Word After Word After Word

The award winning author of Sarah, Plain and Tall, Patricia MacLachlan writes this short and clever "How To" book that reads as a novel. Though maybe I shouldn't have said that. Don't let that scare you away. I was intrigued with the lives of the five classmates who spend their time after school under the lilac tree. These neighbors are all in the same class and for six weeks at various times, they have a guest author, a very famous author visiting their class and she teaches them how to write poetry. Ms. Mirabel is magical, affirming and a riddle and she lures the children into the writing world, word after word after word.  Perhaps you have a poem you'd like to write down now.

Happy Earth Day!

I picked up Recycle This Book to share with my classes. I was drawn to this book because the one hundred authors for each essay on different ideas were authors of many of the books that are checked out from the library. Each writer chose a way that they were attempting to "go green." A variety of green activities were shared, but with one hundred submissions, many of the essays were redundant. Some ideas were general, such as the typical recycling your paper, glass, cans and plastic, but some talked about composting and vermiculture, solar panels, biking and eating less meat. We can unplug our many electrical gadgets when not in use, use cloth napkins and line dry our clothes. Have fun picking out some new ideas and share them with this book blog.

Countdown by Deborah Wiles

Most of the historical fiction books that I read usually take place long ago. But this book takes place in October of 1962. The whole story takes place within several days of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Franny is afraid and worried. Her school is doing "duck and cover" drills and her grandfather keeps flashing back to his days in the war. I personally don't remember having duck and cover drills when I was in school but I can certainly relate to the relationship complexities with the girls in Franny's class. This book has a lot to offer in addition to an interesting story, there is music, news clippings and advertisements interspersed throughout to give the historical background of the time. This book isn't in our school library but a parishioner donated it to the sixth grade classroom and several students have already read it. I hope you let us know what you thought of Countdown.

The Loser List by H. N. Kowitt

Flipping through this book it will remind you of a Diary of Wimpy Kid book. The pages are sprinkled with the drawings of the twelve-year old narrator and the lined notebook paper gives the impression of a composition book. I read the first Wimpy kid book and I must say I enjoyed this book much more. The story started out with a problem (Danny had a crush on a certain girl), it got more complicated (he was put on a loser list), he gets in trouble (of course, the conflict) and before he finds a neat and tidy way out, his problem becomes more complicated. The story moved at a fast pace and with all the pictures, it was a very quick book.