Bad Librarian *slapping hand*

No, I haven't been in a coma or abducted by aliens. Life sometimes just runs away with us for awhile. With the turn of the seasons, I'm renewing my commitment to try and post on my blog on a regular basis. How regular? Hummmmm. Well, more than once a year for sure!

I would like to wax poetic for a moment. No, really, let's polish up on poetry! While most of us in the trenches of education in Texas are watching and waiting for all to be revealed about the upcoming STAAR test...I do rejoice in the fact that poetry is being addressed. Yes, that love/hate relationship that we have with one of humanity's greatest creations and most painful of classroom subjects.

So get out your dusty copy of Mother Goose Rhymes and brush up on the classics for starters and share them with your students. For adults and older students, do a bit of research into the history of the nursery rhymes. Remember "Ring Around the Rosie"? That little ditty is about the Black Death, aka Bubonic Plague from the Middle Ages. The disease would bring about sores with "rings" around them all over the body. The medicine of the day suggested that using various herbs and flowers in a mask would ward off the "vapors", thus "pockets full of posies". Unfortunately, most infected persons would die within a few days and the ending line, "ashes, ashes we all fall down" was a reminder that both king and commoner would meet Death. The reason I present this example is that many of these rhymes have a history behind them that has been forgotten in our modern times.

Jumping into our own time and in the Texas classrooms...suggestions for teachers would be to possibly to introduce poetry in the guise of music. Most kids love to sing and know a lot of songs so it is a natural match to multitask and combine language arts and art. Heck, throw in a bit of history as well and cover social studies. Learn our state song, "Texas, Our Texas".

Be a poet and know it!

"Where are your scary books?"

I guess this was the natural follow up to my last entry about "princess books".

While I am on the topic of my last entry...mea clupa! I want to extend my apologies for not posting in a long while. I could list a million and one reasons, but the main reason is that I put the blog on the back burner. I'm new at this and now that the school year is underway, I will make it a priority to keep up with things on a more timely manner.

Now back to the "scary books". Seems like our students are more than a little taken with all things weird. With the new school year, there comes new purchase orders. What to buy? Humm...well we could be practical and strictly adhere to the curriculum and all that. No, there is a clamor for alien abductions, zombies and chupacabras - oh, my! Yes, you read correctly, chupacabras. They are the "goat suckers" from Mexican legend. Mrs. Higgins did indeed find a book that had some information about these beasties! Not bad given that I had to adhere to the Title I parameters! Oh, yes...look for it later this semester right next to a book about the Mothman.

What could kids possibly learn from reading this stuff. Do these things really exist? Why waste time and energy on things that go "bump in the night"? Most people are a combination of curious and liking a good scare now and then. If this is what it takes to get kids reading, then bravo! Reading about the Yeti will increase their vocabulary and make them geographically aware of the continent of Asia. Reading about La Llorona will give them a glimpse of what use to be oral tradition of storytelling. Our little X-File agents are not wasting their time, but expanding and entertaining the possibilities of the impossible and improbable. THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE!

"Where are your princess books?"

AAAAHHHHHH! was my initial reaction to this question every time a little girl came up and asked me that. And to be fair, it was also my reaction when any student (usually boys) would ask me about "hero" books (meaning super-hero books). I'm not sure why I had such a knee-jerk reaction to those requests over other requests. The library apparently has a critical shortage of these genre which in turn makes me feel like I'm not on my game in collection development.

Most of the time, these books would all be checked out when they were requested. Younger students just can't quite grasp that you have a limited amount of something and that it isn't available at that particular moment in time. While staring into their big puppy-dog eyes like Little Cindy Lou Who when you tell them that "No, sorry, we don't have anymore Cinderella books right now" you feel like the Grinch that stole their Christmas. To the true princess connoisseur, it is only a "real" princess book if it a Disney creation. I try the "bait and switch" and recommend to them other non-Disney versions of Cinderella. At first, they will fain interest and take the book. I leave them feeling like Supreme Librarian Extraordinaire! However, by the time they get to checking out, they have selected something else and I find the recommended book tucked away in the middle of American history. *SIGH* Repeat the above process with another student who wants a super-hero book and I try to turn them on to a tall tale hero or *gasp* a biography of a real hero.

