Storytime: Fruit Salad II

I had a hankerin' to do another Fruit Salad storytime, a preschool storytime. I had done several years ago, but I wanted to give it a little update and try out some different books and add some great new-to-me songs. So, here's what I did for storytime this week:

Opening Song: My Hands Say Hello

Book: Orange Pear Apple Bear by Emily Gravett. This is a silly story that's fun to read and just uses four words throughout most of the book. Families were chuckling along at the funny illustrations and this is a great book to demonstrate rhyming words since "pear" and "bear" appear on almost every spread. When children hear and recognize rhyming words, they are learning that words are made up of smaller sounds (phonological awareness), which is an early literacy skill.

Book: The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big, Hungry Bear by Audrey & Don Wood. This is a favorite with many of our kids and a lot of my storytimers were familiar with this one. I love to share old favorites to demonstrate a love of reading and reassure parents that it's a-okay to read your favorites over and over again!

Felt Rhyme: Five Red Strawberries (with mouse puppet)

This activity was inspired by Melissa Depper from Mel's Desk. Before we said our rhyme, I put up the strawberries on the board and we talked about them. I asked them if the strawberries were the same or different. I asked them to help me find the tall, skinny strawberry and the big, wide strawberry and the unripe strawberry. This is a great activity to help reinforce the concept of same and different and to introduce vocabulary. Then we shared our rhyme:

(This rhyme is the same as the rhyme I have used for Five Red Apples, which, I realized, means that some of the verses don't actually make sense - strawberries don't grow on trees, etc. I will have to update it for the next time!)

Five red strawberries, sweet to the core.
Bear came and ate one and then there were four.

Four red strawberries, sitting in a tree.
Bear came and ate one and then there were three.

Three red strawberries, one for you and you and you.
Bear came and ate one and then there were two.

Two red strawberries, shining in the sun.
Bear came and ate one and then there was one.

One red strawberry, left all alone.
Bear came and ate one and then there was none.

[At this point, I should have gone in to one of our action songs, but the kids seemed okay so I stuck with the plan... halfway through the book, I was regretting that! Don't be afraid to rearrange your order of activities as needed!]

Book: Go, Go Grapes by April Pulley Sayre. How do I love April Pulley Sayre, let me count the ways... She writes awesome and accessible nonfiction for very young readers. This one in particular has a great rhythm and rhyme and introduces kids to lots of new words - many fruits that I was not familiar with. 

Action Song: Bananas Unite! 

Part of the reason I wanted to do a fruit storytime is that I had learned some new-to-me action songs that fit perfectly! This one was really fun. We did it twice!



Book: The Mouse Who Ate the Moon by Petr Horacek. This is a cute story about a mouse who thinks he's found a piece of the moon when he spies a banana outside his house. It smells so delicious that Mouse can't help but nibble and soon he's eaten half of it and he despairs that the moon will never be round again! Bright, colorful pictures make this a great one for sharing.

Felt Activity: Fruit Salad! As we like to do here, I passed out pieces of our fruit salad felt set and let the kids bring them up as I called their fruit. We made fruit salad together! After everyone had brought up their fruit, we talked about the rainbow of fruit that we had on the board and we counted our pieces together (a sneaky way for me to get a count for our stats!).

I ran out of time, but I had also planned two more items:

Book: The Very Hungry Caterpillar (pop-up) by Eric Carle. This is another classic favorite and the pop-up format gives it a twist that's something new for kids who have the original book at home.

Action Song: Fruit Salad

The whole reason I wanted to plan another fruit storytime was to include this fun song and then we ran out of time and I didn't get to do it! Ah, well. I think next summer's theme is going to be Health, so I can definitely fit another fruit program in there!



PS: These action songs are expertly demonstrated by the lovely ladies at Jbrary and if you're not using them as a resource for songs and rhymes, you should start now!!!

Closing Song: Do You Know What Time It Is?

