It's Wednesday! What's happening in the AME Library?

 Right on the heels of our lessons on how to find a book on the shelves--signage is going up!

The fiction section is now marked with beginning and ending letters for each shelf.  The beginning and ending Dewey numbers, as well as the popular sections in between, will point the way to nonfiction books.

The catalog computer is now open!  Scholars can search for subjects, titles, authors, and genres they are interested in reading.

Our scholars are helping to decide what stays on our shelves!  We have thousands of books in our Everybody section that have been checked out less than once a year.  They will be on display on our tables during checkout-only weeks; if scholars choose them, they go back into circulation.  If not, then we will move them on to be used at other schools.  We are expecting our first shipment of new books soon--we need to make room for them!

Read-alouds this week:

PreK will be looking for two dimensional shapes (circles, squares, triangles, stars, rectangles, ovals) in Shelley Rotner's book.

Kindergarteners are listening to another Armadillo Readers' Choice, Hamsters Make Terrible Roommates! by Cheryl B. Klein.  We're pointing out animal needs, as well as communication skills that let others know what we need.

Our Fall Scholastic Book Fair has been moved to line up with our PTA Fall Carnival!  We will be open for shopping from November 1st through 4th.  More info to come, including volunteer opportunities.

See you in the stacks, 'Dillo Readers!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

 I realized that I hadn't read the most popular book in our library, so I remedied that this weekend.

Yep, that's right--I finally read Dog Man by Dav Pilkey!

I'm not going to lie--I was bored at first, and thought that I was going to have to have meetings with my students to discuss why they thought this series is so good.  But then I read the book through to the end, and I think I know why--Pilkey taps into all the potty humor that elementary kids find so funny.  The plot lines are ridiculous, but what did you expect from a series that has a main character that is half-dog, half-cop?  There's a cat nemesis, of course, but it doesn't stop there--Pilkey manages to include a grumpy police chief, evil mayor, hot dogs and a giant taco that come to life, and a not-at-all-subtle nod to the importance of reading packed into this first installment.  There's also the story-within-a-story of two friends making this comic and getting in trouble at school because of it, with a withering statement that "the classroom is no place for creativity"--social commentary, much?

I can also see why these books fly off the shelves for practical reasons.  The print is larger than most of our graphic novels; the art is relatable (there are lessons at the end to show you how to draw the characters); and the vocabulary is fairly decodable.  For readers who struggle with longer stories, finishing a short episode can provide a sense of achievement. 

My suggestion to teachers and parents who are quick to dismiss this series as "mind candy" is to treat these books as you would any other in your students'/ children's book bins.  Talk about the characters, settings, plots.  Skim the stories to look for harder vocabulary words and practice that dialogue with the students.  Ask them to storyboard their own Dog Man stories, incorporating characters, setting, conflict, and resolution.  Then pull a Captain Underpants book from your school library, and point out the same elements and sense of humor.  

Before you know it, they may be reading Nick Bruel's Bad Kitty series,  Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, James Patterson's Dog Diaries...but it has to start somewhere.  Why not a dog-man who solves crimes but can't help peeing in the police chief's office? 

It's Wednesday! What's happening in the AME Library?

 Ms Margocs won a Partners in Education (PIE) Grant last week!

She will be buying supplies soon to start our "Books of Our Reading Lives" project with ALL the scholars at Anderson Mill Elementary!  We will have book cover stickers and little journals to keep track of what we read this year.  More details to come!

This week, we bring attention to attempts to censor and ban books in libraries across the nation.  Did you know that Texas ranks first in book challenges?  Every parent has the right to manage their own children's reading lives--but they should not have the right to manage the reading lives of other families.  Here are some of the books in our library that have been challenged in our country and state; I bet you've read quite a few of them!

We are continuing to celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, and of course, we have plenty of books on Latin American countries and culture, as well as books by Latinx authors to share.

Our Fall Scholastic Book Fair dates have been shifted to accommodate our PTA Fall Carnival.  The book fair will now be open November 1st through 4th.

This week's read-alouds and lessons:

 PreK is making connections with the concept of family while sharing these books:

Kindergarten, first and second grades are thinking about who they are when the question "What are you?" is asked--and it's our first Armadillo Readers' Choice book of the year!  We are also asking kind questions to learn more about new friends.  (By the way, the author/ illustrator of What I Am is Divya Srinivasan--and she lives here in Austin!)

Third through fifth grades are learning how to search for nonfiction books using our online catalog, then finding the books on the shelves.  This will come in handy when they begin their research projects!

See you in the library, Dillo Readers!

 

It's Monday! What are you reading?

I was just about to put this book on display with our other new titles...but something about the cover, then the dust jacket blurb, made me put it in my bag to bring home this weekend.

After Zero by Christina Collins is yet another middle grade book that has taught me something new--this time, on the subject of selective mutism caused by anxiety.  In this work of fiction drawn from the author's own experience, we are privy to Elise's struggle in her own words.  Elise has been homeschooled until junior high, but finally convinces her mother to enroll her in public school.  She knows from visiting her friend next door that her home life is different, and those differences are magnified in school.  After some verbal faux pas, Elise decides it's just easier to speak as little as possible, and soon this silence becomes so woven into her identity that she feels trapped within this bubble she's created.

