I Have a Dream

With the advent of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday and our school-wide MLK, jr. concert, I decided this was a good week to read this contender for our Mock Caldecott.  Knowing that the students have been learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. in their classrooms, I could place the focus on the award.  The children donned their Caldecott hats and off we read.

Each story read with children is a journey of sorts.  To turn my head, while reading I Have a Dream and see 24 children in rapt attention was powerful.  Unlike the previous week's Mock Caldecott book, there was no humor here.  The students seemed to understand the import of the message.  Their bodies were still and their gazes were intent. They were working hard reading the pictures.

Kadir Nelson's illustrations are incredible.  He has beautifully rendered the speech and the event in I Have a Dream. I was especially moved by the shifting perspective between those of Martin Luther King, jr. and the scenes of the Mall and those of the themes and ideals within the speech.  

The three specific illustrations I would also mention are the first scene depicting MLK just before the speech: every conceivable emotion seems to be washing over his face, yet what shines through are confidence, courage and determination.  

The other is the two-page fold where the profile of MLK takes up two thirds of the left hand page.  It is powerful and speaks to the strength of character and importance of the words. When I speak with students about the use of white space and perspective, this is exactly that to which I am referring.  

The last comment (for today) is about the two-page spreads that have the four states.  They really resonated with the students.  it was a moment when they wanted to share an "aha" moment. The use of line, color, shadow and perspective  to connect them is so effective. It is these threads that connect seemingly incongruous places not unlike the threads of peace, freedom and social justice that connect a seemingly incongruous population.  I am not sure whether this was purposeful, but the less congruous and connected images of the southern states is effective.  The lack of connecting threads(beyond the horizon) is jarring after the previous image.

Enough from me, here are some student reaction's to the book:

Ashley: "Each page speaks peace and freedom."

Josie: "The illustrations help me understand the big words."

Parker: "The illustrations show peace.  They look like what Martin Luther King, Jr. was talking about." 

Samuel "I think that the illustrations showed that Martin Luther King, Jr. was very serious and he actually wanted what he said."

Miles: "I like the pictures of when the hills and trees combined through the different places.  It is very detailed in the illustrations."

Lev: "I have heard that Martin Luther King, Jr. died because someone didn't like the work he was doing.  I think it was cool how he stood out in the pictures and looked so strong."

Liam: "I like how the birds are all flying free in the blue sky. It reminds me of freedom."

We've got one or two more books to read.  This will be close because voting day is next Wednesday for us.  Stay tuned!

Tomi Ungerer, My Mother, and A Voyage Across the Atlantic

My daughter has been in Norway this week visiting a college friend.  This visit inspired my mother to pull out her photo album of a trip to Europe that she took after graduating from college in 1955.  In her classic nonchalant fashion, my mother slipped this sentence into one photo's description,

"This is a picture of me on the freighter I took home from Europe with Tomi Ungerer and his photographer friend.  There was also a woman who did yoga and her daughter, but they never came out of their cabin." 

Seriously?

My mother is so funny about these things.  She neglected to ever share that she was on a freighter, crossing the Atlantic, for ten days with Tomi Ungerer.  After I composed myself, she went on to share that given that there were only five passengers on board and two never left their cabin, it left Tomi, his friend and my mother to hang out (for lack of a more formal term) for the ten days. During the voyage, they looked at Tomi's art and gave feedback on the book he was writing, which has to be this one:

Tomi's first book

I grew up on a steady diet of Tomi Ungerer's books.  We owned all the Mellops books along with Crictor, Adelaide and others. My favorites?

Spelunking is such a great word to know

I checked out Tomi Ungerer's Website and noticed that he came to the United States in 1956.  How cool that my mother was with Tomi Ungerer on this voyage.  He was coming to the United States to embark on a new life.  My mother was returning from eight months in Europe to do the same.


Hearing this story has made me yearn for such an experience. There is a grace to this story and this experience that I think we have lost. More on that for another day.

**That classic nonchalant fashion of my mother's I referred to? While driving back from Montreal and listening to a Leonard Cohen CD, my mother said, "When I knew Lenny in college...."  Yeah....exactly what I was thinking..."You just called Leonard Cohen 'Lenny' and you knew him in college?" #youneverknowaboutyourparents

Happy Saturday evening!

5th graders queue up for The Fourth Stall, Part III

The queue for my ARC of The Fourth Stall, Part III is quite long.  It won't get any shorter when students who have already read it are saying things like:

"The Fourth Stall, Part III is the climax of the whole series.  It sums up everything that has happened to Mac and Vince in another hilarious, thrilling, awesome book.  If you liked The Fourth Stall, Parts I and II, this is the book to read.  If you haven't read them yet, you should definitely try them out."
~Myles

"In The Fourth Stall, Part III the mystery is bigger than ever.  I really love how every thing is connected.  I also like how they made some surprising friends.  The challenge in this book is the hardest of all.  This is a great book."

