Pay it Forward: When Your Children Aren’t Avid Readers by Irene Latham

When I first spied those two blue lines on the home pregnancy test I vowed three things:

1. I would read poetry to my kids, the same way my father did with me.
2. The library would be a favorite destination.
3. In Walmart I would say no to candy and toys but always, always YES to books.

No matter what, my children would be readers. I wanted to infuse in them the joy and wonder I have always found in stories and words and short lines with abundant white space. I wanted them to have memories like mine: flashlights under the covers; books read so many times the covers were tattered and taped and re-illustrated, if need be; fervent pleas to Santa for the next book in the series; the satisfaction at age 14 of spending my hard-earned babysitting money  ($25) for a giant box of romance novels at a neighbor’s yard sale which I proudly brought home and showed to my parents (who to their credit, didn’t cringe or sigh, but actually smiled as I proceeded to spend my summer hours devouring those bodice-rippers – and yes, those of you who have read my poetry, might be saying, why yes, that explains a lot about Irene Latham); the encouragement I found from my book-loving father who brought home various treasures from business travel, such as an envelope addressed to Charles Lindbergh, and said, “write a story about that.”

Eighteen years and three sons later, I am sorry to report that I did all those three things I vowed, yet I have been an utter failure when it comes to creating people who love books. Not a one of my sons currently reads for pleasure, and my youngest (age 12) tells everyone he doesn’t just dislike reading, he hates it. (Thank you, dyslexia.) For a while this made me eat bags of Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips and stare longingly at the girl on the schoolbus who always missed her stop because she was reading.

And then I realized: the love of reading is not ever going to be universal. Nor does it need to be. My sons find the same kind of pleasure I did in things other than reading, like film and music and photography and computer games. It’s still humans telling stories, only the mode of the telling has changed. And isn’t the love of story the ultimate goal? The physical act of reading is merely one of the ways to reach that destination.

Yet I needed to connect with young people passionate about books and reading, in a way more personal than can be achieved during a school visit. And that’s when I remembered my nieces and nephews. Yes, that’s when I became that aunt who sends books for birthdays and follows niece JuliAnna’s progress on HARRY POTTER with texts and tweets and sends her autographed books from author-friends and fellow panelists at book festivals. That’s when I started reading Shel Silverstein at bedtime when the wee ones came for overnight visits. That’s when I helped nephew Alex get started on a sequel to my novel LEAVING GEE’S BEND, currently titled (by him) THE RETURN OF MRS. COBB.  And that’s when I started exchanging by mail a collaborative story with 9 year old Matt – much like my father did with me.

Here’s the latest installment, as written by Matt, in a story called GOINDEILIER’S NEW JOB:

She spilt her pasta with applesauce into Erics salad. it turns out pasta with applesauce is a good salad dressing. “Harriet you’re a genius said Goindeilier.

To call it “paying it forward” is actually far too generous. It’s selfish, really. And I intend to keep right on doing it just as long as I can.

 

Irene Latham is the only Nerdy Book Club member in her current family of five, and the only one of the five kids in her family of origin who inherited the reading gene from the King of all Nerdy Book Club members, her father, who has for a lifetime read a book a day. She is the author of two middle grade novels, LEAVING GEE’S BEND and DON’T FEED THE BOY as well as two volumes of poetry THE COLOR OF LOST ROOMS and WHAT CAME BEFORE. Her children would be more impressed if she made movies. www.irenelatham.com

Eloise by Kay Thompson – Reviewed by Kimberly Moran

For some, okay most, Eloise is far removed from any kind of reality. But not for me. For me, she was funny, smart, loveable, interesting, also six, and lived at The Plaza Hotel. The Plaza  Hotel for God’s sake!

Eloise was read to me weekly long before my sixth birthday, but on my sixth birthday my Father invited me to the Plaza for lunch alone with him. I walked in and was greeted by a larger than life sized portrait of the fabulous Eloise herself. I wore a gray pleated skirt with gray straps that criss crossed across my back and over my shoulders buttoning at the waistband in the front, a white shirt with a scalloped color and buttons up the front, short white socks without ruffles (because my mother thought ruffles were fussy) and shiny black patent leather Mary Janes. I did not wear this outfit because Eloise did. I wore it because that’s what little girls in NYC being raised on the Upper East Side wore.

Being at a fancy place like The Plaza was not that weird for me. Don’t get me wrong I was thrilled to be meeting my father for a special birthday lunch, but spectacular NYC restaurants were where I spent a lot of my childhood. My parents took us everywhere they went probably much to the chagrin of the waitstaff.  When the waitress would come, I would order a Perrier with a twist of lemon and say offhandedly, “and charge it please Thank you very much.” This I did say because Eloise did, but also because I knew it guaranteed a laugh.

Eloise by Kay Thompson is a book about a little girl who lives at the Plaza Hotel with her Nanny. Her father is never referenced and her mother is out of town all the time with her lawyer. It is clearly written for and about a jaded, NYC, world weary child and there really are quite a few out there. According to Wikipedia, “Thompson, who lived at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, became most notable as the author of the Eloise series of children’s books, which were partly inspired by the antics of her goddaughter Liza Minnelli, daughter of Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli.”

