I recently bought an unbelievably wonderful picture book, Oh No! (Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World) by Mac Barnett and Dan Santat. It will surely destroy any lingering notion you may have that picture books are sweet concotions for little innocents. Instead of reviewing it myself, I'll send you to one by bubbly Betsy Bird, and you'll see what a resource she is for children's book recommendations.
Looking for some great ideas for summer reading? What about what some actual kids recommend? You'll find such lists on the Center for Teaching and Learning's "Kids Recommend" page.
Barnes and Nobles will give kids a free book for any eight books they read this summer!
Here on the Peninsula we have a fantastic library system. Despite budget cutbacks, there are kids' events in your city, and our children's librarians are experts at matching children and books. And did you know that if your local branch does not have a book you want, or if a book is currently on loan, you can reserve the book online (if any library in the system has it) and your library will let you know when to pick it up?
Saturday, June 26, 2010
LARS'S LIBRARY: THREE RECOMMENDATIONS
For fifth graders and up:
Belle Prater's Boy by Ruth White
Belle Prater is the aunt of the narrator, a pretty sixth-grader named Gypsy Arbutus Leemaster. Belle's son Woodrow is her seemingly ungainly and cross-eyed cousin.
Apparently abandoned by his mother, who has mysteriously disappeared from "way far in the head of a long, isolated holler," Woodrow comes to live with the cousins' grandparents, residents of the tony part of Coal Station, Virginia. They live right next to Gypsy and her mother and step-father.
Woodrow is a surprising and endearing character, one of the best I've come across in children's books. And Gypsy has her own unexpected aspects as well. I really liked it that although we learn what happened to her father (needed a hankie there), other mysteries are left unresolved.
I'm a sucker for the novel's time frame, the late 1950s. The references to politics and culture, and in particular, the music--mostly old country songs like "On the Wings of a Dove," but also Dinah Shore singing "See the U.S.A. in a Chevrolet"--really resonated with me. Not only for old guys, though--a friend just read this with a seventh grader who loved it.
Those allusions to a time gone by are just bonuses to a rich tale full of magic and emotion, a tale where the poetry of Rumi is as important an underpinning as the lyrics to a Ferlin Husky song.
For fourth graders and up:
The Kane Chronicles, Book One: The Red Pyramid
by Rick Riordan
OK, I'm hooked on the whole Riordan phenomenon. Bought this one the week it came out and ripped through it. If Riordan can keep it going, this series will be even better than the Percy Jackson books. Let me back that up.
As with the PJ books, first person narrator, but there are two of them, switching every two chapters. One is a girl. Sadie and Carter Kane are siblings who squabble but are fiercely protective of each other, despite being raised separately. I enjoyed the slightly nerdier-than-PJ cast of Carter, and Sadie is wickedly irreverent.
The kids are African-Americans. Carter's dark skin gets him identified that way. Representatives of officialdom, like airport police, see the light-skinned Sadie as white, unrelated to her brother, and less likely to cause trouble. That infuriates Sadie, and is likely to intrigue readers. Certainly a change of pace from Harry Potter and Greg Heffley (and for that matter, Percy Jackson).
The Red Pyramid made Egyptian mythology and history fun. A bonus for me, because the Greek legends and myths found in the PJ series are more familiar (and already fun). After reading Pyramid, you'll want to investigate further. I went back to the wonderful Graphic Universe comic book, Isis and Osiris: To the Ends of the Earth to get into source material, and for sure I'll be looking for other non-social-studies-textbook books.
The three kingdoms of Egypt are never going to be a dry research subject again. And I'll never see Mickey Mouse in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" section of Fantasia in the same way I used to.
For first graders and up:
Stinky by Eleanor Davis
All of the Toon Books, high quality children's comics, are first rate. But Stinky, the story of of a smelly monster who eats pickled onions for breakfast has been extensively field-tested by me. I haven't worked with a kid yet who didn't enjoy reading it. And there have been quite a few.
Stinky lives in a muddy swamp and stays far away from the kids in town who don't like swamps and like to take baths.
Then a kid named Nick fearlessly enters the swamp, builds a tree house, and adopts Stinky's pet toad, Wartbelly. If that weren't enough, he renames it Daisy. You can see why Stinky might be upset.
Belle Prater's Boy by Ruth White
Belle Prater is the aunt of the narrator, a pretty sixth-grader named Gypsy Arbutus Leemaster. Belle's son Woodrow is her seemingly ungainly and cross-eyed cousin.
Apparently abandoned by his mother, who has mysteriously disappeared from "way far in the head of a long, isolated holler," Woodrow comes to live with the cousins' grandparents, residents of the tony part of Coal Station, Virginia. They live right next to Gypsy and her mother and step-father.
Woodrow is a surprising and endearing character, one of the best I've come across in children's books. And Gypsy has her own unexpected aspects as well. I really liked it that although we learn what happened to her father (needed a hankie there), other mysteries are left unresolved.
I'm a sucker for the novel's time frame, the late 1950s. The references to politics and culture, and in particular, the music--mostly old country songs like "On the Wings of a Dove," but also Dinah Shore singing "See the U.S.A. in a Chevrolet"--really resonated with me. Not only for old guys, though--a friend just read this with a seventh grader who loved it.
Those allusions to a time gone by are just bonuses to a rich tale full of magic and emotion, a tale where the poetry of Rumi is as important an underpinning as the lyrics to a Ferlin Husky song.
For fourth graders and up:
The Kane Chronicles, Book One: The Red Pyramid
by Rick Riordan
OK, I'm hooked on the whole Riordan phenomenon. Bought this one the week it came out and ripped through it. If Riordan can keep it going, this series will be even better than the Percy Jackson books. Let me back that up.
As with the PJ books, first person narrator, but there are two of them, switching every two chapters. One is a girl. Sadie and Carter Kane are siblings who squabble but are fiercely protective of each other, despite being raised separately. I enjoyed the slightly nerdier-than-PJ cast of Carter, and Sadie is wickedly irreverent.
The kids are African-Americans. Carter's dark skin gets him identified that way. Representatives of officialdom, like airport police, see the light-skinned Sadie as white, unrelated to her brother, and less likely to cause trouble. That infuriates Sadie, and is likely to intrigue readers. Certainly a change of pace from Harry Potter and Greg Heffley (and for that matter, Percy Jackson).
The Red Pyramid made Egyptian mythology and history fun. A bonus for me, because the Greek legends and myths found in the PJ series are more familiar (and already fun). After reading Pyramid, you'll want to investigate further. I went back to the wonderful Graphic Universe comic book, Isis and Osiris: To the Ends of the Earth to get into source material, and for sure I'll be looking for other non-social-studies-textbook books.
The three kingdoms of Egypt are never going to be a dry research subject again. And I'll never see Mickey Mouse in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" section of Fantasia in the same way I used to.
For first graders and up:
Stinky by Eleanor Davis
All of the Toon Books, high quality children's comics, are first rate. But Stinky, the story of of a smelly monster who eats pickled onions for breakfast has been extensively field-tested by me. I haven't worked with a kid yet who didn't enjoy reading it. And there have been quite a few.
Stinky lives in a muddy swamp and stays far away from the kids in town who don't like swamps and like to take baths.
Then a kid named Nick fearlessly enters the swamp, builds a tree house, and adopts Stinky's pet toad, Wartbelly. If that weren't enough, he renames it Daisy. You can see why Stinky might be upset.
WORLD OF LEARNING: COMPUTERS CAN HINDER LEARNING
"Duke study: PCs hurt students' grades" Charlotte Observer 6/22/10
As I mentioned earlier, commenting on a New York Times article about how our use of screen technology might be changing the way we think and behave (also see the related Times Stories here and here), I'm nervous about the effect of computers on our brains. There are definite benefits, such as the ability to link that I'm demonstrating as I write this piece. But there's a downside, and a paradox, there, because if your attention is constantly shifting, you are less likely to really be paying attention.
