It's Monday! What are you reading?

 Well, 'Dillo readers, it is Monday...and I have no new books to report.  I am still working on the last three I picked up--Echo Mountain, They Call Me Güero: A Border Kid's Poems, and The Everything I Have Lost.  Seems I have bitten off more than I can chew at the moment!  

This is a good time to remember that reading isn't just something we do with books.  We read words in all sorts of ways:

• cooking directions on food containers
• emails
• blogs (you're reading now, right?)
• text messages
• medicine bottles
• Facebook and Twitter posts
• shopping signs and websites
• road signs
• weather reports
• video game chats and narration
• captioned commercials
• washing instructions on clothes tags.

I came up with a dozen ways we read; can you add some more?  This is why learning to read, and to do it well, is so important--we use reading every day!

It's Monday, and I'm still working through three different books--have you ever taken a long time to finish a book?  Do you think about all the reading you do every day besides books?

(Tags for sale on Etsy by SeanLabels.)

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

 

Our Grab & Go Curbside Delivery Service began yesterday!  We had some orders for books, but didn't have any pickups; be sure to come by tomorrow evening from 5p to 630p to get your books!  We will keep placed orders on hold for one full week, so yesterday's orders will be held through next Tuesday--then they get checked back in.

Don't remember how Grab & Go works?  Head on over to our library website for directions on how to place a hold or request a book bundle and curbside hours.

 AME Library Website

Ms Margocs has been visiting classes during their Meet times with their teachers.  After introductions, we've been reviewing curbside service with the older students and learning our read-aloud prep songs with our PreK-1 classes.  PreK-2 classes also got their first "lesson" pushed out on Schoology--a read-aloud about library book care.  (A shout-out to Mrs. Mensing, the librarian at Sommer Elementary, for the title reminder!)

Ms Moss and Ms Margocs are still working on straightening up the library and making room for the new books that are being ordered this week!  We will have all the new Bluebonnet Nominees soon, as well as our Armadillo Readers Choice and several Texas 2x2 books for our read-alouds.

Hope to see you soon at Grab & Go Curbside Delivery, 'Dillo Readers!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

 A side benefit of attending the virtual #CTXLIBCAMP this summer was purchasing a signed copy of They Call Me Güero:  A Border Kid's Poems by David Bowles, a Pura Belpre Honor Book/ Bluebonnet Award nominee. 

Since I'm a fan of Cinco Puntos Press, I also bought a copy of The Everything I Have Lost by Sylvia Zéleny.

I didn't mean to purchase them as paired readings...but they are exactly that.  Two different perspectives about life in the border towns of Texas and Mexico--the former in the Valley, the latter in my former home of El Paso.  Güero and Julia are both in middle school, both twelve years old, and both use writing to record, reflect, and reminisce about their lives.  Güero is a free-form poet, and Julia, a diarist.  Family is central to their stories.  

Güero's poems are light in spirit.  A trip over the bridge to Mexico with his father introduces us to his world.  His description of border culture, the mix of Spanish and English, his father's words about the flow of culture uninterrupted by imposing border walls is joyous.  Güero's family celebrates the traditions of Mexico even as they are solidly rooted in the United States.  There is violence, but it is the school-bully kind, overshadowed by multicultural friendships and a librarian mentor.  Life on the border may include suspicious looks from border control agents, but for Güero, it is a good life.

Julia's diary entries are full of young teen angst and more questions than answers.  Her waning childhood innocence is blossoming into awareness of the very real violence present in her everyday life.  The story opens in Juárez with the family car being stolen--no one seems too surprised, just annoyed.  The anniversary of a pope's death prompts Julia to ask, "How did this guy die?  Was he shot in the street?  Did they light him on fire?  Was he kidnapped?  How did it go down?"  In her worldview, people don't just die--they are murdered.  When the family is awakened by the sound of bullets, she is comforted with the fact that her father owns a gun and can protect them.  Life in a border town is "living on the edge."

It's Monday, and I've got paired books at hand.  Are there books you would pair on your shelves?

  

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

 

We are straightening up the library and preparing for Grab & Go curbside book delivery to start on September 1st!  Ms Moss has been shifting shelves and making room for another box of world languages books that was delivered over the summer.  Our Arabic section now has dozens of titles to choose from; we received new books in Korean, Hindi, and even one in Bulgarian!

So how does curbside service work?  You place your books on hold using our online catalog, get an email that tells you your books are ready, and drive up to the school within a week to pick up your books! See the graphic below for details and links to our library website.    

