The OLD Top Shelf

The ESC7 blog for librarians has a great post on an interesting way of introducing kids to books.

Does this excerpt peak your interest? Click the link to find out how it was selected.

“I tried to be helpful. ‘He did a split and couldn’t get up. I’m pretty sure he has a bad back.’
‘It’s not my back, it’s my crotch!’ he howled. His agonized eyes focused on me for the first time.”
– Born to Rock by Gordon Korman (Texas Lone Star Reading List 07-08). Hyperion, 2006.

Sci-Fi Lists gives us a statistical survey of the top 100 science fiction books of all time. Try posting this list and see what your science fiction readers have to say about it. This is a great discussion starter for a book club or blog.

(Found via Neat New Stuff)

Image citation:
Trev vG. “Alien.” Trev vG’s Photostream. 25 Oct 2005. 12 Sep 2007. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/trevorvangorp/55863412/>

Now that the Harry Potter saga is complete, Stephen King (writing for Entertainment Weekly) has the last word on the series.

Need to spice up your booktalks? Booktalking has moved into the realm of digital video. Publishers, universities and even public school students are now producing “book trailers.” These are similar to movie trailers, but are used instead to promote books. Here’s an example from University of Central Florida’s Digital Booktalk. Click Play to watch the trailer.

Download My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

In her Neverending Search blog on SLJ.com, Joyce Valenza highlights several sites where you can locate these “trailers” for use in your library program.

Can you think of other ways that these trailers could be used? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Presenter: Nancy Kubasek, Richardson High School, Richardson ISD

Nancy does several staff development sessions and she offered us a taste of two of them.

Booktalking

All of us need a pleasurable experience with reading every day. Kids will give us 3 opportunities to recommend a book to them. After three failures, their trust is broken.

Paper bag project – Librarian booktalks several books; students read them, then put items in a paper bag that represent their books and give their own presentation; Librarian comes to the classroom to listen to their booktalks

Don’t talk about books you don’t like personally. Talk about books that suck you in and won’t let you go.
Examples:

The Red Thread by Roderick Townley

Runner by Carl Deuker

Desert Crossing by Elise Broach

The Silent Room by Walter Sorrels

Classic/Contemporary Connections

Nancy’s English teachers were sick of reading research papers, so they came up with a way to spice up the typical literary research paper by pairing classic and contemporary literature for a comparison. Contemporary fiction answers the question “who am I?” Pairing it with a classic piece helps students to make that connection between themselves and the classic work. Students don’t look for differences, but similarities instead.
Process:
Students come to the library to get the books they are to read. After doing the reading, they return to the library for literary research on the classic they have read. The next library visit is for literary research on their contemporary book.

What would classic would you pair with these titles?
The Raging Quiet by Sherry Jordan

The Crucible?

Truesight
by David Stahler

Farenheit 451? Brave New World?

These are just two example of pairs. The key to the success of this project is booktalking the contemporary fiction.

If either of these is of interest to you as a librarian, please post a comment.

Greetings from the Texas Association of School Library Administrators annual summer conference in Austin! My posts this week will give you a little insight into what we are spending the week talking about.

Book Clubs! – presented by Cris Espinoza, librarian at LBJ Middle School in Pharr-San Juan ISD. Cris has a phenomenal book club program that she described for us this morning. It is based on Oprah’s idea of discussing a book over a meal. All students are welcome to read the book of the month and participate in the Book Club meeting on campus. Students who want to go beyond that may write a review or summary of the book. These reviews are scored on a rubric based on TAKS writing criteria. The top six students are taken to lunch at a local restaurant for a more intimate discussion. In addition to the meal, what is different about Cris’ book club is that she invites district personnel, parents, teachers and community members to participate. The superintendent of the district has participated in every book club meeting since the club started. The program is funded by sponsorship from local businesses. The sponsors help to provide a copy of the book for each book club member, refreshments for the meetings and the lunches out. In 06-07, the book club had over 200 members and book club members had a 92% TAKS passing rate. These are students with a low SES and very little reading material at home, so it was quite an accomplishment! The LBJ Book Club was so successful that it has now expanded district-wide.

Chris Harris’ Infomancy blog details a successful reading project that took place in NY this year. The project, a brainchild of Chris and the Special Education Training and Resource Center coordinator, takes the social aspect of reading and book clubs and moves it into the realm of web 2.0. Chris writes:

The idea was simple, re-introduce reading to students as a social activity by providing them an online space where they could review books and share their thoughts with teachers and peers. To accomplish this, we built a book review site using the powerful open source content management system, Drupal. There was already a book review module available, and with a bit of tweaking we had something that would work. The focus would be on student summaries and reviews, with additional opportunities to tag and rate the books using a five-star system. The results were simply astounding.

Read more…
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Since summer is upon us, I thought it might be fun to get some recommendations of books to read this summer – when you need a break from the Bluebonnet, Lone Star or Tayshas lists. Here are my picks:

Best children’s – Each Little Bird That Sings ( I loved this story of an unconventional family. Have some Kleenex ready at the end!)

Best YA – Twilight by Stephanie Meyer (vampire love story! can’t wait to read the next two!)

Best memoir – The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (memoir of a successful writer who grew up homeless and in poverty, whose parents chose to continue to live that way)

Best adult fiction – OK, I didn’t really read it this year, but My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult is the best adult fiction I have read in a LONG time. Nothing else compares!

Best adult non-fiction – The Innocent Man by John Grisham (this story of a man falsely accused and imprisoned will outrage you)

Best guilty pleasure – the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich (hilarious exploits of a New Jersey apprehension agent or “bounty hunter.”)

Now, how about you? What are the best books you’ve read all year?

I love this idea! Take a look at what Princeton Public Library is doing on their wiki. They have created a “summer reading club for adults” and have invited people to post reviews of the books they are reading. If you’ve been wanting to try out a wiki, but couldn’t figure out what to do with one, this would be a great reason to create one. It would be a terrific way for your teachers or older students to share their summer reading. Fantastic!

I became aware of this wiki through:
Neat New Stuff I Found This Week
http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html
Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999-2007.

Show your support of teens and literature by registering
for YALSA’s 2007 Teen Read Week, “LOL @ your library.”
Registration is quick and free. The event will officially
be held Oct. 14-20. The humor theme is meant to encourage
teens to read light and entertaining materials just for
the fun of it. Register at:
www.ala.org/teenread

The first 100 registrants will receive a free audiobook from an award-winning author!