A number of people have written me asking what in the world is this wavy thing about “pig and hogs” on Facebook? This is a “wave” across the Arkansas Razorbacks football stadium, and “hog” (nickname for Razorbacks) football kicks off Saturday, September 4. Arkansas is a rabid Razorback state, the red and white throughout the state Saturday will be phenomenal. As one young Arkansas friend said who had also posted this “wave” - ”I’m not even a sports fan, but the Razorbacks are another story, it’s a religion here.”
Welcome to the bimonthly children’s literacy and reading news round-up brought to you by Jen Robinson’s Book Page and Scrub-a-Dub-Tub. As a reminder, while Jen, Mheir and Baby Bookworm are settling into routines, I (Rasco from RIF) am “filling in” for Jen, so here’s a *wave* to Jen and Baby Bookworm who is growing quite fast! It has been exciting recently to see Jen back on twitter and posting on her blog; check out some of her latest posts!
While the air doesn’t have even the hint of autumn yet in the Washington, DC area, the calendar says September, the windows of many commercial establishments show fall colors, the school busses are back on the streets and children are now not always running along the sidewalks more carefree but stooped forward with the weight of backpacks. It is easy to allow our thoughts to immediately leave summer behind….
But I encourage each of us to stop, think and go to work on preparing for next summer! There is no better time to reflect on our communities’ programming for summer learning than now when the summer of 2010 is fresh on our minds. I am a broken record, yes, I know it but summer is such a critical period for literacy for our children. Make sure your community has individuals attending the National Summer Learning Association’s (NSLA) annual conference SUMMER CHANGES EVERYTHING! By the way, *wave* a Happy Anniversary greeting to NSLA and read about their productive year for children.
As school does start up sights often turn to “back to school” nights or regular family engagement nights, mornings, afternoons…Reading Rockets recently shared an article Creative Literacy Events for Families listing some new ideas, different twists on often-used, good ideas. A family game night or cultural cookout sound intriguing to me! Also, if you have not reviewed a copy of School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action by Joyce Epstein and others, you will want to do so. Dr. Epstein is the Director of the National Network of Partnership Schools and the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships, Principal Research Scientist, and Research Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University; the Network will be hosting the annual Leadership Development Conference in Baltimore October 26 and 26; you do not have to be a member of the Network to attend. It is a great opportunity for networking and learning more about the critical school, family and community partnerships critical to children’s educational progress.
Another potential community or even Family Literacy Night activity that builds on the “One Community, One Book” concept was recently announced by Boston: One City, One Story. I can see this as a great school night activity – what about you?
The school “start up” period also brings about a new flurry of discussion about types of reading: book, e-readers, audio reading. While the article was posted in April, I only recently had it called to my attention and it notes: 81% of the top iPad book apps (13 of the top 16) are for kids; whether in print, on screen, really it’s just a book to the kids. And did you see the WSJ article recently labeled “THE ABC’S OF E-READING”? In brief, it notes a study of 1200 e-reader owners found that 40% said they read more than they did with print books, 58% read about the same amount and 2% said they read less. And 55% said they would use their device to read more in the future…worth a read. And there is already an article that makes one think about the future of that thing we know as an APP!
Now, in case you are worried about friends who do all their reading by e-reader and you want them to remember “the print book” or you yourself are pining for the “good ole days”….you can order this if still carried: This is weird. But that also makes it fun. Perfume that smells like an old book! The maker of this scent, Christopher Brosius, loves his books. He describes the odour of his product as: “English Novel taken from a Signed First Edition of one of my very favorite novels, Russian & Moroccan leather bindings, worn cloth and a hint of wood polish”. He made four varieties of his “In the library” scent. It comes as Perfume Absolute 15 ml and 2 ml, a Water Perfume and a Home Spray. You can find out more about it, and order it if you dare, here.
In talking about their new book pictured above, Sandra Feinberg and James R. Keller have said “How parents and caregivers act within the library setting often influences how children feel and how often they will come to the library. How children feel when they use the library will affect their attitude and behavior not only when they are children but also when they become parents.” One article commenting on this quote by the authors noted you can “substitute the word ‘reading’ for library…and is it any different?” By the way, if you haven’t met Sandra Feinberg in print or in person, you must do so. She is the Library Director at the Middle Country Public Library in New York, what a librarian, what a library!
