electric child

Goodreads Challenge 65-69/85: A Little Jaunt Through History

2011-08-21T20:37:00.000-07:00

Continuing on with my Goodreads Challenge of reading 85 books in 2011, I read a string of historical fiction, primary resources, and stories so old they're history....

Goodreads Challenge 69/85: My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

My Brother Sam Is Dead is an interesting piece of historical fiction written for young adults. Full of the mundane details of everyday living of the colonial period, it explores the philosophical struggles of the people dealing with the American Revolution. The first part of the book focuses on the details of colonial life, while in the last 80 pages or so, this book becomes quite a page-turner. The book as a whole is a coming of age story about our hero, Tim Meeker, who is forced to grow up quickly in a war-torn world.

Who should read this? Depending on your toleration of violence and language, this book is most appropriate for eighth graders. I think a lot of teachers read this to their fourth or fifth grade classes, but be aware that there are some violent parts--war-related, of course. The writing is simple and clear--keep in mind that it’s written at about fifth grade level.

I highly recommend My Brother Sam Is Dead to anyone who is interested in the American Revolution, historical fiction, or the interpersonal conflicts of war. I've read quite a few reviews by kids who were "forced" to read this for a class. "I despise history," wrote one reader. "This is the most boring book I've ever read," wrote another. Well--if you hate history and refuse to have an open mind, then you will certainly hate this book as well. If you are blatantly anti-intellectual--yeah, you might find this book boring. But if you want to explore what it's like to run a tavern in the 1700's, trudge an oxen cart through the snow, or be ambushed by cattle thieves--then you will love My Brother Sam Is Dead.

Goodreads Challenge 68/85: Inside Lincoln's White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay by John R. Turner Ettlinger

On the heels of reading Lincoln by Gore Vidal, I was compelled to read the diary of John Hay.

So if you don't know who John Hay is--google him. Did you google him yet? I'll wait....oh never mind. To summarize: He was Abraham's Lincoln personal secretary when Lincoln was president. Later in his career, he was a journalist, a diplomat, and Secretary of State. This book, however, is comprised of his diary entries during the Lincoln presidency.

The Civil War Diary of John Hay is really all that--a diary. The editors lovingly and painstakingly pored through his notes and made their best attempt to preserve the integrity of his words. They even included the parts that he crossed out, represented in print with cross-outs ~~like this~~. So, how does this book read? It's like reading someone else's diary! You can't possibly understand all of his entries and references, because he uses abbreviations and short-hand (like anyone would in a diary), and he refers to people without explaining who they are (perfectly understandable--although this book contains about 100 pages of footnotes to help).

The big difference between this and a "normal" diary is--when John Hay goes to see a play, J. Wilkes Booth is an actor. And when he delivers a letter for his boss, his boss is Abraham Lincoln, and the letter is addressed to Ulysses S. Grant. And a really good day for him is when everybody gets to read the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. This diary contains the petty annoyances of everyday living, as well as the historically significant events of the time.

Yeah, this is a diary, and this is a really good read. Mr. Hay was an aspiring writer at the time, and we all benefit from his fine turns of prose. During slow times at the White House, he wrote in poetic paragraphs; during the busier times, he jotted down notes (like, "Had lunch with Mr. X.") Just observing the structure of his writing gives insight into the state of the Union at that time.

Anyway, this book would be a great reference for anyone doing scholarly work on the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, and especially John Hay himself. This is not the kind of book you leisurely read. However it did make me want to go back to grad school!

Goodreads Challenge 67/85: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

I’m so sorry, everybody, but I don’t want to read 500+ pages telling me how horrible it was in Nazi Germany. I’ve actually been to Auschwitz. I’ve laid my hands on the ovens, toured the facilities where they experimented on Jews, and walked through the showers. Believe me, that pretty much does the trick for a long time. I had my World War II overdose and I’m a bit too much of an empath to go back for a while. I guess it's a personal thing.

So many people said to me, you must read The Book Thief--it’s fantastic! But they never told me what it was about. I don’t know why I assumed it was supernatural fiction. Perhaps I was putting it into the same category as Inkheart, another book about books, where characters are viable living things. The Book Thief is nothing likeInkheart.

Having said that, The Book Thief is a fine book to read if you want to understand some of the daily struggles of life in Germany at that time. This book peeks into the trials of pro-Nazi Germans, anti-Nazi Germans, neutral Germans just trying to survive, and, of course, Jews (most of whom are Germans; I assume they are anti-Nazi). The characters each have a clear voice and compelling stories to tell. You really care what happens to them, even if it takes 500 pages to get there.

Sorry I keep mentioning the number of pages, but it’s a very long book. I find it hard to believe this was written for a young adult audience. Just because the main character is a kid, does that make it a book for young adults? But I digress.

Aside from the characters, the other reason to read this book is the short story contained within it, “The Standover Man.” It is sweetly written and sweetly illustrated.

A comment about the writing style--first, at times Markus Zusak tries too hard to be literary. There is so much metaphor in the book that you get a little tired of it. Dude, just say it! Also I found the use of foreshadowing a bit excessive. Maybe the author feels he needs to do this because the audience is young adult (I’m not sure who came up with that classification), but when every other chapter ends with something like, “That was the last time she would smile--ever”--well, it gets real old. Actually, one chapter ends like this:

For now, though, let’s let him enjoy it.
We’ll give him seven months.
Then we come for him.
And oh, how we come.

Really? Do you have to end every chapter with a teaser like this? Also, I am annoyed by the excessive use of one-sentence paragraphs, but that’s just a pet peeve of mine.

I was so aware of the conspicuous use of literary devices that I had trouble getting lost in the story. Frankly, the writing seemed contrived and distracting. I would read a line like, “His fingers smelled of suitcase, metal, Mein Kampf, and survival,” or, "The sky was like soup, boiling and stirring," and then think to myself, oh he’s using figurative language again. Where was I? Oh right, I’m reading a book about a girl in Nazi Germany where Death is the narrator. See my problem?

As I write this, I am not sure if people are even critical of this book, because they are so impressed by the theme of the badness of Nazi Germany. Nevertheless I’ll take a chance. This book could have (should have) been about 100 pages shorter, or more. Remove the excessive metaphor usage, excessive foreshadowing, and sidebar comments by the narrator that don’t add to plot or character or setting. There! I feel better now. The book doesn’t seem so long and labored.

Goodreads Challenge 66/85: 1001 Arabian Nights

The Nook version of the 1001 Arabian Nights that I chose included only the stories of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sinbad. I enjoyed the detail in the stories, although I was a bit disappointed that there were not more stories in this particular collection.

Goodreads Challenge 65/85: By the Great Horn Spoon! by Sid Fleischman

By the Great Horn Spoon! is a delightful book for kids about the California Gold Rush. Twelve-year-old Jack runs away with his butler Praiseworthy on a trip from Boston to San Francisco. They seek their fortune in the gold mines of California to help out Jack’s Aunt Arabella, who is on the verge of bankruptcy. Jack and Praiseworthy take the ship's treacherous passage around Cape Horn, up the western coast of South America, and on to California’s gold.

Reading this book is like jumping into a time machine. You will encounter people and artifacts surrounding the California Gold Rush, as well as life on a cargo ship. I don’t know if all the details are historically accurate, but certainly you get the feeling that you are right there with the miners eating sowbelly and beans. This book is worth at least 2 ounces of gold flakes!

Goodreads Challenge 64/85: Gore Vidal's Lincoln

2011-07-25T22:17:00.001-07:00

Don’t read Lincoln by Gore Vidal unless you want to get totally sucked into the story and history of the Civil War. This historical novel is so detailed, well-written, and compelling that you will add dozens of books to your “must read” list and it will consume all of your free time. You will interrupt your reading as you check out photos of the main players on Wikipedia. You’ll take a breather by watching the Ken Burns Civil War series--over a plate of crabcakes. Special order primary resource books like the diary of John Hay from the public library. Scour your house for your old, stolen high school history textbooks. Thank you for my new obsession, Mr. Vidal. I am getting nothing done, dishes are dirty, weeds are two feet tall, dogs are neglected and starving. My house smells like Washington D.C. in 1862.

Is this a positive endorsement? Absolutely! Using journals, diaries, letters, and countless other primary sources, Mr. Vidal plunks you right in the middle of cabinet meetings, dinner conversations, and carriage rides taking place with the likes of William Seward, John Wilkes Booth, Salmon P. Chase, and of course Lincoln himself. We spy on the personal tragedy of the Lincolns when their son Willie dies of typhoid. We snicker as we find ourselves party to the indiscretions of politicians seeking prostitutes. We worry about our Lincoln as he travels about town without bodyguards. And we roll our eyes as Mary Todd Lincoln goes on yet another spending binge and buys a $10,000 rug for the White House during wartime. (By the way, Lincoln tells her exactly what we’re thinking: That money could have paid for 10,000 blankets for our soldiers!)

We’ve all read about the Civil War in one way or another—at the very least in high school. Vidal’s Lincoln begins when Old Abe arrives in Washington for his inauguration and ends when he dies. For the most part, we know what happens in between—secession, bloody battles, emancipation -- you know the rest. But in Vidal’s telling, the men and women of the war become flesh and blood as we pore through the pages of this book. With a simple turn of phrase, Vidal creates so much character for these people that reading this book feels like watching a movie.

We don't see much in the way of battles, but we do see plenty of the clockwork of Washington politics. Reading this book is like watching The West Wing--lots of interpersonal action and jockeying for position. I'm sure Aaron Sorkin had Abraham Lincoln in mind when he created the folksy-intellectual Jed Bartlet.

This story is told from the point of view from numerous people surrounding the Lincoln White House (figuratively and literally). We are privy to their thoughts, feelings, and motivations. The one person who remains a mystery, though, is Lincoln himself, whose point of view is conspicuously missing. The personality of Lincoln is revealed entirely through his words and actions, plus through the views of others. This is the best way to learn about this compassionate, brilliant, and yet mysterious man.

There are two love stories in Lincoln. One subtle story line is between Lincoln’s secretary John Hay and Kate Chase, the celebrated daughter of Secretary of Treasury Salmon P. Kate agrees to marry Governor William Sprague to help further her father’s career. When Hay indirectly mentions his previously unspoken affection for Kate, she responds, “There was no time, ever, for us….There is not much time for anyone, really. We must all move with such haste toward…our goals.”

Just as this unfulfilled love is extinguished by the ambition of the daughter and the plague of war, so is the affection between Abraham Lincoln and his beloved Union—the other love affair. For almost five years in office, he struggles to hold that Union together, finessing every move and appointment, risking failure and hatred for what he believes is a solution that will keep the Union together--until finally he wins the love of the Union at the war’s end. And then the love affair is tragically cut short by his untimely death. As Kate said, there was no time, ever--for a love between the Union and Lincoln to last.

Lincoln might be a tough book to read. It’s long, and very dense, and at the start you already know he dies in the end. But you need to read it carefully because every word promotes plot (every intrigue and manipulation), character (each eyebrow raise and twitch), or setting (all the mud and swampy stink). There isn’t a word wasted, and there are a lot of words in this book.

Political intrigue. Backstabbing. Love triangles. Indiscretion. And a stinky, smelly swamp. Gore Vidal’s Lincoln has something for everybody.

*All photo in public domain with the Library of Congress.

Goodreads Challenge 63/85: Snow Crash Your Brain

2011-07-14T22:24:00.000-07:00

Goodreads Challenge 63/85: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Reading Snow Crash was like being on Snow Crash—the drug-virus, that is. Neal Stephenson crams so many images and ideas into each sentence that it fried my brain. I mean, how many images, metaphors, acronyms, and obscure references can you take in one paragraph?

Here’s an example:

"The Deliverator knows that yard. He has delivered pizzas there. He has looked at it, scoped it out, memorized the location of the shed and the picnic table, can find them even in the dark--knows that if it ever came to this, a twenty-three-minute pizza, miles to go, and a slowdown at CSV-5 and Oahu--he could enter. The Mews at Windsor Heights (his electronic delivery-man's visa would raise the gate automatically), scream down Heritage Boulevard, rip the turn onto Strawbridge Place (ignoring the DEAD END sign and the speed limit and the CHILDREN PLAYING ideograms that are strung so liberally throughout TMAWH), thrash the speed bumps with his mighty radials, blast up the driveway of Number 15 Strawbridge Circle, cut a hard left around the backyard shed, careen into the backyard of Number 84 Mayapple, avoid its picnic table (tricky), get into their driveway and out onto Mayapple, which takes him to BellewoodeValley Road, which runs straight to the exit of the Burbclave..."

Brain hurt yet?

Neal Stephenson reads like Harlan Ellison on steroids. Or maybe Robert Anton Wilson on acid, which is almost redundant. You know, Neal, you don't have to write everything that comes into your head. It's just TMI. Many authors write a backstory that feeds the motivation of the characters; in this book, you make the audience privy to all of the backstory. You include all the backstory of all the minutiae of each and every character, setting, and crack in the sidewalk. Reading this is like reading a data dump when you're debugging programming code (something I had to do repeatedly when I was writing machine-language programs in college--it's not a pretty sight). And as you read the 160,000+ words in this book, you can't help but wonder--is all this germain to the plot?

No--but the plot takes a back seat to the setting. Every little detail contributes to a highly complex and developed world.

Random ideas:

• As girl "kourier" Y.T. careens through the roads of L.A. on her board, ‘pooning onto passing vehicles and watching the landmarks pass with a blur, we careen through this novel in a similar manner. We plow through so many images and ideas that eventually it’s an overwhelming blur. Hold on tight or you might fall of and forget what you just read.

• At one point, we get quagmired into dozens of pages of exposition as our hero, Hiro Protagonist (smack me on the head but I love his name), questions a virtual Librarian about the history of Sumerian culture. Meh.

• Being a native of Los Angeles, I really enjoyed the geographic product placement of locations and culture of L.A. Any references to Wilshire Blvd. and the 405 freeway always make me smile.

• I have a problem with books that rely heavily on dreams or other virtual worlds to advance the plot. I really can’t take anything that happens in a dream seriously. So when we first walked into the virtual Black Sun with the avatars of our characters interacting, I had trouble caring what happened to anyone while in there. The whole hook of the book, though, is that something that happens in the virtual world can actually affect you in the real world (i.e. the Snow Crash drug-virus). So, it made me care just a little bit.

But that’s not to say I didn’t like or appreciate this book. Don't get me wrong. Snow Crash is a really fine piece of science fiction, which is why I rated it so highly. Neal Stephenson takes a few ideas and evolves them as we jettison into this strange commercial world. To be honest, the trajectory was so far-out-crazy-believable (once you accept the science fiction as fact), that it made me want to get out of L.A. before all this happens. Nice job, Mr. Stephenson.

And now? It's time for a good SnowScan.

Goodreads Challenge 62/85: Enclave

2011-07-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

I was pleasantly surprised by Enclave by Ann Aguirre, the July selection for the Goodreads Young Adult Post-Apocalyptic Dystopia group.

Elements of Enclave reminded me of City of Ember. When the world up top becomes uninhabitable for whatever reason (like plague, nuclear holocaust, alien invasion), survivors duck down below ground to create a new civilization. After who-knows-how-many generations underground, the culture below has developed into a well-controlled citizenry that has only a distant attachment to the world on top. Citizens of our underground world don’t trust the viability of life up there.

The world of Enclave is dark and murky. The life expectancy is around 25 years, presumably due to poor nutrition and sub-par living conditions, not to mention the lack of vitamin D. Consequently most characters in the story are teenagers. Enclaves of people live in subway tunnels. The social structure in the “College” enclave is carefully stratified. Youngsters are called “brats” and have a number for their name until their naming ceremony when they are in their teens. They receive a brand and a role—hunter, breeder, or builder. Everyone has their place and they stick to it—or else. The underground enclaves have limited contact with each other, so, like the old walled towns of Italy, dialects and traditions emerge. For example, the zombie creatures that plague the tunnels are called “freaks” by the College enclave and “eaters” by the Jengu group. We don’t even know what the Nassau enclave calls them.

I enjoyed the detail that author Ann Aguirre put into her world, and I was thankful that she did not take the romantic line of the story in a slobbery direction. The setting is at the forefront, and Aguirre throws you clues along the way as to what part of the world you’re in. It’s a fun puzzle, and you’ll be satisfied to know that there is an answer! You have to read the whole book, though.

The culture of the College enclave is borne out as we follow the life of our protagonist Deuce, who has just been through her naming ceremony. As she branches out from the bowels of the enclave to administer her duties as a hunter, she learns about the layout of the underground, other creatures living below, and eventually the world topside. And as Deuce learns, so do we.

Goodreads Challenge 57-61/85: Some books give me the shivers...

