Spring Break!

Mine officially started on Monday of this week when my husband walked out the door to go to work, and I didn’t. The first thing I did to celebrate my vacation was to gather an armful of flowers from our garden and place them on my coffee table. Take a look:

The second thing I did was grab my backpack chair, fill its oversized pocket with books, put on my hiking boots, and head to Big River. It is a short seven-minute drive from my home. Here is where I settled for a time of reading, writing and contemplation:

The second day I met a friend for breakfast and the meal was almost too pretty to eat, almost. 

It was big enough to share and have leftovers, but we didn’t. We didn’t have leftovers that is - we DID share.

My husband took off the last half of the week so we could travel to the wine country for a stay in a Bed & Breakfast. We spent our mornings and evenings sitting on the deck enjoying the pastoral view, reading, chatting, and writing.

Yesterday morning, sitting behind that coffee cup you see above, I reread poems from a book by Mary Oliver and that reminded me of a poetry exercise I learned in a writing class. I enjoy the way it helps me feel the rhythm of language used by poets I admire. If you’d like to try it, start with a line or stanza in a poem and exchange each word with another of your choosing, using the same part of speech, noun for noun, verb for verb. Here is one I wrote yesterday using four lines from Mary Oliver’s poem, Lightning:

Her words:

            The oaks shone

            gaunt gold

            on the lip

            of the storm before

            the wind rose,

My words:

            A rock glistened

            sharp silver

            in the gaze

            of the morning after

            a cloud passed,

You get the idea. If you or your students try this exercise, I’d love to see what you write.

Now back to my Spring Break. You know that hike I took on Day One? You saw the relaxing spot I found, well I had passed it about five minutes into my hike, but did I stop? No. I kept hiking, searching for the perfect place - tree branches to hang over my chair, enough sunlight filtering through to keep me warm and light my book but not too much glare, close enough to the river to hear it rippling, and far enough from the trail so I wouldn’t be interrupted by other hikers. I wasn’t asking for much! Now my chair has two padded shoulder straps but after 45 minutes of hiking and searching, the padding seemed thin. Then there is the metal bar that gives wonderful support when I’m sitting, but doesn’t feel so wonderful digging into my lower back with the added weight of a small stack of books. I finally figured out I wasn’t going to find the perfect place so I turned back toward the pleasant place near the beginning of my hike. I had achy shoulders and a bruised back when I got there. I loved the hike but I loved the final destination even more.

We’ve left the trails and vineyards behind and now we’re in Roseville. I am attending a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) conference today. I’ll write again next week but in the meantime, I hope you’re able to see your perfect/pleasant places, moments, and circumstances before you travel too far past them, and before you accumulate too many bruises along your path.

School Library Month

What a wonderful idea! I can’t let this one slip by. The American Association of School Librarians established April as “School Library Month” and their theme this year is, “You belong @ your library.” I couldn’t agree more.

I have wonderful childhood memories of my weekly trips to our school library. That’s where I first met, The Black Stallion, King of the Wind and my favorite, Justin Morgan Had a Horse. The librarian very patiently helped me search for the perfect book each week, even when I was the last one in my class to come to a decision. I remember very clearly the day she told me I’d read every horse story in the library and gently suggested I move on to another topic, like “dogs.”

Library day was the highlight of my week and I see the same excitement in my students when they tell me about their library books. Unfortunately, they can no longer check them out every week due to cutbacks. Next year, things could become even more dismal. It breaks my heart to see the budget cuts in our schools. All programs are hurting, and all are important, but I feel it is imperative that we safeguard our school library. If we expect our students to want to learn to read and write, we need to tempt them with good literature and warm associations with books. When my children were young, they could hardly wait to start school. And the reason they wanted to go to school was to learn to read all those marvelous stories they’d heard from books. We need to keep that yearning alive in our students.

