Painful Predictions

Battle of the Kids' Books is about to begin and just like every year, Im obsessed.  I can't remember the last adult book I read because I've been madly reading this list.  It's the first year out of the five I've participated that I've finished all of the books before the battle begins!  This has only made it harder to pick my favorites, but I tried.  I only changed my mind once.
Here are my guesses although really I'd be happy with many different outcomes.  I have to say half are my very favorites which is why I'm happy to have someone else judge.  Also, as I'm typing this I'm having second (and third and fourth) thoughts about my choices.

Round 1 Winners:
Challenger Deep
Drowned City
Goodbye Stranger
I Crawl Through It
Most Dangerous
Nest
Rhythm Ride
Symphony for the City of the Dead

Round 2 Winners:
Most Dangerous
Symphony for the City of the Dead
Challenger Deep
I Crawl Through It

Round 3 Winners:
I Crawl Through It
Symphony for the City of the Dead
Gone Crazy in Alabama (back from the dead)

The Winner:
Symphony for the City of the Dead

My favorite thing is reading the books and my second favorite is reading the judges decisions.  In contrast to the ALA YMAS where we hear the results but not the thinking behind them, in Battle of the Kids' Books the authors write beautifully thoughtful responses to the two books they judged and their thinking behind the choice.  I love the passion and the commitment, I love the suspense.  I love this much time and effort put forth for these great books.
Thanks, BOB people for putting this together!

Book Challenges

Now that the ALA Youth Media Awards have been announced I can start reading for the new year! My goal last year was 100 books and I did it!  I count every single book I read no matter how short and I'm reading like it's my job because...librarian. So, I needed something new to focus on.  A fellow librarian told me about this reading challenge and I decided to make one for our Jefferson Jets.  Lots of students are already participating.  It's a fun way to read outside of the normal types of books we choose again and again.

If you need a hard copy, stop by the library or email me and I'll get one to you. 

I'll be filling my challenge sheet up for the next couple of months with books from the Battle of the the Kids Books contenders.  These books will get matched against each other in March Madness like brackets until a winner prevails.  So much fun!

THE BOYS WHO CHALLENGED HITLER by Phillip Hoose

CHALLENGER DEEP by Neal Shusterman

DROWNED CITY by Don Brown

ECHO by Pam Muñoz Ryan

GONE CRAZY IN ALABAMA by Rita Williams-Garcia

GOODBYE STRANGER by Rebecca Stead

THE HIRED GIRL by Laura Amy Schlitz

I CRAWL THROUGH IT by A. S. King

THE MARVELS by Brian Selznick

MOST DANGEROUS by Steve Sheinkin

MY SENECA VILLAGE by Marilyn Nelson

NEST by Kenneth Oppel

NIMONA by Noelle Stevenson

RHYTHM RIDE  by Andrea Davis Pinkney

SYMPHONY FOR THE CITY OF THE DEAD by M. T. Anderson

X: A NOVEL by Ilyasah Shabazz and Kekla Magoon

Mock Caldecott 2016

This fall we've been reading LOTS of picture books to prepare for our Mock Caldecott election that took place right before winter break.  Our list of books is here.

We had fun reading the stories together, discussing theme and story and the illustrations.  It's a wonderful thing to have a collection of shared literature to refer to and discuss.  In the end we voted. It's clear that this group loves a funny book, they're 6th graders after all.

Winner: I Yam a Donkey by CeCe Bell

Honor Books: The Bear Ate Your Sandwich by Julia Sarcone-Roach and Red, Yellow, Blue with a Dash of White too by Charles George Esperanza.

You can see what other Mocks have chosen here.  I can't wait to see and share what the committee chooses!

This Year in Books

This year my goal was to read 100 books.  I did it! Click on the picture to see the books I've read.  I abandon books I don't like right away so my books are all rated pretty high.  I find books to read by reading the blogs in the sidebar and from the Goodreads groups Mock Caldecott, Mock Newbery and Mock Printz.  There are some fantastic books for gifts on this list so click the link and see what you like.  What was your favorite book of the year?

AASL Reflection

I was lucky enough to attend the AASL this year in Columbus, OH.  I'd been to a couple of other national conferences so I knew the energy and focus that was going to be required as well as the fun and excitement I was going to experience.  I learned more than I'll ever be able to implement.  Here are my main take aways:
The opening session was presented by Heidi Hayes Jacobs who challenged us with the question,

"What decade are we preparing our students for?" 
There were a few things that she implored us to do:

• Sign up for Twitter (find me @SaraCoo08365060) s to connect with other professionals and read about current happenings.
• Have students view and create quality media as part of their learning and sharing all the time.
• Carve out space at school for a green screen (I'm going to paint a green wall in a library corner), recording room and Skype area.
• Have students create their own websites where they can store all of their work.

Her talk was inspiring and left me wanting to get back to school and get started!

