The Chicken Problem: Jen and Billy Interview Each Other

The Nerdy Book Club is excited to celebrate The Chicken Problems today with Mr. Johnny Schu and Mr. Colby Sharp.

Be sure to check out The Chicken Problem book trailer on Mr. Schu’s blog. We think you’ll enjoy reading what his students thought of the trailer.

Mr. Sharp was suppose to interview Jen and Billy for today’s trifecta, but his fourth graders took matters into their own hands.

Now it is Jen and Billy’s turn.

Jen and Billy work closely together. So for this blog, we thought we’d take turns interviewing each other! Here goes:

BILLY: So Jen. Were you a nerd?

JEN: I would say yes. I was a nerd. And I still am! I didn’t spend a lot of time reading books as a kid, but I did spend a lot of time drawing comic strips. What about you, were you a nerd?

BILLY: I was always weird in one way or another. Sometimes I studied way too much. Sometimes I didn’t study at all, just played music. But I guess that still makes one a nerd, so I guess yes, I’ve always been a nerd too. And I’m not ashamed!

JEN: Neither am I!

BILLY: So would you say being a nerd is cool?

JEN: If you asked me when I was younger I would have said no, it wasn’t cool, but that never bothered me. If you ask me now, I’ll say yes it’s cool to be so into what you do that you don’t care what others think.

BILLY: Well I think you’re REALLY COOL, so whatever you are, that’s cool.

JEN: What’s the first thing you ever wrote?

BILLY: I used to make up plays for my brother and sister, and force them to be in them. What’s the first think you ever drew?

JEN: I don’t remember the first thing I drew. But my mother tells me that when I was two or three, I asked her to show me how to draw an elephant, and she told me she didn’t know how to draw. So I threw the entire box of crayons at her in frustration. In that moment she knew I was going to be an artist!

BILLY: Funny story! So, it’s like you’ve always been an artist…and I’ve always been a writer. It’s just been this lifelong adventure for both of us. Anyway, one more question. You’ve been so successful creating characters for TV, why did you want to make a book?

JEN: I’ve always wanted to work on a children’s book. I guess now that everything’s digital, it feels more magical than ever to hold something that you made in your hands and touch it. How about you?

BILLY: Yeah. I love picture books. You have so few words, every one of them is so important. And I love the way the words work with the pictures. And that the reader can control the pace at which the story unfolds.

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BILLY ARONSON’S plays have been produced frequently by Ensemble Studio Theatre and published in five volumes of Best American Short Plays. His writing for the musical theater includes the original concept and additional lyrics forRent, and the book for the Theatreworks USA musical Click Clack Moo. His TV writing includes scripts for MTV’s Beavis & Butt-head, Cartoon Network’sCourage the Cowardly Dog, Sesame Workshop’s Bert and Ernie’s Great Adventures, and Nickelodeon’s The Wonder Pets!, for which he was head writer and won an Emmy Award. Billy lives in Brooklyn with his wife Lisa Vogel and their offspring, Jake and Anna.

JENNIFER OXLEY was born in Hollywood, California, and made her first film at the age of seven. She’s the recipient of an Emmy Award for her role as director on Nick Jr.’s Little Bill. Most recently she created the look and animation style for the award-winning television series The Wonder Pets! Jennifer has directed over 15 short films that have been screened at festivals around the world. Her most recent film, The Music Box was just acquired by the Museum of Modern Art for their permanent children’s film collection. Jennifer lives and works in New York City as an independent filmmaker and artist.

OLDIES BUT GOODIES: TEN GREAT OLD BOOKS FOR TWEENS AND TEENS By Teri S. Lesesne

It pains me sometimes, but the music that colored my adolescent experience is now played on the Oldies but Goodies stations on the radio. It still does not deter me, though, from singing along at the top of my lungs much to the dismay of anyone else in the car.  I love revisiting old songs; I feel the same way about books.  There are some books that are like old friends: they bear repeated readings.  They are still books I recommend to teachers and to kids in booktalks.  I suspect many of  the following titles might well be languishing on the shelves of your school and/or public library waiting to find a new generation of readers.  Check out a few and bring them back to life by sharing them in a booktalk or read aloud.

 

ACTING NATURAL (Meriwether, 1991) by Peg Kehret is a collection of one act plays for tweens and teens to perform.  Topics for these monologues, dialogues, and playlets cover bad hair days, problems and parents, and other familiar territory.  Tie this one to Don Gallo’s collection, CENTER STAGE, one act plays by YA authors to cover some of the speaking aspects of CCSS.