~Justin

This series has garnered quite a bit of energy in my school.  I have multiple copes of parts I and II, but they are not meeting the needs of the masses -- the queue for them is equally as long as the one for Part III.

It has been fascinating to watch the excitement around these books grow. I first heard of The Fourth Stall by Chris Rylander last fall, when I participated in a book group with other teachers and bloggers. The discussion was very interesting as the story engendered many feelings from our own childhood experiences with bullying.  We wondered if middle grade readers would feel the same way.  They do and they don't.  They love the humor (and Godfather references), they understand the bullying, they appreciate the characters. The book strikes a chord with my students.  They want to read and talk about this book.  Maybe that's the highest praise. 

Students wanting to talk about books is a cool thing.

Folktales, fairytales, where are you?

Look for the number 398.2!

This is the rhyme I've been teaching the kindergarten students to help them remember where to find the folk literature we are studying.  

Today we read, The Lion & The Mouse as retold by Jerry Pinkney.  Part of our exploration of folk literature has been the understanding that these stories have a message, that they are told to help the listener understand the world around them or learn an important lesson.  Here are some of the messages the students heard today:

The Lion & The Mouse offers a powerful learning experience.  This beautifully-illustrated wordless picture book has so many wonderful messages.  Prior to beginning the story,  I explained that they would be reading the pictures and that after reading the book we would share the story and its message. If you had been in my library, you could have heard the proverbial pin drop while I was turning the pages.  The information they shared after reading the book was phenomenal.  They had picked up on so many of the subtleties of the story.

I chose a few pages to explore further, one being when the mouse shows up to rescue the lion:

I asked the children to give me an adjective, a good word to describe how the lion is feeling.  The students shared words like: uncertain, doubtful, nervous, unsure, embarrassed.  I love that they were able to read his expression to clearly.  It speaks to Jerry Pinkney's amazing talent.

Here is Jerry Pinkney talking about The Lion & The Mouse.  I will show this to my students next week.

The lesson/moral aspect of these stories has been an interesting aspect of this unit.  Ideas around friendship were the story threads most students heard.  it was interesting though, some of the students are still so concrete, "The lesson is to watch out for traps set by hunters," while others are able to thinking more broadly and hear messages about friends coming from surprising places. Food for my own thought...

World Read Aloud Day is coming to a book near you!

We interrupt the Mock Caldecott frenzy to talk books and reading of a different kind.  World Read Aloud Day is an initiative of LitWorld, a nonprofit literacy organizations, whose mission is to foster resilience, hope and joy through the power of story.  

"World Read Aloud Day is about taking action to show the world that the right to read and write belongs to all people. World Read Aloud Day motivates children, teens, and adults worldwide to celebrate the power of words, especially those words that are shared from one person to another, and creates a community of readers advocating for every child’s right to a safe education and access to books and technology."

Check out this video:


I am passionate about books, about reading and about ensuring that all children have the support they need to learn how to read as well as access to good literature.  Books do more than just provide windows and mirrors; books heal, books inspire, books inform, and books provide endless amounts of pleasure. 

Where would we all be if everyone in the world could read? 

Let's make it happen.  One book at a time.  One reader at a time.

Join me in participating in World Read Aloud Day
this March 6, 2013.  Register to be a part of this incredible event.

Looking for ideas?  Here are some of the activities we did, both leading up to and on the day of the event.

Making the Connection

Share the Power: Read Stories to Children

Reading is a (SUPER)Power

Crossing State Lines to Read Poems in Two Voices

A dragon would be cooler

Sorry, Mac Barnett...

The Mock Caldecott reading continues...today we shared Chloe and the Lion, written by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Adam Rex.

The giggles and guffaws emanating from the children on the rug were proof enough that they understood the humor in this book.  These first graders could appreciate the inside joke-- when a dragon shows up on a page where a lion should be. 

Early in our Caldecott exploration, I tell a story about how I have written this incredible book about pigs. I explain the plot and give plenty of details and then go on to share about this amazing illustrator who has drawn the most spectacular and unique pictures of...elephants.  I explain that these are incredibly detailed, beautiful illustrations.  I then ask why this illustrator would not win the Caldecott. The students know that the illustrations have to help tell and even extend the story, so we all have a good laugh, but this story helps them remember this criteria.  Today, when the dragon showed up instead of a lion, many students referenced my story.

We'll be reflecting more on this book next week, but as a quick check in, I created a Voicethread and left it open for the students.  Here's what they had to say:


There are many things to be said about this book, but I will leave it for the students!  Stay tuned...

All Green

My first graders and I are heavily into our Mock Caldecott reading. Today, we read Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger.

If you are not familiar with the book, here's the trailer:

After reading the book and reflecting on it with our Mock Caldecott hats placed firmly on our heads (you will have to wait until next week to hear their reflections), the students created their own green pictures.  Their only requirement was to think of something green, draw it and come up with a clever name. 

Lightning Green

Mean Green

Here are the rest: