Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman

Hello, my fellow readers! Long time, no post.  I’ve been on the run since school started last month and haven’t had time for much of anything extra lately.  Are you all tired? I am tired! It’s always hard to settle into a classroom full of new students, and I bet if you are a student, it’s got to be difficult for you as well.  Luckily I was able to pick up the perfect-sized book and read it over the weekend, so now I have something to share!

Do you have a silly dad, a wacky grandpa, a zany uncle?  You know, one of those grownups that can’t ever just answer a question, but instead has to tell you some crazy story about something that may not have actually happened (or did it…?), and now you’re never sure if you should believe them or not because they might just be messing with you for fun? Yeah, that’s what this story is like!  Fortunately, the Milk is written by one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman.  He wrote the super creepy books Coraline and The Graveyard Book, which you may have come across at school.  This book, however, is completely hilarious and not spooky at all.

One day a dad goes to the store to get some milk.  The kids, a brother and sister, wait at home for him to return.  He is gone for a very long time, longer than he should have been gone, so the kids start to wonder where he went or who he must have run into at the store.  When dad finally returns, he has an amazingly absurd story to tell about UFOs, aliens, pirates, vampires, piranhas, volcanoes, a stegosaurus in a hot air balloon, time travel, and of course, the milk.  It’s a very silly book.  When you read it, just know that it is ridiculous.  Don’t question it, just roll with it and go along for the ride. This book would be an excellent one to share with your family as a read aloud because it has great opportunities for doing lots of crazy character voices.  Also, the illustrations by Skottie Young are a perfect match for the story.  At first glance, they are plain ink sketches, but when you look closely, they are whimsical and intricate and the details bring all the characters to life.  

Read this book if you like Roald Dahl’s fantastic books, or if you’ve ever read the Calvin and Hobbes comic strips, because this totally reminds me of Calvin’s dad.  (If you don’t know Calvin and Hobbes, you NEED to go check it out–http://calvinhobbesdaily.tumblr.com/)  Fortunately, the Milk has an AR level of 4.3 and is worth 1 point.  Enjoy this one!

 

Escape From Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein

I’d been hearing a lot of buzz on the internet about this book and how it would be a great read aloud story to share with a classroom.  I didn’t know much about it except that it took place in a library, so I decided to go find it and check it out.  I’m so glad I did, and now I AM reading it to my new students as we kick off the school year!

Kyle Keeley is a seventh grader in Alexandriaville, Ohio.  It’s a small town that hasn’t had a public library in twelve years, so kids who are Kyle’s age have grown up without a library their whole lives. Kyle has two older brothers; one is a jock, the other a genius.  Kyle excels at playing games of all kinds, but he’s not that into school, or sports, or reading.  Until…he finds out that the master gamemaker, Luigi Lemoncello is the man who is paying to have a brand new library built in Alexandriaville! Mr. Lemoncello is one of Kyle’s heroes and the creator of games such as Squirrel Squad, Family Frenzy, and the Indoor-Outdoor Scavenger Hunt.  He makes card games, video games, board games, puzzles, games with secret codes… you name it, he’s done it.  Suddenly Kyle has to scramble to finish that extra credit essay assignment that he blew off, because that essay was for a contest to be able to spend the night in Mr. Lemoncello’s new library!

Twelve twelve-year-olds are selected to experience the state-of-the-art library before the general public will be allowed inside.  The book is a cross between Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Night at the Museum.  The kids are becoming a part of an even bigger game, and the library is coming to life around them while they explore.  Mr. Lemoncello is very much like a Willy Wonka-type character, appearing randomly to give out clues and run the game. (Pay careful attention to how Mr. Lemoncello speaks in book titles and see how many you can identify.  That by itself is kind of like another side game while you read!)  Players are eliminated along the way (though nobody has to go to the juicing room after chewing blueberry bubble gum!) and competition grows fierce as the children race to collect the clues that will help them to escape the library.

