Detective Work

When my brother and I were younger we would play "spy" with some of our friends.  Basically whenever my parents had people over we would play, for a bit, with their kids then we would organize spy sessions to see what the adults were doing.  They were never talking about anything interesting, but there was a thrill in overhearing even snippets of conversation.  Unfortunately, the fear of getting caught kept us from getting close enough to do any useful spying.


Mo LoBeau, star of Shelia Turnage's Three Times Lucky, had no such fear.  She and her best friend
Dale start their own detective agency and bravely confront all the towns mysteries.  But these aren't the dinner party conversations I tried to observe, theses are real cases: upstream mothers, missing pets, and even murder and kidnapping.

The charm of this book is one hundred percent wrapped up in the main character, Mo, from whose perspective the story is told.  Mo (short for Moses), is a maybe orphan found floating in a basket after a hurricane.  She has gumption and spunk and all of those other antiquated pleasantries we use to describe a particularly self-sufficient, if a little over bearing and involved sixth grader.  I loved Mo.  She is exactly the kind of student I would love to have in my class.  All of the extra excitement and intrigue are just the icing on the cake, I loved this book because I loved Mo-and I would have loved it even if Mo just had an ordinary summer.

Solving mysteries...that's kids stuff.  

Liar Liar Pants on Fire

Rebecca Stead's Liar & Spy is another one of those books that has been sitting on my classroom shelf that I would recommend to students but had never read.  I bought it at last years book fair because I knew Rebecca Stead from reading When You Reach Me.  I just assumed that Liar & Spy would also be good. 

I was....mostly right.  I loved When You Reach Me, mostly because I made a ton of connections to that book.  Liar & Spy is just as engaging, the story is just as well written, and it is full of it's own quirks (something I love in a book).  I did really enjoy Liar & Spy, I just didn't love it as much.  

As the title suggests the book contains both a liar and a spy.  You find out who the spy is fairly early in the book but you have to read to the end to discover who's the liar.  Of course I'm not going to give away that juicy tidbit here.  

Liar & Spy is the story of young Georges (yes his name has an s at the end.  Want to know why?  Read the book) as he learns to navigate middle school in the midst of his family's move and a sharp increase in the number of hours worked by his mother.  Georges makes new friends in his building and discovers a new way to cope at school. He learns that maybe having a silent s at the end of your name isn't such a bad thing.  Quirks give character.   Mixed in is a delightful blend of quirky characters.   Parents who don't name their children until they are two-so that the children can show who they are before getting a name, students who believe the taste bud test in science class will deliver their destiny, and so many more.  

I was right to recommend this book to my students, it is definitely a good read.  Phew.  How would I have redeemed myself if it turned out to be terrible?  

Embracing your quirks...that's kids stuff.  

Al Capone does What!!??

Today I will be looking at another one of the Reading Olympics books and it also happens to be a Newbery Honor Book as well as a New York Times Best Seller.  All of these distinctions make me think that this is going to be an excellent book.

The book is Gennifer Choldenko's Al Capone Does my Shirts.  Now at first I thought that was just a catch title or an allusion to the gangster days of old.  But as I started reading I realized that the setting is 1935 on Alcatraz Island.  Moose's dad works as a guard/electrician at Alcatraz prison and in that time all of the guards lived on the island with their families.  All of the families would send out their laundry to the prison and the prisoners did all of the families laundry and sent it back.  At this point I thought, "oh my goodness, Al Capone really does his shirts!"

As a special education teacher, as well as a reading teacher, what I really appreciated about this book was the relationship between Moose and his 'younger' sister Natalie.  Natalie has what appears to be Autism, though her diagnosis is never explicitly stated in the book.  I think that sometimes we put so much attention on the student with the special needs we forget about their "typical" siblings.  It was refreshing to see something from a siblings point of view.

I found this book to be engaging, honest, and astounding all at the same time.  The setting adds a level of intrigue and drama to an already captivating story.  This book is definitely deserving of all of its accolades.

Making laundry interesting....that's kids stuff.  

Confession

Ok, confession time.  I have a shelf full of books in my classroom and I often encourage students to read these books.  Most of these books I have read, but some-confession-I have not; but I still try to sell them to my students.  One such book is James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein's I Funny.  

I just assumed this book was a Diary of a Wimpy Kid type book but, another confession, I was wrong. I Funny tells the story of a middle-school boy who, well, is funny.  After much encouragement he decides to enter the Funniest Kid Contest, will he win? Of course I can't tell you that, you'll have to read the book.


