Our parent/child book club is off to a powerful start this year. In the past students were selected by a drawing with only 10 students per grade level. This year we were able to allow everyone who wanted to participate to do so. the good news is that I had to order more copies of the books. Our 3rd grade is reading Runt, but Marion Dane Bauer, one of my personal all time favorites. 4th Grade is reading Capture the Flag by Kate Messner. It looked like a good spy novel to get boys to read and it's one of the NC Children's Book Award nominees for this year. Our 5th grade is reading Sophia's War by Avi, also one of the NC Children's Book Award Nominees. 5th grade studies US history so what better way to bring the America Revolution to life than to have them read a novel about Benedict Arnold and his efforts to betray General Washington. We will be meeting in November and December so it's going to be a busy few weeks for me to get all the reading done.
Most recently I got a fun opportunity to do an activity I hadn't done in years. Our art teacher was looking for a way to collaborate so I shared my old Book Character pumpkin idea with him. We ended up getting a range of characters that included Tom Sawyer, No David, Charlotte's Web, and the Tortoise and the Hare as well as several other familiar faces. As far as originality goes I was most impressed with the selection of the character "Scabbers/Peter Pettigrew" from Harry Potter. I've had a lot of Potter themed pumpkins in the past but this is the first time a supporting character was the one that was designed. I've attached a link to the slideshow of pumpkins if you are interested. We were even able to get the School System TV channel come out and interview some of our students.
Finally, beyond the school level, I took over as the NC School Library Media Association President-Elect for the next year. That means I am in charge of planning our conference for next year. Our theme is: Empowering Our Students: Literacy for All. My hope is that we can provide a real focus on students that come from poverty as well as those who face challenges based on language barriers or even other types of discrimination.
We've got some great names like Dr. Rebecca Constantino who runs a non-profit in California that works to replace outdated school libraries since there is not state money set aside for this. She did her Doctoral work with Dr. Stephen Krashen who has long argued in favor of the value of school libraries and combining that with her heart for working to supply libraries for those with the greatest need and the least resources she was a perfect fit for our conference. I've also planned to have Joyce Valenza, a librarian who has worked at various levels and types of facilities over the years. She's quite prolific in the school library field and brings an enthusiasm for how to continue adapting our field with the times. My dear friend and now big name author, Deborah Wiles has agreed to come as well. Over the years I have loved her work from "Love, Ruby Lavender" and "Freedom Summer," to her new extremely powerful novel "Revolution," Which has won the Distinction of being on the National Book Award List. We've also talked to Donald Davis who is a storyteller from the Outer Banks of North Carolina about coming to enthrall us with his talents. I've heard glowing reviews of his work from several of my highly respected colleagues so I'm ecstatic about this given my love for traditional storytelling. I'm in the process of getting contracts ready to send out to all these people so while they aren't "official" yet, they have all verbally agreed to come.
Sorry this is so long. I'm hoping I can write more regularly which should solve that problem.
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