Play Time: For summer, we're keeping it easy and I just pulled out the blocks and the play food/dishes and the kids had a great time. These simple basics are a great investment and encourage lots of imaginative play!

Summer Reading Club Check-In #1

Summer Reading Club started last week! Which means... we have been busy! (In fact, I meant to post this last week, but that was not to be.)

I was super anxious about Summer Reading starting this year, in part because we were doing school visits almost every day in May and I felt like I didn't really have any time to prepare. When the first day came around I did NOT feel ready. But guess what? It was okay. We had everything ready that we really needed and we were able to get to everything else throughout the next couple of days.

Now, we're a week in and we have over 1000 kids and over 300 teens signed up for the Summer Reading Club. They're starting to read and log their books. And, of course, they're coming in to ask us questions! 

We keep track of questions we're asked for stats and to help with collection development and trends. Normally, our questions for the entire day fill up half a sheet or maybe one whole sheet. During the summer, we regularly spill over onto the back page (or sometimes more!). 

These pages are from a couple of days last week, the first week of the Summer Reading Club.

Programs are hopping! We had a big performer last week (the first week school was out, which ended up being a mistake - our crowds were too big for our room!) and our weekly storytimes are back this week. I really try to go light on programming the first week of Summer Reading Club because as the kids get out of school, we have SO MANY coming in and we need all hands on deck to answer questions and help people get signed up. 

(Life is SO much easier since we switched to doing the Summer Reading Club online several years ago, but we still get questions!)

One GREAT change that we made this summer is that we have made all of our summer programs drop-in and many of them are all-ages this year. Not having to deal with registering patrons and getting all their info (and then at some point having to turn people away when the programs fill up!) had made life easier, too. 

I am all about making things easier this year. :) 

Of course, we librarians have started our summer reading, too! 

I love showing off our own reading so that kids can see that we're participating. They may see something that looks interesting on our "reading log" and want to check it out, too! Since we generally can't meet for our Reading Wildly meetings due to the traffic in our department in June and July, this is a way we can still share what we're reading with each other. 

We have been seeing a lot of our booktalking kids come in to the library looking for books that we've brought to their classrooms throughout the year. Even if they didn't come in right away, many have been storing up ideas and are now seeking out these titles as they come in with their families. 

Have you started Summer Reading yet? How's YOUR summer going?!

Tiger Boy

Tiger Boy by Mitali Perkins. Grades 4-6. Charlesbridge, April 2015. 144 pages. Review copy provided by my local library.

Booktalk:

Neel loves his home in an island village in India. He loves his mother’s cooking. He loves swimming in the nearby ponds. And he loves the tigers that live on the preserve on a neighboring island, the only place where wild Bengal tigers still live.

When Neel and his friends learn that a tiger cub has escaped from the preserve and is thought to be on Neel’s island, they know that they have to look for her. It’s not often that tiger cubs are born in the preserve - every one is precious.

Neel’s teachers have nominated him for an important scholarship, a prize that could be his family’s ticket out of poverty, and Neel knows that he ought to be studying instead of patrolling the island for a lost tiger cub. But when Neel finds out that Gupta, a corrupt businessman, is also searching for the cub, Neel knows that he has to be the one to find her. If Gupta finds her, he will most likely sell her on the black market for her beautiful fur and Neel can’t - he WON’T - let that happen.

Can Neel find the lost tiger cub in time? If he joins the search for her, is he giving up his chance for a good future?

My Thoughts:

Okay, friends, I judged this one by its cover initially (the cover, to me, is not super appealing). But it kept getting great reviews from my friends on GoodReads and when I finally picked it up, I was so glad I did!

Lesson: do not doubt Mitali Perkins. 

This is an engaging story that will be a super hit with kids who love animals and/or adventure stories. Cultural details bring the Indian setting to life, detailed while still being accessible to kids who have no knowledge about India. The pacing is on-point; this is a short book that will hold the attention of its audience. There's plenty of tension as the reader wonders if Neel will find the tiger cub in time (and also, y'know, what Neel will do about his entire future, which rides on this scholarship). 