I loved that Eloise kept herself busy constantly by play acting and bothering everyone in the hotel. She had a pet turtle and a pet dog and she made them play with her all day. She had lots of rules about life and ways of doing things that made life more interesting and amusing.

One thing that bothers a lot of people I guess is that Eloise has a nanny. For me, this was a part of the life I lived as well as that of many of my childhood friends. It may be one of those things that you just cawn’t cawn’t cawn’t understand unless you lived it.  In the book, Nanny loves her Eloise and Eloise loves her Nanny. I had a nanny growing up and I can say whole-heartedly that the connection between children and a nanny is not something easily explained. When I think of my nanny, my eyes well with tears. She took wonderful care of us and she loved us with all her heart. I think people feel like this is a sad story about a girl who has so little in the way of a family, but I just can’t bring myself to think of it that way. In fact it was quite common for us to quote from this book. Besides saying the charge it please and thank you very much line, we could also quote nanny by saying things three times so that they feel real real real. This book reminds me of my childhood when those around me, now that I live in Maine, don’t really get it. I love Eloise and will always hope for a turtle named Skipperdee.

Kimberley Moran is a lifelong member of the Nerdy Book Club who just remembered to order her card. She is also a First Grade teacher in Southern Maine. She has worked at a lot of non-profits, taught middle school, and been a literacy specialist. She can be found on her blog at 1stinmaine.blogspot.com and on twitter @kagmoran.

Writing, Reading, Inspiration, and DRAMA: An Interview with Raina Telgemeier by Dave Roman

Drama focuses on creative people who genuinely enjoy working behind the scenes (rather than in the spotlight). What do you think attracts people to that aspect of theater, and what were some of your inspirations to set a story backstage?

Not everyone wants the limelight. I was kind of a shy kid, very modest. I hated being looked at. Oral reports were the stuff of my nightmares. Stage crew is great for artistic people who enjoy spectacle, but also excel at technical work. And, you don’t have to be glamorous! Social misfits are welcome!

When I was a teenager, I came out of my shell a little, and did a lot of background/ensemble singing in school musical productions. In any given show, I might have spent 15 or 20 minutes total on the stage. That meant a lot of time backstage and in the green room, waiting for cues and goofing around. It’s an atmosphere that brings out interesting qualities in people. Some kids treat everything with total seriousness, while others are just there just to have fun. There are a lot of pranks and practical jokes. As a non-essential cast member, I was free to observe and enjoy.

Were you ever a part of your school’s stage crew, the way Callie is in the book?

 

I never did any tech work in high school, but I did help out a lot on my friends’ student films during art school. Making props, painting sets—it was a blast! My friend Adam was a seamstress (is there a male version of that word?) who had majored in production design, and spending time at his apartment, especially during Halloween costume season, was so great: thread, fabric, boning and batting everywhere. We spent much time pouring over the notions in the Garment District in New York, looking for just the right buttons. Adam also made my wedding dress a few years later! The intensity of craft that goes into theater, whether it’s professional or personal, is awe-inspiring. I also love how working on projects collectively really bonds you with your fellow crafters.

It has been a little over two years since the publication of Smile. In that time, you’ve traveled the country and met a lot of people! Have there been any special memories or experiences that particularly stuck with you?
In every city, I meet enthusiastic kids and their somewhat incredulous parents, who confide in me that their child was not a “reader” until now. I’ve seen graphic novels open doors for so many kids, turning them from non-readers into people who drag their parents to author events to get a book signed!

This past spring, I met a group of middle schoolers (and their fantastic school librarian) at a conference, and they wanted to know if and when a Smile movie was going to get made. I told them that it hasn’t been optioned by any film studios, and nothing is in the works—but that if they wanted to, they were welcome to make their own Smile movie. And they did! An ambitious girl named Charlotte became a first-time director, and filmed a 30-minute interpretation of Smile. I’ve only seen 5 minutes, but they absolutely blew me away.

With Smile being a memoir and Drama being an original work of fiction, what were the creative challenges that each presented? Do you have a preference moving forward?

They both have challenges and rewards. Kids are generally fascinated when they find out a story is true, while adults get caught up in how the story might have been stronger if it were fiction. I personally find writing memoirs very freeing: these are the facts, and it’s simply my job to tell them to you in a fun way. With fiction, there’s arguably more creative freedom, sure—but that can equal less certainty. Knowing readers will hold me to my choices and decisions as a storyteller kind of terrifies me. It will be interesting to see how what reader response to Drama is like. Ideally, I’d like to do more of both, I think!

In Drama, the main character Callie is always going back to her favorite book for inspiration. What books in your life have had a similar effect on you?