I hardly ever use the computer in sessions with kids, and not because the kids are going to start social networking with me looking over their shoulders. It's because of the attention thing--moving the mouse around and clicking on various options, whether linking while online or playing with font types, sizes, and colors while word processing. Now comes this Duke University study which makes the case for a correlation between lower grades and personal computer use.
As I mentioned earlier, commenting on a New York Times article about how our use of screen technology might be changing the way we think and behave (also see the related Times Stories here and here), I'm nervous about the effect of computers on our brains. There are definite benefits, such as the ability to link that I'm demonstrating as I write this piece. But there's a downside, and a paradox, there, because if your attention is constantly shifting, you are less likely to really be paying attention.
I hardly ever use the computer in sessions with kids, and not because the kids are going to start social networking with me looking over their shoulders. It's because of the attention thing--moving the mouse around and clicking on various options, whether linking while online or playing with font types, sizes, and colors while word processing. Now comes this Duke University study which makes the case for a correlation between lower grades and personal computer use.
Monday, June 21, 2010
WORLD OF LEARNING: "INCREDIBLE PLASTICITY"
"The Writer Who Couldn't Read" NPR 6/21/10
A truly amazing story. After a stroke, Howard Engel, a detective-novel author, was faced with a real mystery. Although he could write, he was no longer able to read. How he retrained himself to do so is both a strong argument for multi-sensory teaching methods and a paean to what the fantastic NPR science reporter Robert Krulwich calls "the incredible plasticity of the human brain." After you listen to Krulwich's Morning Edition piece, watch the wonderful animated video he made about it with Engel and San Francisco artist Lev Yilmaz.
A truly amazing story. After a stroke, Howard Engel, a detective-novel author, was faced with a real mystery. Although he could write, he was no longer able to read. How he retrained himself to do so is both a strong argument for multi-sensory teaching methods and a paean to what the fantastic NPR science reporter Robert Krulwich calls "the incredible plasticity of the human brain." After you listen to Krulwich's Morning Edition piece, watch the wonderful animated video he made about it with Engel and San Francisco artist Lev Yilmaz.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
LARS'S LIBRARY: YOUNG ADULT DYSTOPIA
The June 20 issue of The New Yorker has a great article by Laura Miller that surveys dystopian YA literature: "Fresh Hell: What’s behind the boom in dystopian fiction for young readers?"
WORLD OF LEARNING: THIS SUMMER, NO BOOKS YOU HAVE TO READ, YOU JUST HAVE TO READ BOOKS
It’s summer. No more school. But most parents realize that it is not helpful for kids to take a vacation from learning.
Summer vacation, after all, did not come about because children deserved down time after the rigors of the school year. In an agricultural society, children were needed to work during the most productive time of the year.
In the information age, allowing kids to turn off their brains for three months is downright dangerous. As Richard Nisbett points out in Intelligence and How to Get It, summer vacation is a “natural experiment” that researchers have used to determine if access to education correlates with measured intelligence.
The evidence is clear, Nisbett says: “Kids are deprived of school over the summer, and this results in a drop or greatly reduced growth in IQ and academic skills.”
Citing studies that start in 1906, the Nation Summer Learning Association notes, “Research spanning 100 years shows that students typically score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation than they do on the same tests at the beginning of the summer.”
But I’m not here to sell summer learning per se. What I want to do is to promote summer as a learning opportunity. This could be the time when reluctant readers can find some joy in reading. This is the one time of the year where kids can choose what they want to read.
Or is it? For many children, the pleasures of summer are diminished by a nagging vestigial reminder of school. It’s not enough that they had to read books they didn’t like during the school year. Now, lurking in the shadows of these lazy sunny days, looms the dreaded summer reading list.
To which I offer a subversive suggestion. School is out. Children don’t have to read the books on any list.
