Maria Menounos reads with kids at the "Nestle Share the Joy Reading Program" kickoff event.
Yesterday, Nestlé launched a new charitable initiative, “The Nestlé Share the Joy of Reading Program,” to support RIF’s national mission of helping kids discover the joy of reading. The program kicked off with a special guest reader at Los Angeles Public Library’s Robertson Branch—Maria Menounos, actress, filmmaker, and Access Hollywood special correspondent. Menuonos, who read several books to the children, commented, “Reading has played a major role in my life—I wouldn’t be where I am today if my parents hadn’t read to me growing up and stressed the importance of reading on my own at an early age.”
While “The Nestlé Share the Joy of Reading Program” will be donating to RIF, it also gives Nestlé customers the chance to win a wide range of prizes. Through this program, they can help a RIF kid receive a new book every time they open a variety of specially marked Nestlé products. By entering the package promotion code inside specially marked Nestlé candy bags at http://rif.celebrationcorner.com/, they’ll have a chance to become an instant winner of a $10 book certificate. And, they’ll be entered into a monthly $5,000 cash drawing.
Each time a person enters a valid package promotion code to play the instant win game, Nestlé will donate 10¢ to RIF. Nestlé will also donate a book in the form of $2 to RIF for each valid instant win prize claimed. Specially marked Nestlé product bags are currently in stores nationwide and will be available until the program ends in December 2011 or while supplies last. During that time, Nestlé will donate up to $250,000 to RIF, with a minimum guarantee of $100,000—and the more people play, the more money Nestlé will donate! So the next time you want to satisfy your sweet tooth, look for the specially marked Nestlé bags.
Happy Reading (while enjoying a sweet treat!),
Carol
September 2nd, 2010
Food is a great way to introduce children to a variety of literacy and numeracy concepts! Here are a few suggestions as to how to use food, cooking, and meal time as a language learning experience:
Grocery Shopping
- Writing Skills: Before arriving to the grocery store, have your child help you make a grocery list.
- Word/image association: As you walk through the grocery store aisles make the connection between your written list and what you are placing in the grocery cart. Have your child cross off items as they are placed in the cart.
- Cognitive Skills: When unloading groceries at home, ask your child to sort the items by food group before putting them away.
Cooking
- Measurement: Allow children to watch you read a recipe. Invite them to help you measure ingredients for the meal.
- Cause and Effect: As food is being cooked and/or created, children will observe the changes each ingredient goes through as it becomes a meal.
- Writing Skills: If the recipe does not come from a cook book, ask your child to write it down. This could be your first entry in a family cook book!
More fun with food
- Letter recognition: Use alphabet food items (pasta, cookies, crackers, cereal) to spell out words and names.
- Science: Grow your own fruits and vegetables! Planting teaches children basic science concepts and exposes them to nature and the environment.
- Cognitive Skills: Help Riffington zoom through the supermarket while playing Supermarket Spree on the RIF Planet website.
- Reading Aloud: Search the Book Zone section of the RIF Planet website for great book titles having to do with food. One of our personal favorites is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett.
Whether you’re planting your own vegetables or creating a new delicious meal, be sure to include your child in this language and flavor- filled adventure!
Happy Reading!
RIF Training Team
September 2nd, 2010
Laurel Snyder paid a visit to RIF last October – and did we ever have a good time careening from one topic to another with her, bombarding her with questions! Last week on the release date of Laurel’s BAXTER, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher I shared here on the blog how much I learned from that pig. Today we are in for another treat from Laurel, a very thoughtful piece about books and their role. Laurel always makes me think as well as laugh, and I am grateful for her friendship and for her dedication to the world of children’s literature!
Here we are in September, at the beginning of fall. How did the summer fly by so quickly?
When I was a kid, believe it or not, fall was the best time of year! Fall meant fresh pencils and a notebook with nothing in it, just pages of clean white paper. Fall meant Halloween was coming and leaves were changing, and of course, it meant school, but more than all of that, fall meant books.