I love reading my favorite books over and over. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH was my first big favorite, after having it read aloud to me by an early elementary school teacher. I still go back to it every few years. I also read my copies of The Baby-sitters Club and my Ramona books to shreds. The books I cherished the most, however, were my comic strip collections! My volumes of Calvin and Hobbes and For Better or For Worse are dog-eared and stained, from shoving them into my backpack and reading them at lunchtime in school. And when I read Barefoot Gen (at age 10), I made it my mission to share that book with everyone I knew, from my fifth grade teacher right on through friends from my senior year of high school. Its cover fell off and the binding wore out. My friend’s brother finally taped it all up for me. I have a newer copy, but I am still in love with my completely busted-up copy. The way I view it, the more destroyed a book is, the more it has been loved.

What’s the main thing you hope people will experience when reading one of your graphic novels? 

My books are very personal to me, but it’s super rewarding when so many different types of people say they connect and identify with them. It takes me anywhere from two to five years to create a graphic novel from start to finish—I don’t cut corners, and each book is a labor of love. When a reader finishes one of my graphic novels, my hope is that they’ll want to read it again! And then, maybe they’ll seek out more graphic novels, and discover the same kind of joy I get from reading comics and sequential stories.

Dave Roman is the author of several graphic novels including Astronaut Academy: Zero Gravity, Teen Boat! and Agnes Quill: An Anthology of Mystery. He has contributed stories to Explorer: The Mystery Boxes, Nursery Rhyme Comics, and worked as a comics editor for the groundbreaking Nickelodeon Magazine from 1998 to 2009. You can find him online at www.yaytime.com. 

Raina Telgemeier grew up in San Francisco, but made her way to New York City when she was 22 to attend the School of Visual Arts as an Illustration and Cartooning student. She received her BFA in 2002, and has worked as a freelance artist ever since. She is the adapter and illustrator of four Baby-sitters Club graphic novels, the co-author of X-Men: Misfits, and the author-illustrator of the bestselling dental memoir graphic novel Smile, which recently won the Eisner Award for Best Publication for a Teen Audience. Smile was also an ALA Notable Book, a Kirkus Best Book of 2010, and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards Honor title.

Raina lives in Queens, NY, with her cartoonist husband, Dave Roman.

ALL illustrations from Drama copyright 2012 by Raina Telgemeier. Used with permission from Scholastic/GRAPHIX.

 

Drama hits shelves on September 1, 2012!

#1 by Dave Roman

I’ve always enjoyed the company of people who are curious and passionate about stuff. A.k.a., readers. These are my people.

My most favorite kind of reading-people are those who share a love of comic books. This is not to be confused with comic collectors, a.k.a., people for whom a comic book’s greatest value is in speculation and price guides. I’m talking about real comics readers. Whether they hang out in comic shops every Wednesday (new comic book day), wait for the trade paperbacks, or prefer to read manga and graphic novels while sitting in the aisle of a bookstore or library. I dare you to find a comic reader who isn’t a beacon of passion and enthusiasm. Or at the very least has strong opinions about character continuity, consistency, retcons, the best art styles, and who could beat who in an all out brawl.

As kids, my sister and cousins and I would search through the yellow pages and seek out every comic book store in our county. And whenever we traveled, we’d do the same, in our hunt to discover new and interesting books. Old, new, serious, funny, black and white, color, 3-D: no comic wasn’t worth checking out. And, by traveling in packs, we could each buy a different comic and then report back or trade with each other afterwards. I only read the occasional X-Men book, but my little sister couldn’t get enough, describing to me the endless plot twists, crossovers, characters, secret origins, and relationships in so much detail I felt like I did read them, after all.

For too long, comic readers have been branded as nerds and misfits.

I don’t need to reinforce stereotypes we are all too familiar with. Maybe we all know someone like “Comic Book Guy” on The Simpsons, but he does not represent the hundreds of thousands of people who have kept comic shops afloat during some crazy economic times. There has always been a quiet comics-reading community of men, women and children of all shapes, sizes, and ethnicities who love sequential art narratives…or just think Batman is really is cool. There have been underground comic movements, self-publishing booms, and long-running cult series created by artists who slaved away with only minor acclaim. The height of my comic reading craze was in the mid-to-late 90s (when people received free AOL disks in the mail and we still used encyclopedias). And even though it was a passion I shared with my closest family members and friends, it was far from “mainstream.” A comic book being referenced on a TV show, or adapted into a movie was a huge deal. But all us comic book readers knew there was a change in the air…

Somewhere along the line, the Internet made nerds into millionaires, comics became graphic novels, and the geeks inherited the earth.

Now, almost everyone knows what adamantium is! It’s a very different world for comic readers now than the one I grew up in. When my friend Rich Zimmer and I convinced our high school English teacher, Ms. Caraway, to let us make comic books about Beowulf instead of writing a traditional book report, we felt like we were really getting away with something sneaky! Like kids being tricked into whitewashing by Tom Sawyer, Rich and I were too excited to realize we ended up doing way more work by writing, pencilling, inking, photocopying, and assembling books compared to the other students! We were making comics in school. By the time another english teacher, Mrs. Siedleki helped us form an after school comics club as an extension of the literary magazine, we felt like giddy inmates running the asylum.

