New Picture Books

Greetings! This is the last post for the year 2011. My next one will be in the year 2012. I have now completed three years of emails and blog posts now. I have a good time doing this and I know many of you have been helped because you write and tell me so. Thanks so much for the kind words. I enjoy helping where I can.
Today I will booktalk a few more books for you. These are mostly all new books and I hope you see something that catches your eye.

I just got this book called ‘Balloons Over Broadway’. It didn’t look like a book that I would normally be interested in, but then I saw the last line on the cover; the story of the puppeteer of Macy’s parade. I know I am not the only fan of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, and this book tells the story of how the whole thing began and how it has grown over the years.

The two books shown below are part of a set of books about a period in history. The cover looks a little bit like a newspaper and is titled “Actual Times” and the date of the paper is the date of the event. Don Brown writes the story and illustrates it so people will know what the event was like. These titles are ‘Gold! Gold from the American River!’ and ‘America is Under Attack’.

“I Will Come Back for You” is the story of a Jewish Italian family during World War ll. The father was taken and detained in a village in the mountains and the family went into hiding on a farm. The story actually happened to the author’s mother. The dust jacket reads, “Based on the experiences of the author’s own family, this deeply moving book deals with a difficult subject in a way that is accessible and appropriate for young readers.” The endpapers have photographs from the family album of the people in the story.



Steve Jenkins is one of my favorite nonfiction authors. His illustrations are torn and cut paper collage like his other books, but so well done that you have to look carefully to notice this. These two books are about the eating and sleeping habits of different creatures. If you already are a Steve Jenkins fan, you will enjoy these two books. If you aren’t a fan yet, just pick one up at a bookstore and leaf through it. I advise starting with “Actual Size”.

“Saving Audie” is the story of a young pit bull who was about to be raised to be part of a dog-fighting ring until the owner was caught. Audie was rescued by a kind couple and is now able to trust other humans and even help other dogs in different ways. The book also contains information about pit bulls and information about the other dogs from the dog-fighting kennel and how they are doing as well.

Claire Nivola has written a book about the Italian village Orani on the island of Sardinia where her father was born. She writes about the times her family would visit the relatives and explore the town and surrounding countryside. The author describes ordinary life in the village with her family and the other villagers. Note that the book contains a drawing of a dead man on a bed with mourners dressed in black surrounding him. The story does not dwell on this event, rather it includes it along with festivals, and weddings as part of the daily life in Orani.

If you have ever been to Niagara Falls, you may have seen the movie about the different people who have tried to go over the falls and you will also know that few have done this and lived through the experience. “Queen of the Falls” is about Annie Edson Taylor who accomplished this amazing feat. Chris Van Allsburg has written and illustrated Annie’s story and also included other information about the barrel riders who have been successful.

What do you do with a runt piglet that was too weak to push his siblings aside so he could eat? Why, bring him to the house and let the family pet dachshund nurse him, of course. Pink thrived with his doggie mother and eventually returned to the farm although he did take his dog bed with him. Students will love the photographs of Pink and his two families, pig and dog.



At first this book did not attract my attention, but during the Scholastic book fair last fall, I finally sat down and leafed through it. The book contains a number of stories of extraordinary animal friendships. Some are long-term friendships, and others are shorter, but it is very interesting to see some of the animal combinations that make some unlikely friendships. The photographs are stunning. This is a good book for all ages. Nonreaders can study the pictures and more advanced readers can read the text as well as enjoy the pictures.




I hope you find something that is of interest in this group of books. I also hope you have a restful Christmas vacation. I’ll see you back here in January 2012.
Christmas Blessings,
Audrey

Library Holes and Weeding

Where are the holes in your library? Do you know what kind of books you have and what kind of books you need to update or weed? This week I will give you some very general guidelines for weeding your library. If you want to go into more depth, you can do a search on the internet for weeding the library.

I found that The Crew Method (for weeding my library) is fairly easy for me to use and is intended for small to medium sized public libraries. In our even smaller school libraries, we need to take these weeding guidelines with a pinch of salt, but they are still useful and a good place to start. I actually printed out the 93 pages and put them in a binder for quick and easy reference. I will admit that I need to weed my library as much or more than you do, so this is me preaching to myself as much as giving you some guidelines! You can find this at https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/pubs/crew/index.html.