Don’t get me wrong, summer meant books too. Beach reading. Lazy days. But when I was a kid, I spent my after-school time in the public library because my parents worked late. Every day at 2:30 I’d walk across the street to the Roland Park branch of the Enoch Pratt Free library in Baltimore.
At the library I’d read and read. But also I’d talk about what I was reading with the other latchkey kids who spent their afternoons this way too. There was a funny little crew of us, and we read every new title that came into the library. We learned to help the librarians shelve the books. We used tracing paper to copy the pictures from our favorite books. We shared our snacks with each other on the library steps and talked about how we might someday like to write and draw books too.
And now, thinking back on that, I wonder how many other kids had this experience. I didn’t just have access to books. I lived among them three hours a day, with an odd assortment of other characters who also lived in the library. Left to our own devices in the stacks of books, we visited faraway places, memorized magical spells, cried and laughed, and the world seemed enormous. We did these things together.
This fall, I have a new book coming out, Penny Dreadful. It’s the story of a girl who—like me—loves and lives in books. Penny Dreadful is full of references to other books Penny and I both love—from Ballet Shoes to Lemony Snicket’s Unfortunate Events. But there’s something I want to explain about Penny to anyone who might decide to meet her.
Penny Dreadful isn’t just about the importance of books. Because what Penny discovers is that books, wonderful as they are, aren’t enough all by themselves. Penny has all the books she could want, but she’s lonely. Books are only distractions for her, in a sense, from her life. Because she has nobody to share her books with. Until she moves to a town called Thrush Junction, and her life changes forever.
I think, sometimes, we see books as an escape. We see them as little vacations from life. We need them to be this sometimes. But at their best, books are the very opposite. They connect us to other people and to the world. If we have the right little crew of teachers, librarians, parents, friends who will share books with us—people who will turn books into vehicles not just destinations.
I’d like to thank RIF for being just that kind of right little crew!
September 1st, 2010
For the third year, RIF and US Airways have teamed up for the “Fly with US. Read with Kids.®” campaign to promote the importance of reading with children.
If you’ve participated in the past, you know that a very fun part of this campaign is the Read with Kids Challenge, where participants log the number of minutes they spend reading to children. This year, our nationwide goal is reading with kids for 10 million minutes between September 1 and October 31. Think of the incredible benefits kids will receive by spending quality time with you and some good books!
When you join the Challenge and begin logging your minutes, you’ll be eligible to win weekly prizes, travel gift cards, and the grand prize of a US Airways Vacations package to the Walt Disney World® Resort. In addition, if you make a donation to RIF through the campaign, you can receive up to 5,000 Dividend Miles from US Airways. And free downloadable resources, like bookmarks featuring Maisy our campaign “Spokesmouse,” can help you spread the word to your friends and family.
As you can see, there’s a great deal to take advantage of in this campaign. Welcome aboard, and enjoy some wonderful reading adventures with the children in your life.
Happy Reading!
Carol
September 1st, 2010
(From L to R) A family enjoys books & pumpkins during a trip to the pumpkin patch. Families celebrate at the "Fatherhood chili feed" RIF Distribution.
The Goldenrod Hills Head Start RIF program in Wisner, Neb. embodies the vision of its umbrella organization, Goldenrod Hills Community Action, Inc., by helping to create “strong family foundations built through education, empowerment, and support.”
At the beginning of each year, RIF volunteers, who oversee 16 sites and approximately 443 children, send out family interest sheets and fatherhood surveys to the homes of their students. After compiling the parents’ feedback they make a list of the most popular options for possible themes. The parents vote on the themes and the top three become the basis of the program’s RIF book distributions.
The data volunteers collect also includes what talents and skills the parents would like to share to make the book distributions successful. “We ask ourselves, ‘What can we plan around their interests and hobbies?’” says RIF Coordinator Karen Leise, who oversees four of Goldenrod’s sites. “We try our best to gauge the needs of parents and to develop our activities based on that.”
The program’s activities have included travels to the local pumpkin patch, where the children selected pumpkins and books, which they read with their families in a designated area. At a garden party, families learned about caring for plants and the children potted their own flowers to take home. And tea parties, goldfish races, pajamas days, and Dr. Seuss-centered events were some of the other activities held throughout the year.