In today’s world, teachers incorporate comics into the curriculum so often that it’s almost normal. I was lucky to have a teacher ahead of the curve, and wonder if kids today just take it all for granted. They don’t have to beg their parents to drive them to the town with the nearest comic shop. They can simply ask their school librarian for a recommendation.

I’ve always bought comic books and graphic novels as gifts for non-readers with the hope they too might catch the bug. Getting my high school girlfriend’s parents to read and enjoy Sam Keith’s The Maxx was one of my earliest victories.

Now that I’ve grown up to be a full-time cartoonist, I get to travel the country and meet countless teachers and librarians who I consider kindred spirits: people who share their passion for reading and creativity on a daily basis, potentially unleashing boundless creativity and inspiration. I love reading all the comics these kids create in and after class.

We still have to deal with some misconceptions and judgment from non-comic readers. Misguided people who still don’t consider comics “real reading.” But those people are the true outsiders. Comics is not only real reading, it’s “dynamic reading.” The love of comics is infectious and leads to so many amazing possibilities. It opens doors and makes connections between words and pictures, people and places. I know that our combined passion will win them over and give us all something to share.

Dave Roman is the author of several graphic novels including Astronaut Academy: Zero Gravity, Teen Boat! and Agnes Quill: An Anthology of Mystery. He has contributed stories to Explorer: The Mystery Boxes, Nursery Rhyme Comics, and worked as a comics editor for the groundbreaking Nickelodeon Magazine from 1998 to 2009. You can find him online at www.yaytime.com. 

Passing on the Love of Reading by Cathlin Shahriary

One of the reasons I became a teacher was to share my love of reading and literature with others. I’m an avid reader and try every day to instill that same passion for reading in my students. While every year there are fantastic new books, and my students’ book preferences are constantly changing, there are some classics from my childhood that I can’t help but share each and every year.

 

One book I share with my fourth grade students every year is Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume. I usually start the year with this one as the main character, Peter, is also in fourth grade. Every year my students crack up at Peter’s younger brother Fudge’s antics (they especially love that Fudge calls Peter, “Peetah”).  Kids of all ages can relate to the things poor Peter puts up with from his younger brother, Fudge, and his annoying neighbor, Sheila.  I remember Judy Blume being one of my favorite authors as a child. Without fail every year after reading aloud Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, my students run to the library to check out more books by Judy Blume.

 

The Goosebumps books by R.L. Stein are favorites every year. I have a rather large collection of this spooky series. These are also books that I remember loving and reading as a child. While I wish I could say the same for Nancy Drew, The Boxcar Children, and The Babysitter’s Club, I just can’t seem to get my kids excited about those series. I try every year telling them how much I adored them, but they just don’t hold the same appeal to today’s generation as a good old ghost story does.

Choose Your Own Adventure Books are some of my absolute favorites from school. I remember several of my teachers owning the entire series and I would devour them like candy. I loved that one story could take you so many different places. I’m not shy to admit that sometimes while reading I would back track and change a previous choice if I didn’t like where I was headed, but that was part of the fun. My students usually have never had experience with these when I introduce them. I love to read them aloud and have them vote as a class the direction in which we will go. It only takes a few to have them asking for more. One of the neat things that I have recently discovered (thanks to my addiction to Pinterest) is Inklewriter (http://www.inklestudios.com/inklewriter/for-teachers). Inklewriter is an online Web 2.0 tool that allows you to write your own interactive story similar to a Choose Your Own Adventure. You publish it online and can even save your stories in progress. I can’t wait to share this tool with my students and see what Choose Your Own Adventure stories they write.

 

I encourage you all to read aloud some of your favorite childhood books to your students or children. Even though they are old, good stories remain just that- good stories, and passing on the passion for reading is something we should all do.

 

Cathlin Shahriary is a fourth grade teacher in Irving, Texas. She has worn many hats in her 7 years of teaching including: first grade, GT, and bilingual teacher. She and her husband live in Flower Mound, Texas with their two cats and dog. When she’s not teaching, she’s volunteering with the Humane Society of Flower Mound or reading. Last summer she started a book blog as a place where she and her fellow teachers can share amazing books with their students at http://yourteacherreads.blogspot.com/. You can also follow her class on Twitter @shahriarysclass.

Introducing Students to the Classroom Library by Donalyn Miller

Last Friday night, I met my new students. Seeing children investigating our classroom for the first time, it finally felt like home. Walking around the room visiting families, I overheard Maggie tell her mother, “Wow. We have a lot of books in here.”

Sidling over to her, I said, “I think we need a lot of books, don’t you?”

Maggie beamed, “Yes! Yes, we do.”

She chatted with me about the Dork Diaries book she is currently reading and we looked in our classroom library for more books in the series. I told Maggie that I shoved more books in our storage closet before she and her classmates arrived, “I am glad you all are here. I know you will be taking some of these books home to read and we will have more room!”