 

 Before there were Orca Soundings or other Hi-Lo books, Jay Bennett was writing mysteries for readers who might otherwise struggle with text.   In COVERUP, (Fawcett Juniper, 1991) Bennett explores the world of a teen who is certain his friend was responsible for a hit and run accident.  Short chapters, fast pacing, and easy readability make this a perfect book to share with struggling readers.  Tie this to Paul Flesichman’s WHIRLIGIG and Todd Strasser’s THE ACCIDENT and even IZZY WILLY-NILLY by Cynthia Voigt.

 

HARRIS AND ME (Harcourt, 1993) by Gary Paulsen is perhaps one of the easiest books ever to booktalk.  It is one of my go-to books when faced with less than enthusiastic readers.  I set it up by talking about all of the cruel tricks Harris plays on his cousin, Gary.  Gary slides down a haystack and encounters the handle of a pitchfork; he ends up face down in a pig sty.  After taking all the abuse he can muster, he dares his cousin Harris to pee on an electric fence.  I read abut 3 sentences from that scene, show kids that there it occurs about halfway through the book and then put it aside.  Pair this with other Paulsen titles such as THE SCHERNOFF DISCOVERIES and HOW ANGEL PETERSON GOT HIS NAME.

 

HOMECOMING by Cynthia Voigt (Atheneum, 1981), introduces readers to the Tillerman Family.  Abandoned by their mentally ill mother, Dicey leads her siblings on a journey to find their grandmother in hopes she will help keep the family intact.  Finding a place to call home is a recurring theme in YA literature.  Partner this with KEEPER, THE HUMMING ROOM, and TOUCH BLUE.  Also point readers to other books in the Tillerman saga including A SOLITARY BLUE.

 

JOHNNY CHESTHAIR (HarperCollins, 1997) by Chris Lynch is Book #1 in the HE MAN WOMAN HATERS CLUB series.  Many readers may know Lynch for his edgy and dark YA novels.  His sly sense of humor is right on target in the series as he explores pubescence in all of its angst in   the character of 13 year old Steven and his eccentric group of friends.   Possible connections include CRUSH and even the Origami Yoda series by Angleberger.

MOVES MAKE THE MAN (HarperTrophy, 1984)  by Bruce Brook was a Newbery Honor Medal winner.  One look at the structure of the book should demonstrate why it achieved this prestigious accolade.  Jerome, AKA Jayfox, is the token African American in his school.  Life is certainly not easy for him, and it is about to become more complicated when he meets Bix, a gifted athlete who is hiding a terrible secret. An interesting text recommendation would be Lynn Rae Perkins’ EASY AS FALLING OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH (Scholastic, 1991) by Avi was one of the first books that turned storytelling in a different direction.  Subtitled, A DOCUMENTARY NOVEL, Avi relays the narrative through conversations in school hallways, newspaper clippings, and other non-linear conventions.  The story of Philip, who hums during the morning pledge of allegiance to get on the nerves of his homeroom teacher, is a prime example of how one tiny un-truth can lead to horrific circumstances.  Jerry Spinelli’s STARGIRL might make an interesting follow up recommendation.

THE PRINCESS DIARIES (HarperCollins, 2000)  by Meg Cabot will make you forget the movie with Julie Andrews and Anne Hathaway from the first chapter on.  Mia has just learned that her late father was the prince of a kingdom.  As his heir, she is now a princess.  Trouble is, she  is nothing like any princess she has ever seen in books or movies.  A ROYAL PAIN by Ellen Conford, another blast from the past, would be a terrific companion to this book.

WHISPERS FROM THE DEAD (Dell, 1989)  by Joan Lowey Nixon is another of my go to books when working with large groups of students in a booktalk. Sarah relocates with her parents to Houston following her near-drowning.  The new home and neighborhood should be a welcome relief but instead whispers from the previous occupants of the house, where a double murder occurred in the past, disrupt her return to normal.  A fine mystery with ghosts and blood spatter and red herrings make this a terrific read aloud or choice for independent reading.  Nixon write many mysteries which could be recommended for those who love the genre:  THE WEEKEND WAS MURDER, THE SÉANCE, THE DARK AND DEADLY POOL, and many more are sure to please readers.

WINTER ROOM (Scholastic 1989)  is one of Gary Paulsen’s neglected classics. Just the introduction to the novel is enough to demonstrate the wordsmithery of Paulsen who won a Newbery Honor Medal for this book.  A series of connected vignettes about growing up on a farm in Minnesota celebrate family, story, and nature.  DOGSONG is a logical tie-in. For something a little different, try WOLVES, BOYS, AND OTHER THINGS THAT MIGHT KILL ME.

Teri  Lesesne a proud member of the #nerdybookclub.  She no longer has to apologize for holing up in her room with a book or burying her nose in a book.  You can visit her book blog at:  http://professornana.livejournal.com You can find her on Twitter as @ProfessorNana.

