Category Archives: Book Reviews

Book Display Ideas

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My Instagram Account has many shots of favorite books and displays:

https://www.instagram.com/barefootlibrarian/

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While on instagram, type in #bookdisplay It is always best to type # in singular, rather than plural, eg #bookdisplay has over 3,000 posts, whereas #bookdisplays has only 300.

When you find some great displays you like, check out that person’s account and see if they are worth following. Also, click on your favorite book displays and see what other # they have used.

You’ll probably turn up tags like #booksuggestion #bookstagram #bookchallenge #instabook and one of my favorites #bookishrainbow

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Here is a post I wrote about using instagram to promote new books http://sites.saschina.org/kpower/2014/11/04/using-instagram-to-promote-new-books/

I like bringing outside elements in to enhance displays, and I’ve done that here with some creations made by students, which I then matched with Roger Hargreaves Little Miss and Mr Men books http://sites.saschina.org/kpower/2014/10/16/fantastic-fun-with-bump-nosey-and-tickle/

I’ve also linked to many of the people I’m mentioning here, on this post. Once you discover a few of these “one stop shops” for finding new books, book lists and great displays, you can rest easy that they’ll always have something for you http://sites.saschina.org/kpower/2014/04/30/list-lovers-of-the-world-unite/

My favorite blogs for inspiration and EXCELLENT book lists include:

http://www.pragmaticmom.com/ check out Mia’s Children’s and YA booklists link, and you really can’t go past her http://www.pragmaticmom.com/booklists/ List of Lists: All My Booklists

Melissa from Imagination Soup is a great one to follow on twitter and pinterest too, here is one of my favorite lists from her http://imaginationsoup.net/2014/11/07/nonfiction-books/ I’m sure you’ll also like her book recommendations by age http://imaginationsoup.net/book-recommendations-age/ 

Here’s one last link I recently stumbled upon: http://clrsig.org/nbgs_books.php which contatins some great book suggestions for our diverse makeup of students at the Children’s Literature and Reading Special Interest Group site.

 

 

2nd graders are Book Reviewers

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From the moment we can enjoy a book, we have an opinion on it. Children who are read to, know which books they enjoy and want them read over and over and over again.

As we get older, we learn to verbalise our opinions on books, and once we reach school, we are encouraged to write them down in the form of  book review.

There are many specific elements that contribute to making a STRONG book review.

*Hook the reader in, perhaps by asking them questions
*Write a summary of the book that does not give two much of the plot away
*Using quotes from the book is a great way to catch people’s interest
*Make sure your review shares how you feel about the book, and why, and not just what the book is about

Here is a scholastic site you can go to and put your own review online for the world to see.

I also love this spaghetti book club page which includes hundreds of reviews written for children BY children ABOUT children’s books. They all follow a pretty clear pattern making it obvious to young learners what is expected of them.

Here is a book review by F.M. (age 6) and G.M. (age 7)from taken from here.

This book is about a spider. In the beginning he climbs up the waterspout. The water comes down and he gets swished away. He keeps trying to climb up different things, like a yellow pail and a rocking chair, but trouble is always right in front of him. Each time something goes wrong.

This is a fun book to read because there are lots of rhyming words and the pictures are nice and big. At the end of the book is even a place that shows how to play the song on an instrument. We didn’t know the song was so long.

We think this is a perfect story for little children because it is fun and it has rhyming words.

Second Grade, you are now going to work on your own book reviews. Enjoy the examples given to you in class, and remember, you have already been doing this for a long, long time.

What to read next…

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Before your child enters their next grade level, it would be wonderful for them to read the following great books that have made a splash in the literary world in 2015.

For lower Elementary Students who love art, I highly recommend the following delightful picture books. The Noisy Paint Box earned Caldecott Honor at this year’s American Library Association Awards and is a beautifully illustrated book by Barb Rosenstock and Mary GrandPre sharing the story of abstract artist Vasily Kandinsky. Also earning an Honor nod was the incredible Frida, by Yuri Morales, to learn more, and drop your jaw in awe, over the making of this book, check out this clip on Vimeo. Finally, a third book for aspiring artists is my favourite, The Iridescence of Birds: A book about Henri Matisse. It is so divine, I want to jump in the pages of this book and hug Henri’s mother for encouraging her child to experiment and find so much joy in his art. Bravo to Patricia MacLachlan and illustrator Hadley Cooper.

For older students, 4th, 5th and above, I’d love to see you read the whole Joey Pigza series, by Jack Gantos. Jack won the Newbery Award for Dead End in Norvelt in 2012
and children may also know his successful Rotten Ralph books. However it is the Joey Pigza series, started in 1998, that I’ve enjoyed the most; and students should also be impressed
that this series has taken almost 20 years to come to it’s climax, with the fifth and final book, The Key that Swallowed Joey Pigza being released just this year. Focusing on the main character Joey as he, and those around him, come to terms with his learning style, unique perspective on life and often humorous, yet bittersweet adventures, children and adults alike will find something to learn from Joey.

