Review: Shakespeare Bats Cleanup - Ron Koertge

Shakespeare Bats Cleanup

by Ron Koertge

Ages 10+

116 pages

Candlewick, March 2003



English teachers, take note: hand this book to your students, and you can teach them poetry little by little, almost without effort.  Isn't that the power of poetry: to instruct subtly without you even knowing you're learning?

Kevin, once MVP on his school ball team, now is laid up with mono.  He writes in his journal to escape the monotony of his illness, but also to reflect on the loss of his mother, girlfriends, baseball and other issues of importance.  As he begins to claim his identity as an author, he struggles with his changing identity as a baseball player.

Kevin begins with the familiar haiku and then moves on to more complex forms, including sonnets, a pantoum, a ballad, blank verse, a sestina, couplets and a pastoral.  I enjoyed reading each form before learning its name, as Koertge demonstrates the type of poem before explaining what it is.  He discusses structure, scansion, rhyming and similes in passing, almost offhandedly, and uses the ongoing metaphor of baseball to help keep things concrete.

I was planning to read Hate That Cat to my 5th graders (as a follow-up to Love That Dog, which I read aloud to many of them in 3rd grade), but now I am considering reading this one.  I'm going to have to ask them if they'd be embarrassed having me read about sex and stuff.  There's nothing inappropriate for middle schoolers, but having your librarian read about making out might be more than they can handle.  Maybe better to leave it to them.  I could read All the Broken Pieces.  Hmmm.  Hard to choose -- they're all so good.

Teaching idea: after reading the novel, students respond in their reader response journals with one of the poetic forms Kevin used.

Nominated for the Louisiana Young Reader's Choice Award, 2006.

Question for you: what other books do you recommend for middle school boys?

Ratings

• Awesomeness: 8 - tight and clever, with just the right amount of poetry instruction.
  
• Wordsmithing: 7 - no heavy punches here; even Kevin's mother's death is presented with a light hand, but excellent poetic examples.
  
• Personages: 7 - Kevin is likeable but not outside the realm of normal boy.
  
• Mesmerizitude: 7 - a quick read; it kept me interested.
• Factfulness: 7 - taught me more about poetry than the best instruction manual.
  

Other Reviews'n'Stuff

• at lection
• at bookshelves of doom
• at Finding Wonderland
• recommended on Common Sense Media
• interviews with Ron Koertge at Through the Looking Glass and Cynsations
• lesson plans at the State Library of Indiana web site
• more novels in verse | still more novels in verse

Review: The Yearling - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The Yearling

by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Ages 10+

400 pages



I read this book for the YA Through the Decades challenge (book 1!).

I loved the perpetual question asked in the book: how would they be challenged next?  There was no question it would happen, nor did it feel excessive or overly dramatic.  It was just the way life was in the northern Florida swamp.  Yet even though the question of survival was always on Jody's family's mind, it was never so sharp and immediate as it was in the last chapter, where Jody ran away from home and discovered his own truth: in the end, when one is hungry, animals must be food.  It is eat, or die - no questions asked, no morality, just truth.

I'm listening to another book, Farm City, that discusses this idea, but clearly in our "civilized" world, it is a choice to eat animals for food.  The author embarks upon a month-long experiment to see if she can successfully feed herself on her own garden and animals for one month.   She talks about how she wasn't sure if she could kill her rabbits, being mammals like her, but discovers in the hungry moment that it didn't matter that much.  Food is food, and she is grateful for it.  I think perhaps with Jody being so emotionally tied to Flag that he has crossed a line, but I suspect, had it been necessary, Jody would have been able to eat Flag's meat, with appreciation for what Flag did for him.

Oh, and can I just say?  You know you've really made it when your book gets its own publishing imprint.  Not to mention its own Wikipedia entry.

Ratings

• Awesomeness: 7 - never ponderous even in its tome-like length, this is a great survival story.
  
• Wordsmithing: 8 - Rawlings does a spectacular job evoking the language and attitudes of the people of rural Florida of this time period, but the true magic is in her description of the swamp.
  
• Personages: 7 - several characters were flat, but Jody and his family are multifaceted and fascinating to read.
  
• Mesmerizitude: 8 - I found myself reading bits of it under the covers on my iPhone in the middle of the night.

Review: From Cover to Cover: Evaluating and Reviewing Children's Books - Kathleen T. Horning

From Cover to Cover: Evaluating and Reviewing Children's Books

by Kathleen T. Horning

Adult

230 pages

HarperCollins, February 1997



As a librarian, I've had myriad opportunities to review children's literature on the fly, in the form of booktalks and newsletter reviews, but it wasn't until I started writing this blog last year that I've looked critically at my skill as a writer and reviewer.  Reading From Cover to Cover was a gift to myself to help me write better and more informative reviews, and I highly recommend all bloggers do the same.

