Read A Book A Day!

When I was a little girl my mom and dad read to me all the time. They also read books for pleasure themselves, as well as magazines and newspapers and the backs of cereal boxes. Once I could read, I read books. I had lots of books, we went to the library all the time, and I was praised for reading. Bedtime always involved a story - either from a book or from my mom and dad’s memory. My dad, in particular, was great at bedtime stories and I learned all the Greek myths before I was 6 years old from his night-time re-tells.

I was little in the 70s and I don’t remember ever having cable, if it even existed, and we got 3 channels in most of the places we lived if we were lucky. So - lots of books, no TV, and obviously, no video games or computers (because I’m too old for that), and people who modeled that reading was an activity better than pretty much anything else you could do.

That’s how to raise a reader! I’m a professional in the book industry (writer, publisher, and librarian) but I’m also a mom who is raising 2 readers of her own. Both my boys have access to stuff I didn’t have - computers, video games, and way more channels on TV than a person could ever need - but we limit their access to screens and we never limit their access to words. If given the choice, guess which thing they spend more time doing?

You’re right: reading.

My 9 year old son and I just finished reading Crispin: A Cross of Lead, by Avi. I read it to him at bedtime, and I think if you’re going to introduce any 9 year old to this book that is the way to do it. I was able to explain it to him as I read. I doubt most 9-year-olds have the background knowledge of pre-Reformation England to really understand it.

It’s interesting to me that this book won the Newbery award in 2003. There’s been a lot of discussion on the library lists and blogs about the relevance of the Newbery in the past few years and I think this book is a good example of the problems with the award. I’ve read about half of the Newbery award winners (and more than half of the honor books) and in many cases I don’t agree with the selection. Not that I think the choices aren’t deserving, but in many cases I feel the books that were given an honor (as opposed to the top award) are more appealing to kids, faster-moving, and more universal than the actual winner. Now that I’ve read Crispin: The Cross of Lead, I feel the same way about the 2003 winners. I loved both Hoot and The House of the Scorpion and I usually have no problem booktalking either book or suggesting them on the fly to my 4th and 5th graders - but I don’t feel the same way about this book. That’s probably not the only criteria the Newbery folks use to give the awards - but that’s my #1 criteria: can I sell this book to the kids in my library. And this book, for me, is a hard sell. The same goes for the winners of the last few years - I happened to love The Higher Power of Lucky - but how to get my kids to want to read it? And forget Good Masters, Sweet Ladies! My kids lack the background knowledge to understand this book. When I read it, it’ll be out loud to my son.

That said, I did enjoy this book and we were both on the edge of our proverbial seats during the final confrontation. I did have a bit of a hard time buying the character change from Crispin - he got a lot of confidence awfully fast for a kid who didn’t even have a name until the past couple weeks of his life. But I guess that’s the power of love!

Some resources for using Crispin: The Cross of Lead in the classroom:

• A study guide for Crispin: The Cross of Lead
• Video interviewing Avi, from Reading Rockets, where he talks about the struggle of writing - as a writer myself I love what he says about having trouble deciding what to say next a hundred times a day. From such a prolific author this means a lot! He also talks about his dyslexia. This could be really inspirational for kids who struggle with writing. 
• A great page of suggested booktalks for Crispin: The Cross of Lead.

So, apparently you are never supposed to apologize for not writing in your blog. It’s bad blog manners or something. So I’m not saying I’m sorry or anything like that, but people, I have been busy! Work, holidays, my little publishing business, and now the CPSIA.

If you don’t know what it is, go to my other blog and read about it. Or Google it. Or read this in Publisher’s Weekly. Educate yourself. Because if you have anything to do with children’s books - be it writer, publisher, librarian, parent, reader - whatever - you need to know what it is and how astonishingly devastating it will be for the children’s book industry.

“I wish for a change and a friend,” says Little Pig, when he learns these three new words. And just like that, it happens. Simple, easy, wonderful!

Wish, Change, Friend, which is written by Ian Whybrow and illustrated by Tiphanie Beeke (and which seems to be, sadly, out of print) is a brilliant, charmingly illustrated picture book that tells the story of someone - Little Pig - who inspired to get outside of his box. Little Pig lives alone in the forest. He loves to read, and he has all the books and acorns and twigs that he needs. Until one day he finds three words in one of his books: wish, change, and friend.