Take a look at some of my speech kids enjoying (and showing off) their library books:

I want to see these happy faces remain excited about our library and the treasures they find there. In hopes of generating funds to extend the hours and keep it open in the coming year, I am donating all the proceeds of a book I’ve written, to our library.

When the wind rattles Kristy's window she is certain a ghost has come into her room. She repeatedly calls her mother who assures her there is no ghost but still Kristy cannot sleep. From the beginning to the surprising ending, children will have the opportunity to learn the letter “g” and to pronounce its sound as they “help” tell the story.  

Besides providing entertainment, The Ghostly Night will encourage pre-reading skills and articulation development in young children. I hope you’ll consider supporting our library by purchasing this book or passing the information along to others. Here are a few of the people who will appreciate your help:

School librarian, Allison Brown with a sea of kindergarten students.
Photograph by Keith Wyner.

Our photographer, a retired teacher and volunteer, assured the kids:

Thank you, readers, for all you do to support your children, our children and children’s literature! 

Kids Flock to "Birds of a Feather"

National Poetry Month is here and poetry is everywhere - on websites, blogs, in our classrooms, and hanging in the halls. The beautiful and playful language found in many children’s poetry books provides a wealth of material for building vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and giving students practice pronouncing their sounds.

Yesterday I brought in a book of poems by Jane Yolen, Birds of a Feather. Jason Stemple’s photographs accompanying the poems are so close-up and crisp they practically fly off the page. My first-grade students snatched this one off the table before our speech session began. Next time I’ll have to bring in several copies – they fought over this book. They loved the perfect pairing of words and photos – the Mohawk on the Kingfisher, the cheery chickadee, and the group of strutting “Oystercatchers on Parade.” After listening to Jane Yolen’s poems they wanted to write their own. I thought they’d try for bird poems but no; they expanded the theme to all animals. One student wrote,

I like yellow monkeys
Running and playing.

Then he said, “That’s kind of a poem,” and I had to agree. One of my kindergarten students dictated a poem about his cat. I’m not sure of the spelling, but here is the closest I could come:

Sammy de clonie de ponie
She scratches me
And jumps
        on the kitchen counter.

I liked his creative rhymes!

Another group of kindergarteners were excited when they discovered the names of their pets rhymed. We worked together to create this poem about their animals:

Luke has a hamster named Taco
        And Zayd has a cat named Paco
        Avery’s bird is Neena
        And Hailey’s rat is Tina.

        We hope these pets will never meet
        For fur might fly and one might eat
        a pretty pet, a favorite friend,
        and give our poem a sad, sad end.

You’ll find better-crafted poetry in Jane Yolen’s book but my students had fun collaborating with me on this one. If you’d like to share your poems or those of your kids or students, I’d love to see them.

Have a wonderful Easter and Passover!

Notable Non-fiction

Last week I posted about fiction and since I don’t want to be unfair to all those fabulous non-fiction writers and enthusiasts, I thought I’d mention non-fiction this week. Some of my students would choose non-fiction over fiction any day. My son was like that. In his preschool years, during our weekly library trips, he’d head straight to the nonfiction section while I browsed through shelves of fictional picture books. We’d leave the library with a brown-paper grocery-bag filled to the brim. At least half of those books were non-fiction. His love for information started earlier, at home. In a dimly lit hallway, tucked away on the bottom row of a bookshelf, I stored all my college textbooks. One day I noticed a book from that shelf lying open on the floor. I put it back only to find it out again the next day and the day after that. It was always the same book - my speech science textbook - and always opened to a page of diagrams. It wasn’t long before my three-year old son began asking me to read it aloud for his bedtime story. He’d look at all the pictures of the inside workings of the mouth, brain and ears and ask me to read the captions. I thought it was rather boring but he loved it.