Neel's reluctance to leave his family home (and thus his reluctance to study for the scholarship exam) is believable. It shows that smart kids can be reluctant learners, too. Neel needs to find inspiration to continue his studies, he needs to be shown how attending a good school can enable him to do something he cares about. I found that transition to be believable, too. 

And, after all, who doesn't love a story in which a kid protects a baby tiger?!

Answer: no one. Everyone loves that. 

Readalikes: 

I would suggest this to kids in 4th-6th grade. I'm excited to have a shorter book I can bring to our middle schools for booktalks (I feel like every book I bring there is so LONG!).

Rickshaw Girl by Mitali Perkins - this book brings its Bangladeshi setting to life in much the same way as the Indian setting in Tiger Boy. 

Chasing Cheetahs by Sy Montgomery (and other books about animals) - Tiger Boy is a great pick for kids who love wild animals and want to learn more about them.

Can We Save the Tiger? by Martin Jenkins - this book about endangered animals includes a passage that I kept thinking about while I read Tiger Boy, about why folks in India might hunt tigers even though they know they are endangered. This would be a good readalike for kids who enjoy exploring environmental themes.

The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher by Dana Levy - okay, this is a little bit of a wild card, but i think that kids who enjoy reading about Neel's family in Tiger Boy and/or kids who identify with Neel's struggle to figure out his future might also find some of those elements in The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher. 

Kids' Choice

I'm over at the ALSC Blog today talking about our summer Kids' Choice display and why it's vital to support kids' choices in reading over the summer!

Click through and check it out!

The Way Home Looks Now

The Way Home Looks Now by Wendy Wan-Long Shang. Grades 4-7. Scholastic Press, April 2015. 272 pages. Reviewed from ARC provided by publisher.

Booktalk:

Peter Lee and his family have always loved baseball. One of Peter’s happiest memories is going with his family to watch the Little League team from Taiwan compete against the American team in the Little League World series. It was such a beautiful day and a great game, plus an important one as Chinese-American families all gathered to support Taiwan.

But that was Before.

Before Peter’s older brother Nelson died in a car accident and everything changed. Peter desperately misses his brother and he wonders if his family will ever be happy again. Now, Peter’s mom just sits on the couch and watches TV all day, not cooking, not talking, not doing anything… until one day when Peter mentions that day at the Little League championships and she actually sits up and has a conversation with him for the first time in forever.

Peter thinks he’s found the key to bringing his mom out of her slump: baseball. So he convinces his father to let him join a baseball team, aiming to get really good and invite his mom to come and watch. But when Peter’s father volunteers to coach his team, Peter begins to doubt his plan. His dad has never coached before. He has weird methods. Some of the other kids don't like having a Chinese-American coach. Is Peter's team doomed to fail? Will his family ever be normal again? 

My thoughts:

This is a great sports story, perfect for baseballs fans, while also including some really interesting historical detail and a nuanced family story.

Set in the 1970s, the story is based on events that happened in the author's childhood - the Chinese-American community's strong rally of support for the Taiwanese Little League team, the question of girls playing on sports teams, etc. Reading the author's note helped me appreciate the story on a deeper level, knowing that it was based on some actual events.

This is also a story that tackles the subject of a grieving family and acknowledges that grief does not just magically go away. It's a story of family members doing their best to support each other, even as each person in the family grieves in his or her own way. Peter doesn't really understand why his mom is so out of it, but it's something he has to accept. True fans don't give up if their team has a losing season; they continue to show their support and hope that things will get better. This simple message really connects baseball to the deeper themes of the novel.

And the beauty is that this nuanced family story is organically nestled in a great baseball story. The book includes some of the play-by-play action that sports fans will look for, as well as fun baseball facts and coaching techniques. Peter and his teammates challenge themselves to come up with the answers to seemingly impossible plays, like "How do you get a no-man triple play?" 