2011-07-11T10:04:00.000-07:00

Whew! I read some high-profile books for which I had plenty of expectations. What a rollercoaster. Thankfully I read a book by Neal Shusterman somewhere in there--he never disappoints.

Goodreads Challenge 61/85: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

I read Shiver on a hot summer day. That was probably a mistake, because I had to take a real leap into the icy setting of the story. It was difficult to imagine anyone feeling cold, or icy, or shiver-y. And the temperature was a major factor in this story--just look at the chapter sub-headings, which list the temperature at the time. Anyway, I fixed the problem by cranking up the A/C, and I was able to get a little shivery myself.

So--nobody told me that Shiver was first and foremost a romance novel. I had thought this would be typical YA supernatural fiction, teens in peril, an interesting world to portray, and lots of plot (and maybe a little romance). I was hoping for something on the lines of Midnighters. Not even. This was 90% romance, and I'm not a big fan of romance novels to begin with. But--I'll withhold judgement to see if it's an interesting well-written romance novel. With a romance novel, you'd better have a great plot and great characterizations. Sadly, Shiver is not one of those romance novels. Most of the book went like this: She said, "Blah blah blah I like your eyes," and He said, "Blah blah blah it's getting cold." Honestly, I skimmed those parts. Like this: character babble (skip), character babble (skip), character babble (skip), oh they're getting in the car now it's time to read again because something's happening. There was so much telling-not-showing that I wanted to take a black marker and line out all the unnecessary parts. That probably would have taken out at least a third of the book and gotten me a library fine. So I didn't.

I want to add (trying to avoid spoilers here) that our protagonist boy "Sam" reminded me so much of "Sam" in True Blood that I had a hard time picturing anyone else. That's okay--I like Sam in True Blood, so the Sam of Shiver gets the halo effect.

That's it. A quick read about a girl and her dog.

MAJOR POST SCRIPT:

I've just read a blog post on the difference between YA UF and YA PR. "YA" is young adult. "UF" is urban fantasy. "PR" is paranormal romance. YA UF takes place in our world but has aspects of fantasy in it like magic (e.g. Harry Potter series, Midnighter series). YA PR is primarily a romance novel where the romance takes place between a human and a non-human or partially non-human (e.g. Twilight series). Aha! I was expecting YA UF and I got YA PR. I like the P in PR. I'm not crazy about the R, though.

I'm not against romance novels as long as they're well-written. After all, I read and loved Gone with the Wind, and that's over 1,000 pages. I do admit, though, that I've only read a few in my lifetime. I took a swing at Pride and Prejudice--which, admittedly, was very well written. I just wasn't into it. Looking at my Goodreads list, most of the romance novels I've read are fairly poorly written. Either the characters are flat (e.g. Twilight, Shiver), or the writing is trashy (e.g. Twilight, Dead Until Dark). *sigh*

I guess YA PR is just not my genre. Maybe if Anne Rice stepped into the fray, there would be something good to read. Oh I remember now--she's sworn off vampires. Oh well...

Goodreads Challenge 60/85: The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

I’m sad to say that I was a little disappointed in The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. I don’t know what I was expecting. It was listed on so many “best of fantasy” lists, and judging from the cover, it looked like something Narnia-esque. With that build-up, I was expecting a full meal but only got the appetizers.

It took me a very long time (say, 200 pages) to actually get into the book, and in fact halfway through I considered putting it down. Yes, the author created a complex and detailed world, and it takes a while to get immersed in that world. However I suppose that in a trilogy of 1200 or so pages, it takes that long to create the fantasy world. I should have noticed the warning sign at the beginning of the book, which stated that this was the first part in a three part trilogy.

What mostly troubled me about this book was every character’s unwavering trust and obedience to the commands of the girl Lyra (whose age is apparently over 11 but we’re not quite sure). Aw c’mon, really, you’re going to trust her judgments when it comes to military strategy? I mean, I know she’s smart, and special, and “the one,” but she lacks the experience to really understand the intricacies of this kind of strategy. Yes, I can believe that polar bears wear armor and humans have animal-familiar daemons. But I find it hard to swallow that little girl bossing everyone around. The fantasy aspects were totally believable. The true-to-life aspects were not.

Having said that, I do respect the world that the author created, and the various factions of creatures was believable. The concept of animal daemons is exceptionally cool and well-thought out.

I guess first and foremost, this is a trilogy. And since I don’t trust the author enough to finish the other two books, I’m only a third way through the adventure.

Goodreads Challenge 59/85: Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo

Many things happen Because of Winn-Dixie. A lonely girl in a new town makes a few friends, among other things. A charming book that I will read to my fourth graders next year.

Goodreads Challenge 58/85: Duckling Ugly by Neal Shusterman

“How do you judge beauty?” We dance around this question in Duckling Ugly, as Neal Shusterman takes us on a psychological tour of the consummate teenage ugly duckling. We climb into Cara DeFido’s head as she competes in a spelling bee, navigates the school lunchroom, and endures sibling torture. Like many Shusterman books, there are elements of fantasy that lend Duckling Ugly a fairy tale flair. But instead of giving us beautiful fairy godmothers and princely ponies, he grounds that fairy tale in gritty details that make you squirm like a nightcrawler. The fairy godmother in this story has milky cataract eyes, and the princely pony is an old beat-up Chevy. Basically this is Stephen King meets Hans Christian Anderson. Instead of politely turning away from the ugliness of Cara, we are forced to focus on every zitty detail of her hideousness. It’s painful. We take a trip as we consider the question—how do you judge beauty? Toward the end of the book, one character declares, “Ugly is the new pretty.” At that point, you might have an answer to the question. Thanks again, Mr. Shusterman—you never disappoint me.

Goodreads Challenge 57/85: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Oh Dan Brown, you have a formula and you love to use it. But you know what? I like your formula and enjoy the ride. Your books have been panned by critics, panned by book aficionados—people love to hate you. Why? Are your books any worse than, say, James Patterson’s?

Admittedly, if you’ve already read The DaVinci Code or Angels and Demons, then The Lost Symbol certainly will feel familiar. But if you like the character of Robert Langdon, then this is just another fun ride.

What annoyed me about The Lost Symbol:

1. The ending that never ends. Reminded me of the final installment of the Lord of the Rings films. Get on the boat and leave Middle Earth, already!

2. Predictably unpredictable solutions to dire situations. Even when characters were in life-threatening situations, I was able to predict the outcomes. Maybe not HOW the outcomes would surface, but certainly I had an idea about what would happen generally. I know Dan Brown likes to write himself into a corner (a good writer’s trick, no doubt), but some of the solutions were a bit too convenient.

3. Cliffhangers. They seem a little contrived. Every chapter doesn’t need to end with a cliffhanger, you know.

4. Bad guys are so….grotesque. I’m not going to make comparisons between Silas in The Da Vinci Code and Mal’akh. Never mind, I just made a comparison. Couldn’t help it. Maybe next time make the bad guys more three-dimensional?

5. It’s not very well written. Okay okay!!!! I know Dan Brown has trouble constructing a sentence. I don’t care. It’s still fun to read.

What I loved about The Lost Symbol:

1. Robert Langdon. He knows a lot, but he doesn’t know everything. I enjoy reading about clever, intellectual, educated characters, and I look forward to the next Robert Langdon installment. (side note: When I picture Robert Langdon, I actually picture someone more like Robert Downey Jr. than Tom Hanks. I'm sorry Opie didn't include me on the casting call....)

2. Washington, DC. Like all of Brown’s books, The Lost Symbol makes you want to get on a plane and investigate the setting yourself. The beauty and design of the city of Washington DC comes to the forefront of this story.

3. The pace. Some people complain about it, but I love it. Switching from one point-of-view to another after a few pages works just fine with me. (Did I mention I have a slight case of ADD?) On the other hand, the short chapters frequently end on cliff-hangers (see complaint #3).

4. You learn about cool things. I do happen to enjoy the almost nauseating flood of references to literature, science, and art. After reading a Robert Langdon book, you are compelled to jump on the Internet and check out that painting of Melancolia I or the Kryptos at the CIA headquarters.

I know, I know—Dan Brown takes fact and twists it into some kind of weird fictiony fact that is only remotely related to the original kernel of truth. Yes, we all know the culture and history of the Masons runs deep. But taking what we know about the Masons and running it to sometimes illogical conclusions is kind of fun. I’m not looking for accuracy, here. Just entertainment.

5. Puzzles. Plain and simple: they’re fun.

Near the end, there was an Obi Wan Kenobi moment for me. You know, when Luke Skywalker challenges Obi wan, “You said my father was dead!” And Obi Wan counters, “Wellllll, he was dead in a certain sense of the word.” When you start rationalizing actions because of semantics, you know you’re in trouble. Towards the last pages of this book, I was getting that feeling. Awwww, it’s just a matter of semantics. (Don’t want to put any spoilers here so I apologize for the vagueness.)

In defense of this, though, I want to point out that Dan Brown quite deliberately brings semantics to the forefront of his story (and stories, I might add). It is through the evolution of the meaning and use of a word that we come to understand the evolution of humanity, religious thought, scientific inquiry, and other big picture ideas.

The Lost Symbol is a fun book—not a great book, but a fun book. On my rating: I wavered between 3 and 4 stars. For me, this is a 3.5 star book; I pushed it over to 4 stars because I get the sense the people are beating up Dan Brown for being popular and ranking him much lower (feels like how the entertainment industry HATES Tom Cruise--but you know, his films are fun). Looking at Goodreads ratings, they seem to vary deeply depending on whether the book is popular with the younger crowd or not. Seriously—Twilight gets a better rating than The Lost Symbol (or The Da Vinci Code, for that matter)? It’s not better written than The Lost Symbol--and neither book is very well written. The Y-A fan base, I suspect, is a little overzealous with its application of 5 star ratings. Having said that, I’m bumping up my rating to compensate, so there! Twisted, huh? Not as twisted as the plot of The Lost Symbol!

Goodreads Challenge 52 - 56/85: Dogs, Losers, and Crazy Girls

2011-07-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

Here's a hodgepodge of books--classroom drama, young adult, fantasy, and dysfunctional character study.

Goodreads Challenge 56/85: Loser by Jerry Spinelli

Heartfelt, sad book about that kid in your class who is always picking his nose.

Goodreads Challenge 55/85: Fire Study by Maria V. Snyder

I can't remember experiencing this much pain reading a book since...oh yeah, since Twilight. Fire Study is the third installment of the "Study" series, which began with Poison Study. I really enjoyed the Poison Study book, even though it wasn't very well written. The whole angle of food taster really hooked me in. The second book, Magic Study, held my attention with its explanation of the use of magic in its world. But Fire Study--blecch!

Poorly written, rambling, too many characters with weird names, a plot that literally goes all over the place--reading this book was just one giant lesson in frustration. The only reason I finished it was because I felt I had to complete the series. What's really mind-numbing is that this book was a whopping 440 pages long.

I seriously wavered between one and two stars. This book does have a couple of cool things in it, like the glass figurines that glow. And Kiki the horse adds a lot to the book. I would give it two stars just for Kiki--but really, this book has an average of close to 4 which is completely insane so I'm overcompensating by giving it one star.

Maybe I'll write more details later, but right now I am so fatigued from plowing through this miserable mess that I won't spend any more time thinking about it.

Goodreads Challenge 54/85: Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

I read Pippi Longstocking for two reasons. First, apparently Steig Larson based his Dragon Tattoo Girl on this premise: What would Pippi Longstocking be like as a grownup? Urban legend or not, it was certainly the carrot that led me to this book. The second reason is that I am screening this book for reading next year with my fourth graders.

Anyway, it's entirely believable that Lisbeth Salander (the dragon tattoo girl) is Pippi all grown up. Pippi has no sense of relating to other people and has a limited sense of morality. Or a weird sense of morality. Oh it's hard to say. Leave it at this: Pippi makes me cringe. She lies, she invades, she disregards. She is pure id. Just think--Salander's diet of nothing-but-pizza is something that Pippi would do. Now, Lisbeth Salander isn't really pure id, but don't forget that she's Pippi grown up. You wonder what happened to Pippi to make her that...anti-social.

Many of the images in this book are vivid--Pippi riding a horse at the circus, battling a strong man, and annoying old ladies at a coffee klatch. The images are great. However, I don't particularly care for the episodic nature of the book--it is really a string of short stories.

I gave this story four stars because freckle-faced Pippi is an icon. You have to get to know her, at least once. You might not like her, but that doesn't matter--boy, does she take you for a ride. I probably won't read another Pippi story, but I'm always happy to learn more about classic kids' stories.

Goodreads Challenge 53/85: Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl

Fantastic Mr. Fox is a charming fantasy story written by Roald Dahl. I read it because I might use it as a read-aloud in my fourth grade class. This book definitely lends itself to a class read-aloud, with uncomplicated language, but enough rich vocabulary to make it challenging. There are also several moral themes that will be great to discuss in class, such as: Is it okay to steal if you are starving? This short book will be a great way to introduce chapter books to my students. Long enough to build reading stamina, but short enough to give them a carrot with a short stick. Thanks, Mr. Dahl!

Goodreads Challenge 52/85: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time was a weirdly compelling book. Told in the first person by an obsessive-compulsive (or maybe Asperger's) teenager, at first it's quite difficult to read. Christopher Boone's voice comes out loud and clear as he dictates the details (i.e. facts and observations) of his life. At first I was annoyed by his inability to use contractions and was thrown back to my Star Trek Next Generation days of Data, the cyborg who can't use contractions either. But this book reads as clunky. Eventually, though, you get used to his voice, and in fact this story couldn't be written any other way. It's through the main character's voice that you really get to know him deeply and understand the other characters in the story.

For example:
"Why were you holding the dog?" he asked again.
"I like dogs," I said.
"Did you kill the dog?" he asked.
I said, "I did not kill the dog."
"Is this your fork?" he asked.
I said, "No."

Sounds boring and sophomoric, right? Yet, Christopher Boone lays out the facts dispassionately--which, by the way, describes him personally. He has trouble understanding people's emotions, yet can recite all the prime numbers up to the 7,000s. (Come to think of it, that sounds more like Asperger's...) So dialogue exchanges like this, which in the beginning of the book seem annoying, by the end of the book make perfect sense once you have gotten to know our hero.

Anyway, this kid is certainly an unreliable narrator, and you really have to read between the lines (and in fact wait for other characters to reveal things) in order to discern what actually happens in the story.

Reading the selection above, I'm reminded of The Sun Also Rises, which I read recently. I was completely annoyed by The Sun Also Rises because the story was told so plainly and dispassionately. But that book was different, because the narrator was a journalist and who should have quite frankly had a more interesting voice. In The Curious Incident, though, this lack of emotion just lends depth and mystery to the character. And it makes Christopher Boone sadly charming.

I suppose I should include a brief summary--this book is about a teenager with Asperger's Syndrome who is investigating the murder of the dog next door while dealing with the death of his mom. I can't reveal anything else or I'll spoil it! This story unfolds bit by bit, until at the end, all of the mysteries have been solved.

Random things I liked about this book:
Christopher Boone reminds me of Adrian Monk--one of my favorite television characters.
His favorite book is The Hound of the Baskervilles--also one of my favorites.
We get an in-depth description of taking the Tube in London.
I can't recommend this to my fourth grade students because it uses the f-word too many times. *sigh*

Are you a voyeur? You'll love this book because it gives you a great opportunity to climb into somebody else's mind. Twisted as it may be.

Goodreads Challenge 49-51/85: The Good, the Bad, and the Chocolate

2011-07-09T12:02:00.000-07:00

I really have a backlog of book titles to include with my Goodreads Challenge of reading 85 books during 2011. And with summer upon us, I'm reading a lot more! Anyway, here are a few selections moving through my reading queue. Some of the books are pre-screenings for my classroom, and others are for general personal consumption.

Goodreads Challenge 51/85: The Dangerous Days of Daniel X by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

Every so often a book makes me angry because it is so poorly written. The Dangerous Days of Daniel X is one of these books.

I read this book to screen it for my classroom library. In particular, one of my fourth grade boys (we'll call him Tom) refuses to read anything but action books. At the beginning of the school year, Tom unabashedly exclaimed that he hated to read. I made it my personal quest to change him and asked him what kinds of video games he likes. He said, quite cheerfully, "I like violent games!" So, I started him with Alex Rider, a recommendation from my son, which is basically James Bond for kids.

Tom quickly took on to Alex Rider and tore through the whole series. After that, I was stuck--he wanted action, but he didn't want anything with magic or fantasy involved. Sadly, that left out a whole sub-genre of some great young-adult fiction. But then I figured, maybe he should try The Hunger Games. Right now, he is gobbling up the second of the trilogy.