A delightful blend of story and sketches, I Funny is an entertaining read that will definitely put a smile on your face.  But it's not all jokes.  You will fall in love with Jamie and get deeply invested in his story.  You see Jamie's life hasn't been easy, he uses humor to help cope.  There is some of the usual, "middle-school" humor, but many of Jamie's jokes are just plain funny-even to adults.  Definitely worth the read.  And if you liked the first one, get excited, because this is now a series!

Making a joke.......that's kids stuff.  

Theme Song

This year I have the exiting opportunity of helping out the the Reading Olympics team.  If you don't know about Reading Olympics you should definitely check it out here.  Every year the committee comes out with a book list and since I just have a handful of Newbery winners to finish I thought I would start looking at some of the Reading Olympics books.

The first one I read was Pam Munoz Ryan's Esperanza Rising.  I have to say if the rest of the books on the list are as good as this one it is going to be a very good time indeed.  The story is about a young girl, Esperanza, who is the daughter of a very wealthy Mexican rancher.  Her life is filled with a loving family, friends, school, parties and beautiful dresses, but that all changes when her father is attacked by bandits.  Now Esperanza must move to California in the middle of the great depression and find work in a labor camp.  The situation is anything but easy, however-as the title suggests-Esperanza must find a way to rise.

Sometimes I think, "If this character had a theme song, what would it be?"  For Esperanza I was stuck between two options.  One is Stronger by Kelly Clarkson (watch it here) and the other is Big Yellow Taxi by Counting Crows and Joni Mitchell (seen here).  Read the book, listen to the songs, see which one you think fits best.

Having a theme song...that's kids stuff

True Story

I have confessed to being a history nerd so you're probably assuming that I am a big fan of non-fiction-especially when it's about history.  Well.....that's not entirely correct.  I like reading dairies or
journals from people in history and I love reading stories from history (historical fiction OR non-fiction).  But a classic historical
text isn't always my favorite thing to read.

So I must now confess Russell Freedman's Lincoln: A Photobiography was hard for me to get through.  I loved all of the prints and engravings from the time period.  He was right to title this a "photobiography," there are pictures (whether they be prints, engravings or newspapers) at least every other page.  However, the style of writing, to me, seemed to drag on.

But this book won the Newbery, people who care a lot about reading deemed this book worthy of an award.  So I asked myself, "why didn't I care for this book?"  I think it came down to this-I already knew the story.  Lincoln is one of our most celebrated presidents, he gets a lot of coverage in pretty much every US history class.  I grew up just outside of D.C., I visited the Dr. Mudd house (where Dr. Mudd set the leg of John Wilkes Booth), I have seen the theatre where Lincoln was shot, I have visited Gettysburg and taken the tour multiple times.  So because of all of this, there wasn't a whole lot I learned from this book.  Without all of this prior knowledge I think I would have enjoyed this book infinitely more.  I would definitely suggest it for a middle school history class where students are just beginning to learn about Lincoln.

One special treat that this book contains is the last chapter titled, "A Lincoln Sampler."  I am a great lover of quotes, and the Lincoln sampler is exactly that-a sampling of quotations.  This included not  just his most notable speeches and famous lines, but also some quips-giving a depth to the president that we don't always get.  This sampler portrays Lincoln not just as a great president who saved the Union and freed the slaves, but as an actual human being.  This is my favorite quote: "Common-looking people are the best in the world; that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them."  

Seeing someone as a real person....that's kids stuff.  

It Smells Old

As if you didn't already think I was a nerd, I have an extra nerdy confession for today.  I love the smell of books especially old books.  Older books also tend to have thicker paper with roughened edges-I love that too.

So I was very excited to find that the library copy of Kate Seredy's White Stag possessed all of these qualities.  My excitement grew even more when I read this quote from the introduction, "Those who want to hear the voice of pagan gods in wind and thunder, who want to see fairies dance in the moonlight, who can believe that faith can move mountains, can follow the tread on the pages of this book.  It is a fragile thread; it cannot bear the weight of facts and dates."  You see it was the stories that drove me to study history-I had no interest in a long string of facts dates.  It was the stories that mattered.

Though Seredy's White Stag is short, less than 100 pages, it reads like a story that matters.  It feels like an epic.  Originally copyrighted in 1937 some of the language is dated, and I wonder how that would affect a modern students reading of this text.  To be honest, I think it would deter a great many students.  But for those who pushed past the language, they would find a captivating tale of the Huns and Magyars as they search for their permanent home.

Though not quite as gripping as some currently popular series, i.e. Divergent, this is still a story worth reading.  As the introduction hinted it is indeed a story of faith and faeries and pagan gods, but more than that it is the story of an entire nation trying to follow their god,  and the long-promised child who guides them.

Smelling your books....that's kids stuff.