Speaking of Libraries, have you seen this great game? The Library Adventure Game! It uses a web-based simulation to teach reference skills….sounds very interesting to me as a former sixth-grade teacher who struggled to find engaging activities on just this topic.
RIF invites you to join us along with US Airways in packing your bags and taking off with the the 2010 Read with Kids Challenge! Remember, one part is where participants log the number of minutes they spend reading to and with 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! (and there are nifty prizes, check it out!)
DON’T FORGET these events: National Book Festival, September 25 Even if you can’t attend this 10th Annual Festival on the Mall, there are things on the website you’ll find interesting and more will be posted as the day draws closer! Also, remember the next installment of The Exquisite Corpse Adventure begun at the 2009 National Book Festival will be posted on September 10, don’t miss it!
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 Posteditorial 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 WEEKarticle:
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.
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.”
Last week I received this photo of my great niece reading in bed at the close of the first day of second grade. This year the homework for this young lady’s class consists primarily of 20 minutes a night reading. I really like this focus on reading with no in-depth accompanying assignments at this point. I was curious if I might uncover how common this technique is around the country as I hear of it rather frequently from RIF sites in schools; I started some searches. WOW, it is great how many sites i encountered with homework targeting 10-20 minutes a night reading above all else for a wide range of grade levels. There are various approaches as to whether it is “free choice reading” or a mix of assigned genres/ titles and free choice reading.
Does your school (whether your students, your children, your community) use this type approach?
If so, what are the parameters?
Are reading logs used with parental signature in your district? Other methods?
Last Sunday I spent a “dream come true” seven and a half hours riding the Glacier Express from St. Moritz to Zarmatt, Switzerland. The overpowering size of the alps, the varying configurations of stone patterns and color gradations, the “snow!” showing still, the waterfalls tumbling downhill in some sites, roaring through crevices in other places…it was humbling and relaxing and one part of a dream since childhood to travel throughout Heidi’s country, Heidi being my favorite childhood book character even to this day.
The full ten-day trip around Switzerland also allowed me to think in a quiet, logical manner. One thing that has bothered me since RIF’s move to a new “home” in May has been the bookcase next to my desk full of books I have read and not shared with anyone with a few exceptions. I was able to reflect quietly last Sunday on “why?”…and it came to me that I haven’t written about those books on the whole because I had not settled on a format that is me, that speaks to what I look for, enjoy, take from book reading. So I started jotting notes over the week during quiet times in Switzerland and the plane trip home yesterday; I also spent time reflecting on the type things I mark in books as I “porcupine” the edges with removable markers.
It may take a while to evolve the categories to fully suit me, but later today I start. The categories I will use after a very brief synopsis of the story/content of a book will be the following; and of course perhaps not every book will have something for every category.
PEOPLE Here I will mention and describe why I identified with and/or admired or felt a certain character was or characters were memorable. WORDS Some quotes of special significance to me or I simply liked the words as they were arranged. SEQUENCES One or more episodes/content/processes I particularly liked.
ART
The arts – visual and performing – are important to me and almost every book has some artistic connection left with me or evoked within me.
AND I TAKE WITH ME…
An item or two in closing that indicates factors not already mentioned that will stay with me for a long time.
August is well underway, the media is now reminding us that indeed it is time to think about “back to school” tasks. Check out this article in the September issue of Family Circle Magazine: “Your Biggest Back-to-School Questions, Answered.”
Remembering many wonderful August 5th birthdays since 1980 when my daughter was born. An extra special one was the year Samantha joined our family, tea party and all in our hotel room!
Yes, it truly is National Ice Cream Day…and more than that, July is National Ice Cream Month! President Reagan in 1984 proclaimed the month and the day in recognition that 90% of the country’s people eat ice cream, a higher percentage than any other nation.
When I think of ice cream what comes first to my mind?
My dad’s soda fountain at Hampton Drug Company; the uniqueness was the square ice cream scoop, great discussions about it through the years, many thousands of scoops enjoyed there by friends and family!
