The Cheshire Cheese Cat and other May Musings

Did you know May is Better Speech and Hearing Month? The purpose is to raise awareness about communication disorders and to promote treatment. I’m a speech therapist and I think our profession is worth celebrating; however, I’m not sure everyone would see it that way. Take for example, David Sedaris. In his book, Me Talk Pretty One Day, his description of speech therapy was anything but pretty. I cringed (and laughed) when I read his description of the “agent” coming to take him away,

“My capture had been scheduled to go down at exactly 2:30 on a Thursday afternoon.”

The agent, if you haven’t already guessed, was his speech therapist coming to his fifth-grade classroom to take him out (not as in “rub him out” although the humiliation may have made him feel that was her intent). David went on to describe his hilarious, if somewhat painful, memories of speech sessions. He had a lisp and so he pronounced “s” as “th.” Besides embarrassing him, his speech therapist had him read, “childish s-laden text recounting the adventures of seals or settlers named Sassy or Samuel.”

Ooh, that hurts. I hate to admit it but I’ve been guilty of inflicting my students with plot-less stories, just to give them a lot of practice pronouncing their target sounds. But that was a long time ago. I have since discovered an abundant supply of fabulous books to read, filled with whatever target sounds I’m looking for. For example, if I had a fifth grade student with a lisp, I could open The Cheshire Cheese Cat: a Dickens of a Tale, by Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright. On the very first page there are plenty of “s” sounds for practice.

            “He was the best of toms. He was the worst of toms.

Fleet of foot, sleek and solitary, Skilley was a cat among cats. Or so he would have been, but for a secret he had carried since his early youth.”

Look at all those “s” sounds - and what a delightful way to practice them. The first lines of this book drew me in immediately with its nod to Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. I am a fan of Charles Dickens, animal stories, humor and good writing, so this book was a hit with me right from the start. I haven’t had the opportunity to use it with my students yet, but I have “great expectations” for doing so.

The secret Skilley hides is his extreme fondness for cheese; and he does not eat mice. These qualities lead him into a unique relationship with the throng of mice who inhabit Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a pub which is a gathering place for famous authors in 19th-century London. One of these authors is Charles Dickens himself. In this story, Dickens is struggling with a severe case of writers’ block. Eventually, he is assisted by Pip, a literate and literary mouse. This romping tale is full of adventure and challenges. The tension builds when a conniving cat arrives and the alliance between Skilley and the mice grows strong. The story has twists and turns, plots and subplots, and captivating characters. Described as being suitable for children age eight and up, I think Dickens’ fans of all ages will enjoy the humorous use of familiar lines and phrases. In one conversation, Skilley and Pip spoke of “our mutual friend;” there was “artful dodging” of passing cabs; and when the barmaid renames the conniving cat, Oliver, it brought “an unwelcome twist” to the story. 

I’ve solved the problem of plot-less stories in speech sessions. I don’t use them. And I’d never intentionally embarrass a student when I escort them to speech. The younger ones are thrilled to go. In fact, the difficulty comes with telling the other students why they don’t “get” to go to speech. Older students require a bit more subtlety. Fortunately, they don’t need me to come knocking at their door. David Sedaris’ humorous essay should be required reading for speech therapists. It’s eye-opening to see our job from the other side of the table!

From My Pocket to Theirs

Thursday was “Poem in your Pocket” day and we decided to celebrate in a big way in the speech room. (That is a very large paper pocket in case you can’t tell.) I filled it with poems for my younger students and they were delighted to dig around and find a special poem - and to make it their own.

They added a few decorations and tucked their chosen poem into their pants pockets. Of course they didn’t stop there. They added more poems to the paper pocket, hoping to fill it to overflowing.

Poems are a wonderful way to introduce new vocabulary, rhyming, humor, and even speech practice with the catchy lines kids love to repeat. There are many entertaining books of poetry for children but this week I especially enjoyed introducing my students to Book Speak! by Laura Purdie Salas, Illustrated by Josee Bisaillon.

My students were drawn to this book from the moment they looked at the cheery cover. They immediately wanted to hop a ride on the hooked-handle of the umbrella. And when I turned to the poem, “Calling All Readers” they were entranced by the illustrations and the words,

“I’ll tell you a story.
I’ll spin you a rhyme.
I’ll spill some ideas-
And we’ll travel through time.

Their ideas spilled out in a rush: places they’d travel, which balloon (or dragon) they’d ride, and what they’d see. This book is full of poems about books and it made me want to spend this weekend curled up with some of my favorites, which is what I plan to do once I finish this post.

Poetry month is drawing to a close but there will be no shortage of excellent children’s books to read. Last Saturday I attended the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference in Rocklin, CA. It was wonderful day. As usual, I came away with fresh insights and inspirations for my own writing and was introduced to books that I’ll soon be using with my students.

I hope you have found more poems to love during this poetry month. And I hope you remember to remove them from your pocket before laundry day!

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.