Reading Makes Cents

     Our school is participating in a “Reading Makes Cents” Challenge as part of this year’s book fair events. The money raised during this challenge will be used to purchase children’s books that will be donated to the families at COTS (Committee on Temporary Shelter).

     Here’s the challenge: Can our students read 100,000 minutes by November 16th? It sounds like an impossible goal, but if all students were to read 30 minutes a day for two weeks, we could easily reach that goal before the end of our book fair. Can we do it? YES, WE CAN!

     Here’s how it works: we are asking students to bring in one penny for every 10 minutes of reading, so if your child reads thirty minutes one night, they would bring in 3 cents. We count all kinds of reading: reading by yourself, being read-aloud to, listening to books on cd, reading aloud to a younger sibling. Pennies may be brought in to the Learning Center, where we will count them daily. We’ll have a “Reading Thermometer” to show how close we are getting to our goal of 100,000 minutes.

Questions? Please contact Mrs. Scrimgeour 857-2140 or cscrimgeour@etsd.org

LET’S GET READING AND COUNTING OUR MINUTES!!

Degrees of Separation

Chances are you know the song DEM BONES , or at least have heard of it and can even sing some of it in your head: "the leg bone's connected to the knee bone, the knee bone's connected to the thigh bone..."  There are times when I am astonished by the connectedness of things, and not just bones!  For example:

Earlier this month we read the fun story Miss Brooks Loves Books! (and I don't) by Barbara Bottner, and illustrated by Michael Emberley; a delightful tale about a girl who doesn't like reading ("it's too pink, too kissy, too ...) despite her teacher's enthusiastic encouragement.  When her mother claims she is as stubborn as a wart, she finally discovers a book that speaks to her: none other than Shrek, written by William Steig (1907-2003) in 1990, well before the first movie was produced.  Naturally, we had to read Shrek next, as many of the children were familiar with the movie only. 

The children were on the look-out for similarities and differences between the book and the movie.  Princess Fiona is drastically different, by the way!

 

      The next week with the second graders we read Wumbers, wri10 (written) by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and illustr8ted (illustrated) by Tom Lichtenfeld, a fabulously clever book about playing with words (and numbers).    

 At first the children were puzzled, but as they recognized what the "words" were, they were eager for more on the following pages.  Such fun this book is.  It's 1derful!  The children thought it was gr8!

     Now here is where it gets weird; on the back pages the author and illustrator team dedicate this book to William Steig, whom we had encountered last week, because of his love for word games.  What a remarkable coincidence that William Steig should show up in two books.  And yet it's not all that surprising.  Steig wrote many books for children, including Pete's a Pizza, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Doctor De Soto, and The Amazing Bone, as well as two books of word puzzles, CDB! and CDC?

Published 1984

Published 1968

Some of them are quite complicated.  Here are two of the easiest examples:

"Are you okay?"  "Yes, thank you."  and
"I am a human being. You are an animal."

Sometimes we encounter these clever puzzles on license plates.  That's when I am thankful for traffic lights; it gives me enough time to figure out what the plate means on the car in front of mine.  I imagine that William Steig chuckled whenever he encountered a clever license!  I wonder what his was.

Why Picture Books Matter

    
     As we welcome students back to school this fall at Essex Elementary School, a special display of picture books and their storybook characters are crowded together in a hallway display case inviting children and adults to stop and look, spot their favorites and even discover some new stories to search for on their next trip to the library.   

  
     Picture books are like pirate booty: a treasure chest of visual and written delights!  They are a unique form of literature.   A common misconception is that picture books are for very young children, and that once a child can read independently they have outgrown this type of book.  Picture books encourage critical thinking and promote visual literacy with their sophisticated marriage of text and illustrations.  Children have the opportunity to practice their skills of inference and prediction, and are exposed to a rich vocabulary and creative uses of text (called author’s craft).  The subject matter is boundless; picture books range from humor to biography, from factual information to fantasy, from moral stories to deep tales of humanity.  The writing can be tender or beautiful or clever or hilarious. And the illustrations? There’s such a range of styles between illustrators; picture books are like a mini-trip to an art museum!