But now, with summer drawing near, I've been frantically looking for a book that has all the action this kid craves with none of the magic. I googled "books like Alex Rider" and had to skip over great books like The Lightning Thief and The Warrior Heir because of the fantasy angle. What popped up most often? The Daniel X series. I reluctantly cracked open the book---I have found James Patterson to be the most overrated writer around. His books actually irritate me because they are so poorly written....and yet he is so popular. But Daniel X ended up on a lot of librarians' lists, so I decided to give it a try.

Here's the hook in a nutshell: Daniel X is an alien hunter. End of story. I won't waste any time on the plot--I'm sure you can read summaries elsewhere. It's basically a Men-in-Black knock-off for teens.

I just want to ask--who put these books on the same list as Percy Jackson? It's shameful. There is no coherent world view--apparently Daniel X has any power that will conveniently solve his problems. Unless the writers need to put him into a life-or-death situation, in which case they conveniently fail to mention his alien superpowers.

The descriptions are completely void of any detail. Oh--let me quote an example: "The inside of Seth's cochlea was even grosser than his earwax situation. It was filled with this fluid that was...ugh, I don't even want to get into it." Pleeeease get into it! I want to hear all about the fluid. Every last, disgusting detail. But James Patterson and his co-author pass up every single chance to give the reader a stimulating reading experience.

This book has two things going for it: (1) aliens are, in general, fun to read about, and (2) it's a very fast read. (Read: the pain of reading it was brief.) I wavered between giving it one and two stars--but this book is so horribly disappointing that I'm punishing it for letting me down.

So---next time I am tempted to read another James Patterson book, would somebody please poke me in the eye?

Goodreads Challenge 50/85: The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

There's a reason why The House of the Scorpion was showered with so many awards, including the National Book Award and Newbery Honor. This book treats us to an evolved future, some solid science fiction, and wonderfully complex characters.

Author Nancy Farmer develops a trajectory of the geo-political climate surrounding drug lords in Mexico, illegal border crossings, and child labor. The governments and drug lords have created a buffer zone between Mexico (now called Aztlán) and the United States called, of all things, Opium (wonder what goes on there….). People fleeing both sides get trapped in the heavily guarded state of Opium and are turned into zombie slave workers. Meanwhile back at the ranch, literally, drug lords nurture their own personal clones for organ harvesting, thus sustaining their lives upwards of 140 years.

How refreshing it is to read about complex characters whose motivations are revealed through their actions. Our main character, Matt Alacrán, is a boy clone of the drug lord El Patrón. El Patrón is cultivating Matt for future use as a possible heart donor—for when the time comes. As we see Matt grow up, we wonder if he is going to turn into a deadly killer like his genetic donor. Nature battles Nurture as El Patrón blesses Matt with many life lessons, such as "Easy targets are opportunities to frighten enemies you aren't ready to tackle yet." As we progress through the book we wonder—what part of his DNA contributed to the evil side of El Patrón? And what part will he pass on genetically to Matt? Conversely, what part will he pass on the Matt through his parables and advice? By the end of the book, we wonder which way the chips will fall—will Matt become a cold-blooded killer like El Patrón, or will he forge a new direction for his DNA code?

The House of the Scorpion is a very smart book. It will stoke your intellectual fires as you consider the implications of the numerous big ideas in the story.

Goodreads Challenge 49/85: The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling

A cute book with lessons learned originally by King Midas--this time with chocolate. My fourth graders love this book. 'Nuf said.

Goodreads Challenge 48/85: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

2011-07-02T13:33:00.000-07:00

Goodreads Challenge 48/85: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by Philip K. Dick
(the book on which the film Bladerunner is loosely based)

Okay, I’ll admit it—I really wanted to hate Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Why? Well, I’m usually averse to things that are wildly popular and have a crazed fan base. I mean, PKD’s fans actually built an android replica of him! Crazy, huh? I know Bladerunner is only loosely based on the book, but I have always been annoyed by Bladerunner’s extreme popularity, probably due to the fact that I don’t like film noire. At all. (And really you can't expect the movie to be like the book--in this case, it wasn't at all, just the idea of androids and bounty hunters). Anyway, suffice it to say that Philip K. Dick had the cards stacked against him in my deck. But I felt I had to give him a chance—how can I form an opinion about a book or author I haven’t read?

Well, I didn’t hate it. In fact, I loved it.

I had no idea that the thrust of this book was going to be empathy. Coming off the heels of reading a supernatural book about an empath who absorbs everyone’s physical and emotional pain (Bruiser by Neal Shusterman), my reading pump was primed. The theme of empathy runs throughout the book and helps us look at the essence of humanity. Dick even takes the idea of empathy so far that in his post-apocalyptic world, he has created devices that enable empathic experiences. Empathy is the key to differentiating humans from androids. And Dick also expertly pulls out of his reader emotions as they identify with the complex characters in the book, not to mention the animals. I mean, if you can't empathize with the lowly spider depicted in the book, then you are clearly not human. In fact, this book is one giant test to see if you are an android or not. If you don't feel for the characters or animals in this story, then you are clearly an android and should be retired.

I struggled a bit at the beginning of the book because I had trouble following the pathway into the world that Dick created. You pick up nuggets of information, bit by bit, until finally you start to get the big picture. The Earth was polluted by the fallout of World War Terminus. Check. The best human specimens went to Mars as refugees, along with android companions/slaves. Check. Animals are scarce, revered, and expensive—people collect them like precious museum pieces. Check. Occasionally androids escape to Earth from their meager existence on Mars and are chased down by bounty hunters. Check. With the new and improved androids, the Nexus-6 model, the only way to tell them apart from humans is their lack of ability to empathize. Check.

Now that we know the basics of our world, we can delve down into the good stuff. Oh, certainly there’s action and suspense. But that’s not the heart of the good stuff. This book is special because of the inner conflict of our main character, Rick Deckard. He’s having an existential crisis (is he an android with pre-programmed memories?), second thoughts about his occupational choice (is it moral to kill androids?), and the more mundane keep-up-with-the-joneses issues (will anyone find out my sheep isn’t real?). And as he suffers these inner conflicts, we suffer them as well. We question our own moral principles and our own life choices. Really--who goes through the day without rationalizing something? The undercurrent of cognitive dissonance sweeps you along until you breathe a sigh of relief at the end of the book—because Rick Deckard has finally gone to sleep after a very long and stressful day.

This book isn’t perfect, but it’s most excellent. I’m no longer annoyed by the fanaticism surrounding Philip K. Dick, and in fact I look forward to reading another of his books! A friend recommended A Scanner Darkly…maybe that will be next.

P.S. To answer the book's title, my opinion is no.

Goodreads Challenge 45-47: Neal Shuster-fest

2011-06-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

Finally I got around to finishing the Skinjacker trilogy by Neal Shusterman--and after reading one book, you get an instant craving for another.

Goodreads Challenge 47/85: Bruiser by Neal Shusterman

Neal Shusterman takes the empath to its extremes in Bruiser. Whew that was a painful ride! Painful because of my own empathic tendencies, though. As usual, Mr. Shusterman creates great characters, gives them all a voice, and poses a question for them: What if? What if a person could really absorb all the pains of other people? I thoroughly enjoyed Bruiser, and I really couldn't put it down until the story resolved on the last page. A real easy read told in the point of view of several characters, so the book flies by quickly. Enjoy yourself when you read it, but don't feel too much for the characters--it might be painful.

Goodreads Challenge 46/85: Smith of Wootton Major by J.R.R. Tolkein

A well-written, sweet little fairy tale by the hobbit master.

Goodreads Challenge 45/85: Everfound by Neal Shusterman

The Everlost trilogy (Skinjacker, actually) presents a wonderful view of life after death. And I'd like to put emphasis on the word "life," because there's a whole world out there full of ghosts wandering in some kind of limbo, and all of them are children. What I love most about this world, though, is the idea that beloved objects and buildings can cross over into the afterlife. Each story is a walk down memory lane of loved objects.

In the last installment of this trilogy, Everfound, the character follow their own arcs that sometimes take an unexpected turn. In a kind of bittersweet trajectory we come to accept all that happens in the end---because that's the way it has to be.

I basically love just about anything Neal Shusterman writes--and with the Skinjacker trilogy, I love the world he created as well. Thanks for the ride!

Goodreads Challenge 44/85: The Sun Also Rises

2011-06-12T10:07:00.000-07:00

I decided to read a book by Ernest Hemingway because I heard an article on NPR about the new Woody Allen movie, Midnight in Paris. They were interviewing the actor who played Hemingway in the movie, and I thought to myself--why haven't I read anything by Hemingway since Old Man and the Sea in eighth grade? So I hit up the library.

I have many things to say about The Sun Also Rises. Where to start?

1. Hemingway's style is so simple I found it annoying. Reading this was like reading field notes by an ethnographic sociologist--which happens to be my graduate school specialty. That's not exactly what I'm looking for when I read a novel. Anyway--it's written in the voice of Jake Barnes--he's supposed to be a journalist, but he sure doesn't have a journalistic flair. I appreciate the subtlety but don't really care for it.

2. The "lost generation" characters were so unappealing that ultimately I was hoping they would all get gored by a bull. Everyone is either nasty or pathetic. Or both.

3. Having just come off reading In Cold Blood (a book where every word perfectly painted a picture), I just wanted to say: Is that all you have to offer, Mr. Hemingway?

4. On the other hand, the dialogue was realistic and amusing. It felt like reading a Seinfeld script, down to every despicable character. Nothing much happens, people complain a lot, and it feels like real life. (although these people get drunk an awful lot).

I wavered between three and four stars--the characters were so believably hateful I gave it four, plus the dialogue was superb. I don't really care to read another by Hemingway, though. Or maybe I'll wait another thirty years.

Goodreads Challenge 41-43

2011-05-23T18:17:00.000-07:00

As the school year winds to an end, I get a little busier and have less time to read. However, I did find some time to fit in a few more good reads.

Goodreads Challenge 43/85: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
In Cold Blood is every bit as riveting and compelling as they said it would be. Many call it the beginning of literary journalism, the first instance of the nonfiction novel, and just plainly a well-written book (every word is perfect). After you read this book, you'll want more--you'll look for the faces of the victims on the web, you'll watch the movies on Netflix. And you'll wonder--how did he do it? How did Truman Capote write such a detailed story from countless interviews and hours of research? As a former ethnographer, I really appreciate his ability to take a detail and form it into a narrative. It feels like he was there witnessing every moment of the story. Lucky for us he did such a masterful job. The characters jump right off the page, and even the midwestern town of Holcomb, Kansas, becomes a character in its own right. I can now see his influence on later nonfiction novels, like anything by Tom Wolfe, or John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Thank you, Mr. Capote.

Goodreads Challenge 42/85: The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth
It's so easy to hate Nazis. Enjoyable book, lots of suspense, and I loved the details. And now I know how to make a bomb. The Odessa File was such an interesting read that I immediately watched the movie on instant-view on Netflix, and then surfed the web for information on the historical figures. Makes me want to read more WWII (and post-war) fiction.

Goodreads Challenge 41/85: Magic Study by Maria Snyder
Magic Study is a nice follow-up of Poison Study, the first book in the series. I liked the detailed description of magic in the story--from a phenomonological perspective it delves deep into the experience of casting magic. Looking forward to the third book. Would give it 3 1/2 stars if it was available, especially for young adult fiction.

Goodreads Challenge 40/85: Frankenstein

2011-05-23T18:10:00.000-07:00

As I'm knocking out the classic reads, Frankenstein of course was high on the list. I was miserable for the first third of the book. Why? Told in the voice of Victor Frankenstein, it was dry and blathering. The narrator Frankenstein has a tendency to "tell, not show"--so instead of describing actions of other characters, or himself, he is merely telling about his thoughts and feelings. This is okay once in a while for clarification, but it got really old. I understand that 19th century fiction has more description than action compared to modern day fiction, but the first part of the book is really wanting for the characters to do something.

The other thing that bothered me about the first part of the book is the lack of detail in describing the creation of the monster. This scientific creation was one of the things I was looking forward to in the book--yet Shelley merely glosses over it. In that subtle 19th century way of writing, she hints at the fact that the monster is made out of body parts. But there is no real description of how it's done. Again she drops the ball later in the story when Frankenstein attempts to make a lady companion for our monster. No details, just innuendo.

Having said that--this is not what the book is about, and thankfully when the monster comes onto the scene, the book picks up--way way up. The monster is "persuasive and eloquent," tells a great story, and is far more sympathetic than Frankenstein himself. I love this guy! While the monster is skulking in the shadows, as a reader I hoped he would reappear to take over the narration from Frankenstein. The creature teaches us about the human condition, what love and pain and agony are all about, and what it means to be alive and/or human. I loved every scene with the monster. Unfortunately, part of the greatness of this book is the suspense--you wonder every minute when that monster is going to show up and kill another loved one of Frankenstein. Consequently the monster only shows up every so often. I'd love to see a book titled Frankenstein's Monster.

After the creature takes a major role in the story, the novel is totally engrossing. I would have given it 5 stars if it wasn't for the rambling musings of Victor Frankenstein.

Goodreads Challenge 31-39/85

2011-05-23T17:57:00.000-07:00

Goodreads Challenge 39/85: Risk by Dick Francis
Dick Francis books are fun to read because the setting is always about horseracing. So, while you get a little bit of thriller action, you also get a peek into the world of racing horses. And in the case of Risk, into the world of accountants. A thriller about an accountant--who woulda thunk?

Goodreads Challenge 38/85: The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl
Be nice to the animals, or else....

Goodreads Challenge 37/85: Silent Night by Mary Higgins Clark
I chose Silent Night from the library because I've seen Mary Higgins Clark books all over the place--the market, the drugstore, bookstores. Anyway I chose this because it's Easter and I thought a holiday book would be fun. And it was short. Reading this book is like watching a Bruce Willis action flick. Really not much substance but it's fun to read for the short time it takes to get through it. For some reason I had expected a mystery--this was a thriller. But fun just the same. The author makes no pretension of writing quality prose, and I appreciate that. Just straight-forward thriller.

Goodreads Challenge 36/85: Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
Gosh, Robert Heinlein, I'm so sorry I was disappointed in your book Starship Troopers. I had been looking forward to reading it, and I really loved Stranger in a Strange Land, so I had high expectations. This book is often listed as one of the best science fiction books of all time. Well, this 263-page book had about 50 pages of science fiction (a generous estimate) and the remaining 213 pages was about the military. If the sci-fi aspect had been infused throughout the military pages it would have been a little more science fictiony. But it wasn't. It was just chapter after chapter about boot camp. And then about being reassigned from boot camp. And then officer's training. Oh--they did visit the Bug planet and kill a few at the end of the book, but it took a long time for us to get there. Another problem was this story was not plot-driven; it was more like a soldier's diary. I suppose if you are interested in reading stories about the military, Starship Troopers is for you. But it wasn't for me. :^(

Goodreads Challenge 35/85: Only the Good Spy Young by Ally Carter
The Gallagher Girl series by Ally Carter is like watching a popcorn movie on a Saturday afternoon. Good fun but not really Oscar-worthy.

Goodreads Challenge 34/85: The Library Card by Jerry Spinelli
The Library Card is a cute book, and well-written by Newberry-winning author Jerry Spinelli. One thing's for sure--I won't look at mushrooms the same way again.

Goodreads Challenge 33/85: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Why did I wait so long to read The Hobbit? I don't know! But oh my goodness, it's worth every star. It well deserves its excellent reputation and fan base. Of course I'm biased, being a hobbit myself....

Goodreads Challenge 32/85: The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima
Now that was fun to read. The Warrior Heir has elements of Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, The Hunger Games, The Lord of the Rings, and Ars Magica -- all coming together in an event that could have been sponsored by the Society for Creative Anachronism. I'm looking forward to the next book!

Goodreads Challenge 31/85: You've Been Warned by James Patterson
Thank god this was a quick read because it was a painful experience.

Homework vs. Learning for Fun

2011-05-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

Santino was sitting on the couch with his brick-heavy history book on his lap. "Wow, Hawaii is closer to Australian than I thought." "Hmmmm?" I said, barely listening. "Wait--what I really mean is Oceania. This is Oceania." (holds up book) "Really?" I muttered, "...interesting." "Oh, and here's Guam! So that's where Guam is." I barely paid attention to him as he gave me updates on his travels through the Pacific.

And then came the thunderbolt.

"Oh my god, Mom," he said, "I've been sitting here reading my history book for fun. And NOW I've got to do my homework."

His homework is a nine-square grid describing the characteristics of the Lutheran, Calvin, and Anglican religions. The graphic organizer he used was straightforward, I suppose, but kind of, well, boring. I sighed in empathy. "Don't worry, Mom, this is easy." He knocked out the "community," "rituals," and "salvation" sections of the Lutheran church in about five minutes. "There!" he said, "I'm one third done! See Mom, it's not so bad. I can do this really fast."