From the first day of school and for every day after that, I want my students to read. This means selecting books from our class library immediately. Each year, I begin our first class with a book frenzy—inviting my students to explore our class library and choose books to read. I help students who need guidance finding a book, and those students who are more confident in selecting books feel free to browse. I learn a lot about my students’ reading experiences and preferences during the book frenzy. In turn, they learn that I am serious about reading and invested in giving them choices in what they read.

Turning children loose to rummage through your carefully-ordered bookshelves before discussing with them how to use the library and care for the books may fill you with anxiety, but it helps me to remember that the books don’t belong solely to me once the children arrive. It is our classroom library—ours to learn from and share and enjoy for the entire year. Building a reading community begins by getting books into my students’ hands.

After the children have selected books to read, we discuss the finer points of using the library. Over the next few days, we work as a class to determine classroom library procedures and explore how our books are organized. Consider the following discussion points when introducing your students to your class library:

How to check out and return books: After years of using a recipe card file box and index card system for library checkout, my students and I will use Booksource’s Classroom Organizer this year. Last spring, my squadron of class librarians helped scan every book’s ISBN number using the free Classroom Organizer app or entered the titles into the computer database. Easy-to-use for even young children, students can check out and return books on the computer. I bought an inexpensive bar code scanner on ebay, but you can use a phone or iPod, too.

How to take care of books: As a class, I ask students to develop rules for taking care of our books. Working in table groups, students brainstorm a list of guidelines for protecting our books and we use their ideas to create an anchor chart displayed in our classroom. I keep a few damaged books from past years as examples and show these to students, so they can see what happens to books when we don’t take care of them. I reinforce to students that readers will not have access to all of our books if we destroy the books we have. Last year, my students developed these rules:

How the library is organized: I organize our classroom library by genre. For the first two weeks of school, I read a different picture book, short story, poem, or article every day and ask students to determine each text’s genre. We create a class set of notes on genre characteristics and determine what types of characters, plot lines, and settings we commonly find in each fiction genre. For poetry and nonfiction texts, we look at the text structure and text features, too.

After students have been exposed to every genre and discussed genre characteristics, I give students several book tubs from our library and ask them to determine the genre of their tubs using their notes and their reading experiences. Previewing the selections in the tubs, students identify the books’ genre. Checking with each group, I give them a genre label for their tubs and students stick the label on the front of the tub. This activity helps students locate books by their individual interests and reading goals, and reinforces how books are categorized by their commonalities.

 

Through these activities, students examine and discuss scores of books and familiarize themselves with titles they might like to read. Teaching students how to select and care for our classroom library books fosters ownership and confidence and reinforces that these books are an important resource for our reading community.

Donalyn Miller is a fourth grade teacher at Peterson Elementary in Fort Worth, TX. She is the author of The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child. Donalyn co-hosts the monthly Twitter chat, #titletalk (with Nerdy co-founder, Colby Sharp), and facilitates the Twitter reading initiative, #bookaday.

Ten Middle Grade Books that Reflect the US Immigration Experience by Natalie Dias Lorenzi

Like any school librarian, I’m always looking for books that will connect with my students. There’s nothing like reading a new book and thinking, “Yes! I know just the child who will love this book…”

But at the elementary school where I teach outside of Washington, DC, matching books with kids isn’t always easy.  Eighty-eight percent of my students speak a language other than English, most read below grade level as they acquire English as a second or third language, and the vast majority are immigrants or children of immigrants. Finding books that reflect my students’ realities isn’t easy, which is partly why I chose to write about a boy who emigrates from Japan to the US in my middle grade novel Flying the Dragon.

Below is a list of ten books whose characters are recent immigrants to the US. For each title, I’ve added one common immigrant issue featured in the book that I often see with my students and their families.

New arrivals will identify with these characters who wade their way through American culture and the English language. But these titles aren’t just for our newest Americans; the following ten books provide all of us a glimpse into the immigration experience, which has played an integral role in defining who we are as a nation.

Ten Middle Grade Books that Reflect the Immigration Experience

1.Day of the Pelican by Katherine Paterson—(contemporary fiction) Meli Lleshispends her eleventh birthday fleeing her home when Serbian soldiers sweep through Kosovo, killing Albanians and burning homes. After spending more than a year in a refugee camp in Macedonia, Meli’s family is granted asylum in Vermont. Just as Meli feels like she’s adjusting to American life, the events of 9/11 make things difficult for her Muslim family. In the end, however, Meli and her family accept, and are accepted by, their new home and neighbors.

Common immigrant issue: Children learning English faster than their parents, and the shift of power in the household when parents have to rely on their children to communicate with others outside of the family. Meli is relieved when her Baba drops out of English classes, because she did not want him to feel ashamed as her English progressed and his did not.

2. Drita My Home Girl by Jenny Lombard—(contemporary fiction) This dual point-of-view tale alternates between ten-year-old Drita, whose family has escaped from Kosovo to New York City, and Maxie, Drita’s African American classmate, part of the “in” group who keeps Drita out. When the girls’ teacher pairs them together for a class project, a reluctant partnership blossoms into true friendship.