How to Inspire Students (with a little help from my friends…) by Cindy Minnich & Gae Polisner

Once upon a time, I read the tweets and Facebook statuses posted by Paul W. Hankins about his students being able to interact with authors online as well as in person and I kept thinking, “Wow. I wish I could do that.”

All I could think was that this must be such an incredible experience for students – one that is both memorable and inspiring. A chance to connect reading and writing and all of the things that readers and writers wonder about in one glorious 42 minute period that would surely leave an impression on them.

Paul is truly a God of connecting authors with teachers and vice versa. Through him, I have met some of the most inspiring, creative, motivated teachers (and youth librarians) in the country, including Cindy. It has spoiled me a little for what I want (and see) for my own kids. Each time I meet one of their English teachers who doesn’t know a thing about contemporary YA fiction, or seem to make any real effort to truly encourage reading with their students, I’m like, “whaaaaaa? ”

I had the opportunity to see this kind of interaction firsthand this week with my students when Gae Polisner came to visit with us in my small rural high school. Let me tell you: it was exactly what I had hoped it would be.

Funny, it was exactly what I hoped it would be too – and more. And, it was amazing to see first-hand how “Mrs. Minnich” truly inspires her students to read… they literally walked into the room asking for titles, dishing on titles, racing to the back of the class to see what was new for them on the shelves. These kids have caught their teacher’s bug for reading. It’s something wonderful to witness.

My honors ninth graders read both The Pull of Gravity (Gae’s book) and Of Mice and Men over the summer. We had spent time talking about them, making connections, and puzzling over the choices Gae made when she wrote the book. We had quite a collection by the time Gae arrived on Tuesday: Why don’t Nick and Jaycee start dating sooner? What was the point of the bus crash? Did you intend for the Scoot to be like Yoda? Should we see Jaycee as a Mary Sue character?

I answered their questions as best I could, but first I had to be told what a Mary Sue is. And the answer is NO. Jaycee’s the opposite of a Mary Sue, if you ask me. 
The other ninth grade sections were only up to chapter 7 by Tuesday though we’d hoped we’d be done before. Ah…the best laid plans of mice and men! But this didn’t slow us down. We talked about how long it took to write, where her inspiration came from, whether she had known anyone with progeria before.

We also did some fun five-minute writing exercises and, as always, I was amazed at how enthusiastic and participatory the students were, and how amazing their pieces were. I was also amazed at how many were brave enough to read their rough work (or any work) aloud. I was one of those kids that was way too nervous and prayed I wouldn’t get called on.

And one student from those sections proudly read the very last page of The Pull of Gravity  in her presence and proclaimed to her that it was the best book he’d ever read – and the only book he’d yet read cover to cover.

He didn’t have his own copy, so, needless to say, as soon as I got home, I signed one up and sent it to him. Trust me, I’ll remember that kid more than he’ll ever remember me. 

Have you ever seen an author cry? That’s one sure way to make it happen.

Indeed it is. Surreal, happy tears, to move a kid in that way. . .

Books were signed, mini-trolls were passed out, and black cherry cola and wax lips were enjoyed.

As fast as it began, the bells rang one period after another, and before we knew it the day was done.

Gae headed home and I waited to see what the next day would bring.

What it brought were thank yous. Lots and lots of thank yous. The most overwhelming comment was that they wished that we could’ve had more time with her. (Indeed, fifth period was over before all of the questions were answered.)

I know. I felt bad because the hands were up – like a sea of hands – and I promised we’d get to them all. I’m not a fan of breaking promises, so I told them I’d happily Skype in again, or that any of them could email me and I’d happily answer their questions.

Even the substitute teacher’s aide told me that she was grateful she could be there to enjoy the visit. “It made me want to start reading more than I have been.”

The students echoed this sentiment. There’s a new level of thinking now with their books – the thinking of what inspired this writing or what ideas connect to it. I can teach this strategy, but hearing an author speak on the subject is ten thousand times more effective.

More than that, huge numbers of students wrote that they felt motivated to write more. “You really let me understand that I have better potential than what I thought I had,” wrote Aaron. “I judged myself on my first drafts. Now I know not to do that and I can be a better writer now because of you.”

If Aaron wrote that, my work there is done.

This has us working in the right direction to continue reading as writers and writing as readers. And I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my friend Gae.

Thanks, Cindy, it was an honor to be there. I hope to be back next year!

Cindy Minnich lives with her husband and six-year-old son in Millersburg, PA. She teaches 9th and 12th grade English and advises yearbook at Upper Dauphin Area High School. The best part about her job is seeing her students discover books again. The best part about motherhood is seeing that her son loves books as much as she does. She can be found on Twitter at @cbethm.