Readalikes: 

The Only Game by Mike Lupica - I read this earlier this spring and it shares a lot of the same themes: a boy mourning the loss of his older brother in an accident with lots of play-by-play baseball action. 

Nest by Esther Erlich - kids who more identified with Peter's family mourning and who are interested in the 1970s setting might like Nest, a story of a girl dealing with her mom's MS diagnosis. 

Abby's Plan for Surviving the Summer

Summer Reading is upon us. Our program starts on Monday. We have been CRAZY with school visits this May and I'm hoping we'll see a lot of those smiling faces at the library this summer.

It's a busy time of year for your public children's librarians and I have a plan that I hope will help me stay healthy and sane until I get to take my week of vacation in August. ;)

1. Stay hydrated. No, really. So often I come home feeling crappy and realize that I can't remember when I last drank some water. Summer is a busy time; we're on our feet for much of the day helping people find what they're looking for. DRINK WATER throughout the day!

2. Take time off when I can. Although as a department head, I am salaried, my administration is very supportive of us adjusting our schedules and taking time off if we have to stay late or come in to cover. Sometimes that's not possible in the busy summer months, but serving on the Newbery Committee last year (when I HAD to leave on time to go home and read a million books) has taught me that I usually CAN make up those hours. Now I make sure that I do whenever possible.

3. Keep exercising. Summer Reading wears me out! I'm often tired when I get home, but I know that I feel better if I can stick to my exercise routine. Having great audiobooks helps keep me motivated, and I'm hoping to make it to yoga class at least once a week (hopefully this summer. It helps me deal with stress and weight-bearing exercise like walking or yoga helps prevent osteoporosis! Did you know that, ladies?!

4. Let myself read fun-for-me books. Okay, most books I read are fun for me, but this school year I've been so focused on reading things that I can take to elementary and middle schools to book talk that I let other reading slide. While summer is a great time to prep for next year, I'll read some adult and YA titles for fun this summer.

What are YOUR summer survival strategies?

The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly

The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes. Grades 8+ Dial Books, June 2015. 400 pages. Review copy provided by publisher.

What it's about:

When Minnow was five years old, her parents moved the family to the remote woods of Montana to join a religious cult led by a Prophet named Kevin. Good Kevinian girls didn't read or write. They obeyed the prophecies that came to Kevin. They didn't doubt or question. They prepared for the war that the evil Gentiles would one day wage on them. But Minnow didn't quite buy it. And when she rebelled, they cut off her hands.

Now the Prophet is dead. The Community has burned to the ground. A green-eyed boy was beaten almost to death. And Minnow sits in a juvenile correction center, trying not to remember the horrors that came before. The FBI is investigating what happened and Minnow might be the key to unraveling the events of that horrifying night.

My thoughts:

We have been doing so much booktalking this year that sometimes I feel like that's all my reading is - prepping for booktalks I will do. So it's been hard for me lately to get into books that I know I can't booktalk (YA stuff, since we only cover the elementary schools and early middle school grades).

Not so with this book.

I had heard some rave reviews and I picked this book up Sunday night and I seriously could not put it down. I finished it less than 24 hours later. That has NOT been happening lately, so you know this is a special book!

Minnow is a really compelling character, a strong girl who has escaped from those who would harm her and who is trying to stand on her own two feet. And her story is compelling, as well. Author Stephanie Oakes metes the back story out at a nice pace, keeping tension taut in the story while still giving you enough to keep you invested. I was also riveted by Minnow's time in prison, how she navigated the waters and how she managed with no hands. I was so engrossed in the story that it was hard to get it out of my head. I went to lunch with a friend and kept thinking about what it would be like if I had no hands myself.

The book reads like part crime-thriller, part religious cult expose, and it reminded me of several of my favorite TV shows - Orange is the New Black and The Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt (not the tone of that last one, but a little bit of the premise).