Several sites use their RIF book distributions to engage their communities. The Hartington location went to the Golden Living Center, a retirement home that in turn helped sponsor the site. There, parents read to their children and the youngsters shared their books with the residents. At a book distribution during Halloween, preschoolers and parents from another site visited the Oakland Nursing Home, where they decorated residents’ doors and the children staged a parade of costumes.
Some of Goldenrod’s book distributions focused on food and fatherhood. At their Father Chili-Feed, RIF volunteers served up books and bowls of delicious chili as dads acted as guest readers. During the Pizza with Papa/RIF event, the head start classes made pizzas and bookmarks and the men read aloud to the children.
Of their RIF program, Melissa Campbell, a teacher at the Hartington Head Start says “It’s an all around great program. It allows those who cannot afford to buy books or those who cannot make it to the library to be encouraged to read and it keeps families connected.”
Congratulations, Goldenrod Head Start for being named RIF’s Program of the Month for September.
Happy Reading!
The RIF Program of the Month Selection Committee
August 31st, 2010
Somewhere, sometime prior to publication I read a fascinating story about this guy who had written a book about the men who invented day-glo paints. I was intrigued by the review and watched carefully for the book to become available. And I was even more hooked on this Cybils award winning book when I was able to read for myself The Day-Glo Brothers. I knew exactly what child would first receive it as a gift from me along with a set of what else but day-glo paints?! And I have given many of the book/paint sets since that time. Then I saw this guy Barton mentioned on Facebook which led to us befriending one another and then we were both on twitter… and what fun it has been getting to know Chris through social media with a treat of saying hello in person at ALA in DC this summer and getting books autographed for my grandson. Thank you, Chris, for joining us today at Rasco from RIF; and even more, thank you for your terrific contributions to children’s literacy!
Charles Darwin & James Bond: The Intersection Between Fiction and Nonfiction
by Guest Blogger Chris Barton
Don’t ask me how this happened, because I still haven’t figured it out myself, but until recently my six-year-old son had managed to confuse Charles Darwin with James Bond.
Besides being good for a laugh, his mental mix-up got me reflecting on the intersection between fiction and nonfiction, and on just how entwined the two genres can be, especially for me as a writer.
Last year, as I awaited the publication of my picture book biography The Day-Glo Brothers, I was putting the final touches on another worlds-apart book, the completely silly Shark vs. Train. As that book was making its debut this spring, I was chasing down final facts for my upcoming young adult nonfiction project, “Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities.” And this summer, when galleys arrived for that book, I was working on fiction (a middle grade novel involving anthropomorphism and explosives) while also thinking ahead to other nonfiction projects.
I slide back and forth between fiction and nonfiction without really thinking much about it, my experiences with one building on the other. I suspect the youngest readers approach the two genres pretty much the same way—when you’ve explored only a smidge of the world, all books are about exploring more of it. It’s as we get older, as both readers and writers, that our tastes divide.
Or rather, it’s when our tastes divide that we see ourselves as preferring, say, fiction over nonfiction. Among other creators of books for children and young adults, I’ve seen this manifested in what I call “Nonfiction Face.” Remember Mr. Yuk, the nauseated-green frowny-face poison-control logo of yore? I’ve seen that look on many of my peers when I’ve brought up writing nonfiction.
I suspect that’s partly because they still think of the less-then-compelling nonfiction of their youth rather than of the creative and powerful contemporary work of the likes of Tanya Lee Stone, Phillip Hoose, and Brian Floca. But I also believe that too many makers of Nonfiction Face have simply never taken the time to consider what sort of nonfiction book they would most like to create.
For each of them, there’s bound to be one such book. I’m convinced that for every last maker of Nonfiction Face, there’s some real-world subject that they already know more about, care more about, or simply find more interesting than most people do. I teach an entire workshop on this, but a self-help approach can yield the same results: If they simply give it some thought, they’ll realize that they would bring passion and enthusiasm to some angle on that subject that most people simply could not.