What would be more important, and more beneficial, would be to insist that kids read books every day of summer vacation. But those books would be ones they would get to choose.
That doesn’t mean you can’t look at that summer reading list. Teachers do try to select books that appeal to their students. But think of the list as a starting point. The goal is to read, and for your child to find out what he wants to read.
Look at other lists. Look at bestseller lists. Look at blogs. Go to libraries and ask the librarians in the children’s room for advice. Go to bookstores and look at the displays in the children's section and ask the staff for advice. Ask other kids and their parents for advice. Ask me for advice. Don’t give up.
Be willing to accept that what your child wants to read may not be what you would choose, nor exactly what you want him to choose. Your discomfort with Captain Underpants, or God forbid, Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger, in fact, could be a selling point for those works.
Someone who reads Shakespeare for pleasure, after all, is going to be someone who actually enjoys reading. “Those who try to crowd into the school years everything that ‘ought’ to be read,” Louise Rosenblatt writes in Literature as Exploration, “evidently assume that the youth will never read again after the school years are over.”
Why do we teach children how to read? Isn’t it so they will become lifelong readers? Don’t we want everyone—children and adults—to read? Don’t we want to keep growing and learning by reading books even after school is finished?
Use this summer as the chance to instill a love of reading. Insist on reading, but let the kids decide on the books. I agree with Nancie Atwell’s argument in The Reading Zone: “The only surefire way to induce a love of books is to invite students to select their own.”
Once you’ve made that your central principle comes the hard part—getting kids to read every day. That's not be easy in the midst of summer camps and play dates, but we all know the only way to make something a habit is to do it habitually. Carve out time for reading.
That means reading by everyone in the family. Seeing that adults value and enjoy books is far more persuasive than hearing adults tell you that you should value and enjoy books.
Rick Riordan, author of any number of books that kids choose on their own, says, “A lot of families, my family included, have a reading time. We all spend an hour a day reading. That's the family expectation. We make it a priority.”
Once we give kids the time to read, and we find books that fit kids instead of trying to make kids fit books, we’ll get kids who want to read. The more kids read, the greater their vocabularies and expertise. The more kids read, the better their abilities to express themselves, to make informed decisions, to understand the viewpoints of others, to analyze data from a variety of sources, to deal with problems.
Not to mention that they are likely to do better in school. According to Atwell, “the single activity that correlates with high levels of performance on standardized tests of reading ability…is frequent, voluminous reading.”
Rather than demand that kids slog through a couple of books they don't want to read over this summer, make the goal "frequent, voluminous reading" of books they choose.
Summer vacation, after all, did not come about because children deserved down time after the rigors of the school year. In an agricultural society, children were needed to work during the most productive time of the year.
In the information age, allowing kids to turn off their brains for three months is downright dangerous. As Richard Nisbett points out in Intelligence and How to Get It, summer vacation is a “natural experiment” that researchers have used to determine if access to education correlates with measured intelligence.
The evidence is clear, Nisbett says: “Kids are deprived of school over the summer, and this results in a drop or greatly reduced growth in IQ and academic skills.”
Citing studies that start in 1906, the Nation Summer Learning Association notes, “Research spanning 100 years shows that students typically score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation than they do on the same tests at the beginning of the summer.”
But I’m not here to sell summer learning per se. What I want to do is to promote summer as a learning opportunity. This could be the time when reluctant readers can find some joy in reading. This is the one time of the year where kids can choose what they want to read.
Or is it? For many children, the pleasures of summer are diminished by a nagging vestigial reminder of school. It’s not enough that they had to read books they didn’t like during the school year. Now, lurking in the shadows of these lazy sunny days, looms the dreaded summer reading list.
To which I offer a subversive suggestion. School is out. Children don’t have to read the books on any list.
What would be more important, and more beneficial, would be to insist that kids read books every day of summer vacation. But those books would be ones they would get to choose.
That doesn’t mean you can’t look at that summer reading list. Teachers do try to select books that appeal to their students. But think of the list as a starting point. The goal is to read, and for your child to find out what he wants to read.