Here’s the coolest part though: At the end of the book, there is a note from the author.  He says that there is another puzzle in the story, one that was hinted at, but not used.  The clues are there, and it is up to the reader to figure it out.  If you can solve the puzzle and email the author the correct answer, you can win books for yourself and your favorite library.  You have until January 1, 2014 to play, so get to reading!  I think I’m on the right track, but I’m not telling…

Read this book if you’re a Wonka fan, or if you love mysteries, puzzles, adventures, and balloons!  This is a fast book to read because it is so hard to put down and force yourself to stop.  I read it in a day when it was too hot to do much else than to lay around quietly and not move too much.

Escape From Mr. Lemoncello’s Library has an AR level of 4.5 and is worth 7 points.

The Surprise Attack of Jabba the Puppet by Tom Angleberger

Yes, book #4 is here! (Well, book 5 if you count Art-2 D2, but it’s not part of the stories, it’s a stand alone how-to art book.  So I don’t think it counts like that, cool though it may be.)  The Surprise Attack of Jabba the Puppet came out on my birthday, which was also a fantastic bonus for me.  I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday than with a trip to the bookstore.  Unless I can go to the library AND the bookstore on the same day, which occasionally gets to happen, and then it’s like one of those months where we have two full moons or something.  It’s like the Leap Year for books!

Jabba the Puppet picks up where Fortune Wookiee (book 3) leaves off.  If you recall, the kids get an ominous letter from the school district that indicates that all elective classes, like art and music and yearbook, will be cancelled.  In the new book, we find out why.  Because test scores at McQuarrie Middle School have dropped, a new program is being instituted for all students in order to prepare for the next year’s tests.  The new program is called Fun Time, and it consists of a video series that features a singing calculator (or a breakdancing dictionary, depending on what grade you are in), and worksheets.  Lots of worksheets.  Naturally, everyone hates it.

Dwight and his Origami Yoda have returned to McQuarrie after being banished to a private school for the last semester.  He and Yoda come up with an idea to form an Origami Rebel Alliance in order to stop Fun Time from ruining their school year.  This is also serious because without sports or clubs, they will fall out of practice for high school and it could affect their choices later on when there is more competition. Many new characters get folded into the plot (see what I did right there? Folded? Origami?) and kids from all grades join in the protest.  It’s pretty funny because even when Dwight himself drops out, his Origami Yoda still remains the leader of the group!

It turns out that Fun Time is much bigger than just this school; these crazy intervention programs go up to the state and national level, and Tom Angleberger shows how stuff like this works in real life by making fun of a sometimes true situation.  (All of that state testing business?  Teachers don’t love it either, kids!)  Our heroes need some extra help on this case, and it comes in surprising ways.  And just like in Empire Strikes Back, the stage has been set up for the rebellion to truly begin.

If you’ve read the others, you must read Jabba the Puppet as well.  Read it you must! Some of the Star Wars references truly made me laugh out loud. I loved it.

And if you haven’t read the others….why not?!?

This book is too new, so no AR test or level info for you at this time.  I’ll update when it becomes available.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

The Knife of Never Letting Go (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s taken me longer than I had hoped to finish this book, but the fact is that I’m spending a ton of my time getting ready to go back to work next week. (Next week?!?) I’ve already spent about 6 hours in my classroom moving furniture around and unpacking my library.  Library first, always.  It makes me feel like I’m at home.  I’m super lucky this year because I get to teach another round of sixth grade at the same school I was at last year, and I’m really looking forward it!