"Fast" certainly describes how he did his homework. He didn't put much thought into it, although I imagine he didn't need to--he basically remembers everything he hears or reads, so filling out the chart was fairly easy for him. But completing the chart was just a formality. He already knew the material. What was the purpose of this homework anyway? Probably a chance to "practice" what he had learned in school so he would remember. Well, in Santino's case that isn't necessary because he has that gift of memory. But I imagine many of the other kids in his class might have needed that extra practice.

A more appropriate homework assignment for him might be--tell us something you didn't know about the Lutheran (or Calvin, or Anglican) church. Then he will get online, surf around, and have some fun on the way to learning something new.

I'd like to be able to say to my students--for homework I want you to learn something new and then tell us about it tomorrow. But I don't know if that will fly with my kids, especially fourth graders who need more structure. Also I think it might be confusing for some of our families who come to expect those predictable worksheets for homework.

As we wind down to the end of the year, I find myself less enthusiastic about assigning homework than usual--and my enthusiasm was fairly low to begin with. As my kids take their yearly tests this week, I know that I've done my job teaching them what they need to know. What's the purpose of homework this late in the year?

But I digress. Santino's finished with his homework (as I'm writing this). How do I know?

"Hey Mom, is it possible to swim from Japan to the mainland?" His nose in his book, he's found something fun to think about again.

Book Share-The Warrior Heir

2011-04-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

About a week ago, Gerry recommended a book to me: The Warrior Heir. "You'll love it," he said, "You've got to read it!"

We have a common love for fantasy stories. About a year ago, Gerry and Santino and I all swapped fantasy favorites as we pored through book after book.

Reading The Warrior Heir was challenging because I couldn't share it with Santino. Not wanting to spoil it, I had to bite the bullet as the book wound its way through intrigue, suspense, and thrills.

Now it was my time to say to Santino, hurry up and read the book!

As I speak, he's interrupting himself. "Ellen's an enchantress, isn't she!" and "That vest is armor, isn't it?" And minutes later--"I knew it!"

Santino read that book in less than a day and then immediately downloaded the next two onto his Kindle. So, Santino---Hurry up and finish!

Fool's Gold

2011-04-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

Last Friday we had the day off from school, so I was sleeping in. My phone rang at 7:15 am.

"Hey, did you look out your window?" Old friend. Only old friends call that early in the morning.
"I was sleeping, so I'd have to say no."
"Well, I drove by your house and there's a big statue in your yard. Did you see the statue?"

I live on a busy street and the whole universe goes by my house every day. So, the idea that someone left a statue in my yard was in the realm of possibilities. I stayed on the phone with my friend as I walked around my miniscule front yard in my jammies.

"I don't see it. Where is it?"
"How could you miss it? It's HUGE!"
"Can't see it."
"It's a big statue of Jesus. How are you missing this?"

No Jesus in front, none in back. Wait....Oh, right. It's April 1. I resigned.

"Got it, I got it! You got me. Have a great day--can I go back to bed now?"

I have always been harangued by April Fool's Day. I'm not the one making the jokes, but I'm usually the one on the receiving end.

Santino woke up shortly after that and found a cuddly spot on the couch. Yawn. "Oh mom, I hate to tell you this but the window in my bedroom is broken."

Sigh. I walked into his room and checked his window. "Honey I don't see it. Is it a break or a crack?"

My lovely son came into the room snickering. "April Fool's, Mom!"

So early in the morning on my day off and already I was fooled twice. But that wasn't the end of it.

Over the course of the day, Santino gleefully told me all of the following:
1. He smelled smoke in the house.
2. My bed was on fire.
3. Baskin Robbins went out of business. (Not true but the local BR is closed.)
4. He had a huge science project due on Monday that he hadn't started. (That one was totally believable.)
5. We didn't have the day off school after all--cruel joke by the school district.

Probably my most memorable April 1st was when my principal (a great prankster) announced her retirement at a faculty meeting. Everybody laughed. "No, really," she said, "I'm retiring." Some of us called out, "April Fools!" "Really, I'm retiring. And I hate to leave you all." Then we knew it was true. It was no joke. Sadly she was gone three months later.

But I digress. Being the target of Santino's April Fool's jokes gives me endless joy. He's a sweet kid, his pranks are benign, and they are mixed enough with reality that they are usually believable. He unearths every verbal prank like a nugget of fool's gold, hoping I'll fall for the trick. He fights hard to surpress his giggles. I admit, he got me a few times, but after the first three or four pranks I was on my guard.

All in all, though--even if it's fool's gold, every prank feels like the real thing. And I love it.

Goodreads Challenge 23-30/85: Books for kids, books for me

2011-04-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

I am really behind in my Goodreads Challenge posting. That's a sign of the school calendar, I suppose. As time gets closer to testing in May, schoolwork becomes more intense, I spend more hours working, and I'm a little more exhausted at the end of the day.

But this will not stop me from reading!!! Here are updates from the last few books I've read for my Goodreads Challange.

Goodreads Challenge 30/85: Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Wow, that was fun to read. Michael Crichton expertly puts together a suspenseful thriller. Please don't complain that it's impossible to clone dinosaurs from blood extracted from mosquitos suspended in amber. Take an intellectual leap so you can go for a wild ride. Lighten up. Have fun with it. Let yourself enjoy this book. To do this, you need to suspend any doubts you might have about the science of the book--after all, this is science fiction. And it's well-written science fiction. Some of the characters are flat and have absolutely no arc. Who cares?! With the threat of getting eaten by a velociraptor, you find yourself crossing your fingers that those two dimensional heroes escape the bite, and those two dimensional villains get what's coming to them.

Goodreads Challenge 29/85: Bare Bones by Kathy Reichs

I. Am. So. Tired. Of writers. Who. Think. That. One. Word. Makes. A sentence. Suffice it to say I am unimpressed by Kathy Reich's writing style. The story was a little confusing because there were too many victims and suspects for my scorecard. And what really bugged me is that the villain responsible for everything didn't show up in the book until the last 20 pages. Aarrghh! Some complain that her books are hard to read because the language is overly technical, but I actually enjoyed that aspect of the book.

I wanted to read a Kathy Reichs book since she is the originator of the Bones tv series, of which I am a huge fan. Maybe it's time to go back and watch a regular Bones episode instead.

Goodreads Challenge 28/85: Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume

Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by veteran children's author Judy Blume is just an adorable book. My fourth graders will definitely be reading this one.

Goodreads Challenge 27/85: Nurture Shock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

I read this for a book club. It annoyed me so much I'm not going to waste any more key strokes writing about it.

Goodreads Challenge 25/85: Witch and Wizard by James Patterson

Dystopia, kids in peril--add magic to the mix for a fun read. James Patterson doesn't have the best prose style, but he puts together an action-filled plot. HOWEVER, I am so frustrated because this book does not end on the last page; you really have to read the next book to complete the story. I hope. I'm looking forward to The Gift since this one ends on a cliff-hanger, or end of a rope. Take your pick.

Goodreads Challenge 26/85: The Gift by James Patterson

Okay, James Patterson, you have made me NOT a happy camper. The Gift is just the second act of the Witch and Wizard series--and the third act won't be released until May.

Goodreads Challenge 24/85: Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Another dystopic future in which there are strict government controls on the number of children each family can have. Among the Hidden is followed by popular sequels, but the story and the writing weren't enough to make me care to move on.

Goodreads Challenge 23/85: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover by Ally Carter

The third installment of the Gallagher Girls spy stories is like the two previous books. In Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover, Cammie ventures outside the walls of the Gallagher Academy to spend time with her roommate, Macey. Macey is the daughter of a senator and needs Secret Service protection during a presidential campaign. A good spy book for girls, especially if they are reluctant readers.

More Tsunami Letters

2011-03-30T05:36:00.000-07:00

March 11, 2011

********
Dear Me,

   My class couldn't go to the whale watching field trip. All the beaches are closed. I will tell you why they are all closed.
   There was an earthquake in the ocean floor. The earthquake happened in Japan. I saw it on the news and was surprised. I was glad we didn't go.
   It was a tsunami. Mud slides, broken homes, and mass destruction. People have to go to high ground to stay safe. I saw pictures of destruction Ms. A. put for the class from her computer.
   The destructions were so horrible I feel so sorry for those people. People died, houses flooded, and buildings were destroyed. Even a bridge with cars on it were destroyed.
   I'm so glad my class didn't go whale watching. Yet I still feel upset, but hey I'm not complaining. I also feel sorry for those people who died, but that's life.

Love,
Alan

******

Dear Me,

   We didn't go on our field trip. We didn't go on the field trip because of a tsunami. The tsunami was in Japan.
   There were plates crashing into each other in Japan. It made an earthquake in Japan that was 8.9. It happened on March 11, 2011 in the afternoon. The lights were flashing and some turned off.
   The earthquake made a big big tsunami. The tsunami killed kids and parents. There were mudslides and it flood villages, farms, buildings, and houses. People in Japan lost everything. Some people alerted Hawaii. They evacuated Hawaians to higher ground.
   I feel sad for the Japanese people and my class. I feel sad for the Japanese because of what happened. I feel sad for us because we couldn't go on our whale watching trip.

Yourself,
Brenda

Tsunami Letters--Do Not Open Until March 11, 2021

2011-03-29T05:53:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, we had to cancel our whale watching field trip because of a tsunami advisory. The 9.0 earthquake in Japan on March 11 triggered a tsunami that made its way across the Pacific Ocean and into the waters of California. We were forced to postpone our much-awaited whale watching trip that day.

The tsunami was definitely one of those teachable moments. World-wide events affected our little classroom in Highland Park. So, instead of boating out in Long Beach Harbor, my kids and I watched videos of the tsunami. Then they wrote letters to themselves "in the future" about their experience. They sealed the letters in envelopes that said, "Do not open until March 11, 2021." Here is one of those letters:

****

March 11, 2011

Dear Linda,
   Today our class didn't go to our field trip to go to Long Beach on a boat to go whale watching because today a very important thing happened. In Japan there was a 8.9 earthquake. When the earthquake happened two plates crashed into each other and started a tsunami.
   At March 10, 2011 there was an earthquake. This earthquake was so big that it was an 8.9 earthquake and because it started a tsunami. The earthquake lasted for about a couple of minutes. And after that there were so many after shocks.
   After the earthquake there was a tsunami. This tsunami killed alot of Japanese people and it also flooded all the houses and it also destroyed it by mud slides. The tsunami went from Japan to Hawaii and to California. That's why we didn't go to the field trip today. The Hawaiians had to evacuate to higher ground. Many buildings got destroyed and Hawaiians had to get on a roof of a building. Many Japanese people lost everything. And many houses got flooded.
   I am so sorry to those Japanese people. They lost everything and their city or country got destroyed. I'm very lucky that we didn't go to the field trip today and I think my mom was so happy that I didn't go to the field trip today.

Your best friend,
Linda

The Day the Earth Stood Still - NOT!

2011-03-13T17:27:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday my phone rang at 11:17 pm. Since I'm a teacher, the alarm goes off early (4:45 am), so I pretty much crash out by 9pm. I was in deep rem sleep.

It was my brother. He called to tell me that an 8.9 earthquake just hit Japan, and that a tsunami was making its way across the Pacific and was expected to hit the shores of California in about 10 hours. He was concerned--he was at a friend's in Redondo Beach and they were deciding whether to evacuate.

Ten hours??? I was going to be on a boat in Long Beach Harbor in 10 hours! This would be the day of our whale watching trip. This was the trip that the kids held a bake sale to raise money ($750). This was the trip that we have been talking about--how to behave on a boat, what to bring, how to recognize a whale in the water. We were well-prepared for the trip, but not for a tsunami.

I watched CNN for about an hour and learned that the tsunami would hit Hawaii at around 5 am, so I went to bed. When I woke up in a few hours, the waves had certainly hit Hawaii and were still coming. Online I found out that a "tsunami advisory" had been issued for the coast south of Point Concepcion. That would be us. Even though the waves would be no higher than about 3 feet. going whale watching just seemed to be a bad idea. Imagine the worst case scenario--Fourth Graders Perish in Whale Watching Accident as Teachers Ignore Coast Guard Warnings.

So yes, we called off the trip. The kids were disappointed, but many of the parents who showed up to school thanked me for canceling. It was a tough call, but there were plenty of lessons to learn.

I seized on one of those great teachable moments to have the kids do research on the tsunami. We watched videos of the earthquake and devastation. We looked at diagrams showing how a tsunami is created.

And then my kids wrote letters. They wrote letters to themselves in the future, talking about the day that an 8.9 earthquake halfway around the world affected them personally. They sealed the letters and wrote, "Do not open until March 11, 2021."

Global events always affect us--we just aren't always aware of it. But in the case of the great earthquake and tsunami in Japan on March 11, 2011, our world got a lot smaller.

Goodreads Challenge 22/85: Henry Huggins

2011-02-27T08:28:00.000-08:00

Henry Huggins by the prolific children's writer Beverly Cleary is a cute book. I read it to evaluate its appropriateness for my class. Written in episodic form, this book presents clever situations written in very simple language. I think it would be more appropriate for a third grade class than my fourth graders.

Goodreads Challenge 21/85: Maniac Magee

2011-02-27T08:22:00.000-08:00

Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli is a Newbery Award-winning book and comes up on every list of books that kids should read. I totally agree! This book tackles some pretty major issues, including racism, homelessness, and family. It does so with complex characters, clever situations, and plenty of humor.

I mentioned the book to Santino after I had just read it. He picked it up to read a few pages and didn't put it down until he finished two hours later. That's a pretty good endorsement.

Maniac Magee is another book I'm considering for my class. I think they'll love it, although they will need a lot of help with some of the more serious angles.

Goodreads Challenge 20/85: The Witches

2011-02-27T08:13:00.000-08:00

Roald Dahl is so fun to read. The villains are really revolting. The good guys have heart. The Witches is particularly fun to read because it makes you wonder about all those ladies wearing gloves and hats!

In my grand search for a class set of books for my kids to read, this tops the list. Parts of it are difficult--when the Grand High Witch talks, she has a thick accent that is played out in the spelling of her speech. But I think my kids are up for the challenge, especially for such a fun book. This book also gives nice contrast to Stuart Little, which we just finished. Mice play an important role!

Goodreads Challenge 19/85: The Death and Life of the Great American School System

2011-02-27T08:11:00.000-08:00

Being entrenched in the world of No Child Left Behind, I had a difficult time reading The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Not difficult--depressing. Under the behemoth of NCLB it's really hard to be hopeful about the future of public education. Everyone who is worried about their child's test scores should read this book and re-think their priorities.

Goodreads Challenge 18/85: Dead Until Dark

2011-02-21T09:43:00.000-08:00

I love the series True Blood and decided to read the book from which it came, Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris. If you like vampires, Dead Until Dark (book 1 of the Sookie Stackhouse mystery series) is fun, but non well-written. Not as bad as Twilight, not as good as anything by Anne Rice. I'd say that in this case--it's better to see the movie than read the book. If you're a fan of the show, maybe read this book just to compare it. I probably won't read any more in the Sookie Stackhouse series unless I get laid up sick in bed for several weeks and need instant gratification through the Kindle.

Goodreads Challenge 17/85: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

2011-02-16T18:00:00.000-08:00

I've been looking for a classic of children's literature for my kids to read in a couple of weeks. My goal is to get them used to reading chapter books. Right now we're reading Stuart Little. The chapters are fairly short, and there are only 15 of them. The kids love reading a chapter book together!

Anyway, Santino recommended From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg for my class. It's a really clever book, smart protagonists, and full of wonderful detail and surprises. I think it's a little too advanced for my kids, though. It's not just the level of the vocabulary. There are numerous tiers of references in this book, from New York landmarks to classic works of art. And certainly this would be a great opportunity for my kids, but the book is just a little too long. If it were about 60 pages shorter, I would do it now. Maybe we can read it at the end of the year, by which time they will have worked up their stamina for reading longer books.

Yeah. I think that's a worthy goal to work for.

Goodreads Challenge 16/85: The Hound of the Baskervilles

2011-02-13T10:19:00.000-08:00

Guess who the most significant character is in The Hound of the Baskervilles?

It could be Dr. Watson, who embarks on the adventure through most of the book by himself, relating his findings to Sherlock Holmes (presumably stationed in London) via diary entries and letters.

It could be Sir Henry Baskerville, who has inherited a great fortune and responsibility in the form of Baskerville Hall and all the charitable holdings and ambitions of his uncle Sir Charles Baskerville.

Or--could it be Sherlock Holmes himself, considered to be one of the great literary characters of all time?

