48-Hour Book Challenge - pledge for the Little Lake Free School!

Here's the letter I put together to send to the Little Lake Free School support community:

Hi there -- I'm Maggi, one of the folks hiding in the wings of the wonderful Little Lake Free School.  I'm sorry I haven't yet written an intro, but if you've been to any of the intro sessions, I'm the REALLY tall woman with red hair.  Can't miss me.

I'm an educator and librarian by day, a mommy and cohouser by night, but in my free time, I am a children's literature blogger at Mama Librarian (http://mamalibrarian.blogspot.com/). I love to read and write about kids' books.  

Coming up in two weeks is an event I'm really looking forward to: the annual 48-Hour Book Challenge, hosted by another kidlit blogger.  You can read more about it here: http://www.motherreader.com/2010/05/fifth-annual-48-hour-book-challenge.html

Many bloggers will be reading in support of their favorite charity, and I'm putting forth my hat to collect pledges for the Little Lake Free School.  My goal is to read as many hours as I can in the 48 hour slot allotted to me.  Of course, there will be some sleeping and childcare in there, but nearly all other moments of those two days will be spent reading and blogging about it.  

My goal is to read for 30 HOURS.   Do you think I can do it??  Your donations would go a long way toward encouraging me to really GO for it!

My suggested pledge is five cents per minute.  That would be a $3 donation per hour I read.  Boy, I haven't worked for $3/hour in a long time.  =)   If I reach my goal, that would be a donation of $90.  Sound like too much?  How about ONE CENT per minute?  I bet you have a big jar of pennies somewhere.  =)

I will provide incentives, too!!  I have a large (think over 1500 titles) library of books.  Many great picture books, children's novels, fantasy & SF, rare titles on midwifery, teaching, community and more!  For every $0.05 (five minute) per hour pledge you make, you can choose one book from my library.  I'll even mail it to you if you're not from Ann Arbor!  (You can peruse a catalog of my library at my librarything: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/nubianamy but I own many, many titles I haven't yet added!).  

I also have some great AUTOGRAPHED books!  Most recently I had four beautiful brand-new picture books signed by the fantastic author/illustrator Chris Van Allsburg, author of The Polar Express.  Other autographed copies I have include books by John Perry, Johnathan Rand, Gary Paulsen, Lauren Myracle, and lots more.  I will donate a SIGNED book to any donors willing to pledge $0.10 (ten cents) per minute I read in 48 hours.

Every penny donated to LLFS through this challenge will be fed through the Kickstarter program to help LLFS reach their goal there.  But, if the Kickstarter goal is not reached, I'll still be passing this money on to LLFS.  It's win-win!!

Please feel free to email (or comment here) with questions and pledges, and pass this on to friends of democratic schooling (or anyone who might want a great free book).  And thanks for all you do for LLFS!

48-Hour Book Challenge - oKAY, oKAY. I'm in.

I can't remember in whose blog I first noticed MotherReader's 48-Hour Book Challenge, but I do recall my response was, "Ohhh, good thing I really don't have time for that."

Then the second time I saw it, I thought, "Boy, that looks fun!  Still - absolutely no time."

Ten plus posts later... Sheesh.  Nothing like peer pressure to get me off my butt.  (Or, more precisely, onto my butt -- reading.)  So, yes, I'm in!

The rules are very precise, and they only allow chapter books at around a 5th grade level and up.  So I think I shall compile an alluring stack of novels to keep me reading.  Graphic novels ARE allowed, and I suspect I will mix quite a few of those into the stack, but I have read most of the ones I had checked out of the library.  Time to delve into the ol' Goodreads TBR pile, which, last I checked, has exceeded 500 titles.  Also, this is a perfect time to catch up on all the books I haven't read for various challenges, especially the YA books I've neglected throughout the school year.  The rules also say one audiobook is OK, so that will have to be a pretty hefty audiobook to keep me going through the more ambulatory portions of my scheduled 48 hours.

I will also be informing my husband that I will be busy reading for most of the weekend.  This should allow for more uninterrupted chunks of reading time.  Maybe.  However, my schedule also says I have a party to attend on Sunday afternoon, so that may preclude some reading.

My start time will be 10 pm on Friday (late enough I can be sure the kids will actually be sleeping, early enough I can still read quite a bit before falling asleep).  This puts my ending time at 10pm Sunday.  Perfect timing to crash into bed for work on Monday.

And this is also a perfect opportunity to support my favorite charity, the Little Lake Free School, the democratic school I'm helping get ready to open its big wide arms in September 2010!   If you would like to help support LLFS and are willing to donate a small amount for the time I read/blog -- say, $0.05 per minute read?  That would only be $3/hour!  You can afford that, right?? -- please email me or post a comment here.  I will put all the money I raise in this effort toward their Kickstarter, which will take them just that much closer to their goal.

Now I'm starting to get excited... and trying not to think about all the office-cleaning, packing and other tasks I have to do at work.