Like my son, many of my students love to read non-fiction. And with poetry month starting next week, what better non-fiction book to introduce than a biography of a poet. Jennifer Bryant’s, A River of Words, is a perfect fit for me. I love it and think my students will too. It describes the life and poetry of William Carlos Williams. The illustrations by Melissa Sweet are an inspired match - words become art and splash into the river, cover the walls and line scraps of paper. Bryant’s lyrical writing mirrors the tone and texture of Williams’ life and poetry. When she describes Williams’ childhood love of nature, and specifically of the Passaic River, she made me want to dip into that river and absorb its rhythms. “The water went slipping and sliding over the smooth rocks, then poured in a torrent over the falls, then quieted again below” – beautiful prose depicting a beautiful life. From his childhood love of the outdoors to his adult years as a busy doctor and poet, he lived in a way that inspires. I can hardly wait to introduce this book to my students.

I’m sure my son would enjoy it too. He is grown now and loves fiction, nonfiction and poetry in equal measure but I’ll never forget those early years when he was captivated by non-fiction. Eventually he moved on from my speech science book to wanting ones about trucks and farm animals but the information stuck with him for awhile. I was surprised one day when we went into a bakery with friends. We rarely gave our children sweets so he wasn’t familiar with the rows of pastries in the glass case. He scanned the options then looked up at the young woman behind the counter and said, “I want the one shaped like a cochlea.” You should have seen the look on her face! (He was right, by the way; the pastry is shaped like a cochlea.) He had never seen a cinnamon roll before but he had seen illustrations of the inner ear and he learned this vocabulary from a non-fiction book.

Fabulous Fiction

Last week I attended a 4-day Speech & Hearing convention in San Jose, California and was bombarded with information and inspiration. What a valuable four days! When I returned, I read a blog post and that led to a New York Times article by Annie Murphy Paul called, “Your Brain on Fiction”. (Thank you, Molly O’Neill from Ten Block Walk for leading me there.) This article was a great topper for what I found most appealing at the convention workshops – ideas for using literature with my students and creating “social stories” to encourage new behaviors in kids on the autism spectrum. The article stated, “Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.” No wonder stories are helping our kids!

Now that we’ve established stories are beneficial, I’d like to mention one I absolutely love! Calvin Can’t Fly by Jennifer Berne, illustrated by Keith Bendis. Calvin is a starling with a unique, bookish voice, “Oh, how the wounding words of scorn do sting!” And Keith Bendis’ blocky birds with dangling, toothpick legs are adorable. Besides being charming, this book is funny. One of Calvin’s sixty-seven thousand four hundred and thirty-two cousins (“Starlings have BIG families”) called him “nerdy birdie,” another called him “geeky beaky,” and still another called him “bookworm.” “And when you’re a bird, being called a “worm” is a very bad thing.”

What fun I had introducing this story to my students! I had no trouble tying it to the content standards. It has a plot that can be analyzed; it has a beginning, middle and end; it has enriching vocabulary, and it has entertainment value. OK, that last one wasn’t a content standard but maybe it should be – it helps keep the minds engaged.

Berne’s alliterations are almost like doing tongue gymnastics when you read this book aloud. (And as a speech therapist, I think that is a good thing.)  “So the flock made a loop-de-lop left, a dipsy-doodle right, and dove into the cave.” Calvin saves the day in this tale and he saves the reputation of bookworms everywhere, and all who dare to be different from others in their flock.

Yesterday I discovered another blog had mentioned the NY Times article, “Your Brain on Fiction”. In that Scholastic post, author Tyler mentioned that the Common Core standards now call for a 50-50 mix of fiction and non-fiction. Tyler posed a question, “Is this the right balance?”  I wonder along with him, and plan to follow the answers that come his way. If you have any thoughts on using fiction for educational purposes, I’d love to hear from you too.

An Interview with Anna McQuinn

I had the pleasure of interviewing, Anna McQuinn about her book series, Lola at the Library, Lola Loves Stories, and the newest addition, Lola Reads to Leo. After hearing these delightful tales published by Charlesbridge, my students were excited to have the opportunity to participate in the interview.  We loved reading Anna’s answers and hope you will too.