After thinking about what these students are really asking for is adventure where they can project themselves into the main character. I know, I know...how sexist -- etc. Well, upon further meditation on the matter, the new generation of princesses aren't your momma's princesses. I recently rented the DVD, The Princess and the Frog. The main character was pretty self-sufficient before during and after finding her prince and the prince was not your typical blue blood hero. Marvel super-heroes are full of personal conflicts and identity crisis. We owe a debt of literary gratitude that children are attracted to more complicated characters.
So, the next time I get a request for a "princess book", I'll have to remember that in the immortal words of Prince Naveen, "It is not slime, it is mucus!" It is all a matter of perspective.

At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities. ~Jean Houston

Testing season is in full swing across the country. Everyone is feeling the pressure. As a cheerleader for both students and staff, I offer one simple idea: laughter. As far as I know, nobody ever died from a giggle. If they did, I really don't want to know about it.
Kids love, love, love our joke and riddle books. I can hardly keep them on the shelf in the library. The poor books live a rough life...they are literally "loved to death". They are usually not Accelerated Reader books, but what the heck. Those silly books are probably one of our greatest teaching tools for language: vocabulary, metaphors, use of quotation marks - you name it. If our students can understand the subtle and not so subtle meanings in humor, then we have truly arrived as educators of the mind and heart.

Listed here is the link from Merlot
http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=329573
This is the link for the article for humor in teaching.
http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue6_2/garner.html

So put on those funny glasses with the rubber nose that you have been keeping in the desk drawer and tell a joke and diagram the sentence of the punch line. You've done several things...taught a valuable skill in grammar and made yourself and the kids feel good about learning.

"I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose." ~Woody Allen

Until the next chapter, be good!

Hit or Myth: The Lightning Thief

Greetings!
This past weekend my hubby and I went to see The Lightning Thief. I was fresh off of reading the book about a week before. I've been looking forward to seeing this movie for about five years. I was fortunate enough to have seen the author, Rick Riordan, as a guest speaker at a dinner. I was fasinated by the whole primise of a modern teen finding out that he was the son of Posidon the god of the sea.
Well, I loved the book -- I saw everything play out in my mind's eye. Well, the movie was "different". Chris Columbus did a very good job with setting up the plot at the start...even though the meeting of Zeus and Poseidon on the deck of the Empire State Building didn't happen that way in the book.
The movie can stand by its own merits, and is done well. It is sure to please its targeted audience of pre-teens and teens and it is pretty much family-friendly. The character, Grover, the satur, does get a bit "frisky" making eyes with the ladies, so it might be a bit PG-13 for some parents.
When it comes to comparing books and movies, its "apples and oranges". Books like the Lightning Thief have a hard time being confined to the restrictions given to the movie makers. Cuts and rearrangements become necessary. I was very disappointed that the character, Clarisse, seems to have been written out. As the daughter of Ares, god of war, she is a tough cookie and does factor in the later books of the series.
I do recommend this movie and hope that it and the upcoming Clash of the Titans will encourage and foster an interest in people picking up that dusty copy of mythology and seeing what treasures await them on Mount Olympus.

Here is a link to visit with the author, Rick Riordan:
www.rickriordan.com

Until the next chapter, be good!

"Lions and Tigers and Blogs - OH MY!"

Like Dorthy from The Wizard of Oz, I am entering a magical new territory...a lot of it new and a bit scary! Please come with me on this adventure and hopefully have some fun. It takes a leap of faith to publish something that maybe read by a whole dozen people on the old WWW. I hope to keep up with this blog on at least a weekly basis.



How does one start a blog? Well, first of all you have to come up with some really catchy idea...or at the very least something that might not give others a migraine. I pretty much settled for the latter. Keep the Tylenol handy just in case.



Next, find a free blog site -- I went with herd on this one and went to http://www.blogger.com/

Just follow the directions...there is the rub...there are so many things to set up! I so wanted to be cool and download a lovely background and such...well, you're getting a template in the meantime -- I have high hopes for the future.



Now, the big question: Why would I want to do a blog? Well, er...because it's there? I follow tons of blogs and figured that if "they" could do it, so could I. I hope I'm right on this.

Until the next chapter - be good!