Booking Through Thursday: Useful

Booking Through Thursday is a question-of-the-week meme.  This week's question:

What’s the most useful book you’ve ever read? And, why?

I have not posted much about this part of my life here, but once upon a time, I was a doula.   I saw this as a step along the journey to becoming a midwife, which is something I may still want to do someday.  I was privileged to attend several births in different locations, some in hospital and some at home, the effect of which ten years later was to guide my own decision to have children at home.

I've read a lot -- more than, say, fifty -- books about childbirth.  Some were more technical and some were more spiritual.  But the most useful book by far was Henci Goer's landmark text, Obstetric Myths Vs. Research Realities.  Most midwives would point you to Goer's newer and more accessible book, The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth, but I preferred the earlier one.  It was denser and aimed more at care providers than at pregnant women themselves, but reading it empowered me enormously.

When I hear about women choosing to have babies in the hospital because they are afraid of what might happen at home, I give them this book.

You can read a good portion of it on Google Books here.

I am absolutely thrilled to discover that she is working on a second edition!

Review: When the Whistle Blows - Fran Slayton

When the Whistle Blows

by Fran Slayton

Ages 9-12

160 pages

Philomel, June 2009

Summary from Amazon:

Jimmy lives in Rowlesburg, West Virginia, during the 1940s. He does all the things boys do in the small mountain town: plays a mean game of football, pulls the unforgettable Halloween prank with his friends in “the Platoon,” and promises to head off into the woods on the first day of hunting season— no matter what. He also knows his father belongs to a secret society, and is determined to uncover the mysteries behind it! But it is a midnight encounter with a train that shows Jimmy the man his father really is.

I was captivated by these vignettes of a rural railroad community in the 1940s. Rowlesburg is a West Virginia steam train town on the cusp of the diesel revolution.  Jimmy is twelve in the first chapter, which takes place on one day -- All Hallows' Eve, to be precise. Each chapter carries the reader one year later in Jimmy's life, with its consummate trials, tests and triumphs.

This short middle-grade novel is a winner. The voice of a growing adolescent is authentic and the historic setting springs to life on every page. Think Stand By Me.

It's funny, too. Here's a taste: "I spit hard onto the ground. The spit is good quality -- heavy and thick with no lumps -- and it comes out in a perfect, spinning wad that slaps itself onto the ground just like the way I'd like to slap Stubby upside the head."

On the other hand, I'm not sure if this will appeal to my typical middle grade boy readers. The content is all boy -- football, trains, gross practical jokes, dead bodies -- but the actual story mostly takes place in Jimmy's head. Although the pacing is fairly quick and the stories are engaging, I'm not sure if it has enough dialogue or action to carry the day.

In addition, it's rife with emotion. Jimmy deals with some pretty intense feelings through the course of seven years. I would like to think this will not put boys off, but the sexist cynic in me wonders. It reminds me of the kind of "I love you, man" melodrama that women writers think men feel, but men themselves scoff at. I guess in the end, being a girl reader myself, I will have to try this out on some boys-who-only-read-boy-books and see what they think.

I would give this to readers of Richard Peck and kids who liked Heart of a Shepherd (another excellent book, by the way).

Ratings

• Awesomeness: 7 - quietly unassuming, but packs a punch
  
• Wordsmithing: 6 - vocabulary is straightforward and does not demand much of the reader
  
• Personages: 7 - memorable characters are familiar but still three dimensional
  
• Mesmerizitude: 6 - chapters were short, just right to consume in small bites

Other Reviews - and wow, there are a lot of them!  I am assuming this is because Fran is herself a blogger.

• at Books, Books Everywhere!
• at Bookends and again
• at 100 Scope Notes
• at Everyday Reading
• at The Reading Zone
• at Jen Robinson's Book Page
• at Beckwith's Book Blog
• at Donna St. Cyr
• at Not Acting My Age
• at Frenetic Reader
• at Iron Inklings
• at Galleysmith
• at Booking Mama (with an author video)
• at Capricious Reader
• at Carrie's YA Bookshelf
• Author interviews here and here and here

Booking Through Thursday: Half

Booking Through Thursday asks:

So … you’re halfway through a book and you’re hating it. It’s boring. It’s trite. It’s badly written. But … you’ve invested all this time to reading the first half.

What do you do? Read the second half? Just to finish out the story? Find out what happens?

Or, cut your losses and dump the second half?

Honestly, I don't tend to read books I don't like.  I'm very selective about my  books.  I read from recommended and award lists.  Mostly I love every book I read.  I certainly won't get through a half of a book before I decide I don't like it -- I'll just put it down and read something else.  Sometimes I get back to a book after some time and I do enjoy it. 

I'll say, there are two books I tried reading multiple times and never got past the first chapter.  One was The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkein.  The other was Dune by Frank Herbert.  I am a big science fiction and fantasy reader, so I'm sad I didn't get into these books.  It's been over 10 years now; maybe I'm due to give them another try.  

And the Blogmania winner is...

Suzie! (9oofus2)  Congratulations and thanks to all who entered.