Here are some very general guidelines to keep in mind as you weed your library.
1. Remove books that have wrong information in them. No information is better than wrong information.
2. If a book is being used in your library, keep it. If it is something that is valuable to your school, keep it. (Even if students don’t use it.) For example, a local author donated a book to your school, or it is precious to someone.
3. You don’t have to throw away a book that you wish to keep. The weeding guidelines just help you get started. The decision is ultimately yours. Just because a book is old does not mean it isn’t good.
4. It is much easier to weed someone else’s library rather than your own. If you are finding that you just can’t throw books away, get an outside opinion.
5. It is OK to throw books away.
6. If a book is dirty, torn, marked up, etc., throw it away. If you need that particular title, buy a newer copy.

Reference books such as encyclopedias may soon be outdated since the latest information can be quickly obtained from an online encyclopedia. Take a look at the encyclopedia in your library. How old is it? If it is more than five years old, take a longer look at how you use it. (Or do your students use it at all?) Now you have a decision as to keep it on the shelves or not. If no one uses it and you just dust it off every year or so, it might be nice to have a little extra room on the shelf. If the encyclopedia you have is from 1970, just throw it out. I give you permission.

Do you have anything in the 100s? This can be a difficult section for an elementary library. Look for books on computers and books on feelings like I mentioned in last week’s post. Try to have SOMETHING in that section.

Your religion section should be easy. BUT check to see what kind of books you have there. Do you have 40 old devotional books sitting there unused? Maybe it is time to weed them drastically. Go to the Adventist Book Center and see what is there. If you can, take a couple of students to help you choose. This will be fun for them and they will be more likely to read them which will promote them to others.

The Social Science section should be pretty easy, too. Careers, military, immigration, economics, education, law, customs, etiquette, folklore, and holidays all belong here.

Check the Language section (400s) of your library. Do you have ANY books on language or in other languages? Kids love to look at this kind of book. One suggestion I have is to get books from the series “The First Thousand Words in . . .” Let the students choose which ones you start with. These have drawings for each word and are fun to look at.

In Pure Science (500), you probably have lots of nature books. Check that you have science experiments for the kids to try. What about math books? Space, astronomy, earth sciences, botany, and animals all belong here. This is often quite a large section.

It is also easy to find books for the Applied Sciences (600) section. Medicine, health, cars, transportation, agriculture, pets, home economics, and cookbooks will all go here. This is usually a very popular section, especially the pets section. Students love reading about dogs and cats and horses, but don’t leave out other pets. I add to this as students ask for particular books. “Do you have any books on how to take care of rabbits?”

Arts and recreation is again another easy section to fill. Think art, music, collecting things, drawing, photography, games, and sports. Also, think riddles and joke books. You can see that this is easy to fill. We put I Spy books here and watch them leave and come back on a regular basis.

Literature (800) is the easiest to fill unless you have a separate section for Fiction or Stories. I have all our stories cataloged as 813 and therefore this is our largest section. If you have a separate section for Fiction, then you would put poetry books and any books by non-American authors in the 800s and the stories in the separate Fiction section.

Last comes the 900s, History and Geography. Check that facts are accurate, watch for changes in country names, borders, etc. If you put your Biographies here, check that you have the biographies you need for the curriculum. Do you have all the presidents? What about world leaders? Do you have books on the different states and countries? Those are the kind of books you will look for to fill any gaps in your library.

Previously I have been asked if there are any guidelines as to how many books should be in each section and I found the following information. I put the percentage recommended and in parentheses I put the number of titles for a library of approximately 4000 books. (I did not do this for the high school side.)

Dewey Classification Subject Grades K - 6 Grades 7 - 12
000 - 099 General Works and Reference 2 – 5 % (80 – 200) 6 – 8%
100 – 199 Philosophy, Psychology .5% (20) 1 – 2%
200 – 299 Religion & Mythology 1 – 2% (40 – 80) 1 – 2%
300 – 399 Social Sciences, Folklore, Holidays5 – 10% (200 – 400) 10 – 15%
400 – 499 Language .5% (20) 2 – 5%
500 – 599 Pure Science 10% (400) 5 – 10%
600 – 699 Applied Science 10% (400) 5 – 10%
700 – 799 Fine Arts, Recreation 5% (200) 5 – 10%
800 – 899 Literature (not including fiction)5% (200) 5 – 10%
900 – 999 History, Geography, Biography 20% (800) 20%
F Fiction, Stories 20% (800) 20 – 25%
E Easy books, Picture books 20 – 25% (800 – 1000)

This chart is taken from Administering the School Library Media Center by Betty J. Morris, 2004; page 339.

Please keep in mind that these are just guidelines. We do want our libraries to be well balanced as much as possible so that makes this helpful, but we are very likely to have more than 40 – 80 books in our religion section. Take a quick inventory of the Dewey numbers you have and how many in each section. (Students love to do this kind of thing!) How many books in the 100’s, 200’s, etc? That will give you the approximate number of books you have and will also give you a general idea of the balance of your collection. You will see at a glance where the gaps in your library are.

