets with Elijah, the brother of the lost baby. She realizes who the baby belongs to, but now is unsure of what to do. Should she give the baby back to Elijah, or should she just keep quiet about it?


I hope you have a great week.

Audrey

Currently Reading
The Head of Kay’s by P. G. Wodehouse
In a French Kitchen by Susan Herrmann Loomis
Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit
This Side of Wild by Gary Paulsen

Policies for the Library

Hello,

I have talked about library policies previously a time or two. If you have library policies in place right now, just go and see if you need to do any updating on them, then you can quit reading.
If you don’t have library policies in place, then this is the time to get started. I suggest that you have two policies. One will be the policy for your students and any community patrons that you have. These can also be separated if that is easier for you. I have separate policies for students and community patrons because I have a good number of community patrons. I have them update their information each year and their ‘card’ is renewed yearly.

STUDENT POLICY
In your policy for students, include simple things like how many books may be checked out at a time and how long the check-out period will be. If they do not return a library book, what will the consequences be? Will you charge fines? How many times may a book be renewed?

COMMUNITY POLICY
You may not have community patrons, but you never know. Do you have any homeschooling families who might want to use your library? If you need a community policy, include the same things and add the best times for a community patron to check out. In mine, I also let them know that if a student or teacher needs a particular book that they happen to have, we may need them to return it before their due date since the our students and teachers have priority to library materials. I also limit the loan of seasonal books and particular subjects if a classroom has need of them.

SELECTION POLICY
I have a selection policy that gives a description of criteria we use to select our materials and the care of our materials.

RECONSIDERATION POLICY
The last policy is one that seems to be fairly unimportant, but is not. It is the Reconsideration Policy. This policy is in place in the unlikely event that a parent or student feels that a particular book or material is not appropriate for the school library. Most of us when faced with a particular book might just say, “You’re right,” and just discard the book. However, this practice opens the door to anyone just saying that a particular book should be discarded when they haven’t even read it or know what it is about. It really is much easier on the librarian or teacher to say, “You may be right about that. Will you please fill out this form and I will take it to our committee and we will reevaluate the book?” This puts the power in the teacher’s corner and the person who is complaining will need to justify their complaints. If you happen to agree with the parent, you can also add, “I’ll just temporarily set it aside until the process is over,” and then you can find a place for the book. Once the form has been submitted, then take it to your committee. Your committee can be your school board, or if you are in a larger school, choose a parent, a teacher who teaches at the grade level the book is appropriate for, and your principal to help you. Most likely you will never need to meet with your committee since this will probably never happen. But it is good to be ready for an unlikely event. You have fire drills regularly? Have you ever had a fire? Probably not, but you are ready for them in case.

I wish many times that I had had a Reconsideration Policy in place at my first school. A parent came in to complain about a particular book and brought our pastor with him. I spoke up for the book and asked if either of them had read the book. No, neither one had. There was a bad word in the book, but the story was very inspiring. The father and pastor only saw the bad word and came running. If I had a Reconsideration Policy, they would have had to stop and think about the material instead of just reacting. It would have helped me to diffuse the situation in a positive way, rather than being put on the defensive.

I will attach my policies for you to look over. If you need a policy and like how mine reads, please feel free to tweak it to fit your school.

Have a great week!

Audrey

Currently Reading
The Head of Kay’s by P. G. Wodehouse
In a French Kitchen by Susan Herrmann Loomis
Locally Laid by Lucie Amundsen
The Gold Shoe by Grace Livingston Hill