Common immigrant issue: Parents experiencing signs of depression. When Drita’s mother slips into depression, Drita must take up the slack with duties at home.

3. Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan—(historical fiction) Esperanza is living the good life on her family’s ranch in Mexico. But when she and her mother must escape from Mexico and settle in a camp of migrant farm workers during the Great Depression, she finds poverty, hard work and discrimination. Esperanza becomes involved in California migrant workers’ rights, and saves her mother in the process.

Common immigrant issue: As with many immigrants, Esperanza must transition from a comfortable life back home to a life of poverty in the US—a land that many immigrants see as wealthy and prosperous.

4. Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai—(historical fiction) Ten-year-old Hà flees beloved Vietnam with her family as Saigon falls. After a long and difficult trip across the ocean, the family ends up in 1970s Alabama. With humor and heart, Hà tells her story of sadness, bewilderment, and, eventually, acceptance of her new life in America. Since this story is written in gorgeous prose, the text is much more accessible to English language learners than other middle grade novels.

Common immigrant issue: Hà goes from feeling smart back in Vietnam to feeling inadequate as she struggles to learn English. Many of my students feel this way—going from the top of their class back home to the bottom of the class in the US is daunting

5. Katerina’s Wish by Jeannie Mobley—(historical fiction) When Trina and her family move to Colorado in the early 1900s, her only wish is to return home to their farm in Bohemia. But her father wishes for a farm in America, so he gets a job working in the dangerous coal mines to save money for his dream. Through hard work and ingenuity, Trina finds that wishes change, and she comes up with her own way to make them come true.

Common immigrant issue: Trina and her family only associate with others from Bohemia; the camp where they live is divided into groups by language and ethnicity. Trina reaches out to other groups in order to realize her family’s dream. Children who are used to associating only with their ethnic groups back home often have a hard time adjusting to our multicultural school environment.

6. Kira Kira by Cynthia Kadohata—(historical fiction) WhenKatie Takeshima’s family moves form a Japanese community in Iowa to Georgia in the 1950s, Katie rarely sees her parents, who work long hours in a poultry plant. Katie’s older sister, Lynn, has a kira-kira view of the world—always seeing the light, positive side, even when she is diagnosed with lymphoma. With her parents working extra hours to pay Lynn’s medical bills, Katie is the one who shoulders the bulk of Lynn’s care. It is only after Lynn’s death that her parents agree to join the group of workers who want to unionize and improve conditions at the plant.

Common immigrant issue: Like Katie’s mother and father, many immigrant parents work two or three jobs, and their children need to take on adult responsibilities at home.

7. Lowji Discovers America by Candace Fleming—(contemporary fiction) When Lowji moves to America, he has high hopes of finally getting a pet. But Mrs. Crisp, the no-nonsense landlady of the apartment where Lowji’s family lives, doesn’t allow pets. As Lowji shuffles his way through the boredom of summer, he recounts his experiences in letters to his best friend Jamshed back in India. Lowji eventually convinces Mrs. Crisp that she needs a rat-catching cat, a friendly guard dog, and a grass-trimming goat. In the end, he has the pets he’d dreamed of, and a new friend to share them with.

Common immigrant issue: Many newly-arrived children are surprised when they move to the US and their religion is no longer mainstream. Although religion is not a dominant theme in this story, Lowji and his family are Zoroastrians, with which some students will identify.

8. Shooting Kabul by N.H. Senzai—(contemporary fiction) When Fadi’s family flees from the Taliban in Afghanistan, his 6-year-old sister, Mariam, is accidentally left behind. As Fadi and his family try to adjust to life in San Francisco, Mariam is never far from their thoughts. At school, Fadi enters a photography contest, hoping to win the grand prize—a National Geographic photography trip to India. If he wins, Fadi plans to slip over the border into Afghanistan to find his sister. But after the events of 9/11, Fadi’s Pashtun family is fearful in their new home, and fearful that they’ll never be able to get Mariam out of Afghanistan.

Common immigrant issue: The only job that Fadi’s educated father can get in the US is a taxi driver, and his older sister works at McDonalds as the family struggles day-to-day. Many of my students’ parents who were doctors or engineers in their home countries have to take jobs in the US where they aren’t able to utilize their training and talents.

9. Star in the Forest by Laura Resau—(contemporary fiction) When Zitlally’s father is deported back to Mexico, the family scrapes together enough money for a coyote guide to bring him back across the border. But when the coyote and the people he is with are kidnapped and held for ransom, Zitlally fears for her father’s life. She and a new friend find a dog with an abusive owner in the trailer park where they live and name the dog Star after the marking over its eye. Zitlally is convinced that Star is her father’s spirit animal, and her father will be safe as long as Star is, too. But when Star disappears, Zitlally fears she will never see her father again.   

Common immigrant issue: The fear of deportation that illegal immigrant families face is palpable in this story.