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Life Long Learning

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Speaking of life-long learning….I am learning that I am spending WAY more time reading wonderful blogs these days, than I am trying to build my own blog. When I first began blogging in 2006, I had a captive audience (of eighteen!!!) students AND their parents, (wow, we’re up to nearly 60 now) including my principal, oh and my mother of course!

While I’d love my blog to have a wider readership now that I am working with more like 1,000 people a week once you add students, parents, staff and a few of you ‘out there’; I’m starting to realise I don’t have the skills to engender a decent ‘fan-base’… My writing has not been good enough to warrant people coming back for more; I lack regularity and focus, and I don’t express my opinion as much; I deliver information, but I sit on the fence about it.

One of the places I head to first when looking for book ideas is to Mia at Pragmatic Mom as she always has so many excellent lists. There are also of course masters I’ve followed for a long time like Mr. Schu at Watch. Connect. Read and Colby Sharp and the great gang of four, Donalynn Miller, Cindy Minnich, Katherine Sokolowski and Colby Sharp over at Nerdy Book Club. I LOVE reading these blogs and many others, I spend hours a week reading reviews, learning about new books, perusing best book lists and watching great book trailers and author interviews.

So this paragraph should be about my new goals, how I am going to make my ‘Rocky-style’ comeback and start delivering, start fresh, begin again and be better and brighter than I was back in my 2008 blogging hey-day. Nahhhhhhh, just can’t get my head around it right now.

I’m totally nuts over reading the other amazing posts people have to offer, and at some point, the urge will come to become one of them. Until then…

Check out these great photos from the library this month. We’ve been having a ball promoting Newbery and Caldecott like crazy; chatting, sharing, reading and tallying our results…Voting started today and finishes Monday (American Sunday) in time to be calculated and announced after the big reveal on February 2nd.

http://videonew.saschina.org/player/pak_player/pakplayer.swf?config=http%3A%2F%2Fvideonew.saschina.org%2Fplayer%2Fpak_player%2Fembed_player.php%3Fvid%3D11549%26json%3Dtrue%26autoplay%3Dno

Hook Line and Sinker

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I have a confession to make. I am an addict, a junkie… I am a sucker. You see the problem all began when I read Bridge to Terabithia at the age of 10. That was it for me, only grade 5, and I was hooked… and ever since, well, it’s just been a slippery slope.

I tried to resist…. I taught High School Drama, Middle School English, even 5th grade for a while, but in the end, once an addict, always an addict. Two years, five months and 15 days ago, I finally succumbed to my addiction; I caved, I succumbed and I became a librarian.

Now, I am surrounded by my addiction. Everywhere I look, books, more books, picture books, poetry books, non-fiction and fiction, graphic novels and biographies, you name it, I’ve got it. I go to sleep thinking about them, I dream about them, and I wake up thinking about them, and then, the best part… I get to look at them all.day.LONG!

My favorite part of the year is the month of January, and that is saying something, because nearly every day is a wonderful day in my job, but the best, absolute, COOLEST part of being a librarian is the month before the American Library Association Awards are announced.

All year long I follow incredible blogs like this one, For Those About to Mock, and these ones, School Library Journal’s 100 Scope Notes and AFuse8Production, as well as keeping my eye on lists like this one on Goodreads and the delicious Calling Caldecott from The Horn Book.

Towards the end of the year, I salivate over lists like these from the New York Times and School Library Journal. I plow through twitter and instagram following librarians and authors and seeing what they like and why, and generally, just start seeing what is buzz buzz buzzing around everywhere…

As always, I am totally in awe of the picture books produced by incredibly talented authors and illustrators this year; wordless picture books have again played a huge part in re-defining the library read aloud. After an unprecedented three winning honors for last years Caldecott Medal, (Flora the Flamingo, Journey and Mr. Wuffles… I wondered if we’d seen the peak of their success, however with gems like Draw and The Farmer and The Clown being considered this year, I’m thrilled this genre is still riding the wave.

However as well as books with no words, we got to enjoy Novak’s gem this year, The Book with No Pictures… wasn’t that a lot of fun, and whether you believe it is a contender of not, it’s certainly earned its place in the sun along with some of my favorites this year such as The Jacket and A Perfectly Messed Up Story, which you can read about here. I also loved Gaston and of course Sam and Dave Dig a Hole by two of my ‘librarian crushes’, Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen. As for Baby Tree… LOVE IT!

So over the next few weeks, the aim is to share as many of these treasures, and all the delightful Newbery contenders I’ll write about soon, with as many students as possible, allowing them to read all they can before having their own mock Caldecott vote the week before the announcement on February 2nd.