You’ve done it again. You’ve given children another adorable Lola book to love. Were you anything like Lola as a child?

You know, I didn’t think I was until Yolanda at Charlesbridge wrote some cover copy about me and she made the link – I did LOVE books and reading just like Lola. We didn’t have many books, certainly not picture books (I think I can remember about 3 or 4 and some little Ladybird books), but once I was able to read, I don’t think I ever stopped! I drove my mom crazy as I’d read the back of the cereal package while eating my breakfast etc etc.

I also loved playing at being characters out of stories I read – I guess that’s what gave me the idea for Lola Loves Stories. My fun always involved long discussions about who would be what, what their name would be etc etc

Will Lola have any new adventures in the future?

Lola is busy researching gardens in the library because her mommy has given her a corner of their patch of the local community garden. She’s reading about gardens, and writing lists, and creating little wild areas. It’s going to be great!

I’m sure my students will love that one! We have a garden at our school and the children get to tend it while learning about gardening, counting, measuring and generally taking care of our environment. 

What were some of your favorite books when you were young?

I was really stuck on Enid Blyton. I loved all the boarding school stories and when I stayed in my granny’s house, I used to choose clothes which were only one colour and pretend it was my uniform and that I was in a boarding school also. My other favourites were her Adventure stories and the Famous Five books. My world changed when I read Flight of the Doves which was the first book I ever read set in Ireland and suddenly I saw ‘me’ in the book. 

I almost forgot you are from the UK until I read your answer above. I’m from the US and it’s fun to see the different spellings we use for some words. 

What is the most interesting thing about you that you’ve never been asked?

 Most people assume that ‘booky’ people are cerebral and that that’s the opposite of sporty. So I’m rarely asked about sports. In fact I was very sporty – mostly informally – but I started athletics competitively when I was about 14 and ran on the Irish Cross Country team in the European FISEC Games when I was 15. I also played basketball (though not very well because I’m only 5’3”) but I watch a lot on TV and go to games to support my local professional team, Guildford Heat. No one has ever asked me who my favourite NBA player is!

I’ll save that question for our next interview so we can get to my students. They were excited when they heard I’d be interviewing you so I invited them to ask questions of their own.

From my older students:

How long have you been writing for children?

I’ve been editing children’s books for over 20 years. The writing grew gradually out of that – rather than something I sat down and did one day. I’ve been writing as my main thing for about 10 years now.

When did you first decide to become a writer?

 It kind of crept up on me, actually! In my editorial job I would come up with an idea for a book or a series and end up writing some text to show my colleagues how the series would work. Then sometimes, we kept those texts. So in the beginning, the writing was very much doing a job. In more recent years I’ve got to a stage where I start with the writing and the story. It’s funny, but because it happened so gradually, I’m still a bit embarrassed to call myself a writer!

What kind of education do you recommend if you want to become a writer?

I was really lucky to have a broad education – in Ireland you don’t really specialize until you go to University, so I studied English (which IS essential) French, Maths, Biology, Chemistry, Irish and Art right through High School. This is an especially good grounding for Children’s publishing since you have a broad range of knowledge and interests.

I think anything which helps make you a good researcher (I think studying history in university helped me a LOT) will support writing.

I also think you need to be interested in the world around you and what makes people tick, so I read lots of (light) psychology books and related fiction (I LOVE E.R Frank) and general politics and interesting social studies. I think finding a good general magazine which has interesting articles which make you think are wonderful for prompting new ideas. Interesting bloggers do the same (here’s one of my favourites, Laurie Penny: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2012/03/eating-disorders-awareness).

Kindergarten students giving their version of a "Thumbs up"!

From the kindergarten crew:

Zayd wanted you to know he makes books – he cuts and folds and staples. He asked, “How do you make your books?”