No--the most significant character in this story is the setting, the moorlands of Devon. The lands of Dartmoor pose threats to the villagers and add suspense to the story. Peat bogs, rocky tors, and Bronze age stone huts control the direction and tenor of this story. I've traveled to Bath twice, which is just northeast of Devonshire, and I'm sorry I missed out on visiting this Bronze age treasure. I'll put it at the top of my list for the next time.

As you read this book, you can't hep but be reminded of the movie An American Werewolf in London. "Stay on the road, keep clear of the moors." So true, so true.

Everyone should read this story, where the location becomes a formidable force in the direction of the plot.

Goodreads Challenge 15/85: Everwild

2011-02-11T20:00:00.000-08:00

I am ever so wild about the "Skinjacker" series by Neal Shusterman. Everwild takes us towards the west (but not west of the Mississippi) as our ghostly heroes gather troops for the final battle. Special guest stars include the original Ferris Wheel in Chicago, the Hindenberg, and Graceland. Child ghosts called "Afterlights" take sides as the forces of good (led by the Chocolate Ogre) shore up their battlements against the forces of evil (led by Mary Queen of Snots).

Did I mention that Santino forced me to read the Everlost books? The plot of Everwild takes so many twists and turns, that by the time you get to Memphis at the end, you really can't put the book down until you finish. I stole (or should I say jacked) a few minutes of time this morning at 6:00 am before school to read a tumultuous chapter, highly climatic, lots of karma dealt out--and finally I screamed out, "Ahhhhh! I can't believe they did that!!" (I won't spoil it here.) And Santino said, "See Mom??!!! See why I wanted you to read these books? And I had to wait a WHOLE MONTH for you to read it!!!"

The Skinjacker series is fun to read--it takes a refreshing look at death, ghosts, and the afterlife. What's the biggest problem? The third book in the series, Everfound, comes out May 3. Santino has pre-ordered it on his Kindle, but that just means the book is in a purgatory ghostlike state for the next three months. Kind of like the Afterlights in Everwild. Until then, we can only dream about the Chocolate Ogre.

Goodreads Challenge 14/85 Esio Trot

2011-02-10T21:00:00.001-08:00

When I first saw this Roald Dahl title, Esio Trot, I thought it was about an Italian boy named Esio! Turns out it's "tortoise" spelled backwards.

Anyway this is a cute and clever story, although its main throughline of deception makes it a little dodgy as a children's book.

Goodreads Challenge 13/85 Stuart Little

2011-02-07T05:56:00.000-08:00

Last August, Anne and I went shopping at the Scholastic Warehouse in Duarte. It's exactly what you think it would be: tall Kafkaesque stacks of books towering above you, begging to be taken home. If you are a book addict, this is not the place for you. A trip to the Scholastic Warehouse will put a dent in your wallet and also your shelving at home.

Anyway, we really scored when we found the book Stuart Little by E. B. White for $1. Not to miss an opportunity, we bought a class set for the school. What a perfect lesson for the kids--read the book, then watch the movie to see what's missing from the book.

Like the mouse, Stuart Little is a whisp of a book that fit easily in my small backpack. So I brought it everywhere, read it in doctors' waiting rooms, whipped it out in lines at Target. It's perfect for choppy reading, too. Each chapter contains its own little story about the adventures of a mouse entrenched in the world of humans.

Stuart Little is clever and well-written. My students will certainly enjoy it, especially when we make the side-by-side comparison to the movie. Thank you for another winner, E. B. White!

Goodreads Challenge 12/85: Everlost

2011-02-05T17:14:00.000-08:00

Ooohhhhhhh Neal Shusterman, my life was so drab and dreary before I found you. I admit it--he is definitely my new literary addiction. Even his mediocre books (e.g. The Eyes of Kid Midas) are fun to read. Santino encouraged--no, forced--me to read Everlost by Mr. Shusterman because he wanted to talk about it. I can see why--Shusterman makes so many references to modern culture that it's hard to avoid thinking about it.

Everlost is a ghost story for kids. Where kids are the ghosts. It's a great treatment of the afterlife, or in this case, purgatory. In the land of Everlost, more than kids can become ghosts, though. Buildings, pieces of furniture, toys, and even food can make it to the eternity of the afterlife--as long as those items were well-loved.

Poor lost souls permeate the pages of this book, and there are also a lot of Percy Jackson moments. It's time for the next installment.

Step aside, Stephen King--Neal Shusterman has taken your place!

Testing First, Learning Second

2011-02-02T05:43:00.000-08:00

It's time for a rant about testing again.

Fourth grade math is tough. Kids have to learn double digit multiplication, long division, negative numbers, decimals--conceptually there are many difficult standards to cover during the year.

We've been plugging through the material, and many of my kids have been struggling with double digit multiplication. Sometimes they forget to regroup (we called it "carrying" in the stone ages), occasionally they forget to multiply the tens place (the second row), and usually they forget to plunk down that zero in the one's place on the second line. Whatever the problem, they need lots of reteaching and practice.

Double digit multiplication was Chapter 6. Right now we're doing fractions in Chapter 9. However, I've been reviewing multiplication continually through every chapter since the sixth. Anyway, I gave the kids a quiz last week on multiplication. Ten of the kids failed! The rest (18) passed with flying colors.

I told the kids who failed that we would review and review, and then they could retake the test and replace their score. In the meantime, the advanced kids can get extended enrichment lessons. Then--I looked at our testing calendar.

According to the the school district's testing calendar, we have to administer a quarterly math test in two weeks. That test will not include double digit multiplication (they were tested on that in November). They will be tested on geometry, long division, fractions, and decimals.

First--if my kids are struggling with multiplication, do you really think they've mastered long division?
Second--we haven't even started decimals!

Misery loves company, though--the other fourth grade teachers are in the same boat.

But no worries! We'll cram all of that in next week. Forget about mastering multiplication. Don't worry about understanding the concepts. We'll gloss over the material on decimals and cross our fingers. Taking the school district's mandated tests is much more important than mastery of the mathematics standards.

Hang on tight--it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Goodreads Challenge 11/85: Poison Study

2011-01-30T08:35:00.000-08:00

We bought Poison Study by Maria Snyder about a year ago on a book-buying binge at Borders one night. Santino read it over the summer and thought I'd like it. The writing's a little clunky and forced, but it's a fun read. Interesting world, lots of action, complex characters. Good, solid, young adult fiction.

Now that I'm finished with this book, I'm only reading two books--Stuart Little, which I keep in my backpack, and The Death and Life of the American School System, which I'm reading for book club. Time to find some new good reads....

Goodreads Challenge 10/85: The BFG

2011-01-29T09:03:00.000-08:00

Oh I just finished a wonderful book by Roald Dahl, The BFG. This book has been hanging around my classroom library for several years, but I've never taken the time to read it. Why did I wait so long? What a delumptious book! For my after school class, my kids wrote descriptions of some of the giants in this book, including Bonecruncher, Childchewer, and Fleshlumpeater. My favorite scene is where the queen of England has breakfast with the Big Friendly Giant. Her butler, Mr. Tibbs, creates a giant-sized table out of grandfather clocks and a pingpong table. Vivid images, hilarious dialogue, whimsy and whim (and add a dash of horror)--this is a great children's book.

Another Lovely Day in Highland Park

2011-01-28T19:07:00.000-08:00

See anything unusual in this picture?*

My class was in the computer lab working on our math program. Usually the kids are completely engaged and focussed--what could be better than playing computer games at school? In the back of the room, I saw a hand go up. It was Eric, one of the quiet boys in my class.

"What's the problem?" I asked.

"Ms. A., yesterday I was playing in the yard after school," he started. Boy oh boy, stories that start out that way never end with a happy face. Always that moment of normality before the blast of cold hard reality destroys the veneer. Eric continued.

He was playing outside his house by himself when a big black car drove up. A man got out of the car, pulled out a gun, and started shooting at a house a couple of doors down from where Eric was playing. Eric ran into the house, told his mom, and hid. He was worried that the man with the gun would start shooting at all the houses. I told him that the man was surely looking for someone in particular and wouldn't shoot around randomly--but it sounded really scary.

Eric had nightmares that night. Four men were outside shooting at his house. He couldn't get the dreams out of his head.

I don't live in this part of the neighborhood, but I know it can be scary. During the day we get tidbits of the gang wars. Just this last Tuesday we had a lockdown shortly after school let out. All of the teachers were in the library in professional development. This lockdown came suddenly, no warning of helicopters. That usually means that a shooting or incident has taken place on the school's perimeter (apparently there was a shooting about a half block away). We locked the door of the library and waited until the announcement came that the lockdown was over.

These incidents might be isolated, or they might be the start of another run of shootings like we had in 2009. Either way, after the doors close at school, those kids go home, play in unsafe yards, endure sleepless nights, and wish they lived somewhere other than Highland Park.

* Yes, that little buglike thing hovering in the sky next to the middle palm tree, above the playground, is a police helicopter.

Goodreads Challenge 9/85: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

2011-01-27T17:50:00.000-08:00

Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy is the second book in a series by Ally Carter about a spy school for girls, the Gallagher Academy (yes, another young adult book). I enjoyed the first book and decided to continue with the second. Our hero, Cammie Morgan, attends the Gallagher Academy, where her mom is the headmaster. One of the big draws of this book series is Cammie's voice as a narrator; she certainly says everything that comes into her teenagery head. This book is full of intrigue, cool gadgets, and teenage crushes. The story ends somewhat abruptly, though, but I'm sure there's followthrough in the next book, Don't Judge a Girl by her Cover.

Goodreads Challenge 8/85: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

2011-01-27T17:44:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the Kindle I was able to start The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest right after I finished the second book in the series. At the beginning of the book, I was excited--it showed great promise. I was hoping to see great character arcs, and the anticipation of seeing certain characters was fun. (see Portable Elephants post.)

Yes, this was a page turner like the others, but it also had more of the same downpoints, worst of all being lots of exposition. Pages and pages about the history of a secret police. More pages and pages on the background of a character that wasn't really germain to the story.

But, if you like a story where karma kicks the butts of the bad guys, this will be your kind of story.

I was slightly disappointed that there didn't seem to be much of a character arc in Mikael Blomqvist's character. Doesn't he learn from anything? Still flaky from beginning to end with his friends and women, I really wanted him to appeal to better angels, but he didn't. Glad, though, that he's a good guy when it comes to political issues, and with a high amount of integrity. Almost too good. However, I'd love to see him hook up with Salandar again in solving a crime.

Also I would have wanted to see Niedermann's downfall be directly tied to either his inability to feel pain or his ghosts.

Lisbeth Salandar doesn't disappoint, though. She's almost like a superhero and I'd love to see more of her. I guess we won't, though, unless Stieg Larsson's "widow" is able to finish his fourth manuscript and publish it!

Now I can get on with my life.

Goodreads Challenge 7/85: The Girl Who Played with Fire

2011-01-27T17:39:00.000-08:00

Continuing onward, I downloaded The Girl Who Played with Fire onto Santino's Kindle and started reading again. There are so many sections that are full of exposition, sometimes it got a little hard to read. Stieg Larsson gives almost too much background information, you think he's confused himself with Mikael Blomqvist. But otherwise it was a pageturner, just like the first.

Unfortunately, Santino wanted to use "his" Kindle to read the Neal Shusterman book Everlost, so I had to suspend reading this story in the middle of a highly suspenseful scene. How dare he??!! But you know, aside from the fact that it is his Kindle, Neal Shusterman is kind of sacred in our household.

I distracted myself by starting another book of the old-fashioned paper sort (Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy) until he finished Everlost. Well, it took him a day. That night (it was a Saturday), after Santino went to bed, I resumed reading The Girl Who Played with Fire. I finished it at around 10 pm, and guess what? This book doesn't have an ending! It's really the first two acts of a 5 act tragedy. So it's 10 pm, the heroine has just been shot in the head, and the book ends. What do I do? Of course I downloaded the next book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, right away on the Kindle. Instant gratification. Love it.

Goodreads Challenge 6/85: Your Mother Was a Neanderthal

2011-01-27T17:37:00.000-08:00

By Jon Szieschka, Your Mother Was a Neanderthal is part of the "Time Warp Trio" series. Three kids go back in time (and I suppose occasionally into the future) to pursue adventures. I read this book to see if it would be appropriate for a class read. To be honest, it was a little....weak. Not good enough for a re-read as an adult, but I'm sure the kids will like it.

Goodreads Challenge 5/85: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

2011-01-27T17:36:00.000-08:00

Okay, okay, I started this book way back in November. It was the book I keep in my backpack for emergencies--waiting rooms, lines--that kind of thing. But that's no excuse. I guess the reason it took me so long was because the book has about 15 short stories. I'd start one and was motivated to finish it, but then I was done I'd put the book down for a while.

I selected this book for several reasons. First, Sherlock Holmes is always on those "Top 100" lists for literary characters. I want to form my own opinion. Also, I'm a big fan of the TV show "House." Greg House's character is loosely based on Sherlock Holmes, and I wanted to see for myself. But most of all, I like to read mysteries, and I thought it was time I read this classic.

Sherlock Holmes (the guy) is definitely someone I'd like to have tea with.

Goodreads Challenge 4/85: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

2011-01-27T17:35:00.000-08:00

We've all seen America's "most beloved movie," but have we all read the book? The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum was free on Santino's Kindle, so I spent a couple of days wandering around the land of Oz. Dorothy and friends spend a lot more time gettin' down with the people--it's wonderful to see how rich and imaginative this world is. Definitely worth the price of admission.

Goodreads Challenge 3/85: The City of Ember

2011-01-25T21:15:00.000-08:00

The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau was one of those books on the Goodreads list that I added because I've heard of it before. The style and setting reminded me of The Giver--but not quite as satisfying. Really the book gets going about 3/4 of the way through, and then it's over. Probably won't recommend it to my students except for those who are very patient. I wonder how the movie is!

Goodreads Challenge 2/85: The Eyes of Kid Midas

2011-01-25T21:13:00.000-08:00

Ahhhh, Neal Shusterman. You are so easy to read. The Eyes of Kid Midas comes in the middle of a series of books about kids who have special powers. Some of the kids are werewolves, others are vampires--it varies from book to book.

Seventh grader Kevin Midas is at the bottom of the food chain. Constantly picked on by other kids, he was bound to have a comeback. On a field trip he discovers a pair of magical sunglasses. Whatever he wishes comes to fruition. Quickly he learns that you have to be careful for what you wish--for you may surely get it.

Goodreads Challenge 1/85: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2011-01-25T21:12:00.000-08:00

Fine! I broke down and read that book. I mentioned in an earlier post that I felt left out when everybody I knew (adults, that is) was reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Celebrating the new year, as well as Santino's new Kindle, I downloaded this book for $5 and read it while we were on vacation in Santa Cruz.

I can see why everyone was crazy about this book. It's filled with action, suspense, horror, and certainly it's a page-turner. The characters were intriguing and you can't beat the location. However if I hear one more time about sandwiches I think I'll have to stop reading the book and actually eat one.

Time to read the next book in the series....

85 Reasons to Read

2011-01-23T12:07:00.000-08:00

I'm a member of the social networking group, Goodreads.com. It's a group devoted to--you guessed it--reading. Similar to other social network sites like Facebook and MySpace, you make friends with people, send messages, share ideas, etc. But the focus of this site is books--books, books, and more books.

I heard about Goodreads from a cashier at Borders named Angela. She suggest the website because I guess I was talking her ear off while I was holding up the register line, and the thought I would enjoy the site.

When you first log on, you are asked to look at a list of, say, 100 books. Have you read them? If so, how would you rate it? If not, would you like to read it? The books include all genres--they ask you about books from The DaVinci Code to Dracula, from Pride and Prejudice to The Princess Bride--there's something for everybody.

Eventually you come up with a booklist--books you have read in the past and books you plan to read. You can look at other people's lists for ideas. Eventually when you collect friends, you can compare your taste in books. If you love to read, this is Mecca.

Goodreads is my current not-so-guilty pleasure. I get ideas from friends for new books, look at booklists from other people, take quizzes, write reviews. I've amassed a list of over 400 books. I've read at least 350 of those, and the others are on my "to-read" list. My homepage includes a list of books I am currently reading--usually that's at least 3 books since I keep one at school, a few at home, and one in my backpack. Sometimes my friends list books that look interesting and I add those to my booklist. I don't feel so bad about my addiction to this social network because, hey, it's all about books so it can't be that bad.

At the beginning of January, Goodreads posted the "2011 Goodreads Challenge." You commit to reading a certain number of books during the year. When I signed up the first week of January, the average Goodreads member had committed to 85 books. Well, I figured I should keep with the community, so I committed to 85 books. Last year, I read 34 books, so 85 is pretty ambitious. As more and more readers made their commitments, however, the average number kept dropping. Now it is down to 74. That's okay--I'm pretty sure I'll make my goal, and probably even beat it.