From Cover to Cover is written in a friendly, readable style, using a format designed for easy reference. It uses all the best features of nonfiction to guide the reader to the information she is looking for.  Horning begins with an explanation of how children's books are published, the parts of a book and various categories of children's books.  Then she methodically covers each type of children's literature:  nonfiction, traditional literature, poetry, picture books, easy readers and transitional books, and fiction. She concludes with a short chapter on writing a review.

One of the nicest elements of From Cover to Cover is the use of mentor texts to exemplify each aspect of children's literature.  Horning has a long, juicy list of recommended titles in each chapter.  I can see I'll have to devote a chunk of my summer to reading all those books!

I was thrilled to see that From Cover to Cover will be released this April in a revised edition!  You can bet I'll be picking up a copy to have on my reference shelf.

Horning has received multiple awards and commendations, including the 2009 Scholastic Library Publishing Award.  She is a former president of ALSC and a Newbery Award chair.  She is currently director of the CCBC and will be delivering the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture this year.

Ratings

• Awesomeness: 8 - an excellent resource for all reviewers.
  
• Wordsmithing: 7 - written simply and clearly.
• Mesmerizitude: 8 - I breezed through these 200+ pages in a day, but came away full of ideas.
• Factfulness: 9 - superior content, both presentation of elements of literature and recommendations of exemplary texts.
  

Other Reviews'n'Stuff

• at A Garden of Books
• Read an excellent interview with Horning in SLJ (July 2009)

Catching up

Boy, it's been a heck of a month.  Practically no posts this month -- it reflects my ability to stay awake at the computer at night.  I've kept up with reading, but I have many partially finished reviews.  I'm very glad to say I'm on vacation for one week, and I'm planning to use this time to its fullest!

Goals for my vacation:

1. Spend time with kids! ... including reading to them.  I hardly ever do this during the week because I just see them before bed, other than a bedtime story.  I'd like to ramp this up and do more reading.
2. Read!  I have several books I've put off reading, and I want to get caught up.  This means at least 2 books per day over break.  Yikes!
3. Review!  I want to finish all the reviews I've been putting off, and also review all the books I read this week.  I won't deluge you with reviews, but I'll save them over the next month and release one or two a day.
4. Read blogs!  My blog reading has seriously deteriorated, and I miss it.  I've spent some time culling my email down to professional-only (LM-NET and child-lit, mostly, with a few organizational lists) and now it's manageable.  I have to check out Google Reader on my iPhone to see if it's doable.  That could help me keep caught up.  Otherwise, I will have to plan a block or two of blog-reading time each day.  
5. Do my (our) taxes.
6. Plan my next 5 weeks of classes, and outline the remainder of the year.
7. Spend 1/2 day at work cleaning and sorting my office.
8. Do odd jobs around the house, like hang pictures and sort papers.  
9. Enjoy my birthday (Friday) and get lots of free things at restaurants.  =)

This is doable, but I will need to figure out priorities tomorrow morning while doing laundry.  

Here's a participation question: what do you do first when you go on vacation?  Clean your house?  Sleep in?  Tackle those big projects or do nothing?  Plan or go spontaneous?  

Nonfiction Monday: Extra Cheese, Please! - Cris Peterson

Extra Cheese, Please!

by Cris Peterson, photos by Alvis Upitis

Ages 4-8

32 pages

Boyds Mills Press, 1994

It's Nonfiction Monday (see the roundup this week at Great Kid Books) and I have another book about cows!  (My school is planning to buy a cow to support Heifer International during this year's March is Reading Month (MIRM), so I checked out all the books on cows and milk we had in our public library. You'll see several of these reviews come up over the next few weeks.)

Cris Peterson, the author of eight books on farming and agriculture for children, is a full time dairy farmer in Wisconsin.  She is also the author of Huckleberry Bookshelf, a syndicated weekly column on children's literature.  She and photographer Alvis Upitis have created this excellent nonfiction book on how milk is made into mozzarella cheese.  Peterson won the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation Children's Literature Award for Extra Cheese, Please! as well as for four other of her books.

Description:

When Cris Peterson's cow Annabelle gives birth to a calf, an amazing process begins. Now Annabelle can produce milk--about 40,000 glasses of milk each year, or enough cheese to top 1,800 pizzas. Alvis Upitis's sparkling photographs document the cheese-making process--starting on the farm where Annabelle's calf is born and milking begins, then moving to the cheese-making plant where the milk is heated and cooled, stirred and swirled, thickened, drained, and sliced--and finally packaged for stores. Cris Peterson's personal and informative text explains the process in a simple and engaging manner. Mr. Uptits's photographs capture moments on the farm with the cows and the calves and reveal an inside view of the cheese-making process. A wonderful collaboration, concluding with the author's own recipe for pizza.

