Huck Finn and the Canon

I got to school early today to sit in on an interesting discussion. Lisa Keller visited Andy’s 10th grade English class to talk about why they read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and why they maybe shouldn’t. Mark Twain’s classic novel has been required reading in many high school English classes for decades, but it’s also controversial because of its use of racial slurs and its portrayal of Jim. Lots of important questions got asked, such as:

• Why is it important to read classic literature?
• What is it about some books that makes people want to ban them?
• Why is it important to read things that may make us uncomfortable?
• Who decides what we “should” and “should not” read in school?
• What if Young Adult novels were added to the English curriculum?

It was great to see Lisa advocate for YA literature. At the end of the class she offered to send the teacher a bibliography of great YA books. Maybe he’ll consider adding one (or two or three) to the curriculum? Time will tell. In the meantime, here are a couple YA books that would be worthy of being taught in IMHO:

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• Touching Snow by M. Sindy Felin
• The Pigman by Paul Zindel

Today was also my day to teach 3rd grade classes how to use the catalog. It was much harder than I thought it would be, particularly because the kids seemed to have a bad case of the wiggles. Still, I got through it. I’ll look at their worksheets on Friday and go over things they didn’t get next Wednesday.Jody and I talked about Groundhog Day with the Kindergarteners and 2nd graders. I read aloud several different books about groundhogs (including a book from the Fluffy series that was a big hit). Because of the Kindergarten bake sale, we had quite a few interruptions, so it was a bit of a challenge to keep the kids focused on the stories.

I have noticed that I haven’t been asked many true reference questions since I’ve been working at Bush. The most common question I answer is how to find a particular book (which we call a “known item” question at the Engineering Library at UW). It’s usually a matter of looking the book up in the catalog and then locating it on the shelf. I make an effort to demonstrate to the younger kids what I’m doing so it will be more familiar to them when they learn it. And for the older kids, now that they’ve had their lesson I’ll be asking them to try to find the book themselves before I help.

The other kind of questions I get are readers’ advisory, which means suggesting something to read for fun (I never get to answer these kinds questions at the Engineering Library!). I tend to automatically suggest books I myself have enjoyed, but I’m trying to train myself not to jump right into “Oh I just love so-and-so” and instead ask more questions and think harder about what would be best to recommend. So far I’ve pushed:

• Encyclopedia Brown on a 3rd grade mystery-seeker
• Clarice Bean on a boy looking for a picture book about a girl
• The Stinky Cheese Man on a kid in search of fractured fairy tales.

Happily, a lot of the Batchelder Award winners I book talked have been checked out. Jenine and I filled the display table up again with more award winners today.

I <3 Libraries

With Valentine’s Day coming up, the American Library Association is urging enthusiastic library users to show their love by sending “I Love Libraries” valentines to politicians.

More information is here:

http://www.ilovelibraries.org/takeaction/index.cfm

Another Snowy Day

No school today, so I’m curled up with my laptop by the fire. Today I was going to work on the “Let’s Get Trivial” bulletin board, but I don’t have my materials at home. Luckily, I can work on writing up the content with the books I’ve checked out from the Seattle Public Library: 15,003 Answers: The Ultimate Trivia Encyclopedia and The Giant Book of Bulletin Boards.

Also, I’ve been asked to spread the word about Fund Our Future, a group of mothers trying to pass legislation in Washington State that would require schools to have at least one professional librarian each. Bush is lucky to have four amazing librarians, but many schools in our state don’t have any.

There’s a rally this Friday in Olympia. Here’s the information:

RALLY IN OLYMPIA!
Support School Libraries
and Senate Bill #6380

Friday, February 1st, 2008 12:00 noon

Capitol Steps, Olympia WA

wear black and white it’s a black and white issue
bring signs posted at our website
bring your favorite book for a group READ poster photo
bring a carload make it a day!

Say THANK YOU to the Senate sponsors!
Senators Eide, Brown, McAuliffe, Marr, Shinn, Kohl-Welles & Weinstein.

Senate Bill #6380 will provide permanent essential funding for school library programs across Washington State, and will benefit every child, every teacher, every school, and every community.

To RSVP, sign the petition, and get all the information you’ll need, please visit our website:
www.fundourfuturewashington.org

After the rally visit your legislators’ offices and voice your support for Senate Bill #6380. We’ll provide you with talking points.

Join your legislators at a reception for Bill # 6380 from 4-5pm in the Pritchard Building. More info available at the website www.fundourfuturewashington.org

Thank you, and please pass the word!