In the break out session "Be a Research Rockstar!" Sarah Scholl and Sarah Wein (I'm going to do a research project on the most popular librarian name and my hypothesis is that Sara(h) is the winner) walked us through their collaborative research project,

Challenge and Change using Guided Inquiry.  The website has the presentation slides and the handouts that will give you an idea of this exciting research project that led kids through finding, researching and awarding a notable person who has faced challenge and changed the world around them.   It was obvious that the project led to deep and meaningful learning for the kids involved.  The presentation was a reminder of the importance of collaboration between teachers and librarians and a reminder to create research projects that go deeper into Bloom's Taxonomy instead of "research" being questions the students can easily find the answers to in an online search.

Joyce Valenza presented on leveraging your library with evidence.  I am going to try these two ideas this year:

• Have students film (with and iPad or their phones) "their" library.  The students walk around the library filming their favorite sections and telling about what the space means to them.  These can be posted online, shown during staff meetings, sent to administrators and politicians.  
• Create a "focus group" of students and prepare questions for them to answer about the library.  Film the discussion and use it to implement change in the library based on their discussions.

THe exhibit hall was filled with vendors and lines for free books.  I enjoyed getting to know librarians from around the country as we waited in line.  I brought home a whole suitcase full of free books, signed books and ARCs.  It was invigorating and meaningful.  I'm planning on going to Phoenix in 2017, hope to see you there!

Lessons in the Library

Last week I collaborated on a unit for 6th graders studying censorship.  They had all read the book Americus and were mostly in agreement that book censorship was a bad idea.  When I attended the American Association of School Librarian (yes, that's a real thing and yes it was awesome) conference in Columbus at the beginning of the month Heidi Hayes Jacobs encouraged us to create lessons around current events and since there has been much controversy about

A Fine Dessert we decided to have the kids read the book and decide if the book was appropriate and worthwhile for elementary schools.

I first read this book over the summer and thought it was beautiful.  The story takes us through four generations of families making the same dessert, blackberry fool.  I showed the book to our Home Ec. teacher and thought it would be perfect to read with her classes before making the dessert with the class.  Then at the beginning of this school year I read it aloud to my Mock Caldecott Group and I felt uncomfortable during the slavery scene but I quickly moved onto the next book in our stack to read that day.  Soon thereafter I started to read about the concerns online and I looked back over the book and agreed that in my opinion slavery was glossed over and made to look pleasant and should have been left out of a book with this cheerful tone. 

So, that is how we ended up analyzing it with the 6th graders. 
Here's what I learned from that.  It IS indeed our job as teachers, librarians and parents to protect kids from harmful ideas.  Not in the way we usually think of with books about controversial topics but when the books are telling lies.
After I read the book aloud to the kids (something all kids love and we stop doing much too early!) and we discussed the issue of how slavery was presented, we had the students talk in their groups and vote.  About half of the groups decided that the book was an inaccurate portrayal of slavery and should not be read to young students who might then think that slavery was okay.
What shocked and saddened me were the groups who decided it should stay with the justification that at least one group in each class gave: it was a "gentle introduction to slavery". Oh no. 

We need to avoid gentle introductions to things that are horrible and unjust.  We need to avoid lying to children and ourselves about things that make us uncomfortable.  We need to talk more about these issues and not ignore the uncomfortable feelings.  We need to listen to each other.

September Book to Read

I read all the time.  Sometimes I'm reading a young adult book, every once in a while a book aimed at actual adults, occasionally non-fiction in either of the previous categories but I'm always reading something.

There are books that I love but I'm not sure how to tell anyone else about them because I'm not sure how to put into words what I loved about them without telling the whole story.  This is why I don't write book reviews.  I just like to be able to hand someone a book and say, "Read this!" and have them believe me, read it and love it.  Luckily, I have the perfect job in which to do this.  I love almost every single thing about being a school librarian and this is one of the best.  Handing books to kids.  There's a Judy Blume quote that I love, "Librarians save lives: by handing the right book, at the right time, to a kid in need."  It applies to anyone sharing books of course, not just librarians. Teachers and especially in middle school-other kids...but it's a part of my job that I enjoy tremendously.

So, this book.  Goodbye Stranger is by Rebecca Stead who wrote When You Reach Me and then won the Newbery.  Goodbye Stranger is an important book.  It's a book that shows how easy it is to make mistakes with friends both old and new and how difficult it is to navigate this whole growing up thing.  

I think it would be a perfect book for a mother/daughter book club.  You could read it together, aloud or each on your own.  You could talk about it or even have a journal back and forth about the book.

I recently saw this post on the Growing Book by Book blog about a family dinner book club.  I think this book would be PERFECT for that kind of a discussion.  I'm hoping to launch the idea at our school.  We could wear cat ears and eat cinnamon toast and drink milkshakes while we talk about the temptations to push our own personal boundaries and values to create a connection with someone else.  I'll let you know if I pull it off!