Full disclosure on this book– it’s an upper-middle grade book, which is higher than what I’ve been posting about lately, but it is easy to read and is leveled as a 4.4.  Remember that just because you CAN read something, doesn’t always mean you should, so know yourself as a reader and check with a parent if you’re not sure.  It is violent and has some language in it, though most of it is the word “effing” used as an adjective. Some of the words are spelled phonetically, though it is done so you can hear the main character’s voice in your head and how his twangy accent would sound. And interestingly, hearing voices in your head is one of the main concepts of this book…

Okay, so The Knife of Never Letter Go is like a science fiction-Western story, a mash-up we don’t get too often. Settlers have come to the New World and set up a colony.  They are on a planet other than Earth, because there are two moons, but everything else is very Earth-like.  We meet Todd Hewitt, an almost 13-year-old (or is he 14?), who is days away from becoming a man, according to tradition. There are no women in his town after the war against the “Spackle”, alien invaders who released some sort of biological warfare upon the people.  The Germ killed all the women and left behind The Noise for the men, in which everyone can hear every other person’s thoughts, all the time.  Even the animals were infected with Noise and they can talk, too, which I loved, because Todd is always with his dog, Manchee.  So even when Todd is alone, he always has someone to talk with, which keeps the book moving along.

But then…things happen. Todd quickly learns that everything he thought he knew is a lie.  Because he is on the run, and because reading the book is like being in Todd’s Noise, in his head, this is a very urgent read.  It is The Book of Never Letting Go, and I had to find out what would happen next!  It was different, and I really liked it.  I will continue reading this series, since it ends with a cliffhanger.  There are three main books, plus a sequel.

Read this if you like dystopian stories, like Divergent or The Hunger Games or The Maze Runner, etc., but know that this one is not the same at all.  It’s hard to explain, and maybe I’ll be able to do that better once I’ve read all of the books.  You have to be able to be okay with reading a story and not quite knowing what is going on, which is what I find to be true about most sci-fi books.  Just sit back and go for the ride, and know that the author will tell you what you need to know at the moment you need to know it. It was very suspenseful, especially with the author’s writing style, and it kept me pushing through.  Check it out!

The Knife of Never Letting Go has an AR level of 4.4 and is worth 16 points.

Wrapped by Jennifer Bradbury

Remember a few weeks ago when I posted about the book The Egypt Game?  I picked up another Egypt-themed book the other day and found the reading experience I had been hoping for– adventure, mystery, archaeology, the Rosetta Stone, The British Museum, London…and a tiny bit of romance.  This book met my summer reading requirements!  Did you know that during the late 1830s and 40s, rich people used to have parties where the entertainment involved unwrapping mummies? True!  And, creepy!  If there were any charms or amulets or jewelry wrapped inside the mummy, they would be given away as party favors! Check it out: http://www.history.com/videos/mummies-mummy-unwrapping-parties#mummies-mummy-unwrapping-parties

Egyptology was quite trendy, but was also becoming a serious science all of its own, especially after the Rosetta Stone was deciphered in 1822.  The Rosetta Stone was the key to reading Egyptian hieroglyphics, and you can see it in the British Museum, where it has been on display since 1802.  More info on the stone here:  http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/writing/rosetta.html  And more info about Egypt from the British Museum:   http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/galleries/ancient_egypt/room_62-63_egyptian_mummies.aspx

Wrapped is a story about a young lady named Agnes Wilkins, who lives in London in 1815.  She comes from a well-to-do family and is preparing for her “debut”, or her presentation to society as a woman now eligible for marriage.  In these days, marriages were carefully arranged so that they would be a good match between families, much more like business deals to achieve security and status. Agnes’ mother has her eye set on Lord Showalter as a husband for Agnes, though he is a typical rich, show-off type.  (When I read about him, I pictured Gaston from Beauty and the Beast!)  Showalter has one of these mummy unwrapping parties at his mansion, and Agnes is asked to participate.  When she unwraps a piece of iron in the shape of a jackal’s head, she keeps it.  

Apparently this mysterious item is being hunted down by Napoleon and the French army, which sends Agnes on a mad dash around London to figure out its significance.  At the British Museum, she meets a young man who is a scholar studying the Rosetta Stone.  Of course, he is poor and lower class, not an appropriate match at all, so naturally like in all good romances, she develops feelings for him.  Add in some extra twists and turns, and this book had my full attention!