10.Sylvia & Aki by Winifred Conklin—(non-fiction) This story is based on the childhood lives of Sylvia Mendez, a Mexican American girl who is not allowed to attend the “white” school near her home in southern California, and Aki Munemitsu, a Japanese-American girl who is sent to live in a Japanese internment camp in Arizona during World War II. When Aki leaves for Arizona, Sylvia’s family moves into their home. Sylvia finds a beautiful Japanese doll on the closet shelf in her room, which eventually leads to Aki and a lifelong friendship between the two girls.

Common immigrant issue: Aki leaves home with few possessions, a heartbreaking situation for many who must permanently leave their homes in a hurry.

Natalie Dias Lorenzi is a teacher, librarian, and the author of middle grade novel Flying the Dragon which was released July 1, 2012, from Charlesbridge.

Paying It Forward (with a little help from some friends) by Cathy Blackler

 “What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?” ~ George Eliot

 

A new school year begins this week, and with it new opportunities to share my reading life with students & staff alike. While each school year brings with it new students who possess all the possibilities & challenges of their predecessors and then some, this year’s group is a little different. For many, it is the second time we will journey together as a learning community. Five years ago I had several of this year’s students as sixth graders. This week they will enter into our classroom as high school juniors.  I am doubly blessed, and doubly committed to rekindling many of those sixth grade hopes & dreams that have somehow become deferred.

Recently I heard Lois Lowry speak and she was asked why she writes for children. She replied, “because when you are twelve, a book can change your life.” I believe this life-changing experience can happen beyond the age of twelve, and very often does, for the students in my classes. Far too many have stalled somewhere around a “reading age” of twelve; possibly the last time a book mattered to them. I am privileged to help them find a way to change their lives.

I could not share my passion for reading without access to books and to the stories behind the stories. Throughout my teaching experience this has been accomplished in a variety of ways: MANY books have been purchased with my own money (not a complaint, just a fact), I have coerced my son into volunteering at the Scholastic Book Warehouse Sales in order to earn book credit, and I have attended countless conferences and author signings so that I can make those invaluable connections that come with knowing how a book comes to life; connections that help me put the right book into the right hands.

More recently however, I have had a little help from some friends. The unselfish desire to “pay it forward” on their part has allowed me to touch the lives of students beyond my classroom. For this I am forever grateful. These tireless devotees to the reading community make my work all the more rewarding:

• Andrew Smith, who selflessly signed his personal copy of Stick so that I could give it to a student who needed the story more than I can say.
• Kazu Kibuishi, Garth Nix and Sean Williams. All three graciously allowed me to videotape them sending words of reading encouragement to a friend’s classroom.
• Andrea Vuleta and her staff at Mrs. Nelson’s Toys & Books in La Verne, Ca. Their friendship and support of my passion is a constant source of inspiration. My students and I are indebted to their generosity.

And finally, I thank my students for allowing me to share with them the benefits of a reading life. I love their passion, their excitement, and their buy-in when we make that reading connection.  Reminding me time and again “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” ~  George Eliot

Cathy Blackler teaches High School English in Southern California. A proud, card-carrying member of the #nerdybookclub, she is the current President of the Foothill Reading Council and is serving a three-year term on the California Young Reader Medal (CYRM) Committee. She truly leads a reading life, and still owns the first book she purchased with her own money.

Sometimes Kids Just Need a Gateway Book by Jada Parr

My first year of teaching seventh grade English was every bit as much a disaster as I imagine most peoples’ experience was- ranging from wondering what in the world my professors wasted my time teaching me in college to treading water just barely keeping my head above the surface.  I remember trying to prepare myself for the students who hated reading and who would be the ones that I would need to try the hardest to reach, but was vastly unprepared for the number of students who made it to middle school hating English class and everything about reading books in general.  At the beginning of my second year of teaching, I took a poll of my students, assuring them that it would not in any way affect their grade or my opinion of them. I asked them how many-by show of hands- hated reading books and would never read independently if it was not a graded assignment.  More than 50% of my seventh graders fell into this category.  In all my time teaching, before then and in the years since, I am not sure I have ever been as disheartened as I felt that day.  How could I, who has loved reading since I was a child and who would stay up all night reading if given the chance, change the minds of over half of my students when they had spent so many years hating to read?

 

Rodman Philbrick’s The Last Book in the Universe was the answer.  What better choice of book than a story about a future world in which no one reads anymore?  In Spaz’s world, after the “Big Shake” has obliterated almost everything and what is left of the land has been split up into “latches” where gang bosses rule, all of the old knowledge of the past has been forgotten and everyone is using mind probes- to put the images of virtual reality into their brains.   Spaz can’t use the mind probes because he has seizures, so his memory is still strong enough to remember some stories about books and libraries. This impresses an old man they call Ryter, who Spaz meets when he is sent by the local gang to “bust him down”.  Ryter gives Spaz all of his belongings except for a pile of papers that he tries, at first, to hide.  When Spaz asks about them, Ryter explains that he is writing what is probably the last book in the universe: his life story.  Later that night, Spaz receives bad news about a family member far away, and he sets off on a journey to find and help her, accompanied against his wishes by Ryter, who insists that this will be his one last adventure, to help him finish his book.