 

Favourite Time of the Year

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Some people love Spring, some Summer. Others love days like Valentines Day or Halloween. I know some people who are mad about horse racing season, TV award show time or sales after Thanksgiving.

For me, the absolute, hands-down most exciting time of the school year is the 8 weeks leading up to the ALA award season. For the uninitiated, that is the American Library Association and their awards are given on February 2nd 2015 next time around.

As an Elementary Librarian, my two favorite awards are for the Newbery, and the Caldecott Medal and there is plenty of excitement being generated about them already at sites like these.

Horn Book’s Calling Caldecott is my go-to place for reading about who is on the ‘maybe’ list…
I just did a lot of book-buying on our library kindles here, after seeing this great list from Goodreads.

After viewing this lovely slideshow declaring winners of the New York Times Best Illustrated Books, I was very interested in Travis Jonker’s informative post breaking down the ratio of how books fare on New York Times Lists vs Caldecott. Below are some of Travis’ observations. You can see why I like following him so much, he is always very informative.

  • There has been only one year (2012) where none of the books on the Best Illustrated list won a Caldecott Honor or Medal. So 90% of the time at least one of the Best Illustrated books has won a Caldecott Honor or Medal.
  • On average 1.5 books on the Best Illustrated list each year go on to win a Caldecott Honor or Medal.
  • Seven times out of 10 a book on the Best Illustrated list has gone on to win the Caldecott Medal. Yes, 70% of the time a book on the Best Illustrated list has won the gold in the last decade. That’s an impressive figure.
  • The best illustrated list contains the Caldecott Medal winner almost as much as it contains Caldecott Honor winners, with a total of seven Caldecott Medal books and eight Caldecott Honor books.

I was thrilled to see The Promise written by Nicola Davies @nicolakidsbooks and illustrated by Laura Carlin on the NYT list, but don’t think it is eligible for Caldecott…happy to hear differently from anyone out there.

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Take Two Kid Lit Blog Hop

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Welcome to the 48th Kid Lit Blog Hop where we continue to develop a dynamic and engaged community of children’s books bloggers, authors, publishers, and publicists. So, you are always more than welcome to join us by popping in a post and hopping around to meet some of your fellow Kid Lit bloggers and authors!

Check out this next short paragraph… I’m mentioned, as a co-host!

“We are pleased to be welcoming two fabulous co-hosts this week: Kimbra, the blogger behind The Barefoot Librarian and Tiffiny from the blog, Spark and Pook. Big welcome to Kimbra and Tiffiny!”

Isn’t that exciting???

Happy Hopping everyone and enjoy the Hop!

Kid Lit Blog Hop
Kid Lit Blog Hop

 

Kid Lit Blog Hop Rules *Please Read*

1. We ask that you kindly follow your hosts. You can follow us any way you choose  and we’ve added our preferences below. If you could just give us a quick “follow” or “like” that would be much appreciated! Make sure to leave us a message if you are following us (i.e., on Twitter or Facebook or on our websites) and we will be sure to follow you back. Thanks! 🙂

Hostesses:

Renee @ Mother Daughter Book Reviews Facebook * Twitter

Katie @ Youth Literature Reviews Twitter * Facebook

Julie Grasso, Author/ Blogger Twitter * Facebook

Cheryl Carpinello, Author / Blogger Twitter * Facebook

Reshama @ Stacking Books Twitter * Facebook

Stacie @ BeachBoundBooks Twitter * Facebook

Mia @ Pragmatic Mom Twitter * Facebook

Maria@ Music Teaching and Parenting Twitter * Facebook

Stanley & Katrina, Pawthors Twitter * Facebook

Co-Hosts:

Kimbra @ The Barefoot Librarian Twitter * Google+

Tiffiny @ Spark and Pook Twitter * Facebook

2. Link up any Kid Lit related post. This can be a link to a children’s book review, a discussion about children’s literature/literacy, or a post on a recently-read children’s book or one that you love from your childhood.

* Don’t link directly to your blog, it must be a specific post.*

* For Authors, we prefer you to link to your blog if you have one. Please link unique posts each time ~ no repeats please. *

* Make sure you include an image relevant to the POST (e.g., book cover), not your blog button or photo of yourself.*

* Feel free to link more than one post.*

3. Please visit AT LEAST the TWO LINKS directly ahead of your own and leave them some love in the form of a comment. We are trying to build a community of bloggers, readers, parents, authors, and others who are as passionate about children’s literature as we are so please CONNECT and follow any or all of the blogs that interest you!

4. If you like, grab the button above and put it somewhere on your blog, preferably the post you’re linking up. If you’d prefer, you can just add a text link back to this Hop so that others can find it and check out all these great book links!