Collins has written a story that is more than just a platform for understanding selective mutism.  Elise eventually discovers why her mother doesn't act quite like other parents.  While the traumatic event isn't the direct cause of Elise's mutism, it left me wondering how it affected mother-baby bonding (maybe because I just watched a TV show on just that subject).  Did the effects set the stage for Elise's anxiety later on?  That's a question the author leaves hanging in the air for us...and for her characters to work out in the therapy they finally pursue.

It's Monday, and I learned a bit more about selective mutism and anxiety.  Have you learned something from a fictional character lately?  Did it give you a different perspective on mental health and healing?

It's Wednesday! What's happening in the AME Library?

The latest addition to our update is new signage!

Ms Margocs and Ms Moss went sleuthing on Amazon.  Ms Margocs found the acrylic circles, and Ms Moss found the letters.  We are trying to incorporate our school colors as much as possible as we renew our library space, so the color scheme will continue into our nonfiction as well--Mr Margocs will be helping out by cutting rectangular pieces of acrylic to mark the Dewey sections. 

This week's library visits:

PreK and Kindergarten are watching a book care video--we treat our books like babies!

First through fifth grades are spending more time in the shelves looking for good fit books, checking out, and reading.

Current display:

Scholars have been asking about book fair already!  We will be hosting our Fall Scholastic Book Fair the first week of November, to coincide with our PTA fall carnival.  Stay tuned for details!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

I picked up two books from my to-read pile this past weekend.

Jane Yolen's I Am The Storm, written with her daughter Heidi E.Y. Stemple, is a simple yet powerful book to share with children who may be frightened by the extreme weather events we seem to be seeing more of these days.  Descriptions of tornadoes, blizzards, wildfires and hurricanes are matched with the actions we take to stay safe in these events--hunkering down in a basement, bundling up and lighting a fire in the fireplace when the electricity goes out, evacuating to a campground, evacuating to a relative's house.  The actions are always followed by heading back a home that is still standing with repairs or cleaning up to be made; the book doesn't catastrophize the events.  The story ends with children seeing themselves as strong as the storms, able to weather them (pun intended), and appended with fact-loaded descriptions of each event.  It is a large, beautifully illustrated book that is perfect for a read-aloud with a class.

My other book is a re-published novel from 1976:

I'm not usually a romance reader, but Tisha: The Wonderful True Love Story of a Young Teacher in the Alaskan Wilderness has a lot of elements I do like in a book:  a strong female protagonist (especially set in a time when women weren't supposed to be strong!), a bit of adventure, indigenous culture, and a fight for righteous justice.  I'm only a few pages in, so we'll see if Robert Specht, the author, can convince me to read a "true love story"!

It's Monday, and two books gave me some happy escape time this week.  What are you reading?  Are you stretching out to a genre that may be uncomfortable for you?

 

It's Wednesday! What's happening in the AME Library?

 We are back to our regularly scheduled classes this week!  You can find our schedule on the library website.

PreK is having library in their classroom for the next three weeks.  We are reading aloud The Best Place to Read a Book, talking about book care, and checking out board books from the PreK book cart.

Kindergarten and first grade classes are learning about and practicing library skills as we read Going on a Book Hunt by Pat Miller, illustrated by Nadine Bernard Westcott.

Second graders are learning the Shelf Elf's library rules:

Third through fifth graders are getting an overview of our library collection and reminders about library expectations.

Everyone is getting to check out books!

We will be reviewing book care soon; here are some reminders:

• Keep your books in your backpack when you aren't reading them at home.  That way, you always know where they are! 
• PreK, kindergarten, and first graders all have plastic bags to keep their books in to protect them from food and water.
• Keep books away from baby and toddler siblings when you're not reading to them.
• Keep books away from pets who like to chew!
• If you do have a book that gets damaged, tell the librarian right away--we may be able to fix it.

So good to see our Dillo Readers with books in their hands this week!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

 Here's another new book we've just added to our library collection at AME:

Addie is a storyteller-in-writing, has ultra-sensitive hearing, and loves sharks.  She is also autistic, and bullied by a teacher who equates neurodiversity with bad behavior.  When Addie finds out that her town's history includes witch trials that resulted in the deaths of innocent women, her passion turns from sharks to learning everything she can about the trials and memorializing the victims.

This novel is more than just a book about witch trials--it is window into a person's experience with autism.  We learn about the exhausting work of masking to function in everyday life, and Addie's preference of being called autistic rather than "a person with autism":

""I'm autistic," I correct him, almost automatically. "It's something you are, not something you have. ..."

Addie is fortunate that her older sister, Keedie, is also autistic.  As we read the conversations between Keedie and Addie, we learn more about how they process sensory information and cope with overstimulation. 

It's Monday, and I read a "windows and doors" book that taught me more about autism.  What has a book character taught you?