Gae Polisner is the author of the Nerdy-Award-winning The Pull of Gravity (also named to the PSLA & Bankstreet College’s lists of Best YA Fiction for 2011). Her next YA is forthcoming from Algonquin Books. When she’s not writing, she can be found swimming in the open waters off of Long Island. Follow Gae on Twitter @gaepol, join her on her facebook author page https://www.facebook.com/gaepolisnerauthor, or find out more about her at her website, www.gaepolisner.com. The Pull of Gravity will be out in paperback soon!

 

Literature Unlocked by Corey Rosen Schwartz

October 20, 1973.  That was the day my world changed.  We were driving down the Palisades Parkway.  “It’s a beautiful day,” my mom said.  The sun was shining and autumn was in its full splendor.  I looked out at the blur of orange and yellow.

 I was seven and a half and we were on our way to Columbia Presbyterian to get my glasses.   I had recently had cataract surgery.  (In my family, cataracts are congenital.)  I’d been squinting my way through school and pretending to sharpen my pencil multiple times a day so I could sneak up and decipher what was on the blackboard.

On the way home, I looked out the window, and for the first time, I could see the individual leaves on the trees.  “It is a beautiful day,” I said.   My mom recalls that moment fondly.

What I recall is that I was finally able to read the book that had been given to me as a gift for being in the hospital.  The Secret Garden.  Though it’s been nearly four decades, I can still feel the magic of that story.   Everything disappeared.  There was just Mary Lennox, a vast stretch of moor,  and a mysterious garden.  She found her key, and I found mine. I don’t think my parents saw me without a book in hand for the next ten years.

 If it hadn’t been The Secret Garden, it would have undoubtedly been another novel.  I was hardwired to be a reader.  But, wow, unlocking the gate to a secret garden was certainly an amazing way to become initiated into the Nerdy Book Club!

Corey Rosen Schwartz is the author of HOP! PLOP! (Walker, 2006), THE THREE NINJA PIGS (Putnam, 2012) GOLDI ROCKS AND THE THREE BEARS (Putnam, forthcoming) and NINJA RED (Putnam, forthcoming). Corey has no formal ninja training, but she sure can kick butt in Scrabble. She lives with three Knuckleheads in Warren, NJ. You can find her online at http://www.coreyrosenschwartz.com and on Twitter as @CoreyPBNinja. 

Why Inventions? by Ellis Weiner

What is it about mechanical devices, doohickeys, and gizmos that is so satisfying? Why is it so enthralling to watch elaborate Rube Goldberg-type contraptions chug and pivot and collapse through their paces? Why does this OK GO You Tube video from a couple years ago—-have 37,244,587 (i.e., a little more than the population of Algeria) views? And what’s everyone watching? A warehouse full of junk, being rolled and shot and thrown and shattered by not much more than the effects of simple machines, a little electricity, and a whole lot of gravity.

Probably our pleasure in this crude display of cause-and-effect originates in our ability to feel physical empathy.

Everyone is familiar with emotional empathy. We can look at someone reacting tearfully to bad news, and we can feel a vicarious/empathetic sadness. We feel bad for them. It’s the same with joy: we see hostages rescued from danger and reunited on the tarmac with their loved ones, and it is impossible not to well up with a feeling of vicarious relief.

Physical empathy is no less common. We can witness a particularly violent tackle in football and react, if not with a comparable physical pain, at least with some kind of wince or jolt. We watch pole vaulters or gymnasts execute their highly specific routines, or foot racers strain at the finish line, and experience some rarefied kind of response in sympathy with their effort. The entire art form of dance depends, in part, on our pre-conscious, somatic response to, and appreciation of, the dancers’ gestures and skill.

I’d even go so far as to say that the appeal of sculpture originates in our responding as one physical object—our bodies—to another. Our selves may be minds existing in the non-physical “space” of consciousness, but without our bodies we wouldn’t exist. We’re equipped with an entire repertoire of reflexes that snap into action without our having to (or being able to) think about them. Which is to say, our bodies have a mind of their own.

Maybe this is why we find mechanical inventions and contraptions so gratifying. The understandable, visible chain of cause and effect on display when, e.g., a foot pedal pumps air through a hose into a nozzle aimed at a book, thus turning a page without use of the hands, awakens a kind of fellow feeling in our bodies. The object does something; we, its fellow object, sense a kind of kinship with it.

The iPhone is cool, and everything, but a clever new form of corkscrew or umbrella exerts a charm that no electronic miracle can match. And, as anyone knows who has helped a young student create a project for a school unit on “simple machines,” merely hooking up pulleys and levers in such a way as to get object X from point A to B can be extremely satisfying.

