Celebrating The Celebrations

  This weekend I celebrate with Ruth Ayres at Discover Play Build.  and link with others who share their celebrations, too. I am grateful to Ruth for starting this meme that offers a place to celebrate together!

    The anticipation last week was high. It was Imogene's fifth birthday, and if you know or remember "almost" five year olds, you know they don't quite understand why the wait is so, so long. Well, it finally was here. Just the family celebrated on the 29th, her birth-day, including her favorite pumpkin pie! And the party was at my house just as wished, a bouncy house, with a water slide, friends and parents and a piñata. It was a success, clouds moved in to lower the temperature a little bit which was great. Here are the pictures, a celebration of Imi becoming five.

Poetry Friday - Celebrating Gifts

            I'm off with my daughter and the grand-girls next week to visit family, and wanted to be sure to share my latest special poem swap gift before I go! Thanks to Tabatha Yeatts who created the swap several years ago, those of us who participate have double pleasures each time: we get to create and send a special poem to someone else, and we receive awesome poem/packages in the mail. Considering much of my mail is opened as I stand by the re-cycle bin, this is a thrill.  

           Visit Tara Smith at A Teaching Life for all the Poetry Friday links today. This time, Tara shares a poem that means goodbye to summer, something especially poignant for teachers returning to their classrooms. Thanks for hosting, Tara!

           I've written sestinas, and have had my students write them too. It's a pleasing form, and often when one explores, I've found a story emerges. But I've never had someone write a sestina about me. I'm a bit embarrassed to share this from Doraine Bennett, who wrote and sent my latest swap surprise. It is a poem about me, and I am grateful to have been given such a compliment.

NF-For Presidents

   

              Thanks to Alyson Beecher's Non-Fiction Picture Book Challenge at Kidlit Frenzy, everyone shares wonderful non-fiction picture books.

          I'm visiting Jen Vincent's Teach Mentor Texts today, writing about using Alphabet Books in the classroom as mentor texts. Visit HERE.

              I see that others have read and reviewed this book, the Caldecott winner in 2000. But it's been  updated twice, most lately in 2012, and includes all the presidents. There are a number of books that can be used in the classroom that would help in election units of study. However, lately I've been wondering how to get kids excited without the worry of the huge controversy in this particular year's election. And I want to share this book, filled with information about all forty-four presidents. They've included fun facts, like how many have shared the same first name: six named James, four Johns and four Wiliams, and that eight different presidents were born in log cabins. It also shares that size doesn't matter whether considering height or weight. It talks about pets, spending habits, and looks. There are pages and pages of different kinds of trivia, and it is interesting to see the wide range of interests, both in music and sports, and those who seem more intellectual. 

           The story of the presidents includes short parts about the two who got in trouble, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, showing them in shame walking down the steps away from the Lincoln Memorial. And it mentions one of the worst presidents, Warren Harding. 
           The conclusion becomes a little more serious, what being the President really means, like wanting to turn lives around for the better, wanting to make the world a better place and making decisions as one looks toward the future. And final pages talk about the oath of office, something to consider and discuss. 
            David Small's cartoon-like illustrations change in tone with the topic. There are amusing pages like the one showing the "zoo of pets" that Theodore Roosevelt's children kept in the White House, and William Howard Taft's huge bathtub. And there are somber pages like the darker one of Lincoln standing in his own memorial.
            There is a page that shares who is featured in each page's illustrations, a timeline giving the dates each president served, and other small bits of information. And there is a bibliography. 
            You'll have to decide how this book might fit into classroom learning and discussions. It feels like a great start to me.

A Huge Slice of My Life-Reading!

       I'm slicing with the Two Writing Teachers community today. It's always a pleasure to read what everyone writes about their lives.

          A huge part (slice) of my life, all my life, is reading. I know that I read early, and in my earliest life I lived with my mother and her parents for a few years. There, being the only young one in the family, everyone read to me, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and my mother. I've written about that, and about my love for the bookmobile and the librarian who brought special books to me. And I collected books to read to my students, then my children, then students again. I am a reader! 

         In the past week especially many of the bloggers I read are writing about returning to work, or writing about their children going back to school, or both. They are gathering ideas for-first of-the-year books, to read aloud, to share, to hook students immediately. Perhaps another time I'll share a list of the read alouds I've used in the past. But today, I've been asked to share a press release, the announcement of the 2016 Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award finalists. This release explains the award and shares the books. I've read the first three and you can find my reviews of them on Goodreads; each is wonderful! The other two will certainly go on my TBR list. If you are someone who needs great YA books to read or to recommend to students, take a look at these finalists!

2016 Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award Finalists Announced

The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is pleased and proud to announce the finalists for the 2016 Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award for Young Adult Fiction.  Established in 2008 to honor the wishes of young adult author Amelia Elizabeth Walden, the award allows for the sum of $5,000 to be presented annually to the author of a young adult title selected by the ALAN Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award Committee as demonstrating a positive approach to life, widespread teen appeal, and literary merit.  

The 2016 Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award finalists are:

Monday Reading

           Every Monday, it's a pleasure to link up with a group that reviews books they want to share with others. Come discover new books!

          Visit Jen at Teach MentorTexts and Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders to see what they've been reading, along with everyone else who link up.   

Tweet #IMWAYR

        Perry T. Cook, eleven, has grown up in a minimum-security prison.  His mother is incarcerated; she’s a resident, in for manslaughter. But we also learn that she’s worked to attain a degree in social work while there. Perry has been allowed to stay in his own little room near the warden’s office. He’s close to many of the residents, has some rules (doesn’t every kid?), and is happy. He’s looking forward to his mom being released on parole. He’s a good kid with a great friend at school, Zoey, a young girl who sticks with Perry through everything, and he sticks with her too. The wrench thrown in the story comes from Zoey’s father, a new DA who’s recently discovered about Perry and believes it’s a terrible situation. He manages to get custody as a foster parent, and all of a sudden Perry and Zoey are together, all the time, and Perry is no longer in the only home he's ever known. This is the stepfather that Zoey has been complaining about!