The writing is about as technical as in Aliki's book on milk, which is to say perfectly accessible to younger readers, but complicated enough to satisfy students who appreciate technology.  The text is peppered with fun similes ("The bricks of cheese float like overgrown building blocks in a bathtub.") that make it easy for students to visualize the process.  Because it's illustrated with photographs, this will be a good compliment to Aliki's book, too. 

Oh, and I was hoping for instructions on how to make cheese, but instead there's a pizza recipe.  Perhaps I'll try it and bring in the results for students to taste!  (Too bad we had to take out the kitchen to install the book room...)

Lesson ideas: 

• While reading, students listen for ways in which owning a cow would be beneficial for Heifer International donor families.  Scribe a class list after reading.  
• Use the description of cheesemaking to guide students in writing their own how-to book on making mozzarella.  Then, make cheese using a kit.
• Research one of the villages serviced by Heifer International.  Using the figures given in the book on how much cheese a cow can produce, determine how many cows a village would need in order to provide cheese for all residents.

Additional Resources

• Here's a brief lesson plan for 2nd-3rd grade provided by Powell Center on identifying natural, capital and human resources. (PDF)
• Oregon State Extension has a module in their Start Smart Eating and Reading breakfast program for 1st-2nd grade about milk and calcium.  (PDF)
• The curriculum Bringing History Home uses More Cheese, Please! to teach about assembly line production.
• The Missouri Farm Bureau and Missouri State University present a webquest called Dig Into Dairy, in which students learn about different cattle breeds in the United States.  

Ratings

• Awesomeness: 5 - a very useful book for teaching the how-to style
  
• Wordsmithing: 6 - clear description of a technical process
• Mesmerizitude: 5 - I'm only slightly interested in factory cheesemaking
  
• Photographs: 6 - very clear
  
• Factfulness: 5 - just enough for younger students, but would have loved additional info

January Check-In

I'm trying a lot of new things this year with this blog, and I'm pretty happy with how things are going.  It is more work, but I feel it is more rewarding as well.  I'm working on pacing my reading better, but already I'm getting behind.  I'm keeping track of my reading using an Excel spreadsheet downloaded from another generous blogger, but I'm ashamed to say I can't remember who it was!  I love it, whoever you are.

Total books read or listened to so far this year (not counting books read while teaching): 16

Nonfiction

• Eleanor, Quiet No More (biography)
• Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (biography)
• Green Grass and White Milk (informational)

Middle Grade

• Love, Aubrey
• The Unfinished Angel

Picture Books

• The Mitten

Audiobooks

• Heroes of the Valley (not reviewed - somewhat too long but really well crafted, with three dimensional characters and a smashing, gruesome conclusion... but really, I think reading Powers ruined me for any other coming-of-age fantasy quests)
• Shug (not reviewed - great characters; reminded me of Rules)
• Farm City (currently listening - interesting, but not as good as some other eco-memoirs I've read in the last few years; the writing is funny but somewhat abrasive, and I haven't developed much love for the family yet)

Graphic Novels

• Stitches (not reviewed - amazing and powerful; reminded me of Blankets)

Challenges

• YA Through the Ages: This is my most challenging challenge, because there are so many books I chose to read.  I just finished The Yearling.  Whew!  It took me longer than anticipated.  I'm quite behind on my schedule, but I hope to catch up over February break.  Next is Seventeenth Summer.
• Take Another Chance: I finished #1 (Read Your Doppelganger) and have started #2 (Blogroll Roulette), so I'm right on schedule with this one.
• Clover, Bee and Reverie (poetry): I've scheduled my poetry reading (all poetic novels) for this one for February and March, so there will be lots coming up.  I just read my first book yesterday, All the Broken Pieces.
• Original TBR: I scheduled one per month here.  I should be reading Dove and Sword this week, but I'm swamped with other reading and ack!  I hope I don't get too behind.  
• Read'n'Review: I'm doing well here -- I've actually reviewed just about all the books I've read so far this year, which is a huge improvement over last year!  I have not reviewed many of the audiobooks, though.  I'm not sure if I plan to include these or not.  It's hard to write review notes when I'm walking around or driving while listening.
• Finish That Series: This is a very brief challenge for me, and I'm only participating at the lowest level.  It was really just an incentive for me to actually read/listen to Inkheart once and for all.  I've done one book so far and it was very good!
• GLBT Challenge: I still need to come up with a list of books, but I read Tango Makes Three and wrote a mini-challenge piece on why I am doing this challenge.