Not only that. Practical objects do something that sculpture or ballet dancers don’t. They embody the process of solving problems. In that sense they manifest, not only our bodies as physical objects, but our minds at work. The devices in Rube Goldberg’s cartoons succeeded as elaborate jokes on physics itself (everything was the opposite of “elegant”) because they each ostensibly accomplished something practical. The point wasn’t to chain together an arbitrary array of boiling kettles and falling paperweights. It was—in the end—to pull your own tooth or find your keys.

When I decided to make the Templeton Twins’ father an inventor, it just seemed like a fun idea. But, now that I think of it, maybe this was why.

ELLIS WEINER has written funny articles for magazines, funny television scripts, and co-written a lot of funny books with Barbara Davilman (e.g., Yiddish with Dick and Jane). He has even written several funny books all by himself (e.g., The Joy of Worry), but The Templeton Twins Have an Idea is his first book for kids. It is also very funny. He lives in California. Follow him on Twitter: @EllisWeiner

Check out the book trailer:

Pester the Narrator of The Templeton Twins Have an Idea at http://templetontwins.tumblr.com

 

 

 

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How Comics Made Me a Reader and a Writer by Jeramey Kraatz

There are thousands of comic books bagged and boarded and meticulously filed in longboxes in my closet. In grad school, I studied comics from an academic perspective and spent a semester as the editorial intern for the X-Men department at Marvel. A lot of what I write—be it nonfiction or middle-grade novels—has to do with superheroes.

All this really comes down to one thing: I’m a comic book nerd. I know comics. I’m an adult who has given an awful lot of thought to the ramifications of Peter Parker’s marriage in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21, or what Northstar’s uniform change in Alpha Flight #104 means for his character. And I’ve thought a lot about how the countless hours I spent sitting on my bedroom floor surrounded by issues of X-Men and Avengers as a kid shaped who I am today.

I can say without a doubt that I’m indebted to comics and graphic novels because they turned me into a reader and a writer. Comics made me imagine.

I’m not just talking about daydreaming in class about what it would be like to shoot lasers from my eyes (though there was plenty of that going on). It started much subtler than that, before I could even read. I’m not sure why, but I had a few old Swamp Thing in my toybox when I was really young—these weird combinations of words and art on flimsy newsprint that were completely unlike any of my picture books. I couldn’t read them, but I’d look at them all the time, ignoring the speech bubbles and captions and making up my own stories. Sometimes Swamp Thing was a hero. More often, given his creepy appearance, he was a villain. Thinking about those comics now, I can remember some of the panels perfectly, but I couldn’t tell you what the stories were. Or, more precisely, which of the stories were mine, and which were the writer’s.

A few years later, after I’d learned to read, I bought my first comic book: X-Men Vol. 2 #22, July 1993. I chose it because I really liked the X-Men cartoon, not realizing I was jumping into the middle of decades of backstory. I probably read that comic cover-to-cover ten times after bringing it home. I had no idea what was going on—something about ninjas and implanted memories—but I was enthralled by the action and art. Understanding the plot would come later. All I knew for sure was that I wanted more.

I quickly became obsessed. All my allowance went to buying comics. The month-long wait between new issues was excruciating, especially since superhero comics love to end on cliffhangers, so to pass the time I started writing stories. At first they were just a few paragraphs long, describing what I wanted to happen in the next issue. Eventually, they were a several scribbled pages of me fighting alongside my heroes, or new characters altogether. I never thought of this as anything related to reading or writing or learning—it was just an extension of my love for the characters and their adventures. I know several other comic junkies who remember doing the same thing, spending their free time creating elaborate fan fictions, sometimes sharing them on the playground. We were doing the sort of creative writing assignments without even realizing it.

Now, almost two decades later, I’m basically doing the same thing—writing the story that I want to read, or the one I think I would have wanted to read as a kid. The process has gotten more complicated, but the base is still there. I’m just imagining.

There is also a different, subconscious way comics force readers of any age to use their imaginations. The space between two panels on a page is the “gutter,” which usually represents unseen action or a passage of time. It’s where your brain fills in the story. You didn’t actually see Wolverine take out all the bad guys, but because they’re all on the ground in the panel after they attacked him, you know that’s what happened. If the comic is successful, you can see the scene play out in your head and not even realize you’re doing it. Sometimes when I reread comics I haven’t touched in years, I’m surprised to find that a panel I vividly remember isn’t there. A hero’s demise is less graphic than I thought it was, or plays out in silhouettes, or is never really shown except in reaction shots of other characters. It happened in the gutters, off the page, offstage. The same thing happens in novels, only “imagining what happens in the gutters” becomes “reading between the lines,” and comics made me better at doing that.