Ms Margocs will be popping into your Google Meet classrooms over the next few days to say hello and give you more details about Grab & Go.  We're excited about getting books into the hands of our 'Dillo readers!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

 This ARC (advance readers copy) has been sitting on a to-read pile since the beginning of summer, so I decided to start it last night:

Looking at the cover, I wasn't expecting Echo Mountain by Lauren Wolk to be historical fiction.  But that seems to be Wolk's genre of choice, and the story follows suit, set in Maine during the Great Depression of the 1930s.  

Ellie's urban life was turned upside down when people no longer had money for her tailor father's exquisitely made clothes and the school where her mother taught music.  Destitute, the family of five left the city for a parcel of land in the mountains, within walking distance of five other families who form a network of support.  They survived tent living long enough to build a cabin before winter.  

Ellie and her father adapted quickly to mountain living.  Their needs were met with the resources at hand, until Ellie's father had an accident that put him in a coma.  Now Ellie must do the trapping and fishing while her mother and sister tend to Ellie's little brother and home.  They don't see what Ellie sees in the natural beauty of the mountain--including wonderfully carved trinkets which seem to be left just for her in her favorite places.

Wolk's storytelling through Ellie's eyes is fresh and full of wonder, despite the backdrop of the Great Depression and the hard work of eking out a living in the wild.  I suspect harder times are coming in the story, but I am already certain that Ellie will face them head on and get the job done, her heart echoing the marvels of nature along the way.

It's Monday, and I'm drawn once again to an historical fiction novel for third/fourth grade on up.  What are you reading today?

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

 

It's the last day of summer for students, and campuses all over our district are getting ready to open school in a virtual environment for the first time!  Librarians are serving as Schoology support for teachers and parents, so we've been busy learning about this new way to "do school".

The new Single Sign On for our district, ClassLink, makes it even easier to navigate to our library resources!  Some of the databases still need a password; that information will be updated soon in case that issue persists.  Below is an example of some of the library resources available.

If you attended Anderson Mill last year, your MackinVIA account is still active for the coming school year.  We will be adding our new students over the coming week.  We will be sharing instructional videos for accessing our online resources over the next two weeks.

Our library website is being updated, with new links and resources added daily.  Take a peek if you'd like to see some of the new changes. 

Curbside delivery of books will be coming in two weeks as well!  Stay tuned for instructions on how to use our online catalog to put books on hold.

Speaking of books...here's a look at some of the new books Ms Margocs unboxed last week.  We are really building up our Spanish language collection, thanks to Mrs Henson's last book orders before her retirement!  Can you tell that we love graphic novels?

A big shout-out to our library services director, Ms Uselman, our library assistant, Ms Moss, and our cafeteria monitor, Ms Norma for helping in the library today!  We got a lot of materials put away and a lot of books shelved.  Thank you!!

Ms Margocs had a bit of fun this week and updated her Bitmoji to reflect her new school colors.  Keep on reading, 'Dillos!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

Because of our tumultuous end of the school year in May, there are books piled and hidden everywhere in the library!  I was going through a cart and came across the graphic novel trilogy called March:

     

March:  Book One was published in 2013. The second in the series came out in 2015, and the third in 2016.  I remember the buzz when it was published, but because it seemed geared more for middle school on up, had not purchased them for my previous library.  With the passing of the author Congressman John Lewis, the books have come to top of many to-read piles again.  Lewis worked with his aide, Andrew Aydin, to write this memoir of his life as it is inextricably woven with the Civil Rights Movement, illustrated in fitting black-and-white framed graphic novel format by Nate Powell.

I read through books one and two this weekend.  March:  Book One opens with the day President Barack Obama was sworn into office; Lewis is talking about his humble beginnings as a sharecropper's son with inauguration attendees.  The story continues to alternate between Lewis' involvement in and knowledge of major events in the fight for equality and the Civil Rights milestone of Obama taking office.  Book One ends with the partial success of the sit-ins, with emphasis on "partial"; Book Two opens to show us that written law can't eradicate hate--a lesson we know all too well as illustrated by present day events.  The path of the movement also becomes more complicated in the second book, reminding us that while people may share goals, they may often disagree on the means to achieve them.

I would recommend March:  Book One for fifth grade on up; if a younger reader wants to continue through the series, I would recommend doing so with adult support to talk about the violence, hatred, and politics in the history of the Civil Rights Movement.  It is certainly, and unfortunately, a timely series.

It's the last Monday before school starts, and I'm reading nonfiction graphic novels.  How are you wrapping up your summer reading?