Wrapped was fast and fun, even if it was slightly predictable.  The ending was left open for possible sequels, which I would definitely read.  The writing is a little more formal to reflect the timeframe of the story, but it is not difficult.  Read this book if you like strong, smart female characters, mysteries, historical fiction, Egypt, or museums.  Wrapped has an AR level of 5.9 and is worth 11 points.

The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman by Meg Wolitzer

Do you play Scrabble? My grandma taught me to play when I was about seven years old as a way to practice spelling and vocabulary.  (My dad taught me to play blackjack to help get my math facts faster, too.  If you can make learning into a game, go for it!) I have several Scrabble sets in my classroom and I always teach my students how to play each year.  It’s a great (and quiet) activity for free time or rainy days.  I still play all the time; I think I have about 12 Words With Friends games going on right now, and I learn new words every day as a result!

My book for today just so happens to be about Scrabble, and the cover of The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman was what first caught my eye, for the letter tiles as well as the guy in the alligator costume.  Duncan Dorfman is the new kid at school after he and his mother move back to her hometown to live with his great-aunt.  The night before school starts, his mom gives him a warning:

“Whatever you do, Duncan, keep it to yourself,” she said. “If you don’t, I’m afraid something bad will happen.”

What is Duncan’s power?  He has a remarkable talent in his left hand.  If he closes his eyes and runs his fingers over words, any kind of words, he can read them.  He can feel them with his fingers and know what they say.  Naturally his secret doesn’t stay secret for very long, and as soon as the Scrabble team hears about it, Duncan has suddenly been recruited to play in a high-stakes tournament with a cash prize of $10,000. Duncan’s mother could sure use that money, so he agrees to learn about the game and play in the tournament.  His new partner thinks they will be able to crush their opponents since Duncan will be able to pick out exactly the right letters at the right time.  Duncan can do it, but will he?

We also get to follow two other Scrabble teams as they prepare for the tournament, and ultimately their paths cross once they arrive there.  Everyone has his or her own particular motivation, or reason, for wanting to win, but they also band together to solve some problems that arise along the way.

Duncan has a moral dilemma over the issue of cheating, and yet he makes some interesting decisions as he goes through the story.  Some of the secondary storylines feel like they are just too much extra stuff and so some of the events seem pretty crazy and unbelievable.  That can be distracting when the rest of the story is written to BE believable, but that’s just my opinion.

The thing I like best about this book was that it gives tons of Scrabble tips, hints, and word lists! My favorite team was a pair of kids who, although the tournament was for 5th-8th graders, looked “as if they were only in second grade.”  I wish there had been more about their story, too, because I felt very protective of them!  My least favorite character was Carl, Duncan’s partner, but you get to enjoy not liking him as you read the story, if that makes sense.  If you like word games, feel like you don’t fit in at school OR at home, wish you had a secret power, or you can imagine yourself winning $10,000, give this book a shot.

The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman has an AR level of 5.2 and is worth 9 points.

When Did You See Her Last? by Lemony Snicket

Lemony Snicket book and T-shirt

Well, I just came back from the San Diego Comic Con, and boy am I exhausted! The four-day event ended with us getting in line at midnight for a chance to attend the panel (or presentation) for the 50th anniversary of the show called Doctor Who.  We got in line at midnight and the presentation was at 12:30 the next afternoon.  Comic Con is a very silly place!  We DID get in for that panel, thank goodness, and saw many other super cool things while we were there.  People gather from all over the world to buy comic books, collect toys, watch previews and premieres of movies and television shows, buy artwork directly from the artists, try new video games, maybe see some celebrities,  get autographs, and dress up in the costumes of their favorite characters.  Also, many of the big movie studios and other companies give out posters and t-shirts and all kinds of goodies over the course of the convention.  People like free stuff and it’s a great way to spread the word about all of these upcoming movies, shows, and games.  Let the fans do the advertising for you! 