That’s not the only way comics helped me become a better reader in general. Hungry for more superheroes, I devoured the short, kid-friendly novelizations of famous comic book storylines that Marvel used to put out. When I finished all of those, I started looking for books that read like superhero comics, stories rich in fantasy and battles between good and evil. From there, I moved on to all types of literature. I filled up the time between issues of X-Men with more and more words, and my bookshelves became a beautiful mess of novels, nonfiction, and superpowers. (They still look like that today.)

Imagining, creating my own story, learning to wonder what happens outside of the text and images I’m given—that’s what reading comics helped to open up for me. To create an entire world out of twenty-four paneled pages a month. Obviously, the superhero comics I grew up on aren’t for every taste or age group: I use them only as an example of my personal experience. There are great middle grade and children’s comics and graphic novels out there (many talked about by the Nerdy Book Club on a regular basis), and these same ideas apply to them. Every time I see a teacher or librarian or parent talking about recommending one of these books to a kid, part of me gets so excited. Not just because I love comics and am glad to see the medium passed on to a new generation, but because there’s a chance that kid is going to have a whole new world opened up for them. And I hope that they find it to be as rewarding as I have.

 

Jeramey Kraatz has wanted superpowers ever since he opened his first comic book as a kid. He’s a graduate of Texas Christian University and the MFA writing program at Columbia University. His debut middle-grade novel is The Cloak Society, out October 2^nd, 2012 from Harper. Jeramey lives in Texas, where he works in the animation industry. You can find him at http://www.jerameykraatz.com, or on twitter @jerameykraatz.

Top Enjoyment Reading for My 11th Grade Guy by Teresa Rolfe Kravtin

As this school year commences, I have little time left to kick into gear to insure my son has some opportunity to read for his own enjoyment before he graduates from high school. We do not lack for book stacks in our house: in my office, in our garage, on the dining room table, in the bedroom, on the stairs, on the coffee table, just about anywhere you look. I employ my son and his friends twice a year to help me with my job, which involves all these books. They help me unpack publisher catalog boxes, they sticker catalogs with my contact information, they remove the previous season’s catalogs and help tote the heaviest boxes of catalogs to the landfill for recycling, they sort through my samples and organize them in catalog order, and finally help me assemble my catalog mailings.

I talk to my son about the books I’m reading. He sees me and his dad reading all the time. I share all the exciting developments about my job with him, which author’s first book has just sold movie rights to Hollywood, the author that signed a copy of a book I loved. I have booksellers who look forward to seeing him during my summer swing through south Georgia and the panhandle of Florida, when he accompanies me on my sales calls. (Road trip!) Years ago, I took him to meet Rick Riordan, and Jeff Kinney when they traveled to Atlanta for book signings. When our beloved cat Lucy passed away, it was my son who comforted me and his dad with the spiritual wisdom he gained from reading The Warriors cat clan books. At a younger age, he and I enjoyed sharing the bounty of children’s books from my publishers with his elementary teachers and librarians. We’d pick a day and load up the car with boxes of picture books and take them to school and distribute them to his teachers. I think we enjoyed giving them away more than the teachers enjoyed receiving them. My son has experienced the business of books.

My son has not had the experience of a teacher with a classroom library who is book talking books, reading aloud in the classroom, modeling reading themselves, setting aside time for reading during class or encouraging enjoyment reading since the third grade. I’m afraid that reading is purely assignment driven, and the fun reading of Wimpy Kid and Percy Jackson is a distant memory. How much does he read for his own enjoyment, you ask? Not very much, sadly. So I’m kicking it into gear and making an effort to change that this year. I enlisted the help of the most talented 11^th grade teacher I know (I’m looking at you, Paul W. Hankins!) and I asked him for a Top Ten List of Enjoyment Reading for a Guy in the 11^th Grade. Between the two of us, I think we have a great selection that will undoubtedly grab his attention and hopefully kick start his own discovery of authors and books that he might share with me. I have already rounded up the titles listed here that I have at home, and will shop for the rest at one of my wonderful independent bookstores (as John Schumacher always says, “Support independent bookstores whenever possible.”) Yes, there are more than ten titles below because how can one stop at ten? Please share your top enjoyment reads for guys in the 11^th grade. We have the whole school year to get through.

Here is a link to my bookshelf of these titles on Goodreads: enjoyment-eading-for-11^th-gr-guys

Teresa Rolfe Kravtin (@trkravtin on Twitter) is a publisher representative in the southeast. You can read her blog A Rep Reading at http:arepreading.tumblr.com and find her book recommendations on Goodreads here: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1737994-teresa-rolfe. 