Look at other lists. Look at bestseller lists. Look at blogs. Go to libraries and ask the librarians in the children’s room for advice. Go to bookstores and look at the displays in the children's section and ask the staff for advice. Ask other kids and their parents for advice. Ask me for advice. Don’t give up.
Be willing to accept that what your child wants to read may not be what you would choose, nor exactly what you want him to choose. Your discomfort with Captain Underpants, or God forbid, Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger, in fact, could be a selling point for those works.
Someone who reads Shakespeare for pleasure, after all, is going to be someone who actually enjoys reading. “Those who try to crowd into the school years everything that ‘ought’ to be read,” Louise Rosenblatt writes in Literature as Exploration, “evidently assume that the youth will never read again after the school years are over.”
Why do we teach children how to read? Isn’t it so they will become lifelong readers? Don’t we want everyone—children and adults—to read? Don’t we want to keep growing and learning by reading books even after school is finished?
Use this summer as the chance to instill a love of reading. Insist on reading, but let the kids decide on the books. I agree with Nancie Atwell’s argument in The Reading Zone: “The only surefire way to induce a love of books is to invite students to select their own.”
Once you’ve made that your central principle comes the hard part—getting kids to read every day. That's not be easy in the midst of summer camps and play dates, but we all know the only way to make something a habit is to do it habitually. Carve out time for reading.
That means reading by everyone in the family. Seeing that adults value and enjoy books is far more persuasive than hearing adults tell you that you should value and enjoy books.
Rick Riordan, author of any number of books that kids choose on their own, says, “A lot of families, my family included, have a reading time. We all spend an hour a day reading. That's the family expectation. We make it a priority.”
Once we give kids the time to read, and we find books that fit kids instead of trying to make kids fit books, we’ll get kids who want to read. The more kids read, the greater their vocabularies and expertise. The more kids read, the better their abilities to express themselves, to make informed decisions, to understand the viewpoints of others, to analyze data from a variety of sources, to deal with problems.
Not to mention that they are likely to do better in school. According to Atwell, “the single activity that correlates with high levels of performance on standardized tests of reading ability…is frequent, voluminous reading.”
Rather than demand that kids slog through a couple of books they don't want to read over this summer, make the goal "frequent, voluminous reading" of books they choose.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
WORLD OF LEARNING: PLUGGED IN OR ZONED OUT?
"Your Brain on Computers: Hooked on Gadgets and Paying a Mental Price" New York Times 6/6/10
It seems clear that there are changes happening in our environment and our brains because of the amount of information we can now access simultaneously. But it also seems clear, as this article indicates, that we have not yet been able to accurately measure or assess those changes. But to me, all the screen distractions are a little scary.
It seems clear that there are changes happening in our environment and our brains because of the amount of information we can now access simultaneously. But it also seems clear, as this article indicates, that we have not yet been able to accurately measure or assess those changes. But to me, all the screen distractions are a little scary.
Monday, June 7, 2010
WORLD OF LEARNING: SPACED OUT
"The Hidden Brain" Sharon Begley/Newsweek 5/31/10
This connects towhat I've been reading about sleep in John Medina's Brain Rules: "The neurons of your brain show vigorous...activity when you're asleep...." It looks as if we dream not to rest; we dream to learn. Clearly, our brains are working at these times. Also see MSNBC The Body Odd Blog's Space out! Why daydreaming is so important (thanks, Susan Parkhurst, for this link). Besides our lungs and hearts, our brains are never inactive.
This connects towhat I've been reading about sleep in John Medina's Brain Rules: "The neurons of your brain show vigorous...activity when you're asleep...." It looks as if we dream not to rest; we dream to learn. Clearly, our brains are working at these times. Also see MSNBC The Body Odd Blog's Space out! Why daydreaming is so important (thanks, Susan Parkhurst, for this link). Besides our lungs and hearts, our brains are never inactive.
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