That’s all well and good and fun, but there is also a section of the convention where you can find book sellers and publishers.  This is MY favorite area and where you are most likely to find me hunting around for new titles.  I did go to one book signing, but that is a post for another day. (Veronica Roth was there, too, author of Divergent.  I would have liked to meet her, but I couldn’t be in two places at once. I’m working on cloning myself for next year.)  Something I did manage to come home with is an advanced copy of the next book in the Lemony Snicket series “All the Wrong Questions.”  I’m a huge fan and I even got to meet him at a book festival earlier this year.

Terrible photo, my apologies. This book is in my classroom, so I can’t get a better picture right now.

In When Did You See Her Last?, Lemony and his incompetent chaperone are hired to search for a missing girl, named Cleo Knight.  She is the daughter of the family that owns Ink, Inc., which was once Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s biggest business.  The sea is now gone and the octopi who produced the ink are endangered, and the little town is practically shut down as a result.  Cleo is working on something having to do with making invisible ink when she is either kidnapped or has run away.  Which is it, and why? Who would want to stop her work? Who would want to steal her work? So many questions and most of the are probably the wrong ones!

Many of the characters from the first book return, and the Bombinating Beast statue is still being carefully guarded. But, what’s up with the tadpoles that bite?  And who is meant to be working with all of those aquariums?  Where is Kit Snicket and what is she up to on her secret assignment?  Who is Hangfire, really?  I could take a guess, but it’s too early to tell.  We do get a cross-over character from A Series of Unfortunate Events here, so keep your eyes peeled for that!  Also, watch for clues about other books and see if you can figure out which titles are being referenced.

I liked the first book well enough, but now with book 2, I’m really excited to find out the rest of the story!  When Did You See Her Last? comes out in October, and will be sure to have all of the artwork completed for the official publication.  My copy has a lot of spots where it just says “art to come” so I’ll have to buy the hardback to get the rest of the illustrations, which are really neat.  Because this book has not been released yet, there is no AR information, but I will update this post when it becomes available.

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

I’ll be honest, I really struggled with this book.  I’ve had it in my classroom for years and never read it. It won a Newbery Honor Medal in 1968.  I love Egypt.  (My concentration in college was anthropology.  I was either going to be a teacher or Indiana Jones when I grew up!)  Obviously, I enjoy children’s books.  It should have been an easy match, but it was hard and slow going for me, which surprised me a lot.  There’s even a blurb on the back by Lemony Snicket saying how great it is, and everyone knows that I love Lemony Snicket, so I was looking forward reading  this book.

The Egypt Game takes place in a college town, most likely Berkeley (another one of my favorite things), based on the author’s personal information.  April has just moved to town from Hollywood to live with her grandmother temporarily.  Her mother is a struggling actress who seems to always be on the brink of superstardom, according to her infrequent letters.  April doesn’t really know her grandmother at all, and when she arrives at her new home, she doesn’t quite fit in.  April wears her hair in a very adult up-do, insists on fake eyelashes, wears a fur wrap, and is very different from the other sixth graders.  Luckily her new neighbor Melanie can see through her insecurities and befriends her.  The girls like playing games using their imaginations, such as cutting out photos from magazines and making up stories to go with them.  They also enjoy reading and researching information at the library and find themselves in a phase where they study all they can about Egypt.

Melanie has a younger brother, Marshall, and together they find a place to play what becomes the Egypt Game.  They set up various shrines, create elaborate rituals, and even start making costumes.  Two of the boys from their class even join in the game, though reluctantly at first.  Their secret “Egypt” is in the storage yard of a curio shop in town, owned by an odd man known as the Professor.  When a crisis occurs, the mysterious Professor becomes a suspect, and a mystery unfolds.