A fourth grade HIGH ROADS reader published by the Houghton Mifflin Company which had the story of the man who invented the ice cream cone at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. I remember the story told of a waffle booth next to an ice cream vendor; the ice cream man ran out of dishes and the waffle booth man fashioned a cone and voila! ice cream cones were an instant part of our culinary world. I think years later I may have heard someone else actually had a patent in New York prior to the 1904 World’s Fair but no matter, the HIGH ROADS story was the truth for me!
My mother’s homemade fresh peach ice cream…oh, that is a treat to this day I would even go back to the hand-cranked method and do my turn if that is what it would take for that delectable sensation to hit my taste buds!
On this national holiday and in honor of their 65th anniversary Baskin Robbins will retire five flavors or in the ice cream industry lingo the flavors will be sent to the “deep freeze”; the five flavors include a shocker according to many, one of BR’s oldest, French Vanilla (1945); it was one of the first flavors launched by Irv Robbins and Burt Baskin. But never fear, this home of the annual 31 cent scoop each spring will bring out five new flavors to bring them back to 31; I did not find the new flavors yet announced. Some sources report it will be today, some note there will be a customer voting process….hang tight. UPDATE: Appears Baskin Robbins will now hold a customer participation initiative this fall to solicit customer input for the new flavors: http://bit.ly/909A1I.
Read about some longstanding delicious sounding places in Detroit!
Think you might like to become an Ice Cream Sommelier like Katherine Montero who has also just completed her business degree at Harvard University?
Want more information about ice cream? I point you to ICE CREAM JOURNAL.Politicians, summer and ice cream are staples; see 45 politicians and ice cream in these photos compiled by The Huffington Post.
As you walk into the RIF office today there is a “WoW” awaiting you…a Wall of Words! The first reader outside a RIF employee, Board member or family member of RIF employee/Board member who submits in the comment section below the full listing of words or the most words seen on the WoW by 5 p.m. (eastern daylight savings time) today will receive a set of multicultural books sent to a youth serving agency of your choice!
Over the last week I have savored reading the tributes and discussions surrounding the 50th anniversary today for TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee. It is a special book in my life, one I have been reading and rereading since junior high. Given my affection for the book I have been surprised of course by the attacks on the book this anniversary has brought; I have read them and tried to listen and learn…but this is one book that it will take more than the tepid arguments of this 50th year to change my mind.
While I have collected numerous pieces from the web and other formats over the last month leading to this anniversary date, the article that has best summarized the meaning of this book for me was expressed eloquently by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in a piece for yesterday’s Guardian (with appreciation to Ron Charles of The Washington Post for an early morning tweet about the article). The following paragraph from Adichie is certain to hit many of us from the South between the eyes as we struggle 50 years later with some of the same issues Lee addresses in this book:
Nor does she create saintly characters – although Atticus Finch comes close. She complicates them all, so that while Scout is the lovable narrator whose family deplores racism, we are not allowed to forget that she and her family benefit from the privilege of being white. When their summer friend, Dill, is upset by the dehumanising way that the black man is questioned in court, Scout says, “He’s just a negro,” with the certainty that comes from being complicit, simply by virtue of birth, in a system of institutionalised inequality. It does not occur to Scout to question this, as it does not occur to her to question the idea that four black adults rise in a courtroom to give up their seats to little white children. The most moving line, for me, is spoken by the accused black man Tom who, in response to a question about why he was scared even though he was innocent, says: If you was a nigger like me, you’d be scared, too. That simple statement says all the reader needs to know about the larger system that Lee questions, in which being black was synonymous with guilt.
So much to ponder, so much work to do.
The other reason this story has great meaning for me is my memory of the day I read one of my daughter’s three college entrance “essays” and found she had gone back to an eighth grade English class book – TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. She wrote in the essay about the “aha” moment she had when Atticus admonished Scout to walk in another person’s shoes before casting judgment. My daughter noted she had always harbored some resentments toward her brother who was seven years older, who took a lot of time and attention from us parents as we worked with him to overcome certain of his limitations due to handicapping conditions. She says as the teacher led her class through the discussion of this phrase in the book it hit her this brother would never do some of the top priorities she held at the time – never be out of his wheelchair at a dance, never drive a car and the list continued. For a parent or at least this parent, it was a defining moment for me to read her words on the paper before me.
I think often about this book, and I will be reflecting a great deal today about my friends in the book along with appreciation to Harper Lee I have this book in my life.