In the meantime, I am going to write a review for each book I read. At this writing I have already 9 books, so I have to catch up a bit. But so far it's been quite a ride. And away we gooooooo.........

Happy New Year, I Guess

2011-01-12T06:08:00.000-08:00

We returned from a three week winter break on January 10. With that much time off, the kids are full of stories to tell and not really ready to sit for six hours and work. So I took the opportunity to have "morning meeting" time, where kids tell and listen to stories. It's great practice for our listening and speaking standards, and it warms up the kids for school.

Anyway, the kids met in groups to select stories that they would tell to the whole class. Here are three of the winners.

1. Yennifer went to the mountains where it was snowing. She and her cousins went down a snowy hill on a sled. As their speed picked up, they noticed an obstacle in their path--a snowman! They plowed into the snowman, causing internal damage and decapitation. All humans survived.

2. Jana's uncle died--her mother's brother. She didn't know him because he lives in Mexico. Her mother didn't go to the funeral because if she went to Mexico, she wouldn't be able to come back to the United States.

3. Michelle's Christmas Eve was eventful. A man with a gun ran into the courtyard of their housing complex. She and her relatives watched from inside their house. Police came and wrestled the man to the ground. He dropped his gun. Helicopters circled the house for the next hour or so.

When we have morning meeting, the stories always go the same way: airy, humorous stories mixed in with tales from the hood. After all these years, I shouldn't be surprised.

News from the Blogosphere

2010-12-22T13:12:00.000-08:00

My fourthgraders this year are really becoming expert bloggers. Here's what they're writing about (all of my kids have pseudonyms):

"I Hate Chores" by Alex Rider

I REALLY hate chores with my heart. At home I’m the garbage man, because I am the garbage man I can’t do what I want. I can’t pretend I’m the best soccer player in the world, I can’t read, I can’t play with my dogs or draw or watch Sonic X and use the computer, oh and I can’t play on my XBOX 360 game of Sonic. And I’m tired of it! When I take out the trash I always see ants invading our trash cans and smells like trash. One time it was like 3:00 in the morning and I had to take the trash and when I got outside I saw these chollas and chollos doing graffiti. And in my head I’m thinking to myself shoot me now because i’m tired of taking out the trash. When I went back to bed I imagined my great grandfather with a trashbag in his hands.

"No Thanksgiving for Me!" by Madeline

I never celebrate Thanksgiving because my mom doesn’t like to celebrate just like Halloween. But I don’t even get a piece of turkey or something. All we do is go shopping or to Burger King. So I really never have a Thanksgiving ever. My mom always takes me and my brother to mass/church because she says it’s ”WAY BETTER” than getting a piece of turkey or ”celebrating.” So my Thanksgiving is NEVER celebrated.

"A Day with Ludwig Von Beethoven" by Ella Enchanted

If I could spend a day with somebody it would be Beethoven because he is a good conductor and a good pianoist too. I would go to Beethoven’s grave and a magic dove will take him out and alive. If I could go anywhere with him I would get tickets to go and see an orchestra. Later on we would go to a music school and he will teach me how to play the piano. If I have any questions these will be them. Did you play another instrument besides piano? If you were still alive would you finish the ninth symphony? And I will ask him who was his favorite conductor? In the afternoon we will eat pizza for dinner and at the end of the day we will go out and eat ice cream. And right before he will leaves we will play piano together. And that’s my day with Ludwig Von Beethoven!!!

"A Man that Causes Drama" by Junie B. Jones

Today a guy across the street was yelling out bad words. He said he did not want to hear us. And he was being mean to a guy by yelling at him. There was another person in the house and he told that person to feed him. We were kinda scared because he was looking at us. Another reason we were scared was because he said he did not care what we were learning and that he was going to be loud too. So a while later he stopped yelling and we were so happy .

THE END

Banshees and Viruses

2010-11-16T20:42:00.000-08:00

We spend the first nine minutes of school making announcements before I send the kids off to other classrooms for science instruction. Last week as the kids readied to leave, I asked them--Are there any questions?

Jesse raised his hand. I was relieved; usually he raises his hand and screams, "Ms. Armadillo!" It's almost like yelling, when they raise their hands and call out your name at the same time. Anyway, Jesse was very careful this time.

"Ms. Armadillo," he began, "can we get a virus from writing in our blog at home? My aunt told me I can't do my blog at home because we can get a computer virus."

I wasn't surprised that someone out there was afraid of the kids blogging. A lot of the families in our neighborhood have limited experience with computers, and I'm always having to calm them down about computer usage. No, your child won't be kidnapped if they use the Internet.

Anyway, as I inhaled to answer him, Cathy piped in ahead of me. "I know! Adults say that to you because they don't want you to use the computer."

We all laughed, but I was really impressed with Cathy's understanding of the behavior of grownups. Sometimes it's easier to scare kids than to give them the real reason. Why would an adult tell a kid not to pick up a dirty comb on the ground when it's easier to say: "If you touch that comb, la llorona might come and get you!" La llorona, the banshee, computer viruses--whatever it is, it will come and get you.

So thanks, Cathy, for seeing right through our very thin veil of control.

The Genesis of a Song

2010-11-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

"One More of Everything" - from start to finish....

Genesis of a Song from Gina Amodeo on Vimeo.

This video shows how you can start with a blank piece of paper and 60 kids, and end up with an album and a performance in front of the School Board.

Interest Inventory

2010-10-10T10:07:00.000-07:00

I wish I could fly....*

"Interest Inventory" is not a clever title--it's just a handout I give out to my kids on the first day of school.

In the interest inventory, kids answer questions like:

What is your favorite food? Movie? Book? Fictional character? What do you like to do at home or in your free time? Who lives with you at home? What do you like the most about school? The least?

Some kids have trouble filling out the inventory. "I don't have a favorite song," complained George. "Then just pick one song that you like," I responded. And Michelle had a different kind of problem. "I live in two houses. One has my dad, and the other has my mom," she confessed. "Then just write down the people you live with at both houses." She was satisfied with that solution.

For the most part, though, the kids enjoy filling out information about themselves. On this test, the only right answers are their own opinions.

My two favorite questions are: (1) What do you like least about school, and (2) If you had one wish, what would it be.

Go ahead and guess what most kids like the least about school. That's right, it's homework. And I have to agree with them--but I covered that in an earlier post. Other answers about what they like the least included: mean teachers, bathrooms, the food, the chairs (too hard), and (gasp) reading.

Sadly, there isn't much I can do about the bathrooms, the food, and the hard chairs. But I can work on not being too mean this year. And oh my gosh--those kids who don't like reading are in for a real surprise, because my special project this year will be to get them to love reading.

But my favorite question is: If you had one wish, what would it be? Okay, a number of kids said they wanted a million dollars. And one clever kid wished for infinity wishes.

My kids' wishes really reveals their heart and imagination:

• own a restaurant
• have a larger house
• a smart robot that flies
• be on a baseball team
• move things without touching them
• be a super hero (four kids wished for this)
• get their pet back (three kids)
• world peace

Now that I have their voices rolling around my head, I know where to go. Give these kids a chance to act on their wishes. They will blog about what they want to do to make their world better.

Sounds like this is going to be an interesting year....

* Superacorn, a Tanguy Desailly's Super Hero - European Free Artistic Licence by Hubert Lombard, Jan. 2007

Listen to Your Inner Child--Or Just the One Standing in Front of You

2010-09-15T06:06:00.000-07:00

I was trying to figure out what items to request on a DonorsChoose proposal. DonorsChoose.org is a website where teachers and donors meet in order to facilitate educational materials getting into classrooms where they are needed. Teachers ask; donors listen.

Recently, because of a generous donation by the Claire Giannini Foundation to all California projects, I had numerous proposals funded. The items coming to my classroom include a class set of The Adventures of Captain Underpants (so we can read fun chapter books), a MacBook (to make our own movies about superheroes), and a class set of flash drives (so we can transport our movies between computers).

With a few proposal slots open and about, oh, a zillion ideas in my head, I turned to Santino for his expert kid advice. Bean bag chairs, class sets of Percy Jackson, netbooks, a new printer/scanner--I had lots of ideas, many of them coming from Santino in the first place. So I posed the question to him--what should I ask for?

"Mom, you gotta get laptops. Imagine every kid having a laptop at school!"

He didn't pause for a breath, he didn't think it over--it was obvious to him. And it made me wonder--why aren't we asking kids what they need in school?

I asked Santino for more advice. "Bean bag chair, couch, or both?" Again, he knew immediately. "Both," he said, "because kids are happier when they have options." Kids are happier when they have options. Simple but profound.

I'm not claiming that kids really understand the world of pedagogy or the academic side of education. But I do think they are self-aware. They know what gets them excited about school. It could be a beanbag chair, a laptop, or smelly markers--whatever it takes, they know what it is. And when kids get excited about school, they stay focussed longer, try harder, and have a better attitude.

So listen to that kid standing right in front of you. You might get something out of it.

Trust Chaos

2010-09-14T21:32:00.000-07:00

"Can we read?" asked Mike. He looked hopeful.

I bit my lip. It's the second day of school and I still don't have my library set up--so the kids don't have books yet. A half dozen boxes of books sit in front of my library shelves. Why? I can't decide how to organize them. Do I organize them by genre? By reading level? By shape?

When Mike asked if they could read today, I had to reconsider my plans to organize. What was I waiting for? In my desire to have the perfect start to the school year, I failed to open the most important part--our library.

"Hey, kids," I said, "do you want to sort the books?"

Cheers all around. "Great--how do you want to sort them?" I asked. "By reading level or by genre?" I jumped on the opportunity to teach the word genre and gave them some of the categories. Carla raised her hand. "I think we should sort them by level. If we do it by genre, it would take a long time for us to figure out what kind of books they are. And we want to read now!"

It's hard to argue with that. I handed armfuls of books to all the kids, and they brought them to the tables for the sorting. Have you ever been to smorgasbord? That's how our classroom looked. Kids were feasting on a variety of books--scary stories, fantasies, biographies, mysteries. There was something for everybody.

Eventually every student had picked a book to read, and they even sorted most of the books into bins. All my kids walked home today with a book in hand, and that's the way it should be the first week of school.

I overcame my compulsive desire for order. It's time to trust chaos. And sometimes when you trust chaos, you end up with a book in your pocket and a story in your heart.

New Beginnings

2010-09-13T14:30:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of school.

There’s something magical about those words. The first day of school. Gosh, that’s five syllables. I feel a haiku coming on:

The first day of school

New shoes, new clothes, and new friends

The end of summer

Last night, little Bella was so excited about her first day of second grade as she went to bed--she couldn’t contain herself. She ran around the living room in her fluffy pink robe, rechecking her pencil box, showing off her Hello Kitty backpack, and chanting, “the first day of school, the first day of school.” I couldn’t help but get caught up in her frenzy.

This morning, children are wondering—who is going to be my teacher? Is my best friend going to be in my class? Will I meet any new kids? What are we learning this year?

Believe me, teachers are doing the same thing. Who will show up and who won’t return to school? Will my kids work as a group? Will they learn—and retain—everything I taught them?

Oh, I’m going to miss waking up without an alarm clock. Stacks of paper are going to start to dominate my living room. And don’t forget that eternal state of exhaustion that hovers over your total state of being. But every September gives us a new beginning.

Every year you get a fresh start. New teacher, new kids. Last year you could have been the problem child—this year, who knows? You get another chance to change your karma. Same thing goes for teachers, as you have spent the summer thinking about the past year and make plans for retooling.

Yeah, it’s the end of summer, but it’s the beginning of possibilities.

Character Counts

2010-08-29T20:12:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm reading Dracula by Bram Stoker. I checked this book out of the library because it's on so many must-read lists. I've read everything by Anne Rice, and I made it (barely) to the end of Twilight--how could I have missed the granddaddy of them all, the Count?

I'm only halfway through, but now I know why you must read this book--it's absolutely brilliant. Stoker brings out the narrative using numerous points of view and through various forms of documentation. At one moment you are reading a diary entry from solicitor Jonathan Harker, and the next you're spying on the captain's log of the cargo ship Demeter.

It made me think about teaching point of view in the classroom. You can talk about character motivation until you're blue in the face, but it won't mean anything if the kids don't experience and play with the concept of motivation firsthand. The best way to do this is through theater.

To scaffold the concept, start with something easy. In pairs, give each kid a different motivation--it's best if the character goals have nothing to do with each other. For example,

Kid 1: a child trying to convince a parent to get a puppy
Kid 2: a parent trying to fix a leaky sink

Remind the kids to focus on two things: What do you want? How are you going to get it? That's your motivation.

Once they've had a little experience with this, put them in small groups and have them act in a setting like the zoo or a department store. The students must agree on and pick different roles in the setting. Then each student decides privately what their motivation is. And the acting begins.

Bring it a step further, having them act out the motivations of characters in a story you have just read. You can have them start by brainstorming on graphic organizers the motivations of different characters.

And finally, try a story that they haven't read yet. Which brings me back to Dracula. The reading level of Dracula is way beyond the ability of my fourth graders, but I'd like them to experience the story in a deeper way than the comic books offer. So, I'm assigning them characters and character motivations. I haven't finished the book yet, so these are portrayals I just made on the fly--I'm sure I'll get a deeper understanding as I work through the book.

What's my motivation?

Count Dracula: You want to fill the world with vampires.
Jonathan Harker: You want to escape the castle Dracula and return home to your fiance, Mina.
Mina Murray: You want to create a perfect household and support your fiance, Jonathan.
Van Helsing: You want to protect people from vampires.
John Seward: You want to understand and treat psychosis.
Lucy Westenra: You want to party and get the attention of potential husbands.

Put them in one big room and see what happens! How fun is this? Try it! The opportunities are endless as kids explore the ideas of character, motivation, and point of view. It will increase their reading comprehension, improve their creative writing, and help them become a more empathic person. It's a win-win-win situation.

So, when you're playing a character like the Count, remember that character counts.

Bouncing Baby Book

2010-08-28T18:27:00.000-07:00

Whew! All that talk about testing, and you'd think that's the only important thing in education. Let me get back to the spirit of Electric Child. It's time to talk about Mockingjay.

Mockingjay is the third book in the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. Santino introduced me to Hunger Games last year via recommendation by his teacher. "Mom, you've GOT to read this," he said. A real page-turner, it is a dystopian vision of a post-apocalyptic United States. The controlling central government asserts its power over the twelve districts of "Panem," formerly the U.S., by sending teenage representatives from each district to an arena fight to the death. I couldn't believe my kid was reading this stuff!

Like everything else coming from Santino's teacher, though, this book was compelling. We quickly read the second installment of the series, Catching Fire, some time in March. And after that? The long wait for the third book to come out.

I don't know what's happening in the publishing industry, but it seems that nobody writes a simple, single book any more. So many books come series, in threes, or fours or fives. Each individual book has an ending, sure, but the arc of the whole story isn't played out in the first 300 or 400 pages. Most of my experience is with young adult fiction, but immediately several series come to mind, including "Midnighters" (three books), "Uglies" (three books), "Twilight" (four books), and of course, Harry Potter (seven books). The Hunger Games series was no exception.

As we finished the second act (that is, book) of the story, we were left with two cliffhangers. First--would our hero, Katniss Everdeen, succeed in leading a revolution to overthrow the central government? And second---who would end up as Katniss' soulmate? Her longtime archery chum Gale, or her loving partner in the Hunger Games, Peeta?

These are high stakes, and we had to wait until August 24 for the last book to come out. Santino was upset because he had soccer camp that day. I know he would've been very happy for me to say, hey, don't go to camp--let's sit all day and read instead! But, he went to camp, and I bought the book, including two additional copies for my book club friends at school. When I picked Santino up from camp, he climbed into the car and started reading immediately.

At home, Santino plunked himself down on the couch, and I sidled up on the love seat. He read Mockingjay, and I read Specials--yet another third book in a trilogy about a post-apocalyptic dystopia. After four chapters, Santino growled. "Arrghh!!! Mom, I have to talk to you about this. Could you read it?" So I read four chapters so we could talk. Then he had the great idea--we would each read a few chapters tag-team style so we could discuss the book as we went along.

Once more, he plopped onto the couch and continued reading--he changed his mind about tag-team because he didn't want to give up the book to me. It was getting late, though, and some time past 11 pm he still had about 100 pages to go. "I don't want to go to soccer camp!" he whined. I told him that while he was at camp, it would give me a chance to catch up with him.