Lisa, Susan and Denette
WCS-Lit
www.fundourfuturewashington.org

Visiting Grade Five

I got to Bush earlier than usual today so I could visit the Fifth Grade classes at 8:30 and tell them about those Batchelder books I’ve been reading. I was a little nervous, and I felt like I wasn’t really connecting with my audience. But afterwards I asked one of the teachers who observed me how she thought it went and she told me I did a great job. I still think I can improve, and I’m encouraged by the compliment. When I got back to the library I made a display of the Batchelder books so the kids will be able to find them if they want to check them out. We’ll see!

Now I’m working on my lesson for the Third Graders. I’ll point you to the documents I’m working on here and here.

It’s very quiet in the libray today.

Wednesdays

My Wednesdays at the Bush School are spent with Jody, the Lower School Librarian:

The Wednesday schedule includes visits from two Kindergarten classes, two Second Grade classes, and two Third Grade classes–so the day is pretty full.

Last Wednesday, Jody had all the kids introduce themselves to me individually. They each told me one thing about themselves and were allowed to ask me one question. In response, I told them my favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird, my favorite color is blue and my favorite animals are my mom’s Border Collies (Max and Maggie). They also wanted to know how old I am (25) and what I’m learning in school (which was difficult to explain in brief).

Usually after we met in the story room the kids spend time finding books to check out. This is fun because it gives me a chance to exercise my readers’ advisory muscles and helps me get to know the library’s collection.

Today with the Third Graders we started teaching them how to use Bush’s library catalog. Jody taught a brief lesson about the different kinds of searches they could do (keyword, subject, title, author) and then the kids each picked a subject to search for. Some of them had some trouble when they got to the catalog. The big issues are:

1. Typing and spelling
2. Understanding their results
3. Locating specific books on the shelf

(I’ll try to address some of these problems next week when I teach a lesson on using the catalog.)

After the Third Grade classes, Kindergartners come in. Jody had me read them stories today. I picked Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears and The House that Jack Built for the first class. For the second class I did Mosquitoes again and then Epossumondas. Jody praised my story reading, which felt great. Here are some of the things I try to keep in mind when reading aloud to a group:

• Practice before you get up there so you can look away from the book sometimes.
• Looking at the kids regularly is important because it lets you know how you’re doing and keeps them from misbehaving too much.
• Use a clear voice and try to create character voices.
• Involve and engage the kids by asking questions like “What do you think is going to happen next?” or “Why did he do that?”
• Absolutely pick books that have big, dramatic illustrations (so the kids in the back can see them) and not too many words on a page (Mosquitoes is actually pushing the limit for Kindergarteners).

I had so much fun reading to the Kindergarten classes. Before I’m done at the Bush School I’m going to try some storytelling (i.e. telling without books) as well.

When the Second Graders arrived, Jody taught a lesson about classic tales and their variants. To illustrate her point, she showed the kids different versions of I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly and The Three Little Pigs. Then, as usual, I helped the kids find books to check out.

Batchelder Book Talks

Here are the books the Bush Library has that have either won or been recognized by the Mildred L. Batchelder Award which honors children’s books that were first published in a foreign country in a foreign language and then translated into English and published in the United States.

The Pull of the Ocean

2007 Winner. Originally published in France. Written by Jean-Claude Mourlevat and translated from the French by Y. Maudet.

This story is based on Charles Perrault’s fairy tale “Tom Thumb”. It’s about an extraordinary (and extraordinarily small) boy who has three sets of twin brothers and one set of cruel parents. Just because this book is about a tiny boy, don’t expect it to be cute or sweet. When Perrault was writing fairy tales in the 17th Century they usually included some serious tragedy. Mourlevat picks up on this tradition and modernizes it.

When I Was a Soldier

2006 Honoree. Originally published in France. Written by Valérie Zenatti and translated from the French by Adriana Hunter.

This is the autobiography of an Israeli girl (originally from France, hence the book is in French, not Hebrew) who joins the Israeli army at the age of 18. If you want to know what it’s like to be a soldier in the Middle East, you should check this out.

The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins

2004 Honoree. Originally published in Sweden. Written by Bea Uusma Schyffert and translated from Swedish by Emi Guner.

A pretty cool book of artifacts, trivia, and stories from the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. The focus is on Michael Collins, who went up into space with Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong but had to stay in orbit while they went down to the moon’s surface. I really enjoyed some of the wackier anecdotes from the book. For example, when the astronauts discharged their urine into space it froze and crystalized which, according to Michael, made it look like Angels. Gross!