I hope this quick overview of the sections and the kinds of books in each of them hasn’t been too boring. This is the kind of post you might print out and refer to on occasion or check it out on my blog.
Have a great week,
Audrey

Books for the Library

Greetings!
I have been processing some books for our library and I want to share some wonderful titles that you might decide to purchase for your library. My choices this week are totally random in subject matter. I just picked books that I liked particularly well.

One set of books I recently bought is a great set for your career section. The set is published by ABDO Publishing and each book shows the different tools that each professional uses. The book is appropriate for nearly all ages although the reading level is low. We are placing these books in the Everybody books section so the younger children will have some information on careers. If you don’t have any books on career choices, that is a section to improve.



I found an article years ago about a traveling library in Africa that uses camels to haul the books. I thought this was so interesting and cut the article out, put it away, and promptly forgot about it. Last year I was culling a huge pile of papers at home and came across the article. I went to the internet and did a little research and found a book called “My Librarian is a Camel” by Margriet Ruurs. I bought the book and was fascinated by the different ways books are brought to people all over the world. Libraries come by boat, bus, train, wheelbarrow, elephant, donkey, and even bicycle. Photographs show each country and the ways books come to the people who live in remote areas. It makes me feel so fortunate to live where books are so readily available.

Someone recommended the book “Me . . . Jane” by Patrick McDonnell to me and I decided to get it. It is the story of Jane Goodall and her childhood decision to become a naturalist and work with gorillas. Some of her childhood drawings and writings are shown in the center of the book. The story is simple and sweet and I wholeheartedly recommend it.


How’s the pet section of your library? Do you even have one? That is a section that is popular with our students so I try to keep an eye out for good books on pets. I found a set on large dogs that I like. Each book tells about the dog and the history of the breed, the characteristics of the breed, and the pros and cons of owning that particular breed of dog. Photographs make this a great choice for your library.


Do you have any books to help your children understand relationships with others? There is a lot of talk about bullying in schools and as much as we’d like to think it doesn’t happen in our schools, the truth is that we are not immune. This set has one book on dealing with bullies, and other subjects that are worthwhile to discuss in class. Respecting others and treating them with kindness is how our Christ modeled his behavior for our example. This set of books written by Susan Martineau is called the Positive Steps set and is published by Smart Apple Media. I also have a page from the inside of one of the books so you can have a glimpse of the layout.



I cannot resist a good children’s cookbook. They are so much fun and kids love them. If you don’t have any children’s cookbooks, I would urge you to consider adding a couple to your library. Then watch and see how they are used in your area. I would bet that you end up adding more.

While we are talking cookbooks, think about getting some to represent the different cultures and countries that our students study. The two books shown below are easy to handle and have recipes and other cooking information and are specifically meant for children.


Check your library and see where your gaps are. Then keep an eye out for books to fill the gaps and make your library a better resource for your school.

Hope you have a great week.
Audrey

Ellen G. White books and a Holiday idea

Greetings!

I received a question this week from a reader asking if there was a preferred way to catalog the books of Ellen G. White. I think the easiest way to do this is to use a ‘W’ on the top line and then the abbreviation for the particular book. For example, you would catalog The Acts of the Apostles like this:

W
AA

I found in the Index to the Writings of Ellen G. White a list of her books and the abbreviations for many of them. If you would like this list, check in the first few pages of your index to find them. If you don’t have an index and would like a copy, let me know and I will send you a copy. There are other books that aren’t listed there, but you can follow the general pattern and catalog them accordingly.

I found an idea in a library journal that you might like to use to encourage reading over the holidays. One librarian used the song “The 12 Days of Christmas” as her start and then selected 12 recently published books to recommend to the students. She called it her “12 Books of Christmas” reading list and posted this in the school library, in the newsletter, as a bulletin board display, and made a bookmark for the list. I might not use recently published books, but would choose books that I wanted the students to read or books that were favorites of mine. The point of the reading list is to keep books and reading on their minds through the holidays. Try it out and see if you like it.

Encourage books as gifts and consider starting a stash of books that you can use for gifts. When I have a book fair, I use my points to get books from the fair and put them in a separate cupboard to use for gifts.

I hope you have a great week.