The next day, I read to the exact page where he was in the book. Back from camp, he focussed again on the couch, book in hand and puppies at his feet. That last 100 pages were excruciating. "Oh, not HIM!" he cried. At another point, "Mom, you're going to HATE this!" And finally, "Yes, YES, I knew she would do it!"

The final page read, he shut the book with a loud thump and woke up the puppies. It was my turn, and the book didn't disappoint me. No spoilers here--but I can tell you I know whether the rebels succeed, and also which boy Katniss chose in the end.

After plunging yourself into a world that spans over 1,000 pages, it's always a disappointment when you've come to the end. We certainly felt that sense of loss at the seventh installment of Harry Potter. You get to know those characters, and that world, and it's almost like a death in the family.

But how wonderful is it to celebrate the birth of a book. The anticipation of the release of Mockingjay captured our imaginations for months. We tooted our horns on August 24--today is the day! And as we saw the world play out, a surprise in the end, we left with a sense of happy melancholy.

And now Santino and I are asking ourselves--What's the next great book?

Parent Education and Test Success - It Doesn't Fall Far from the Tree

2010-08-24T21:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm still thinking about testing.

I've been crunching numbers lately. My focus group was three elementary schools in my local district. The statistics come from my school district's website and are available for everyone to see.

One interesting stat is parent level of education. Using stats developed by the California Department of Education, I pulled up information on these three schools that happen to be within about a 3 mile radius of each other. One of those is my school. Here are the stats:

Parent Education Levels

Source: California Dept of Education -- Assessment, Accountability and Awards Division

2009 Academic Performance Index (API) Report

My School percent

Not a high school graduate 31

High school graduate 41

Some college 16

College graduate 7

Graduate school 4

My School's 2009 API: 754

Nearby School #1 percent

Not a high school graduate 9

High school graduate 19

Some college 30

College graduate 27

Graduate school 16

Nearby School #1's 2009 API: 845

Nearby School #2 percent

Not a high school graduate 3

High school graduate 7

Some college 27

College graduate 35

Graduate School 28

Nearby School #2's 2009 API: 898

The "API" of a school is a numeric valuation based on the performance of students on a standards-based test given once a year. The goal is for all schools to have an API of 800 or greater. My school--in a working class and immigrant neighborhood--has been inching up toward 800 slowly but surely. "Nearby School #1" is a magnet school for gifted kids. "Nearby School #2" happens to be my son's old elementary school. If you add up the percentages of each school, they come to over 100%, but I assume this is because of how they rounded the decimals. So, my numbers below may be off by a percentage or two, but you'll get the idea.

Just to take a quick look at the stats, note that 72% of parents in the survey at My School never went to college. Compare this with 28% at Nearby School #1 and only 10% at Nearby School #2 who had no college experience.

Do you see that--as parent education level goes up, the API goes up?

Oh--and look at Nearby School #2 with the meteoric API of 898--90% have been to college, 63% are college grads, and a whopping 28% of the parents went to grad school. Amazing.

I really don't want to club you over the head with a baseball bat on this one, so I'll leave you to your own designs. Look at the numbers, check other schools, and see if you can find a similar correlation. Bon apetit!

Weighing in on Merit Pay -- Do YOU Want Bart Simpson Determining Your Salary?

2010-08-21T17:12:00.000-07:00

Fine, I'll weigh in on merit pay.

I'm for it.

My colleagues are gasping. My friends are confused. My former principal is smirking. How could I possibly approve of merit pay for teachers?

On a personal level, I have everything to gain from it. Teaching isn't my first gig. In fact, it's my fourth or fifth gig. In all my previous jobs, I've had some form of merit pay. Heck, I even suffered a few years in the corporate world, and we all know that merit pay comes with that territory. When merit pay is around, I fare well. And who determined the pay? My supervisors, with whom I worked closely.

I'm not afraid of it, and I welcome it.

However. (You knew it was coming.) And that's a big however.

Our school district, state, and federal government are all promoting merit pay for teachers. In fact, our school district is proposing a "value-added" component that bases your "merit" on the performance of your students on one standardized test they take in May.

Are you cringing now? I am.

Recently our local newspaper published an article preparing us for the worst. They hired a researcher from a local think-tank to review data from our school district and are going to publish a list of 6,000 elementary school teachers and their "ratings." These ratings are based on the improvement of individual students on the state testing (again--that one standardized test they take in May). The evaluation of teachers--what they are calling the value-added approach--is calculated as a percentile. Those at the top of the ranking are being labeled by the paper as "highly effective" teachers, and those at the bottom are "least effective."

Some cynics (and realists) think that this sensationalistic journalism was a move to increase readership in a floundering newspaper whose circulation has plummeted by 40% in the past 10 years. But I won't go there right now. I'll save my rant about the slow and painful demise of our beloved paper for another day.

Ironically, the school district this year is reporting that our test scores have gone up. So, when you are evaluating people on a percentile basis that is moving upward, someone still has to be at the bottom, right? Someone has to occupy the basement even if they are doing something "effective" in the classroom.

Now let's look at how colleges evaluate applicants. Do they look at only the SATs? No. Now that would be silly--it's just one test. Instead, the colleges look at a variety of indicators: SATs, grade point average, Achievement Tests, AP tests, essays, letters of recommendation, extra-curricular activities, and occasionally interviews. They look at a variety of measures and treat the incoming student as a whole person. If the colleges are looking at the "whole" student, why isn't the school district?

Here are the reasons I am against the district's proposal to use this particular value-added measure to evaluate and pay for a teacher's performance:

1. The state test is a flawed tool. It is under dispute and should not be used for something as serious as determination of performance and salary. I have previously written about this and could write volumes more--which I will do in later posts.

2. Kids who have great increases in performance on this test one year are more likely to fall back the following year. That means, as a teacher, if you get a class full of kids who "slid back" the previous year, you're in luck. If you get kids who made big gains, you'll have a tough time improving this year.

3. Believe me when I say this: for the most part, kids don't take this test seriously. It doesn't determine whether they move onto the next grade or not. It doesn't determine the grades on their report card. They don't even get the scores until months after they take the test, and even then, they don't know what they did right or wrong. The impact and import of the test is lost on them, so they don't care about it the way we teachers do, and the way we teachers would like them to care.

4. We teach to the whole child. What does that mean? Well, yes, we teach the standards. We teach them to write, and read, and do math. And we teach them how to take tests. But we also teach them how to think critically. We teach them how to solve problems. We teach them how to love reading. We work on their self-esteem, personal hygiene, social skills--we teach them how to play nice. How to be a good audience. How to be gracious. How to walk away from a fight. How are you going to assess that?

Regarding my own scores, last year I inherited a bunch of kids who had "slid back" the previous year. I lucked out, because there was a lot of room for improvement. Now that I've reviewed their test scores from May, only one of my kids slid back in language arts scores--and she went from "advanced" to "proficient." Twenty of my kids improved by one or two levels--and I feel sorry for the teacher that gets them next, because it will be hard to make gains after that.

I am amused that our newspaper reported that it found that teachers who worked at poorly performing schools fared better in the evaluations than those at highly performing schools. You know why? Because kids at "poorly performing" schools have nowhere to go but up. It's much easier to have a positive impact when such a high number of kids are scoring below the proficient level.

But let's get back to merit pay and value-added measures. The union's response to printing the database of teacher scores has been to boycott the newspaper. I laughed--I started boycotting this paper several years ago after The Tribune bought it in 2000 and began its destruction of our Pulitzer-winning paper. But aside from boycotting the paper and writing letters to the editor, the union doesn't give any concrete advice on how to deal with the situation in a meaningful way. They are relying on appealing to the public via a medium that has been attacking them for the past I-don't-know-how-many years. The newspaper has consistently portrayed us teachers as whiners and slackers. No amount of letters to the editor or boycott is going to change the minds of the public. The public already has their opinion.

The district's response? They love it--using this measure might help win the "Race to the Top" competition created by the Obama administration. Arne Duncan's support of (and love for) value-added measures and merit pay does not bode well for the teaching profession.

So, regarding the value-added measures to determine merit pay: I'm eager to see the fallout--I really do love a good trainwreck. What's going to happen?

• Teachers will flee to teach the lower grades (K-2) where there won't be this value-added measure.
• Teachers will run away from teaching gifted kids, because their test scores typically fluctuate between proficient and advanced--and let's hope that you don't get a kid when they're on the downslide.
• Teachers will be reluctant to teach the lowest special education kids who have much more difficulty moving up.
• Teachers will drill and kill. Haven't heard of that? It's another term for rote learning. To get the kids to perform on this test given once a year, we will have to drill them specifically on these kinds of test questions, thus killing the test-taking skill (that is, mastering it) and thereby killing the spirit of education. Goodbye 21st century learning, hello vapid memorization.
• Teachers are going to leave the profession. We are public servants, and we publicly serve in a hostile environment. If you're going to publish our percentile "scores" based on the performance of nine-year-olds and pay us accordingly, then please pay us more. Don't forget--Bart Simpson is a nine-year-old too.

The country's move toward a corporate model for education is laughable. But that's for another post. In the meantime, since I love a good horror movie, to the issue of merit pay I say: Bring it on.

Hey! I Taught You That!

2010-08-20T18:24:00.000-07:00

You get a free homework pass if you know who this is.*

Another day of testing, and I'm roaming around the classroom quietly as kids take their yearly state-issued standardized exams.

"Yes!" I think to myself as I see a kid get an answer right.

As I continue to roam around, I notice a few kids getting easy questions wrong. I think to myself,

"Hey, I taught you that!
You had it for homework!
You had it in class!
You had weekly quizzes!
And always you passed!
You answered my questions--who what why and how.
You showed me you mastered it, but why why not now?"

I'm not sure why kids do this on standardized tests--get easy questions wrong--questions for which I really prepared them. Maybe we make too much out of the testing. Maybe in stressing their importance, we stress out the kids. Year after year, I clench my teeth during testing. Sometimes my kids do really well, and sometimes not so well. I strategize, I teach them the standards, I have them practice and hone their test-taking skills, and yet--on that fateful day of testing--I am sure of only one thing: that I prepared them for the test. In no way am I ever sure that they will actually demonstrate that.

It comes down to this: I know I did my job. Will they do theirs?

I had one kid--Richard--who was arguably the best reader in my class. He was taking a weekly Open Court Reading comprehension test, and as he handed in the test, I quickly glanced at it. He missed four out of ten multiple choice questions.

"Richard," I said, "go back and check your answers before you hand this in." He glanced at it quickly, wrote his name at the top, and handed it back to me. "Sorry 'bout that," he said.

I grimaced. "Richard, not your name. Your answers. Check your answers." Again, he looked at it, scanned from top to bottom, and handed it back.

"Look, Richard. Go back to the story and write down the page number where you got the answer." Five minutes later he had written down the page numbers but hadn't changed one answer.

That's when I decided to sit down with him--just him--and go over every single question. He read the questions out loud, and then read each multiple choice answer. Finally the light bulb went on. "Oh, that's wrong. Why did I do that?" In response to his rhetorical question, I said nothing. He quickly went through the test, silently, and corrected all of his wrong answers.

Richard was one of my gifted students who underperformed in the state's standardized test the previous year. The tests give out five levels of results: Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic, and Far Below Basic. Last year, Richard scored "basic" in language arts. "Basic" is basically not passing. To pass, you need "proficient" or higher. This kid, who has a very high level of reading comprehension when you talk to him, was unable to demonstrate his reading skills consistently when he took a written test. The key word here is consistently.

During the year, I worked closely with him to make sure that he slowed down and paid attention to his tests. But on that fateful day in May, I worried--will he be too nervous to remember? Will he show the world that he's capable of scoring "advanced" on the language arts section? Or will he space out, yet again?

I'm talking about Richard in this post because it's important for everyone to understand that these standardized tests measure one very specific thing: how kids perform on this particular test. I knew Richard learned what I taught him this year. If you sit down and talk to him about anything he has read, he can speak volumes in a critical voice. He can tell you about figurative language, use a thesaurus, and write a persuasive essay. This kid is smart and applies his learning--both in his speech and his writing. But put a multiple choice test in front of him, and it's a crapshoot. Sometimes he does well, and other times--not so well.

You might argue--well, if he truly understands the material, he should be able to answer any question put in front of him. To be honest, it depends on the question. And the day of the week. Or his mood. What he had for breakfast. Oh--and are there police helicopters hovering above our school at the time?

He did do well on one particular type of multiple choice test--our Accelerated Reader program. In previous posts I mentioned how Richard had passed enough reading comprehension tests to enable him to be the first student at my school to read a million words, and later, two million words. On those 10-20 question tests, he routinely scored 90% or higher.

So, why did he score consistently well on Accelerated Reader, but not on the Open Court weekly tests?

Well, that's easy. He cared. With Accelerated Reader, we had class goals to meet (for example, one million words before Halloween). He chose the books he read, and which quizzes to take. He had a friendly competition with another student to see who could reach one million first. He had classmates cheering him on as he came closer to the two million word goal. His achievements on these daily tests were a classroom event, and the positive vibe in the class kept him motivated, interested, and smiling.

So, on that fateful day in May as Richard took his state standardized test and police helicopters circled above, I hoped and prayed and crossed my fingers. I know you can do it, Richard--now let's show the world.

Ultimately, Richard did extremely well on his test, improving his language arts score by two levels--he scored "advanced." I knew he could do it--he was prepared, after all. All he had to do was care. And for this test, in this year, he did.

Yeah, I taught him what he needed to learn in the fourth grade. But at the end of the day, what really makes a difference is what each individual kid brings to the table. And the most important thing Richard brought was: he cared.

* Robert Goddard, the father of modern rocketry

Testing 1-2-3

2010-08-16T09:24:00.000-07:00

"I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong." --Benjamin Franklin

Santino was in second grade and came home from school after a day of testing for the CSTs (California Standards Test). These are the annual tests kids take to determine a school's compliance with No Child Left Behind.

"Mom, Dad--what's an almanac?" I knew why he was asking that question, because as a second grade teacher, I had read that same question that day as I tested my kids at my school.

I looked at Santino's dad and decided to field the question. "It's an informational book about a specific subject. I used to have a baseball almanac that had statistics on baseball. Or you can have the farmer's almanac, which gives information on the weather."

Santino harrumphed. "Well, if you had to get information about stamp collecting, would you use a dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, or an almanac?"

Simultaneously, Santino's dad and I gave different answers. "Encyclopedia," said Dad. "Almanac," said Mom. Then my poor son waited patiently as his dad and I debated the question. Dad said that all encyclopedias will have information on stamps, and almanacs are inferior because you have to get the right kind of almanac. I countered that encyclopedias only have general information, so you would need a stamp almanac to get any useful information on stamp collecting. He never faltered from encyclopedia; I never strayed from almanac. We could not agree at all. We didn't even agree to disagree.

When two highly educated people disagree on a question posed to second-graders on a standardized test, it makes you wonder: what exactly are they testing? How useful and valid are these tests?

I don't know what testing was like before No Child Left Behind. I only know the tests I have been giving my students for the past seven years.

Anyone can download sample questions from the state's Department of Education website. As a teacher, you need to know not only what topics are covered on the test, but also how they are covered. For example, there are dozens of questions on the test about writing. How can you assess writing on a multiple choice test? One of their strategies is to have sample pieces of writing, and then have students select the best sentence or group of words to complete the writing piece.

I understand that assessing writing is a difficult standard to tackle, but let's be real--this isn't how we actually teach writing, or how we write, for that matter. According to the California content standards, students must be able to brainstorm, draft, edit, and publish a piece of writing--we call that the writing process. Literally, the fourth grade standard reads: "Edit and revise selected drafts to improve coherence and progression by adding, deleting, consolidating, and rearranging text." Nowhere in the standards for, say, fourth grade does it say that students have to be able to select the best possible sentence out of a group of sentences. I suppose you can defend that this is part of the editing process, but that's not how we really edit--selecting "the best" sentence out of many similar sentences. When I'm helping my kids with their revisions, I'm aiming for interesting, complex sentences that fit well in the writing piece and are grammatically correct.

As a writing instructor, I prefer the more organic approach. Give the kids a topic, and let them brainstorm and write. Certainly you review passages and talk about why one sentence would be better than another. But in order for them to perform well on the test, they must be able to do a very specific task: choose the "best" in a group of "good" sentences. This is harder than it sounds. They have to practice this over and over again--and do it well. You need to review with them in great detail--what makes this sentence better than that one? On the test, sometimes they stop when they get to a "good" sentence but not the "best" sentence. (And usually three out of the four choices are good.) Often kids just pick the longest sentence in the group, and so you have to address that issue too. Longer is not necessarily better. Forget about the fact that all year long, we've been teaching them to create depth (and consequently length) to their sentences by adding adjectives, adverbs, and dependent clauses.