5. It would really help us get the word out about the Kid Lit Blog Hop if you would be so kind as to tweet, share, and spread the word about the Hop!

Interested in co-hosting the Kid Lit Blog Hop? If you’ve joined us before, you are welcome to join us again! Please email renee @ motherdaughterbookreviews (dot) com and put Co-Hosting Blog Hop in the subject line.

Happy Hopping!

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Kid Lit Blog Hop

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I’m excited to be co-hosting the amazing, the wonderful, the incredible Kid Lit Blog Hop for the very first time!!! It’s the 47th time this all inclusive event occurred so you can imagine I felt like I’d been living under a rock when I discovered it for the first time two months ago… around Hop no. 43 I believe…

So if you’re a newby like me… get ready to enjoy discovering some new blogs, some wonderful, creative and literate blogs, that may just give you your next read-a-loud, library display, gift idea or reading strategy. For those of your returning… be gentle… it’s my first time.

Soooooo

Welcome to the 47th Kid Lit Blog Hop where we continue to develop a dynamic and engaged community of children’s books bloggers, authors, publishers, and publicists. So, you are always more than welcome to join us by popping in a post and hopping around to meet some of your fellow Kid Lit bloggers and authors!

We are pleased to be formally welcoming Stanley & Katrina, pawthors of the newly released The Observations of the Obstreperous Animals (Stanley & Katrina Book 2) , as permanent hosts on the Hop. Also, a big welcome to our co-host this week, Kimbra, the blogger behind The Barefoot Librarian. Woo Hoo everyone… that’s ME!

Happy Hopping everyone and enjoy the Hop!

Kid Lit Blog Hop

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

Kid Lit Blog Hop Rules *Please Read*

1. We ask that you kindly follow your hosts. You can follow us any way you choose (Email, GFC, Twitter, Facebook, G+, Pinterest, etc.), but we’ve added our preferences below. If you could just give us a quick “follow” or “like” that would be much appreciated! Make sure to leave us a message if you are following us (i.e., on Twitter or Facebook or on our websites) and we will be sure to follow you back. Thanks! 🙂

Hostesses:

Renee @ Mother Daughter Book Reviews Facebook * Twitter

Jaymie @ Snacks for Max Twitter * Facebook

Katie @ Youth Literature Reviews Twitter * Facebook

Julie Grasso, Author/ Blogger Twitter * Facebook

Cheryl Carpinello, Author / Blogger Twitter * Facebook

Reshama @ Stacking Books Twitter * Facebook

Stacie @ BeachBoundBooks Twitter * Facebook

Mia @ Pragmatic Mom Twitter * Facebook

Lina @ Best 4 Future: Bringing Up Baby Bilingual Twitter * Facebook

Stanley & Katrina, Pawthors Twitter * Facebook

Co-Host:

Kimbra @ The Barefoot Librarian Twitter * Google+

 2. Link up any Kid Lit related post. This can be a link to a children’s book review, a discussion about children’s literature/literacy, or a post on a recently-read children’s book or one that you love from your childhood.

* Don’t link directly to your blog, it must be a specific post.*

* For Authors, we prefer you to link to your blog if you have one. Please link unique posts each time ~ no repeats please. *

* Make sure you include an image relevant to the POST (e.g., book cover), not your blog button or photo of yourself.*

* Feel free to link more than one post.*

3. Please visit AT LEAST the TWO LINKS directly ahead of your own and leave them some love in the form of a comment. We are trying to build a community of bloggers, readers, parents, authors, and others who are as passionate about children’s literature as we are so please CONNECT and follow any or all of the blogs that interest you!

4. If you like, grab the button above and put it somewhere on your blog, preferably the post you’re linking up. If you’d prefer, you can just add a text link back to this Hop so that others can find it and check out all these great book links!

5. It would really help us get the word out about the Kid Lit Blog Hop if you would be so kind as to tweet, share, and spread the word about the Hop!

Interested in co-hosting the Kid Lit Blog Hop? If you’ve joined us before, you are welcome to join us again! Please email renee @ motherdaughterbookreviews (dot) com and put Co-Hosting Blog Hop in the subject line.

Happy Hopping!


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The Lonesome Puppy

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The Lonesome Puppy by Yoshitomo Nara (1999)

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Yoshitomo Nara is one of the most influential and popular contemporary artists in Japan and this is the first of his children’s books that feature little girls and dogs. Simply and boldly told, this is a story many children will relate to and enjoy, the theme being loneliness and the bonds created between children and animals. It could easily be used in counseling classes to discuss the idea of being different, or feeling lonely. I would also use it in homeroom lessons as one of the early lessons on community building, belonging and friendship.

http://www.foiltokyo.com/english/book/art/yoshitomonaraeg.html