The next morning, after making his wish for a change and a friend, he wakes up to find that it’s snowed (a change). He makes a snowman, who comes alive (a friend). Little Pig decides he likes these new experiences, and so he and his snow friend take a journey. They meet a penguin, who himself has been reading and who is learning new words: pig and together. Well, what do you know? Pig is there! And he and his snow friend are together with the penguin! They ponder the fantasticness of this, and then decide that together is the best word of all. The end!

I read this book with kindergartners right before the holiday break (winter theme) and I was a tad worried that the book was too existential for them. But it wasn’t. They got it. They really did. Just like Little Pig, they make text to self connections all the time. And if you’re going to believe a talking, reading pig whose snowman comes alive, the coincidence of wandering off and finding a talking, reading penguin who just happens to be learning new vocabulary about YOU makes total sense!

After I read it (twice) we did some really fun collage art, too!

There are some FABULOUS websites out there that you can use to read good quality picture books with kids - completely free! At school, I’ll often use these sites when I want to read a book I might not have in the library, or sometimes I have books about a certain topic in the library but I know the teachers want to use them (like when all of 1st grade is learning about the gingerbread man, for example), or I know kids want the books (like holiday books). I’ll also project books that we have in the library because sometimes it’s just fun to see them really, really big.

I probably use Lookybook the most, since it has a good search engine and the most possibilities, but Storyline will read the book to kids, which is great for a center activity, or for a tired teacher or librarian It also makes the books more like a movie if someone else is reading it, which could make little ears a little more attentive. As a parent, I could see reading from these sites with my child in my lap, and as someone who often tries to get work done at home with my kids running around, I would use these sites as a way to include my child in whatever I was trying to get done on family time.

Here’s a list of sites where you can get full text picture books on-line:

International Children’s Digital Library
Storyline Online
Lookybook
Clifford Stories (English & Spanish)
Kids Corner (Classics)
Lil’ Fingers
Between the Lions
Kids Zone: Myths and Fables from Around the World
Room 108 Kids Stories
Big Universe

First, an apology.

I have not been reading a book a day OR writing about a book a day. I have been busy doing other things, which makes me a little sad. In all honesty, reading a picture book every day and writing about it takes about 30 minutes in total, and it was something I really wanted to do for myself.

But life gets in the way.

So I shall try, try, try to keep up with this. But reading a book a day may have to be a New Year’s Resolution. It was actually a new school year’s resolution, but you see how I’ve managed that.

It’s writing about a book a day that is!

I am now 3 days behind in this blog, but I’m determined to stick with it. So the next blog I will do will be on 3 books! All books about snow: The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats, Owl Moon, by Jane Yolen, and Dream Snow, by Eric Carle.

Snow, by Uri Shulevitz, is a wonderful celebration of what a pure JOY snow can be, especially through the eyes of a child. It sums up that feeling you had when you were a kid (and can still have now you’re a grown-up), when you wish and wish and wish for it to snow…and then it does. Even when the radio and tv say differently:

But snowflakes don’t listen to radio,

snowflakes don’t watch television.

All snowflakes know is snow, snow, and snow.

This book has a very few words mixed in with marvelous, humorous illustrations that you need to pause and pore over before turning the page. When I read it to a group of 1st graders last year we looked at each page slowly, then the next, and the next, until I got to the final, satisfying page. Everyone was quiet when I was done. We were all wishing for snow.

This morning I could not get the song “Let it Snow” out of my head. Probably because we’re listening to a streaming Christmas radio station in the library, or maybe because it’s almost Thanksgiving break, which makes it almost Christmas break, which leads to January, which is pretty much the only month in central NC when we might get snow.

In honor of that song (which is now once again stuck in my head), I want to talk about a sweet little picture book about snow: Tracks in the Snow by Wong Herbert Yee. This is a cozy little book about a girl who takes a walk in the snow, following some mysterious tracks: “Tracks in the snow / Tracks in the snow / Who made the tracks? / Where do they go?” goes the refrain, and the little girl speculates it could be a rabbit, a bear, a hippopotamus, a duck, a woodchuck, or a number of other animals.

Wong Herbert Yee, who I know from the Fireman Small books (a favorite to read during Fire Safety week or any time kindergarten and 1st grade talk about community helpers), illustrates the story with soft, stippled watercolors that somehow make me think of the quiet inherent in walking by oneself through a snowy landscape.

Tomorrow: more books on snow!