You see, the questions on the test aren't designed to check that they merely understand and apply the concept. The questions are actually tricky and often very difficult. For example, in that selection of sentences as answers, the test makers include a very short but descriptive sentence (the right answer) and a very long but awkward sentence (the wrong answer). Good luck to you English learners who are speaking Spanish at home.

Oh--and don't get me going on mathematics testing for second graders. The math test for second graders is given orally. The teacher reads every question to the kids. The questions aren't written in their test booklets--only the answers. So, imagine that spacey--but smart--kid who wasn't quite listening as I read the question the first time, and the kid is still not listening the second time. "I didn't hear the question," says the second grader. "I'm sorry," I reply, "I can only read the question two times. You have to listen and pay attention." Or, what if they heard the question but need the visual cue to understand it? They don't have the question written down to check their understanding.

The math test for second graders becomes a test in listening comprehension. That's tricky for fidgety second graders and even trickier for kids learning English as a second language. I make it very clear to my kids: this is a test of your listening comprehension. I give my second graders practice oral tests in math just to get them used to hearing math questions without any visual reinforcement.

Also, the second graders don't benefit from that test-taking strategy of skipping the hard one and going back to it after your brain has had time to register the information. There is no "going over your work" in the second grade math test.

I could blather on and on about the problems with the standardized tests we are giving our kids in California. I've been told that earlier versions of the test were more reasonable and apparently did a better job of assessing learning.

It's hard to tell who or what the beast is in this situation. Is it the test? The standards? The requirements of No Child Left Behind that ALL students are proficient in all areas by the year 2014? I agree--assessment is a necessary tool to inform instruction. But how do you fix a broken tool?

Let me tell you what I want happening in my classroom. I want my kids to learn how to be critical thinkers. I want my kids to learn how to use reading as a source for information and learning about the world. My kids are 21st century learners, and I want to enable them to use the resources necessary (technology) to learn the way they know best. I want my kids to be able to communicate effectively. I want my kids to enjoy being nerds, to explore their interests, to engage in critical thinking, to love to learn and love to read. Of course--I'll teach the standards, but the standards are really only a framework for what's really important in education.

So what is the use of the test? Essentially we're testing our kids in order to see how the school is doing. We're supposed to use it to inform instruction, but instead it's being used to determine our funding, our ability to stay autonomous as a school, and rate our "effectiveness" as teachers.

What is this test, really? A measure of how well a student performs on this test.

Contronyms: Why I'm Glad I'm a Native English Speaker

2010-08-12T07:53:00.000-07:00

You are sleeping. The alarm goes off. You reach over and push the button to turn the alarm off.

Why is this sentence so confusing? It's because the word "off" is a contronym--a multiple-meaning word whose meanings are antonyms. In this sentence, the word off means at first to turn on, and then secondly to turn off. Who can stand that kind of confusion so early in the morning?

I stumbled upon contronyms when reading the wall post of one of my friends on Facebook. Quoting her teenage son, she wrote, "Antonym slang is just confusing." Having no clue what antonym slang is, I googled around and found something close--a listing for contronyms, or words that are their own antonyms.

For example, the word clip can mean detach and also fasten.

She clipped coupons out of the newspaper. Then she clipped them together with a paper clip.

dust: to add fine particles; to remove fine particles

He dusted the cake with a fine coat of chocolate powder. Then he dusted the powder off the kitchen counter.

sanction: approval, punishment

The school sanctions the sale of condoms in restrooms.

Good luck on this one, and please choose the correct definition.

Certainly, many of these contronyms are part of idiomatic expressions, like "go off" from the alarm clock example above. The word strike means to hit, but it also means to miss when you use the baseball term strike out. When put together with the word out, the meaning of the word strike changes. In some ways when the contronym is part of an idiomatic expression, it's even more confusing. Imagine trying to learn English and coming to this sentence:

When we tried to convince him to go to the party, we struck out.

You look up the word struck, which is tricky itself because it's an irregular verb. Then you find it means to hit. The word out means away from. So struck out means hit away from. Poor guy--his friends want him to go to the party so badly that they're willing to hit him. Luckily for him, they missed. Hmmm....I bet all those ballplayers who strike out wish they they were hitting that ball away from home plate.

There are zillions of reasons (at least 14) why I'm happy to be a native English speaker--contronyms is just one of them. It's the bomb.*

* bomb: a failure; a success

Creative Writing Through Theater - A Total Physical Response

2010-08-11T17:20:00.000-07:00

Try this one on for size.

Imagine you are at the beach. What sounds do you hear? Let's make a list of all the sounds you hear at the beach.

Now pick one of those sounds. On the count of three, make that sound and only that sound. Listen to the other sounds at the same time, and to the whole beach experience.

After you have listened to the sounds, write down a story about what happened at the beach. You have lost an object. That object is important to your family. Use the sounds you heard at the beach to make your story feel real.

I learned this technique during an outstanding class sponsored by the school district teaching how to use theater to deliver creative writing instruction. Two experienced and energetic theater teachers taught the class, and the fourteen students in class were willing participants in an acting and writing extravaganza.

Think of a moment in history. Using all of the actors in your group, create a tableau of that moment. That means everyone freezes in place to show that one moment.

Now point to all the actors in the tableau. What are they thinking? What's the dialogue? Write a story describing that moment.

By having our students act out moments in history, we are using the technique called "TPR"--Total Physical Response. When you use your body to learn, your brain has a better chance of remembering the event and consequently writing about it. The writing becomes interesting, thoughtful, and creative.

Take a look at this painting. Pick one thing in the painting--it can be a person, a plant, or an object--and as a group, re-create the painting just as it looks. You don't need to communicate to anyone, just go up and become your object. Now freeze.

Let's ask each person/object in the painting: What is your thought bubble? What are you thinking?

Think about the object or person you became. Write a story describing the scene from that perspective or point of view.

Again, using TPR the students have a better chance of understanding the moment and translating that into a solid piece of writing.

Doing theater in the classroom doesn't necessarily mean putting on plays. You can just have students act out ideas, concepts, questions--you name it. When they use their bodies and their words to demonstrate understanding and challenge their creativity, learning is effective and fun. And it builds self-esteem, too.

So, get out there and let the kids act!

Note to Self: Make Homework Fun and Relevant

2010-08-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

Homework is a touchy subject. Some people are absolutely for it. Others are completely against it. And many fall somewhere in between. In the face of increasing amounts of homework being hoisted onto schoolkids, numerous articles have come out making the case against homework.

An article in the Washington Post outlines some of the arguments against homework. And that icon of education, Scholastic, even posted an article blasting current homework practices. In a nutshell, they're saying that kids are receiving too much homework and it isn't helping much.

In our school district, homework is required for every grade--even kindergarten, if you can imagine that. Here are the guidelines for elementary school, K-5:
   Kinder 15-20 min
   1st 30-35
   2nd 30-35
   3rd 35-45
   4th 35-45
   5th 50-60

Students at my school are required to read for a certain amount of time on top of the homework.

As a parent, I know what goes on when kids have a lot of homework after school. They're tired, grumpy, and the more homework they have, the more crying that takes place--so it takes twice as along as the recommended homework time. It's wretched and often doesn't really add to their education. It just makes them hate school. See my earlier post, Paging Dr. House: Little Buddy Can't Do It Alone.

This past year I finally found a way to tackle the homework problem. I have two major issues with assigning homework:
1. It takes kids away from playtime and relaxing time after school; kids don't have a chance to recharge their batteries.
2. Many families in our neighborhood, who are working class and/or immigrant, can't help their kids with the homework when they are having difficulties.

I give out homework packets on Mondays, to be returned on Friday. By giving the entire week's homework on Monday, I accomplish a few things:
1. The kids and parents know what they are going to learn for the entire week. Learning is predictable, and I stay focussed.
2. In the event that the family has an event and the child can't do their homework one night, they can either plan ahead and do it early, or make it up later without my having to keep track of them.
3. I reduce the homework collection process to one day, saving instructional time.
4. Families that don't understand the homework have a few days to communicate with me about helping their child because the homework is only due on Fridays.

Each day, my students get one very short page of math and one short page of language arts--it shouldn't take them more than 20 minutes to do their homework, 30 tops. Sometimes I give an additional assignment that focuses on talking to their parents. On top of that, my students know I expect them to read every day.

So, a week's worth of homework might look like this:
Monday: Math p. 39, Language arts write sentences using vocabulary words
Tuesday: Math p. 40, Language arts review page from workbook
Wednesday: Math p. 41, Language arts reading comprehension page
Thursday: Math p. 42, Language arts write 5 similes

Once in a while I will add an assignment like, "Tell your parents the story about how George Washington died." Practicing their listening and speaking skills is critical, especially for English learners. Also, by keeping the homework light and interesting, I know the kids will do it and not get bogged down in a cycle of homework tantrums. If you are a teacher but not a parent, please believe me--this happens even to the best of kids.

On Friday mornings, we correct some of it, but not all of it. I make the act of correcting homework solid instructional time, so we really go over it carefully.

I encourage the kids to "make me laugh" with their sentences or stories. When it comes time to correct the homework on Fridays, all the kids want to read their stories or sentences to see if they can make me laugh. Also, vocabulary sentences are more productive than, say, copying spelling words over and over. It forces them to be engaged with the language and actually think about what they are doing. I only have them do a few sentences--usually 5 or 6, but 10 is tops. Trust me, this will save a lot of stress and crying at home, and the kids will not hate school because of homework.

And guess what? Homework becomes fun. My kids look forward to getting their packets on Monday and correcting them on Friday. Go figure!

But what I really want my kids to do is read, and read for fun. I tell them to read about 30 minutes a day, but I don't keep reading logs (another painful thing for parents to keep track of). I know how much they're reading by looking at the self-directed reading quizzes they take with our Accelerated Reader program. I don't care what they read--fiction, non-fiction, magazines, comic books, cereal boxes. It doesn't matter as long as they're engaging the language.

For vacation homework, they must read read read books and talk talk talk to their parents. Again, I want them engaging in language--whatever language that is.

Basically, here is the type of homework I find valuable:

1. Practice standards that don't get much coverage from the Open Court program (which is substantial)
Example: figurative language, fact/opinion
2. Review and practice math learned during the week or the previous week
3. Practice answering reading comprehension questions
4. Talk to parents about learning
5. Use vocabulary in a meaningful and creative way
6. Brainstorm for writing - thinking maps
7. Read, read, read

And by all means, make homework fun.

So Long, Dr. P--Don't Forget the Worms

2010-08-06T17:23:00.000-07:00

After a turbulent week of endless phone calls, emails, and texting--we have failed to keep our beloved principal at our school.

To remove a principal who was doing something--who had a plan--to remove him after only two years is like removing the President of the United States after two years. He had just gotten started. And we won't know where it could have gone. We were soaring ever higher at our school, and the sky had no limits.

The first day of school this year will be difficult. "Where's Dr. P?" the kids will say. I'll tell them that we have a wonderful new principal, and that Dr. P went to another school where they really needed him. And then they'll ask about the worms. You see, Dr. P promised that if the school's test scores went up by 12 or more points, that he would eat 12 live worms in front of the whole school in September. It's funny to think that eating worms will get kids motivated to perform well on a test, but sometimes it takes many different angles to accomplish our goal. Dr. P played basketball with them, chatted, showed his battle scars, laughed, joked, and he even promised to eat worms. The kids knew he cared about them and that he took them seriously.

I know the incoming principal comes highly recommended and I look forward to working with her. However she will certainly have her own stamp on the ongoing plans. And that's fine. I'm sure our school will continue to thrive. Still, it would have been nice to see what would have happened with Dr. P. still at the helm.

What good has come of this? I am comforted by the fact that our community came together to fight for its right to be considered by the school district respectfully and thoughtfully. I am happy that the families were able to come to a consensus on something--that this principal was good for the school and for the community at large. I am impressed that many parents who were too shy to speak, spoke up for their right to be heard and taken seriously. Sometimes we find our voice when we are under duress.

Goodbye, Dr. P. It was a good ride, and I know we will always keep in contact. I'm hoping that in September, you come back and eat some worms with the kids.

Eight years, Four Principals

2010-07-28T21:10:00.000-07:00

Last year, the district threatened to make our principal's position to be half-time. I created this video, "One Principal, Two Schools," to convince the school board that this was a bad idea.

One Principal, Two Schools from Gina Amodeo on Vimeo.

Now it's July and we find out that our principal has been relocated to another school. Next year will be my eighth year at my school, and the new principal will be my fourth principal. How crazy is that?

Our school: full of English learners, surrounded by gang activity, working hard to improve each year. The school district is like the military, deploying its soldiers wherever they want. But they don't look at school culture, or even the importance of continuity. We're working in the trenches here. It would be nice if you gave us some kind of stability.

Just sayin'.

Space and the Ergonomics of Thinking

2010-07-22T20:56:00.000-07:00

My days of summer are divided into various activities. Read. Write. Play piano. Pull weeds. Water plants. Rinse. Repeat.

I cherish these down times because I know when the school year starts, things heat up. My plants die. The weeds take over my house. And I forget to pay my bills. (See my previous post on spring break.)

Anyway, today was special because I had absolutely nothing planned, which means I would be reading, writing, playing the piano, and pulling weeds. What a perfect day. There was a wrinkle, though.

My son Santino had a friend over today. Our house is small, so the main area of congregation is our living room. Two couches, television, connected to the kitchen. There's not much going on in our bedrooms, not much furniture or infrastructure, so we basically spend 90% of our waking moments in the living room. While Santino and his friend flopped on the couches to hang out, I relegated myself to the dining room table, which is connected to our living room--it's one big living space. I decided to work on writing an entry for this blog.

I floundered as I tried to remember what I was going to write about. Think think think. Yesterday I had dozens of ideas, mostly connected to using technology in the classroom. Today these gems have dissipated into the dusty trails of my mind's canyons.

I know what the problem is. It's the ergonomics of thinking. I can't think sitting on a chair, at a table. I mean, I can do it, but for some reason the chi doesn't flow properly. I need to slouch on a couch. But I don't feel bad about that. I'm not a couch potato--much. In fact, I'm extremely active when I'm on the couch. I read, I write, I multi-task. But there's something about having my body at a greater-than-90-degree angle that helps me think. Heck, they have a couch in the Oval Office, so there might be something to this ergonomics of thinking.

Yes, that's Barack Obama moving a couch in the Oval Office.

This made me think of my own classroom. Kids do most of their work at their desks, right? But that's confining, and what might seem to be a great area to work might not pan out that way later. I've had carpets in the past (last year, my carpets mysteriously disappeared). Once you tell the kids, okay you can work on the carpets, you'd think you'd have the whole class running there, goofing off, and not getting work done. That's not even close to the truth.

Kids tend to self-select with working on the carpet or other unusual places. Some kids like to lie down, others sit cross-legged, and still others prefer to work at their desks. When kids lie down on their bellies, they usually lie in groups, forming a star with their heads at the center. That way, they can collaborate.

Give them laptops, and they're more likely to work at their desks. But they push their chairs around to find the best angle so they can share the hardware.

This year, I bought a few simple rugs for the classroom. I'm hoping those rug-sitters will find a good place to think.

Admittedly, even though I wrote this blog post at a table sitting on a straight chair, I was still able to create. It was hard coming and really hurt my brain, though. I'm looking forward to going back to the couch, where I can slouch and think.

Shaking the Money Tree: Free Stuff for Teachers

2010-07-19T23:00:00.000-07:00

Nobody chooses the teaching profession for financial gain.

Having said that, there's a lot of money out there for teachers in the form of grants.

My favorite website is Donorschoose.org. I first heard about Donorschoose from an instructor in our teaching credential program. He called it "eBay for teachers." Well, that's kind of close. It's more like couch potato philanthropy. Teachers post projects online for review (okay, that part is like eBay). Then donors like you and me select the projects to fund. Voila! Free stuff for teachers.

Through Donorschoose.org, I have added several laptops, hundreds of books, and dozens of musical instruments to my classroom. To be eligible, you must teach in a public school. You must have direct contact with students, so administrators can't apply. But if you need anything--pencils, paper, digital cameras, you name it--this is the place to go. Grant proposals can be submitted any time and are online for 5 months or until they are funded.

If you're in California, try applying for the FEDCO Teacher Grants. These are especially good for field trips. They administer the grants once a year, and grants need to be tied to core curriculum standards. Usually the grants are due in late September and checks are sent to the teacher some time in February.

Another California grant is the Richard Riordan Recreational Reading Mini-Grant. These grants pay for up to $1,000 in library books for your classroom. In 2009, grants were due at the end of November.

Kathy Shrock's Guide for Educators provides lots of helpful links for the grant-writing process.

It's hard to teach without spending your own money, but at least there are ways to relieve the burden. Good luck!