Embarrassed to Read by Donalyn Miller

A recent National Literacy Trust report found that 17% of children surveyed would be embarrassed if their friends saw them reading.  According to a dictionary, “Embarrassment is an emotional state of intense discomfort with oneself, experienced upon having a socially unacceptable act or condition witnessed by or revealed to others.” Embarrassment is tied to our need for social acceptance. If you have ever chased a naked toddler, you know that children aren’t born with an understanding of socially acceptable behaviors and must learn them from people who understand society’s rules.

So, where do children learn that reading is embarrassing?

Children receive the message that reading a lot isn’t cool from adults. When parents don’t model reading, teachers consider reading a school job, and communities and schools close or defund libraries—we communicate to children that reading isn’t important.

In modern society, children’s future success depends on their acquisition of literacy skills. Children must learn to read and write in order to achieve an education and perform job and life functions that require accessing and communicating information. Possession of fundamental literacy falls within our social norms. There seems to be a line, however, between reading well enough and reading as a leisure pursuit. It’s OK for children to read when called upon, but if they would rather read than watch TV or play outside, they are social outliers.

I fight this perception that reading is nerdy with my students every year. I make it my mission to entice the most popular kids with great books and positive reading experiences because I know that if I can show them that reading is cool, other kids will want to read, too.

As adults, those of us who love books and reading often gravitate toward other readers. We join a reading tribe like Nerdy Book Club or find a career that supports our passion. If we want children to read more, we must provide them with classrooms, libraries, and homes where enjoying reading is a social norm.

If cultural acceptance includes reading, then children will read. If reading isn’t valued, they won’t. Why would anyone read if they receive overt and implied messages that reading is weird? Reading shouldn’t be an extraordinary act performed by a bookish few who stand outside of mainstream culture. Reading should be as ordinary as bread.

When we promote books to children and share our reading lives with them, we offer more than another great book recommendation—we invite children into a society where reading and readers are valued. Society benefits when more people read, but we have to show children that our culture values it.

People who read avidly as adults do so because we enjoy it. Along with everything else children must learn about how to read, we can’t overlook the importance of teaching them why we read when society doesn’t demand that we read much at all.

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.

Skype Tour: Stephen McCranie

When graphic novel author and illustrator Stephen McCranie starting telling me (Colby Sharp) about his idea to Skype with as many classrooms as he could, I got extremely excited. I have found that connecting my students to authors/illustrators via Skype is one their favorite things that we do in our classroom. When Stephen shared his idea of how he was going to draw for the students during the Skype I got even more excited. Nerdy Book Club friends, this is an opportunity you do not want to pass up.

Check out what Steven, Mal, and Chad have to say about this amazing adventure by reading the comic below. If you mention Nerdy Book Club in the “questions and comments” section Stephen will email you a pdf of the first chapter of the next Mal and Chad book.

Skype Visits are currently: Available until the end of 2012!

FAQ

Can you give me a more detailed description of the visit?

Each visit will be 20 minutes long and will include a short introduction, a presentation on how to draw comics, and then drawing requests.

What about a time for question and answer?

After the visit, students can contact me directly with questions via email or twitter. Teachers may also email me a list of the class’s questions for me to answer.

How can I arrange a test call to make sure skype is working properly?

I’ll be calling you a couple minutes before the talk to make sure everything works, but if you don’t feel confident about your setup and want to make sure everything will work right, we can arrange a time to do a test call the day before.

I’ve never read Mal and Chad. Do my class and I need to read it before the skype visit?

Nope! I’ll cover everything you need to know to make the presentation enjoyable during my introduction. (If you have read the books though, you’re my hero.)

What happens if I have to cancel last minute or skype doesn’t work?

It’s cool! I know stuff comes up. We’ll just reschedule.

I don’t have a skype account.

Well, click here to get started!

Have any more questions? Feel free to email me!

Application

My AFFL Reading Group by J. Michael Hutchinson

I got an intimidating email in my in-box the other day. It was from Colby Sharp asking if I was interested in writing for the Nerdy Book Club blog. Now I had signed up to be considered for the guest blogging role, so I knew I might get tapped, but still being asked to write for a blog and community that I have always just lurked near was daunting.

I was asked to write a post for the tag “Pay it Forward.” I’m still not sure exactly want that means so I have spent the last few days thinking of how I would respond. My first thought went to my work with SMS Guys Read, a reading club I started nearly six years ago to champion boys reading and highlight the books that appeal to guys. I love working with my guys read club, but a digital friend of mine, Mr. Shaffer wrote both eloquently and elaborately on the subject of Guys Read and even gave our club and our Intercontinental Ballistic Reading Group a cool shout out.

So what was I to write about? After looking back over some older posts and thinking about what else I manage to do in the reading lives of my students and school I have decided to talk about my AFFL group. Even now, nearly a year since its inception that joke still gets me smiling… my AFFL (pronounced awful) reading group. Still funny.