     
     When looking at picture books through the lens of the Essex Town School District’s End Policies, one can see that they address policies 1.2 Students will develop attributes for life-long learning in a complex world through:

• Creativity and innovation
• Critical thinking and problem solving

and 1.3 Students will demonstrate functional and critical thinking skills in the use and understanding of information, media and technology.

     Picture books are a very flexible medium for people of all ages, largely because of their visual nature.  And, most importantly, they are FUN!   If you are interested in reading more about picture books, read Show Me a Story! Why Picture Books Matter; Conversations With 21 of the World's Most Celebrated Illustrators, compiled and edited by Leonard S. Marcus, Candlewick Press, c2012.

     Another inspiring book is Anita Silvey's Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book: Life Lessons from Notable People from All Walks of Life (Roaring Brook, 2009).  Anita also writes an incredible blog called Children's Book-A-Day Almanac.


    





So, give your child a special treat!  Curl up in a favorite spot with your child and enjoy a picture book tonight. They’ll love you for it.  Check out www.readingrockets.org for a wealth of suggestions, or the suggested websites on my blogroll. Or better yet, ask your favorite librarian !

Welcome Back From All Your Friends!

I have to admit it - I have always loved stuffed animals.  Even now, if I see a really adorable stuffie I might stop to check it out.  It's usually the expression that's the clincher, but sometimes it's the color or the material.   Normally I can resist, except if it happens to be book related.  If the stuffed figure is a book character, I simply can't help myself.  Resistance is futile at that point.

I have been a librarian for many years, so it should be no surprise that I have quite a sizable collection by now.  A favorite thing I love to do at this time of year is to set them all on display in our huge case to welcome back the 400+ children that will stream through those doors in less than a week.  This display is so much fun!  Children and parents love it, spending a long time checking it out.  They recognize many but also discover a few stories they aren't familiar with.  It's a visual literacy of the soft kind!

Here are pictures from last year.  The challenge this year will be how to squeeze in a few more characters.  A trip to Livres Babar on Greene Avenue in Montreal this summer yielded a large Gruffalo (Julia Donaldson) and a small Wodney Wat (Helen Lester).  I will start work on it tomorrow.  I can't wait to get out all those old friends.  Bring on the stuffies!

Please don't let the pigeon drive that bus!

Campfire in the Learning Center ?!?

     How many of us love sitting around a campfire, gazing into the flames and listening to stories?  There’s a kind of peace that settles over all who sit within its ambiance.  For many it conjures up summer nights when bedtime is far away, crickets and katydids are playing their songs, the marshmallow bag is bottomless, and stars are glittering above.  Everyone becomes a skilled storyteller – there must be some kind of magic in its glow.

     But here in Vermont, in February, summer nights are only wispy pieces of dreams.  And winter is making us all a little cabin-crazy by now.  Our pitiful snowfall was just a tease this year.  So to brighten up our winter blues I had a week of “campfire in the library.”

  This is the third February I’ve held this event and it always generates a lot of amazement.  Children gather around the "fire.".  “Is it real?” some ask.  "How did I make it?" "Is that real wood?"  "Can we touch it?"  "Why am I doing this?"  Yes, the wood is real firewood, and that's the closest it gets to a true campfire.  I have used a string of lights with orange and red bulbs to simulate authentic color. Underneath the firewood pyramid sits a small fan that blows upwards on some strips of colored cellophane that are meant to mimic flickering flames.  I tell the children it's a real pretend campfire.  And with the lights off, it looks pretty close to real.  Real enough that the kids all hold out their hands as if to warm them.  And we have great fun pretending to roast marshmallows!  A great companion book is Kristine O'Connell George's Toasting Marshmallows: Camping Poems.

 I love to see the children enjoying the unexpected surprise of a campfire inside the school.  They’ve done their book shopping and have returned to the “fire” with their selections.  There they sit with their books and their peers in the warm glow of the fire.  This is what memories are made of; good feelings, happy times, and good friends.  Top it all off with a great book and a campfire!