I enjoyed the characters in this story.  The author was able to capture April’s insecurities at being new and lost and basically being abandoned by her mother.  At the same time, I loved Melanie’s ability to see through that and be a great friend for April, as well as a good big sister to Marshall.  The sixth grade boys are also complicated, wanting to do what’s cool and be popular, but also still wanting to play this secret imaginative game with the girls.  April’s grandmother is also awesome because she is there for April, but knows how to wait patiently until April warms up to her and lets her guard down.

So, this book had a lot of things I liked, but it just felt slow and out of date.  The Egypt part was secondary to the story here, but I did love that the kids were playing this inventive game together, outside, and that they were reading, reading, reading to learn more about a subject they were so passionate about. Honestly, I was hoping for some time travel, or something more like a Rick Riordan book that teaches while it entertains.  It wasn’t bad, just not what I expected.  I probably would have loved it as a kid, back closer to the publication date when we did spend our time running around the neighborhood and riding our bikes all over the place.

Read this book if you are a kid who has a great imagination and you like to write your own stories and make up games or secret clubs!  The Egypt Game has an AR level of 6.4 and is worth 7 points.

The Truth About Truman School by Dori Hillestad Butler

The Truth About Truman School is a book I bought at the end of the school year, since it’s about a middle school and my sixth graders were getting ready to take their next steps to seventh grade themselves.  We had been having some problems with kids being mean to each other, and I knew they were tired of hearing me lecture and I was tired of giving the same speeches day after day, reminding everyone to please just BE NICE.  Most of my students had been attending school together since their preschool days; they were at the point of splitting up to go in different directions for the fall so they were sad, but they also knew just how to push each other’s buttons and drive each other bonkers.  (It’s a fine line between love and hate, so they say.)  So I figured maybe if I couldn’t say anything else, I could throw out a reading experience that some kids would pick up on, and I ended up buying this book.

In the story, Zebby and Amr are neighbors and best friends.  They had a third friend, Lilly, but they “lost” her to the popular group in middle school, and hadn’t really interacted with her much lately.  Zebby wants to be a journalist when she grows up, but is frustrated with the way the school newspaper is being run.  Everything is sugar-coated and nobody can write anything even slightly critical about the school.  She and Amr decide to start a website for school news, where anyone can post anything they want– best teacher/worst teacher, opinion pieces, polls, etc.  They promise that they will not censor anyone like the official school newspaper does.

Of course, this idea of letting anyone speak their mind without consequence begins to spiral out of control.  The site quickly becomes a gossip site, and Lilly is the main target.  Someone is spreading anonymous rumors about her, and going through a LOT of trouble to do it.  This story follows the effects of cyberbullying on Lilly and the others who were involved, by alternating narrators and multiple perspectives.

I thought it was a very up-to-date topic, and was handled very well.  I do wish that the mean girls had expressed a bit more remorse, or indicated that they had learned a little something from their part.  Two of the stories end with a very flippant, “It was just a joke, no big deal” kind of attitude.  I suppose that’s real life though.  Not everyone will get it or have as much empathy as we would like.  You might recognize yourself in any one of these characters, or maybe more than one, since this age is so complicated for all of us.  It’s good to know that we aren’t alone, even if it sometimes just feels like us and a fictional character.  That’s why we read, to make connections.  And maybe reading something like this can help you learn to reach out to a friend who is struggling or even to make changes in yourself.

This was a really fast read, especially since there are no chapter breaks.  That always makes it hard for me to put a book down because I never know where to stop!  The Truth About Truman School has an AR level of 4.4 and is worth 6 points.

 

 

This is totally not a book….

…But it IS an amazing story, and I just have to share it with all y’all.  If you have 20 minutes to watch an inspirational short film, please check it out.  This is a follow-up to the original ESPN short from 2009.  I was lucky enough to discover it because my brother-in-law was the camera man (and you can actually see him in this one!)  Watch this and be thankful.

What can you overcome?

What can you help someone else overcome?

Watch and remember one of my favorite sayings:  What You Do Matters.

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/9454322/why-stayed