I would totally booktalk it to 8th grade and up if I was doing teen booktalks. I think the premise alone (they CUT OFF HER HANDS!) makes a great booktalk and this is one that kids who like thrilling stories will clamor for.

Readalikes:

After by Amy Efaw - another ripped-from-the-headlines type of story about a girl in juvie for abandoning her newborn baby in the trash.

The Year We Disappeared by Cylin Busby and John Busby - this true crime story has the same compelling style where you just can't put the book down until you know what happens.

I'd also hand this book to fans of Jodi Picoult, especially Plain Truth and The Pact.

Booktalking Redux

Photo by Book Aid International

It's been a magical year of booktalking at our local schools! I posted last fall about getting in to our local schools for booktalks, and now that we're wrapping up our first booktalking year, I wanted to post about how things have gone this year. 

We ended up with 18 grades at 9 schools that we saw monthly (or regularly - one group had us come every six weeks when their language arts unit changed). This includes the 5th & 6th grades at our middle schools and our teen librarians visited the 7th & 8th grades there, as well. We saw different combinations of grades for a total of 12 monthly visits each month. Some of these visits were as short as 15-20 minutes and some of them lasted as long as 3.5 hours, depending on the numbers of classes and groups we saw.

For example, we visited one 4th grade class at one of our private schools for just one presentation, about 15 minutes at the end of their school day, each month. At one of our middle schools, we visited twice a month and saw 6-8 groups for 15 minutes apiece at each visit in order to get all the 5th/6th grade classes in. 

Typically, we see each class (or group of classes) for 15-20 minutes, during which time we can share 5-6 books. We always try to keep a balance between genres and formats and we always include diverse books. This year, we saw kids ranging from 1st to 6th grade. Some of the teachers asked to check out the books we were bringing in school collections, some did not. 

We were lucky this year that we had the collection budget to order multiple copies of the books we were bringing if teachers wanted to check out the books for their classes. Unfortunately, next year it looks like we may not have the money to do that, but we're brainstorming ways that we can still make it work. The good news is that we can reuse some of the books that we brought this year (but we have to be a little careful about that - if the 2nd grade team used a book that we also used for 3rd grade, that wouldn't be one we would repeat this year). That's going to be the biggest challenge for the 5th/6th grade groups we saw since we won't be able to repeat any of those books.

I scheduled certain staff members to visit certain schools and we all pretty much saw the same groups each month. This allows the kids to get to know their librarians and the librarians to get to know their kids. The way it's worked out is that I have a set of early elementary booktalkers and a set of older elementary/middle school booktalkers. We'll see how this pans out for next year when we may possibly have an increase in the number of programs we're asked to do.  

All in all, it's been an extremely fun and valuable year. Many of our teachers have already asked if we will be doing the booktalking visits again next year, and I'm excited to see who will have us back and if we'll have any "new recruits". 

As we are wrapping up with each group, I am sending out a wrap-up email explaining about scheduling for next year, including a book list of all the books we brought to them throughout the year and a link to a survey for teachers. I love to send out the book lists, which can be a great resource for kids as they're trying to find good books to read over the summer. We're slowly getting responses to the survey and we've been getting very positive feedback. It looks like the books we brought this past year were on-target for the age groups we were seeing and have been getting kids excited about reading and introducing teachers to new books. 

Results: 

1. We see kids in all the time, asking for books we have brought to their classrooms. The books are checking out. 

2. Kids have gotten more excited about reading and teachers are being exposed to new books they didn't know about before. We heard from one middle school teacher who has used one of the books we introduced to develop a problem-solving lesson that her kids were super into. Huzzah! 

3. Kids have a chance to connect with librarians and ask questions about the library. We have the opportunity to tell them how to get a library card, give an extra push for Summer Reading Club, or tell them about fun programs that are coming up. 