And based on my own experiences slipping back and forth between genres, I believe they might even find inspiration for their next fiction project. I’d ask, however, that they not get any bright ideas about 007’s famed expedition to the Galapagos. That one’s spoken for.
August 30th, 2010
FRACTIONS, DECIMALS, AND PERCENTS by David A. Adler and illustrated by Edward Miller. 2010. Holiday House, Inc.
Last week when I first picked up the book Fractions, Decimals, and Percents I saw the back cover before the title cover; there on the back was a sign stating “County Fair Today” which intrigued me given fall is “fair” time and I miss going to the fair! Imagine my surprise to turn the book over and find it is a math book.
Written by David A. Adler, a former math teacher and illustrated by Edward Miller, this book uses a visit to the county fair to illustrate these math concepts which certainly will awaken interest in many children quicker than a math book alone! Bright, clear illustrations with some photography inserted a couple of places when coins are discussed go even further to make the book far more appealing that it would be initially for the targeted age group of 6-10.
While I am not certain many children will choose to pick up this book initially on their own to read, it is another way for a teacher to carry out both an introduction as well as review of these “parts” concepts. At the end there is a game the students can construct with a visit to the illustrator’s website making that construction even easier.
Adler’s website is a storehouse of information for teachers and for students. Students will perhaps also enjoy this interview by some students about the biographies David A. Adler has written.
Enjoy your nonfiction today and happy reading every day!
Carol
Twitter: @RascoFromRIF
Thank you, Booknosher, for hosting us today and a big round of applause for Anastasia Suen for sponsoring Nonfiction Monday!
August 30th, 2010
It is a fact, plain and simple: The cover of LIFE, AFTER by Sarah Darer Littman is one of the most beautiful covers I have ever seen. Over and out. And from what I have heard – and I try hard not to learn much, if anything, about a book’s story or its history before selecting it for Cover Story - this book almost had a very different cover. I am delighted it is this shade of blue with this particular tree design. As I walk into my office each day this book’s cover cheers me.
And now, I am ready to read the story behind the beautifully designed cover!
Happy Reading!
Carol
Twitter: @RascoFromRIF
Cover Story is a feature every Monday on Rasco From RIF where I share with you the “face” of a book that has caught my eye or that readers have submitted. Cover Story does not discuss the content of the book. I hope you will share your favorite “cover story” with me now and then!
August 30th, 2010
Five years ago today I was immobilized in front of my television, my eyes seeing one image, my mind fighting the truth of what The Washington Post editorial today relates: Five years ago today, hell was unleashed on New Orleans. However, it wasn’t only New Orleans; parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and other areas of Louisiana suffered as well and despite many wonderful success stories, there is both visible and invisible suffering still present in all these areas. Again, in The Washington Post, a cover story today outlines one family that has seen the good, the bad and the ugly over the five years of recovery struggles.
On facet of life in New Orleans that has consistently gained support and shown signs of genuine improvement in the rebuilding efforts is education for the area’s children. I remember with great clarity going to New Orleans in October of 2007 when the first branch library of the New Orleans Public Library system – The Martin Luther King branch – reopened in its home in the Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science & Technology in the Lower 9th Ward. The school and the library were gleaming from their extensive renovation. However, despite my regular television and reading reviews of the devastation in New Orleans, I was clearly unprepared for the pictures taken of school’s condition and the 9th Ward neighborhood within days after Katrina “unleashed on New Orleans.” Sadly on that day I visited the gleaming school, the surrounding neighborhood in the Lower 9th Ward did not look very different from the “immediately after” August 29, 2005 photos. Article after article now documents there is still much work to be done there, including the resolution of exactly how this particular area should be rebuilt. Of particular concern to me given my background in counseling is the emotional toll on children and the lack of adequate numbers of mental health professionals to assist the children and their families still coping with issues outlined throughout the recovery. I remember being told about this young person not eating in the lunchroom as later shared in a January 2008 EDUCATION WEEK article:
At the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology, language arts teacher Yvonne Lancelin has a 13-year-old student who won’t eat lunch in the cafeteria. When she talked to the girl, Ms. Lancelin learned that the student had stood in line for months for every meal while she lived in a shelter with her family after the storm. “She couldn’t bear to do that anymore,” Ms. Lancelin said.