 

The story is action-packed, and Philbrick is a master at ending chapters with cliffhangers.  In my classroom, these were great opportunities during read-aloud to leave my students hanging until the next week.  I started to find more and more of my “book haters” groaning and begging for just ONE more chapter!  The English teacher in me also loves how Ryter makes references to authors and characters from the past such as Robert Frost, Yeats, and Odysseus.  Woven into the story is a message that writers have a kind of immortality through the words in their books, so long as there are people in the world who value them.  Most of the citizens of the Urb have long forgotten the past and the knowledge that came with it. This has dire consequences for Spaz’s sister; if they cannot find a cure for her somewhere, she could die.  Spaz and Ryter even venture to Eden- a city for genetically improved people (proovs), to search for a cure, even though they fear there may be nothing anyone can do now that the knowledge has been lost.

 

Without wanting to give away too much, there are several twists and turns in the last half of this book that makes it almost impossible to put down.  Lanaya gives a speech to the people of Eden that still gives me goose bumps every time I read it.  There is a revelation that has caused a collective gasp from every class I’ve ever read it aloud with, and the power behind the last words has left every group I’ve taught begging for more.  In five years of reading this book aloud to students who both loved and hated books, I never once had someone at the end say they didn’t like the book.  (A couple were mad at the ending, but admitted that they loved the book overall).  Now I use The Last Book in the Universe as a “gateway book” for my reluctant readers, because it opens up a whole genre of dystopian literature that I know many of them would love.  In many ways, this was THE book that set me down the path to “book whispering” with my students- it was the book that helped me learn that it IS possible to change the minds of kids who think they hate to read, if you can find a book that lights up a spark inside them.  Imagine if everyone gave up on these kids, and we ended up going down a road where there ever COULD be a last book in the universe.

 

Jada Parr is a seventh grade English teacher in Smithfield, VA.  She is also the mother of a very precocious 3 year old who keeps her busy, but never too busy to read a good book.  She decided this summer to join the Book Whisperer Movement and may need an intervention soon because she cannot stop reading and buying books for her class library.  In addition to reading and mothering, she loves to learn how to create new things (she recently taught herself how to make purses out of duct tape!), and you can follow her journey at http://craftyjada.wordpress.com. 

The City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare Reviewed by Christie Tondu

The City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare is Book 5 in the Mortal Instruments series. For those who may have not read this series before, let me fill you in on a few things. Not only are werewolves, and vampires and faeries real, but there are other people in the world, ones that protect the human race from unseen evil: these are the shadowhunters.

Shadowhunters aren’t normal human beings, but a breed all their own: angel and human. The story goes that one day, a man by the name of Johnathan Shadowhunter wanted a race of people strong and mighty enough to slay the demons of the world. So he called on one of Heaven’s angels, who spilled his blood into a cup, called the Mortal cup, and whoever drank from the cup would become stronger, faster, and a worthy opponent for the demons of the world.

The Fifth book find us in a new era for the shadowhunters – they have fought a large war and have reached an agreement with those they call downworlders (werewolves, vampires, etc.), and allowed them into their Council, where laws are made and decided upon. They thought they defeated the bad guy (known predominantly as Sebastian, but also called Johnathan) only to find out that he was not only resurrected by his mother, a Greater Demon called Lillith, but also bound to a shadowhunter named Jace.

While The Council works to find Sebastian and stop him, at whatever cost, it is up to Clary (Jace’s girlfriend and main character) and her band of friends to find a way to separate Jace from Sebastian, and stop their evil plan from coming to pass. In an effort to find out what Sebastian has planned, and to try to remove Jace from the situation, Clary follows Jace into an untraceable apartment that slides between dimensions and travels the world, and is forced to be an unwilling party to Sebastian’s plan to burn down the world and start over. Meanwhile, Clary’s friends, who include two shadowhunters, a warlock, a vampire, and several werewolves, come up with a plan to separate the two boys and stop Sebastian’s plans – summon an angel from Heaven who could provide them with a weapon that could hurt one boy and not the other, thus severing their tie and hopefully ending Sebastian’s reign of terror.

Some may think that these books are playing up the new phenomenon of preternatural-themed books for Young Adults, featuring vampires, werewolves, and the like. But shadowhunters add a new dimension to these types of stories, for they are the true unsung heroes, defeating demons and other evils of the world so we humans (or what they call ‘mundanes’) can go about our happy little lives. The main book series became so popular that Clare started another series, set approximately a hundred years in the past, known as the Infernal Devices series that also featured shadowhunters, as well as enchanted clockwork creatures bringing in a bit of the popular steampunk genre as well. Clare is continuing to expand by starting a third shadowhunters series, which will be known as The Dark Artifices series, which is supposed to come out in 2015.

Christie Tondu is a recent University of Michigan graduate with a BA in Journalism. She loves to be silly, read, and write – She has two novels in the works and hopes to publish them before she is 40. You can read her personal blog at http://littlefootslife.blogspot.com/.