Memes, Themes and Other Writing

• I reviewed my last year experience and made some goals for this year. 
• I've done a few Nonfiction Monday entries, which is helping me keep up on  my nonfiction reading.
• I'm trying out Booking Through Thursday.  Themes this month were Favorite Unknown and Twisty Endings.
• I did one Saturday Review, though it's hard for me to sit down at the computer on the weekend.
• Memes to try in the future: Poetry Friday, Fairy Tale Friday and Saturday Network.  
• I participated in Bloggiesta this January, which was a blast and so helpful to get my blog spruced up for the new year!  I highly recommend it.
• I compiled my list of favorite middle grade books for Betsy Bird's 100 best poll at Fuse 8.  I loved her picture book poll and can't wait to see the favorite books revealed this year.

Allen Mock Caldecott 2010 finalists

My three second-grade classes looked at a ton of 2009 fiction and nonfiction picture books, and out of all of them, here are the ones they chose as finalists:

         
 

A Book by Mordecai Gerstein
Robot Zot by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by David Shannon
The Terrible Plop by Ursula Dubosarsky, illustrated by Andrew Joyner (not eligible for the Caldecott because it was published in Australia)
I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll, illustrated by Howard McWilliam
Dinotrux by Chris Gall
Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld
Higher! Higher! by Leslie Patricelli
Harry and Horsie by Katie Van Camp, illustrated by Lincoln Agnew
The Book That Eats People by John Perry, illustrated by Mark Fearing
Nasreen's Secret School by Jeanette Winter
Alphabeasties and Other Amazing Types by Sharon Werner, illustrated by Sarah Forss
The Goblin and the Empty Chair by Mem Fox, illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon

I suspect the quieter titles will lose out to the funnier, more splashy books.  The Book That Eats People is written by a local author, so I'm kind of hoping it wins.  I'm also very fond of Goblin in the Empty Chair (the mysterious ending is so compelling!) and A Book is fantastic.  Robot Zot has been a big favorite, though, and I bet that will prevail.

I have one more week of reading these aloud to two more classes; after that, they will choose their favorites and start debating.  I've never done the debate with second grade before, so it'll be interesting to see how they manage it.  It'll be pretty scripted: I made a form with room for the title and why they think it should win.  We'll begin with a discussion about what makes good illustrations to keep them focused on the pictures rather than the story.

I think I will have a contest with the older students to come up with a name and rules for our annual Allen picture book award.  This will be the third year we've done this process, and it would be very cool to have a shiny medal to put on all those books.  I wonder if there's a place I could produce a custom shiny embossed medal??  Hmmm...

Let me just point out some themes:

• Scary books.  I Need My Monster and The Book That Eats People were both scary enough to get my second-graders quivering in their silent little shoes.  I think they were disappointed that the Goblin in the Empty Chair were not more scary -- I mean, the word "goblin" should have been a tip-off, right?  Wrong.  They still liked it, though.  
• Two books with two exclamation points in the title!!
• At least three qualify as preschool titles; it is interesting that 7-year-olds would choose them.

I will review each of these titles over the next few weeks.

Nonfiction Monday: Eleanor Quiet No More - Doreen Rappaport

Eleanor Quiet No More by Doreen Rappaport, illustrated by Gary Kelley Ages 4-8 48 pages Hyperion Books, February 2009

Eleanor was a serious child.  Her parents died when she was ten.  Even though she had money, she was poor in love and affection.  She was taught to be quiet and not speak up for herself or others.  But Eleanor's compassion was awakened as she matured, and she found many opportunities to help others all over the world, by herself, as First Lady and, later, for the United Nations.  


This picture book biography is in the same style as Rappaport's Martin's Big Words, which is a staple for reading at any time of the year in my school.  It combines description with quotes from King and others in his life.  The format works equally well to tell Roosevelt's story.  I found myself tearing up at her selfless and inclusive actions.  


It includes that most useful of all biographical tools, a timeline, in the back, as well as several suggestions for more reading.  I would have loved a list of references for each quote, but I doubt it would be important to the intended audience.

I've always been fond of Eleanor Roosevelt.  She seemed to me a sensible, funny individual.  Now I'm inspired to learn more -- which, I think, is the ultimate goal of any nonfiction book.  Another fine achievement by Doreen Rappaport.

A Recommended book listed by the Orbus Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children.

Ratings

• Awesomeness: 7 - memorable and significant contribution to the picture book biography genre
  
• Wordsmithing: 8 - a lovely selection of quotes in particular
• Mesmerizitude: 6 - enjoyable read
  
• Illustrations: 7 - muted colors emphasize the challenges of the time and Roosevelt's plain appearance
  
• Factfulness: 6 - concentrates on Roosevelt's character rather than facts about her, but highlights some interesting moments
  

Other Reviews - one lone review at readerbuzz -- write a comment if you know of another!