I have recently read three books on Katrina I wish to share with Rasco from RIF readers, the first one today on this anniversary of Katrina.
ONE BLOCK: A New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilds, photographs by Dave Anderson and essay by Chris Rose. 2010. Aperture Foundation.
New York Times review
David Anderson is a resident of Little Rock, Arkansas which is my home state and the area of the state from which I moved to the Washington, DC area 17 years ago. I do not know Anderson but will certainly make the effort to meet him having savored this book of photographs taken of a one block area during 2006-2010 in the heart of the Lower 9th Ward. The photographs are preceded by an essay titled H-O-M-E written by Chris Rose who is a columnist at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.
PEOPLE /CHARACTERS
Stacy Rockwood and Augustine Greenwood are two of my favorite people shown in the photographs; friends pre-K (Katrina) and glad to be together now post-K while together they rebuild. Not what one might consider spring chickens but quietly strong in spirit as well as energy.
Joseph Pomfrey who is a native of NOLA (New Orleans, LA) and returned after the storm finding work with Mack McClendon on various projects while living “on an old couch in Mack’s junkyard.”
WORDS
“There’s been so many times I wanted to leave. It has wreaked some havoc on my mind…I’m not totally cured of that yet.” – Lisa Perilloux.
Chris Rose in his essay challenges us as readers to just imagine if “everyone you know, everyone you’re related to, and everyone you work with!” is going through this catastrophe at the same time. Well, he says, that is the story being told through one block’s experience as portrayed through photographs in the book. It is a sobering thought.
Augustine Greenwood at one point related “…I couldn’t stop thinking about the yard. So I stopped at the Home Depot and picked up the roses. That felt so great.”
SEQUENCES
Stacy and Augustine shown in the sequences where each is rebuilding her own area, sharing their joy in returning “home.”
Mack McClendon whose own home renovation was put on hold by him for more than two years while he focused on The Village, a service center for the Lower 9th Ward.
On page 122 something really grabbed me about the refurbished exterior of the yellow house with the rooster followed by the hen strutting down the sidewalk…a symbol perhaps of some small amount of recovery.
ART
The photographs in this book represent an artistic rendering of a conversation which Chris Rose notes: “…(people) talk. In New Orleans, it’s an art form, a way of life. Conversation is currency.” “When I leaf through these pages, the sound I hear most is the gentlest clatter of daily conversation…the hum and drone…of the human condition.”
AND I TAKE WITH ME…
The photo of Danny Santiago’s waterlogged photo-albums which “document a girls’ volleyball team he and his wife coached for years. Danny continues to look through them lovingly, describing specific images in detail when virtually nothing remains but muddy whorls of ink.”
August 29th, 2010
Say what? It is International Read Comics in Public Day!
So the challenge to those brave enough to participate is to plop oneself in a public space and read comics with the hope people notice and start a conversation. I know there are plenty of people who pass in and out and through the lobby of my condo complex so I went and sat there with a stack of comic books (you can call them graphic novels but as one article notes “that somewhat defeats the purpose…”) I was reading one by one. And it did not take long:
Are you really reading “funny books”? Yes, I am; want to join me? (To those much younger than me, that is a term used way back when my dad sold comic books in his drugstore, circa the 50’s.) No one sat down and read with me this year.
Does RIF believe in comic books? You let kids read them?
Yes and yes. Of course RIF books are selected by local selection committees and the rules governing our federal grant call for an ISBN but comic books/graphic novels/etc. are ordered by RIF programs for distribution.
Do you really read those because you like them? Yes.
But if you were a teacher you wouldn’t really let someone do a book report on one of those books would you? Sure. I was once a teacher, and I did allow such. (I didn’t add that for some parents that did not go over well….but I had a building principal who knew I had some boys reading and actually doing book reports for the first time in their lives in their sixth grade year!)
Thank you to those who started this day, I had a blast!
Happy Reading, whatever you choose to read.
Carol
Twitter: @RascoFromRIF
August 28th, 2010
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