Audrey

Authors and Books

Greetings!
I want to share some authors and their books with you this week.
It is difficult to find books that span the ages of our children in grades 1 – 8, but Jerry Pallotta is able to do this easily. He writes alphabet books. I know that sound childish, but his books also include a lot of information about the subjects he is writing about. If you aren’t familiar with his books, I highly recommend them. I know of teachers that have their students make similar books for class projects and use these as a guide. Some of his titles are ‘The Underwater Alphabet Book, The Spice Alphabet Book, The Bird Alphabet Book, The Desert Alphabet Book, The Flower Alphabet Book, The Ocean Alphabet Book, and The Icky Bug Alphabet Book.’ He also has some math books that kids enjoy such as the “Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Fractions Book.” The fractions are shown using a Hershey’s chocolate bar.



Gail Gibbons writes and illustrates informational books for younger children. She researches her subject and simplifies it for her readers. She has many, many books out and you can find them online and choose the subject or subjects you can use best in your school. I like the one about apples and the one about berries, but the one about monarch butterflies is good, and the one about bees is great. You can see how much I like her books, can’t you. I really like the one about pottery. It is called ‘The Pottery Place’ and she has even made the endpapers look like splatters of clay slip. Gail describes the process of making things out of clay and the firing and glazing process. In her book ‘Stargazers’ we learn about stars, constellations, astronomers, telescopes and more. All that in 32 pages! There are many more books of hers, but you get the idea.


Aliki also has many books that she writes. She, like Gail Gibbons, researches, writes and illustrates her books. The first book I noticed of hers was ‘A Medieval Feast’. I love the descriptions of the preparations needed for a feast for a king and the illustrations are so colorful. There is a simple text for the story, but further information is included in the illustrations. In her book ‘How a Book Is Made’, she goes through the entire process of writing a book, the editing process, the publishing and the printing until finally the book is done and ready to read. ‘Corn is Maize’ tells the history of corn and how we use it today. At the end of the book she describes how to make a corn husk doll and corn husk wreath.

Beverly Cleary wrote the Ramona Quimby books and I hope you all have heard of them and even have them already in your libraries. If you don’t, it would be a good collection to have. The Beezus and Ramona movie that came out recently spurred a new interest in the books. They are also great read aloud books. Anyway, most people know about those books, but she wrote four books for young children about twins Janet and Jimmy which are wonderful. The Growing-up Feet, Two Dog Biscuits, The Real Hole, and Janet’s Thing-a-ma-jigs are all so good I could not tell you my favorite. Beverly Cleary has the ability to write exactly what a child would think and feel so the stories are very real. Other books of hers are about Henry and his dog Ribsy, and ‘Dear Mr. Henshaw’ with the sequel ‘Strider’. She wrote a few books that stand alone such as ‘Socks’, ‘Muggie Maggie’, ‘The Mouse and the Motorcycle’, ’Mitch and Amy’, ‘Ellen Tebbits’, ‘Emily’s Runaway Imagination’, ‘The Luckiest Girl’ and ‘Fifteen’. The last two books are about girls in their teens. I believe that you can’t go wrong with a Beverly Cleary book.

One last author that can span the grade levels is Peter Spier. His books are often wordless or nearly so and filled with pictures. Everyone will enjoy looking at the books and little ones learning to read will be able to ‘read’ the story for themselves. I am showing his book ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ which has the lyrics to our national anthem illustrated in great detail. However, my favorites include ‘Noah’s Ark’ (look for the comical end when many rabbits leave the ark), ‘Rain’ (somehow he makes the beginning of the book look a bit dustier than the end when the rain has cleaned it all up), ‘Christmas’, and ‘Jonah’. There are more, but these are good ones to start on.

I hope this information has been helpful to you and you got some good ideas of books to put in your library. I know I had a good time looking at these again.
Check out my blog at sdalibrarian.blogspot.com. All these weekly emails are archived there. I would be pleased for you to become a follower, too.
Have a great week!
Audrey

The Making of a Good Reader

Greetings!

We all want our students to be good readers. You can buy all the programs, incentives and other gizmos you want, but as far as I am concerned, there is one best way to become a good reader. That is to READ. Since most of us don’t have extra money to throw away, there is a great FREE way to accomplish this. Sustained Silent Reading. Drop Everything and Read. It doesn’t matter what you call it. Daily silent reading will do it.

There are some important steps or rules to follow. These are NOT for the students as much as for the teacher to follow. I personally guarantee that if you follow the rules I am about to give you, you will have a 98% success rate and have increased your students reading levels by nearly two grade levels in reading over the course of the school year.

First, you need to make time in your daily schedule for silent reading. This could be part of the reading class or after lunch or anytime that works, but it needs to be scheduled just like you do for all the other subjects. If you decide to use part of the reading time, still schedule it along with a time slot. Write it on the schedule so you and the children will see it every day. Do your ultimate best to never miss a day. These actions will visibly show the students that this is important to you. It is important enough that we do this every day, not just when we feel like it or if we happen to have enough time, then we will have silent reading. We do this every day.

