Year 3 - Day 194 - July 12

I don't know what it is with me and this year's BES chapter books. I'm just not clicking with a bunch of them. This one tells the story of Eliza's journey to freedom. The prologue tells you that she makes it, so that takes some of the suspense out of it. I was bothered by the fact that Harriet Tubman led her group to Canada, because although she's a famous face associated with the concept of the underground railroad, she obviously wasn't on every trip. Also convenient that this is one of the few slaves that reads and writes on a high level. They had a pretty uneventful trip from Virginia to Maryland to Canada, which was also a little sanitized.

Year 3 - Day 191 - July 9

This book made my brain hurt. I can't tell if it's written really well, or if it's just ridiculous. Perhaps if I didn't go in thinking it was merely going to be the historical fiction genre, I would have fared better. By the time I finished it, I was willing to admit that it was interesting but when we lept from historical fiction to sci-fi I was really annoyed and put the book down for quite awhile.

The original setting is just before and after the stock market crash. The boy lives alone with his father and they have an extensive train set in their basement. After the bank forecloses on their house, the dad goes went to California to find work and leaves the son with his aunt and cousin. A variety of realistic things happen until the boy finds himself in the middle of a bank hold-up. That's when all realism goes out the window. Somehow, (and I read the few page event several times without clearing up my confusion until later when I realized that I was SUPPOSED to be confused,) the boy winds up on a train bound for California. But when he gets there, it's 10 years later. What?!?!

By the end, I was willing to concede that it was just a "Back to the Future" story, with time jumps back and forth, but my brain still hurts.

Year 3 - Day 190 - July 8

Today was my family birthday party with us, Mike's parents, brother, uncle & my mom. We went to his parents' house and had a cookout while the Orioles lost. A pretty easy relaxing birthday.

This BES book is supposedly set in Baltimore, but I'm not sure the author has actually ever BEEN to Baltimore. One character leaves N.C. after lunch and arrives in Baltimore by dinner. That makes no sense. They explicitly say there's no subway in Baltimore (there is.) And the author acts like it's the arctic tundra for months on end. If they said the ice covered parking lot lasted for a few days, it'd be believable. But they definitely don't act like the cold weather is just a cold snap. Of course maybe she visited during the blizzard year and that's the only time she's been here. :) The basic storyline is that Jake lives alone with his mom. When she slips, falls, and winds up spending some time in the hospital due to that treacherous icy parking lot, he has to rely on an elderly neighbor to take care of him until the grandfather he barely knows arrives (in record time) from NC. Then when the grandfather gets there, everyone has to get to know each other. It was very short in length but also short on deep meanings.

Year 3 - Day 185 - July 3

We were supposed to go to PA to watch fireworks and see friends tonight but sadly that didn't happen. I'm bummed because they have the best view of fireworks from their driveway. The town sets them off down the street and you can go outside JUST before they start, watch them sitting on pavement (which cuts down on bugs) and then go back inside as soon as they're over and resume enjoying the AC. That's much better than the firework viewing of my childhood, which involved hours of being outside to stake out a good place, trying not to get eaten alive by mosquitoes and green head flies, and then dealing with the traffic and horn honking after the show was over!

This is another BES book. It took me more time than several of the others combined. I'm excited to have a book to give to my high readers, but I'm thinking this particular title would have fit better in the middle school group of titles. Maybe not though, because there's nothing completely inappropriate and I do always bemoan the fact that as soon as books get harder to read, they get inappropriate. This story jumps back and forth in time and has a couple different narrators which I'm excited to introduce to kids that don't often see that in literature. It's set during the civil war and while the main characters are a little younger than I believe is completely realistic, it's interesting to see them grow from their horrible experiences on the battlefield.

Year 3 - Day 183 - July 1

This was, by far, my least favorite BES book on the list this year. I honestly didn't find that it had a single redeeming quality. I haven't read the other May Amelia book in quite some time, but I don't remember disliking it this much. I know the author doesn't have anything to do with the cover selection, but the cover is wrong and that just sets the wrong tone. If you've established the late 1800's as a time period and have given basic descriptions of the characters along the way, you don't put a very 21st century looking girl in modern clothes with non-blond hair on the cover.

Year 3 - Day 176 - June 24

Oops. It's sideways. Oh well.

This is another BES book for this year. (I like to read them in the summer before we got back so I can book talk them early.)

Another historical fiction book, another girl main character. This one is set during WWII. The girl longs to grow up and be a fighter jet pilot. Her dad believes she can do anything whereas the rest of the town kind of rolls their eyes at her. Of course dad gets called off to war after Pearl Harbor and shortly after that, a Japanese American boy comes to town. At first she's glad he's there because the bullies pick on the boy instead of her. An unlikely friendship ensues and I really thought that was going to be the heart of the story.

It was, until the book turned into a terrible Indiana Jones movie at the end. (I seriously compared it to the most recent one, where the UFO comes out of the ground. There was no UFO in the book, but it was JUST ABOUT that unbelievable.)

I'm curious to see the kids reaction when they read. I wonder if they'll think it's a great adventure story or if they'll be rolling their eyes too. (I never tell them when I roll my eyes at one of the BES books, because I hate the skew the voting!)