I also cut and fold – but I glue instead of staple. This is how I make a test book to make sure everything fits together. When I’m happy, I send it off to the printers and they do all the cutting and folding for me. This happens when I make the Lola books (which have to be perfect because they’re for sale) but I still make stuck together books for myself and my friends and to test out new ideas.

Marie asked, “How did you make up the stories?

Usually I see something or someone and they give me the starting idea. Then I add more bits and pieces later. Once I wrote a whole story in my head on a bus just because I heard someone say something funny. All the authors I see in interviews seem to have lovely pencils and notebooks with them all the time. But even though I like to buy nice notebooks, I kind of spare them… and I can NEVER find one when I have an idea so I sometimes write ideas on the back of my bus ticket or a receipt from my purse, or I have to rush home and write the idea down before I forget it!

Ashland thought Lola would make a good president but she wondered, “How did you figure out Lola’s name?”

I think Ashland is very wise and if Lola were president, the world would be a better place. You know, I think Lola’s name came with the idea for the story. I know I sat down at my computer one day and just wrote “Lola Loves Tuesdays.” I am very interested in names (I like my name very much but it’s a bummer that it’s the same backwards – that’s quite boring). Do you know that in Holland, the word for library is Bieb, so in Holland Lola is called Bibi!

What a great name! Bodie didn’t have any questions but after hearing, Lola Loves Stories he said, “I wish my dad could take me to the library every day so I could check out lots and lots of books.” 

I hope Bodie can get to the library with his dad. He could check out lots of books, enough for a whole week, and then he wouldn’t need to go every day.

Joden said he loved, Lola Loves Stories, but he had one question, “Why didn’t you put a cat in the story?” 

That’s an excellent question. I think because I put a tiger, I thought that was a sort of big cat – but I’ll certainly consider putting a cat in the next story.

Thank you, Anna McQuinn for taking the time to answer our questions and for telling your stories. We look forward to reading more in the future.

They were great questions, thanks for sending them. They made me think – which is always a good sign.

Best,

Anna

World Read Aloud Day

I stopped by a kindergarten classroom this week and Cathy, the teacher, told me about a conversation she had with a couple of her students. One child, Hope, had done a fabulous job on a project and Cathy said, “You’re my first and last hope.”  Jesse, another kindergartener interjected, “She’s your only hope!”

Of course he didn’t understand the double meaning but it was a sweet and funny comment to hear from this serious little guy. And it got me to thinking about hope.

Recently, I’ve been scanning the website of LitWorld, a non-profit organization, which celebrates the power of words. They communicate such hope! One of their stated core values is; “We believe that all children have the right to read, to write, and to share their words to change the world.” LitWorld declared March 7^th as “World Read Aloud Day” and I passed on that message to my students and coworkers. (You can find out more about their organization here: http://litworld.org/ )

Take a look at some of the activities around our school that day. With 24 classrooms on our campus, I couldn’t get to every room but, I assure you, all the teachers at our school make reading a top priority.

One of our second grade students, Abigail, reading to a kindergarten group.

 

Cathy Wallace reading to her class.

Juan, reading to younger students.

Beth Kirkley, our resource specialist
carrying a heathy snack to young readers.

   Mary Heister, one of our school
secretaries reading with students.

  Ashley reading to younger kids.

Jim Blanton, a kindergarten teacher
who supplies his own class clown.

                                                    

Philip, another second grade student,

reading to a group of younger kids.

Marcia Douglas reading to her
kindergarten students.

 

Tonya Miller, our health aide, with a
group of kindergarten children.

Linda Stephens, school secretary
reading with students at her desk.

At the end of the day, Jesse’s words came back to me, “She is your only hope”. I couldn’t help but think, yes, she and all the other children in my care, and all the children across the world; they are our hope for the future. Those of us who are educators, parents, writers and illustrators of children’s literature can build on that hope by the transforming power of words and education.