Second, let students choose what they want to read. The reading needs to be self-selected, not assigned. This is not the time to read the social studies assignment! Encourage students to gather enough reading material to last for the period so they won’t be getting up and walking around and distract others. Young children may need 10 – 15 books or magazines at arm’s reach. Older ones may only choose to have a chapter book. You may need to decide if you will allow students to bring reading material from home or not.

Third, YOU NEED TO READ TOO. If you grade papers or work on lesson plans and don’t read during this time, you send a very loud message that even though you SAY reading is important, you don’t really believe it. Find a book that you have been wanting to read and pull it out and read every day. You are the model for these kids. If you are afraid you will go overtime if you start reading, I totally understand. I kept a timer handy and set the timer for the specified time every day so I could read in peace and not continually have to be watching the clock. I waited until everyone was settled, and then set the timer and we all started reading.

If you haven’t done this yet, I would recommend starting with 5 minutes for grades 1 – 3 and 10 minutes for grades 4 – up. After a week or so, increase the time until you are reading for 15 – 20 minutes every day for grades 3 – up. First and second graders may not all be able to read for that long, but you know what your students are capable of doing.

This is not Reading Buddies where older students read to younger ones. That is also a great program, but completely separate from this. If you have a variety of grades that includes students too young to read for the extended time slot, you may need to be a bit creative with them. Maybe a parent or volunteer can take them out of the classroom and read aloud to them during this time. Maybe this can be nap time. Maybe you set a silent reading period for 10 minutes, and then take the younger ones for a quiet class while older ones who wish to continue reading silently can do so.

A quick recap:
1. Schedule daily silent reading time and write it on the schedule.
2. Let students choose their own reading material.
3. The teacher must model and read during the time slot.
4. Read daily without fail.

If you follow these guidelines, you will turn out a classroom full of readers for FREE!

I hope you decide to have a silent reading period in your classrooms if you aren’t doing it already. It amazes me that many teachers do not seem to think this is important enough to schedule in daily. I taught third grade for 11 years and at the end of each year my third graders would leave my classroom with nearly all of them reading on a fifth grade reading level or close to it. The only thing I did that other teachers did not do was to have silent reading time every day. I loved that time of peace and quiet. It really helped lower stress levels in our classroom, mine included. After reading, we were all calm and would then continue our school day.

Have a great and peaceful week!
Audrey

Greetings!
Many times we find books that need some repair. I have found that most of the repairs just need a little glue. I will demo a few basic gluing repairs and hope that you will be inspired to do some of these yourselves.

I recommend buying glue for book repair rather than trying to use something like Elmer’s glue. It just does a better job and lasts quite a long time. Check with a library supply for book glue. I buy it in a large size and decant it into a small Ziploc plastic container. The glue doesn’t stick to the container and if it does dry on the sides, it peels right off. If you keep the container closed, it will not dry out for a long time.




When the text part comes away from the cover of a paperback book, it is an easy fix. Just take a paintbrush and paint the glue along the back of the spine.



Then press it firmly back in place and hold it in place with rubber bands.





I also stack the books as I repair them using boards and a weight. The boards I use are from a piece of smooth plywood that I had cut into pieces (9” x 12”) at Home Depot. They cut the boards for free, so my cost was the sheet of plywood and two bricks. I think I paid less than $5.00 for all of it. I wrapped the two bricks in butcher paper and duct tape to keep them from scratching the books.





At this point, if I have more books to repair, I will take the first books from the bottom and set them aside. All they need now is to dry. I usually let them dry overnight, but if you are in a hurry, it should be OK in a couple of hours. I just warn others to be gentle with it for a while.

Sometimes we have an area that needs to be glued, but we just can’t get a paintbrush in the area. This next book needs to be glued along the edge next to the spine. Here’s a trick I learned. Dip a knitting needle in the glue and insert it into the area that needs to be glued. You may need to dip a few times, but the area will be glued, and the glue on the needle will wash off easily.





Set aside either with rubber bands or under a weight to dry. This particular book also needs more work on the upper and lower spine. When the book is dry, I will use repair wings and repair corners to reinforce the spine and corners.

The supplies I used today were from Highsmith library supply and other sources. Book-Saver Liquid Plastic repair hinge is available in three sizes: 8-oz, quart, and gallon; Ziploc container from my house, and knitting needle, rubber bands, and paintbrush from any craft store. Boards and bricks were from Home Depot. Highsmith also has a book care and repair guide for under $10.00 which will guide you through basic repairs.

I hope this has been helpful to you. I know when I see something it makes much more sense. Have a great week.

Audrey