So let me go back to the beginning and set the stage for you. I teach sixth grade social studies on an interdisciplinary team of four teachers. We teach the classic four core subjects of Language Arts, Science, Math and Social Studies. Even though I am the social studies teacher and not the traditional reading teacher, my love for children’s literature has pushed me to become more of a champion for reading on our team. I have pushed, I will say without much resistance, for the role of reading to be a shared responsibility and not just the focus of our language arts teacher on our team. We now each take a day of the week to have silent free reading session and do with the students what we will. That means that students on our team will have SSR in Math, LA, Science and SS once each week. It is now so ingrained in the minds of our teachers that we look forward to our SSR day as much as the students, sometimes maybe even more.

We also used this sharing of responsibility and the focus on championing reading from lots of points of view to the area of circulation and the media center. Normally the Language Arts teacher is the only instructor allowed in the media center for student’s circulation time. We decided to share the responsibility between the science and social studies teachers. Now both my science colleague and I had once taught language arts so we both felt comfortable in the role of sharing books, and wanted our student the experience to hear our thoughts on books and reading as well.

My science colleague is an old friend and we have playfully disagreed on my subjects over our teacher careers, but after we jumped head first into reading we found we had one gigantic reading difference. I told a student they should read Percy Jackson and The Lighting Thief, My science buddy over heard this advice and thought he might need to see what all the Percy Jackson fuss was about. He read the book and hated it. In fact he decided right then and there that he hated all fantasy books and went about telling any sixth grader within ear shot how bad fantasy stories were.  The battle lines on our team started to form.

This became a year of banter back and forth between us, him championing nonfiction and me championing fantasy. After one relatively heated confrontation about Colin Meloy’s Wildwood, I decided I need to something more than banter; I had to band all of our fantasy loving students together, so I formed the AFFL reading group. AFFL stands for the Anti F(our fantasy loathing teacher’s last name starts with F) Fantasy League. Our role was to champion fantasy reading and blow razz-berries and anyone who claimed fantasy was silly or dumb.

We started meeting once a week during our school’s enrichment time and started out reading Colin Meloy’s Wildwood. After reading and meeting for a few weeks, we actually decided that this was more than just a one off club and we need to become more of a permanent group. We then created a blog and started meeting regularly at lunch.

After Wildwood, we started reading the Unwanteds by Lisa McMann and started making videos to go along with our readings. Those videos were the highlight of our time together and really probably one of the reasons so many students kept coming around, even if that meant not eating in the lunch room with the other students.

After a few videos, my flip camera started to die. The video sound kept coming out all fuzzy and I made a half joking comment asking if anyone would like to donate a new camera. Lisa McMann saw our videos about her book and responded that she would be willing to share a camera with us as well as some really fantastic sway from her great Unwanteds book. My AFFL students were over the moon. Not only had the author of this book we loved written to us, but she loved what we were doing and was willing to share cool stuff with us. Powerful!

We even asked Lisa McMann what we should read after The Unwanteds. She demanded (her words) that we read The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen. After reading some of The False Prince and making more fun and fantastic videos Ms. Nielsen saw what we were up to and wrote us a very kind and incredibly powerful letter, she included with the letter some stones to go along with the plot of her fantastic story and some autographed stickers.

Three books read and two very powerful reading experiences met. We finished The False Prince right as our school year was ending, but we living the slightly strange world of year-round schools, so the end of last year was the end of June and we have already been back to school for about three weeks. As I see my now 7^th grade AFFL members in the hallways they ask continually what is up with AFFL? So this school year we have made AFFL a legit after school club meeting twice a month. Our first meeting was last week and it was almost like a family reunion, even though we had only been gone a few weeks.

We have an author visit from Kenneth Oppel happening at the end of the month so AFFL will be reading his Silverwing novel and hopefully having a grand conversation with him and maybe some local bat experts. T-shirts are being planned and the members of AFFL are just as committed and excited about our group as they were when it first formed. In fact I now have to decide what to do with this year’s group of 6^th graders. The word is out there that we have this AFFL reading group for students who love fantasy and current 6^th graders are starting to ask me, “When can I join AFFL?” I think this AFFL group might have legs.

So what is my point in all of this rambling, really I think it boils down to championing reading wherever you can. Finding a hook and running with it.  I have found that middle school students crave the club setting and if structure the club around books and reading you can be successful with students.

I am lucky to teach in a school and on a team that love to read. I am lucky to have a friend who can push me on my love of fantasy and then handle me pushing back with a club named in his honor. I am truly honored to work with groups of students who love to read and are willing to give up their personal free time to meet with me and talk about books.