Year 3 - Day 175 - June 23

This is one of the Black Eyed Susan chapter books for this year, grades 4-6. It is FANTASTIC. It won the National Book Award for young readers and absolutely deserved it. (Interestingly enough, it only won the Newberry Honor rather than the top award.) I hope that my students like it, because it's a little heavy at times. I think they will. (Especially because it's written in verse rather than novel form so there's barely any words on a page.)

The basic gist is that the main character lives in Vietnam during the war. She and her family escape on the refugee boats just before the fall of Saigon. Through various (though quick in the book) events, they wind up in Alabama. A new world, new foods, new cultures and customs, new language - everything is overwhelming. We know from early in the book that she was at the top of her class in Vietnam and once she gets to Alabama she says things like "This must be what it's like to feel stupid." I hope it will really make the kids think about other people's perspectives.

Year 3 - Day 111 - April 20

I went to a conference in Baltimore today with lots of media, technology, and other teachers. I helped with a group presentation in the morning and then did some learning for the rest of the day. Broken up by lunch with my former now retired supervisor and some colleagues. To get down there, I carpooled with Mike to work and then took the light rail. While waiting for the train this afternoon, I realized that the tall building in the left side of the picture is now a "Transamerica" building. That's definitely new. The Gallery/Renaissance building has a new name too. I'm so glad it was a nice day for this. I like breaking up the work week with something fun like being the learner instead of the teacher!

Year 2 - Day 264 - September 22

Now that I've gotten through the first few weeks of "intro" lessons, we get to get into the good stuff! I made hundreds of copies of this year's Black Eyed Susan nominees paper so that we can get started with the reading. Woohoo! The kids have been asking for a couple weeks, so they will be super excited on Monday when I pull out this paper. Throughout the year, we read several of the books on the nominees list. The kids use this paper to keep track of the ones they like. Then in the spring they get to vote for their favorite. It's one of the activities they really look forward to.

Year 2 - Day 222 - August 11

Today was super busy, but I enjoyed almost all of it. I was thrilled to realize that my monthly evening meeting in Arbutus happened to fall on the same day as my afternoon meeting in Columbia. How nice not to have to drive all the way down there twice! We added lunch onto the beginning of the first meeting so I was being a productive person all day. We spent the afternoon in Barnes & Noble reading picture books for our Black Eyed Susan nominees. While I didn't find one that screamed award winner, I found several that I'll buy for our library and one that I absolutely want to own for my own collection - http://amzn.to/r391lN

Year 2 - Day 96 - April 7

There are lots of checkmarks on our chart .... that means that Black Eyed Susan voting time is getting close! :)

Year 2 - Day 58 - February 27

We voted on the Black Eyed Susan Picture Books today!  I won't spill the beans, but one of the ladies had her friends make these cupcakes.  Aren't they stinkin adorable?  The petals are mini marshmellows snipped with scissors, dampened, and dipped in yellow crystal sprinkles!

Year 2 - Day 56 - February 25

Another book that I re-read this week prepping for voting weekend.  I really hope this one makes the list, too. 

Of course I knew about the famous sit in at the lunch counter.  I learned about it in more than one year of school.

However - I didn't know that it happened right here in Baltimore until I heard the protests about the fact that someone wants to demolish the building where it happened.  I felt really dumb that I didn't know.  It's amazing that growing up in one of the "newer" Baltimore suburbs gave me a completly different history than people who grew up in the more established suburbs.  Our area didn't have the "hon" thing, the strong accent, and apparently we didn't know that much about the goings on in our very nearby city.  It's amazing that we lived less than 25 minutes from downtown, and were a world away.

Year 2 - Day 54 - February 23

Tonight my photography class was canceled, so I got to go to book club!  That's exciting because we were actually discussing both our Jan & Feb books due to the January snow.  We read Room & House Rules.  I had actually read both previously, but it was fun to discuss them with people.

More importantly, I read this picture book again because we're voting on the Black Eyed Susan Picture Book Award list this weekend, and I needed to refresh my memory with some of them.  This book is genius.  I really hope it makes the list.  I'd love to sit down with the author and say HOW DID YOU DO IT?!

On each page, there is a pair of poems and a fantastic illustration that go with a fairy tale.  They describe both sides of the story.  The catch is that the 2nd poem is the words in the 1st poem exactly reversed.  It's spectacular. 

Day 231 - August 19

Another day, another book.  I went back to work today and this is actually a book I had to read for school.  It's on the Black Eyed Susan list for grades 4-6, but it was really sad so it'll be interesting to see if the kids like it.  Of course you shouldn't judge a book by its' cover - because then what would we do with the cliche?!  But this cover looks happy and fun, and the story isn't.  It's about an older elementary aged girl dealing with the sudden death of her brother.  He dies in a freak hockey accident, so she becomes a hypochondriac who is worried about everything. (She even wears her bike helmet in the car.)  Her parents don't realize how badly she needs a counselor or someone to talk to, because they're dealing with the loss of their son.  So yeah, really heavy.