Things We Have Learned:

1. May is too busy for Summer Reading Club school visits and a bunch of booktalking visits. Next year, we will do booktalks September through April (like the rest of our programming!) and maybe we can offer an extra visit in May to talk about and answer questions about the Summer Reading Club. 

2. We're taking August off for scheduling. That was the most stressful part of last year for me - trying to take vacation in August when I was in the middle of scheduling a ton of booktalking visits. This year, I have let teachers know that we'll be in touch in August to schedule visits for the school year. I am going to take that month to get everything scheduled and then we'll be ready to go in September. 

3. It's GREAT to be able to send teams of two to do the booktalks. Not only does it cut down on the number of books you have to prepare each month, but it makes it easier to get a nice balance of genres, formats, etc. This past year, I only sent one person to some of the smaller groups. Next year, I'll probably still send one person to these groups, but I am going to rotate so that it's not one person seeing the same group every month. We'll rotate between three or four of us, which will help make the workload more manageable and also result in more balanced presentations over the course of the year. 

4. Send reminder emails!!! I have gotten into the habit of sending out a short reminder note a week before our visit. This allows us some time to put together School Collections if anyone has any special requests, time to reschedule if we need to make changes due to field trips, etc., and it's helped keep everyone on track. I copy the staff who will be doing the visit so that everyone's on the same page. 

Now that I feel like we have a better handle on how booktalking programs can work for us and our teachers, I am really excited to schedule folks for booktalks next year! 

Save the Date: 48-Hour Book Challenge!!!

It's time to start gathering your To Be Read pile up and stocking up on snacks! Pam at MotherReader has just announced the TENTH ANNUAL 48-Hour Book Challenge will be held on the weekend of June 19-21!! This is one of my favorite weekends of the year and you can bet I will be reading with bells on (um, is that a thing?). 

More details to come at MotherReader.com, so stay tuned. 

PS: I know I have been failing at blogging lately. Summer Reading is coming and my budget is frozen and that's all I'm going to say about that (for now). But I will try to get back to it soon. <3 p="">

Reading Wildly: Science Fiction

This month at Reading Wildly, we talked about Science Fiction books. We had an interesting conversation about the different types of science fiction that exist - it's not all aliens and spaceships (although it is some of that!). And we talked about whether science fiction is more "for boys" and whether science fiction is being written that will attract girl readers, too. (What we actually found was that the books we read were about half and half with girl protagonists and boy protagonists and that almost everyone on my staff [mostly female] was able to find at least one science fiction story they enjoyed.) 

To start our meeting, we discussed the following articles: Sci-Fi Series and Stand-Alones Across the Curriculum by Aileen Kirkham (LibrarySparks, March 2012) and Why Everyone Should Read More Science Fiction by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner (Huffington Post, 2013). One consideration we talked about is that some of our school require kids to read in different genres and sci-fi can be a hard sell for some kids who think they don't like it. We're always on the lookout for sci-fi that reads like other types of fiction (example: The Fourteenth Goldfish is a science fiction story, but also has a lot of elements of contemporary fiction). 

And then we shared our booktalks and here's what we all read this month: 

• My Teacher is an Alien by Bruce Coville
• The City of Ember (Graphic Novel) by Jeanne DuPrau
• Earthling! by Mark Fearing
• Hunt for the Hydra (Jupiter Pirates #1) by Jason Fry
• The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm
• Adaptation by Malinda Lo (teen selection)
• Archvillain by Barry Lyga
• The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex
• The Girl with the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts
• Menace from the Deep (Killer Species #1) by Michael P. Spradlin

For June and July, it's Reader's Choice for our monthly meetings.... and we're not going to actually meet! It's so hard to get everyone together over the summer that we're forgoing in-person meetings and I'm asking everyone to contribute to our group "reading log" throughout the summer. We'll be back to our monthly meetings in August, once the kids are back in school and peace reigns again. ;)