The Thief Lord

2003 Winner. Originally published in Germany. Written by Cornelia Funke and translated from German by Oliver Latsch.

Have you ever wanted to go to Italy? This book transports you there as it tells the story of two runaway brothers who join a gang of young thieves in Venice, the city of canals and gondolas.  Kind of like Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, only modern and Italian.

A Book of Coupons

2002 Honoree. Originally published in France. Written by Susie Morgenstern with illustrations by Serge Bloch. Translated from the French by Gill Rosner.

Delightfully silly book about a new teacher in a French school. To be honest, I haven’t read it, but it looks like fun.

Anne Frank Beyond the Diary: A Photographic Remembrance

1994 Honoree. Originally published in the Netherlands. By Ruud van der Rol and Rian Verhoeven, in association with the Anne Frank House, translated from Dutch by Tony Langham and Plym Peters.

If you want to know more about Anne Frank this is a great book to pick up, especially if you’re a more visual person because it has a lot of photographs.

Rose Blanche

1986 Winner. Originally published in Switzerland. By Christophe Gallaz and Robert Innocenti and translated from the French by Martha Coventry & Richard Craglia. (The ALA website lists Rose Blanche as being translated from the Italian, probably because the illustrator who originally conceived of the book, Innocenti, is Italian; however Gallaz, the man who wrote the text, was Swiss and wrote in French.)

Beautifully illustrated, this is the story of a gentile girl who discovers a concentration camp near her home in Germany during World War II. It looks like a picture book for young kids, but the content is very serious and sad, so it’s best for mature readers who can handle stories about the Holocaust.

Hiroshima No Pika

1983 Winner. Originally published in Japan. By Toshi Maruki and translated from Japanese through Kurita-Bando Literary Agency.

This picturebook tells the horrifying story of the day the United States attacked the city of Hiroshima with an atomic bomb. Like Rose Blanche above, this may appear to be for little kids, but the subject matter can be upsetting.

New Study Suggests Students Lack Information Literacy Skills

“A new study overturns the common assumption that the ‘Google Generation’ – youngsters born or brought up in the Internet age – is the most web-literate. The first ever virtual longitudinal study carried out by the CIBER research team at University College London claims that, although young people demonstrate an apparent ease and familiarity with computers, they rely heavily on search engines, view rather than read and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web.”

I guess this means school librarians are actually pretty important.

For a PDF of the report click here.

For the press release click here.

To sign the Washington State petition to require public schools to have certificated librarians click here.

First Friday

Today was my first Friday at the Bush library. On Fridays, Jody (the Lower School librarian) isn’t in the library, so I can use her desk and computer to work on projects, which I very much appreciate.

I arrived at 9 and got started on putting together a display of Tall Tales. To do this, I searched the Bush library catalog for “tall tales,” “johnny appleseed,” “paul bunyon,” etc. until I had found a good number to use. I made sure to include one of my favorite tall tales, Carolinda Clatter. I arranged the book for maximum visibility on the table, and then made a sign for the display. I’ll insert a full list of the books I used later and maybe add a picture of the display.

Then I took some time to prepare for book talks I’m going to give to Fifth Graders next week. They’re focusing on award winners, so I decided to book talk Batchelder Award winners and honor books. It took me quite a long time to look up all the possible books in the Bush catalog, but I finally discovered that we had eight of them, only one of which was checked out. So I gathered the seven books available and looked through them. I’d only read one previously, The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke. I was impressed by the variety of books I had (fiction, non-fiction, biography, historical, jokey) so I think this group of books will make for an interesting set of book talks. Hopefully they’ll be something for almost everybody.

Then Jenine Lillian, the Middle School librarian and a former professor of mine at the iSchool, asked me to help her with a collection development project. She’d just returned from the ALA Midwinter Conference in Philadelphia where she served on the Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers committee. She had a bookcart full of free books she’d gotten at the conference and I helped her go through them to determine what she’d donate to the Bush library and what she’d raffle off to students. This mostly involved checking the catalog to see what Bush already had and separating the winning books from the nominees.

I left a little bit after 1:00 feeling like I’d accomplished quite a bit. It was a good day.

Welcome to my first DFW…

My name’s Destinee. I’m working on my Master of Library and Information Science (or MLIS for short) at the University of Washington’s School of Information (better know as the iSchool).

My goal is to be a children’s librarian, so this quarter ( Winter 2008 ) I’m learning about school librarianship by doing a Directed Field Work (DFW for short) at The Bush School. I’m working with the librarians there to further my knowledge and get some experience. This blog is intended to be a record of that experience for anyone who’s interested.

You can browse my blog by clicking on any of the categories or tags you see on the right —>