ALA Winners for 2012
Jan 26th
On Monday, January 23rd, the American Library Association announced the winners of the Newbery, Caldecott and other book awards.
In the children’s book world, this is like the Academy Awards of books. Librarians get pretty excited about the announcement and try for weeks ahead of time to predict the winners.
Nobody ever knows what books are on the “short-list” because that’s never revealed. A short list is when a list of books is shortened to the books in actual consideration for an award. There are hundreds of books published each year, and all of them can’t be on the final list!
Here are the winners for 2012!
John Newbery Medal – for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children
Newbery Honor Winners
Randolph Caldecott Medal- to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.
Caldecott Honor Winners-
As always, sometimes we already have the books that just won, and sometimes we don’t. The books we don’t already have are currently on order and will be in the library in the upcoming weeks. Check back often to see what has come in!
I was also thrilled to see that Samantha Vamo’s book, The Cazuela that the Farm Maiden Stirred won the Pura Belpre Honor award for illustrations by Rafael López. You might remember that she came to visit our school for Read Across America Week, sponsored by Parkplace Book and read this book to us. You can read that post here.
The sad part of any award list are the books that didn’t win. I have my own favorite middle grade reading list which include, Okay for Now, Bigger Than a Breadbox, Wonderstruck, Breadcrumbs, Small as an Elephant, A Monster Calls (YA novel) and the Trouble with May Amelia.
Now, what book you would have included in your favorite list either for Newbery or Caldecott?
What’s Your Dot?
Jan 16th
Today’s post is about dots. Colorful dots. Big dots. Small dots. Medium sized dots.
Seem like a crazy idea for a post?
Well, yes, unless you have read Press Here, an interactive picture book about how a dot can change itself everytime you turn the page.
And then there’s Lots of Dots
, by Craig Frazier. This is a delightful picture book we just added to our library.
“In this exuberant book, acclaimed graphic designer Craig Frazier does more than simply showcase a vast variety of dots, he encourages young readers to look closely at the world around them. Through his energetic images, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Buttons are dots. Wheels are dots. Ladybugs have dots. And so do the fried eggs on your plate. Lots of Dots is lots of fun!” Text by Chronicle Books
On Twitter, I learned about the extraordinary work by the 82 year old Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, whose “Obliteration Room” is currently on display at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia.
Yayoi started with a typical living room with the walls, ceiling and all contents painted white. Then she gave children brightly colored, adhesive dots in a variety of sizes to children to apply to whatever surface they desired!
These two books and the Obliteration Room gave me an idea.
Why not create our own dot book display in the library?
We could take dots and write titles of books we have read and staple them to our walls and ceiling! We will cover as much of the ceiling as possible while we are in our temporary library space.
Then when our school opens and the tractors and destruction equipment come to destroy the old building, we will see a rainbow of dots float to the ground as the ceiling collapses!
So, that’s exactly what we are doing! Our dot display is a celebration of reading! We have already coverd the bulletin board and the wall above it, and now we are up to the ceiling!
Mrs. Hembree has her own mini-dot display of the titles of books she has read in 2012. She has set a goal of reading 366 books this year, and students can track her progress on the lavendar dot display. It’s on the lower portion of the display.
Students and staff are writing the titles of books on dots. Any book counts whether you read it, it was read to you, you listened to it on an audio-book, or read it on an e-Reader. Reading is Reading!
So… What’s Your Dot? Every time you read a book, stop by and fill out a dot. You can take some home, write the titles on them and bring them back! Every time you walk in the library, it will look different as our dot book display grows! Join in…..it’s fun!
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What do you think about our dot display?
What book have you already read in 2012?
Have you seen or heard about The Obliteration Room in Australia?
Read Aloud Tuesdays Resumes
Jan 6th
“Mrs. Hembree, what’s the new read aloud book?”
“Are you starting today?”
“We’re going to choose it?”
“Wow, okay, I’ll be there! Still at noon, right? Still on Tuesdays?”
On Tuesday, the Read Aloud Club Kids chose Bigger Than a Bread Box as their next choice for me to read during our read aloud recesses.
Bigger Than a Bread Box is the story of 12 year old Rebecca who is forced to move to her grandmother’s house in Atlanta with her mom and little brother while her mom tries to figure out her marriage. Dad is back in Baltimore along with all of her friends and everything she’s ever known.
Rebecca is angry, confused and alone when she finds a magic box in the attic of her grandmother’s house. A box that delivers her wishes. Like better jeans, and a new watch and new tennis shoes. She gets everything she wants, except her dad. Is having stuff enough to make Rebecca feel happy again? We will read Bigger Than a Bread Box to find out!
Watch the book trailer by Lily, age 12 who made the trailer with a Canon SD 1300 Digital Elph camera and iMovie.
But wait there’s more!
The kindergarten-3rd grade students are starting Read Aloud Tuesdays too! From 12:30-12:55, Mrs. Hembree will be reading a chapter book to the younger students. We have something for everyone in the cold, wet, wintery months!
The men and older boys always go on a Dragonquest each year, but Darek is still too young to go. When they come back with a Great Blue, the largest and fiercest of all the dragons, Darek discovers a baby dragonling in the Great Blue’s pouch. He decides to take the dragonling back to the fearsome Valley of the Dragons.
Dragonling is a moving and adventureful fantasy story, perfect for younger readers. It is my personal favorite for introducing readers to the fantasy genre.
So, remember, come on Tuesdays to the library for your chance to get out of the rainy, cold outside and into a world of books!
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What would you wish for if you had a magic bread box?
What is the best book you’ve ever heard?
New Year 2012 = New Books!
Jan 1st
The Bulldog Readers wish you lots of reading happiness!
What better way to launch a new year of reading than with new books? The first group of books was purchased with funds from Reading with Rover.
Reading with Rover donated $250 to our school toward purchasing books for reading. It was their way of thanking Mrs. Daly and myself for our commitment to Reading with Rover with our dogs Jett, Silas and Reese. I spent my portion of the money on new library books!
I couldn’t forget our older readers, so they got a new stack of books too!
Who knows? Maybe one of these will become the next Newbery Award winner for 2011!
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Have you read any of these new books already?
Which one do you want to check out?
Do you have any suggestions for us to buy?
Helping Readers in Need
Dec 26th
Can you help our friends in Melbourne, Australia? I hope so!
Imagine opening a brand new library and then a couple of months later watch it be destroyed in a storm. That’s what happened on Christmas Day in Melbourne.
While we were enjoying our Christmas Day here in the Seattle area, one of our blogging buddies was dealing with a library disaster. On Christmas Day in Melbourne Australia, a terrible storm thundered through the city. Flash floods, hailstones the size of tennis balls, tornadoes and pelting thunderstorms pummeled the city.
St. Martin of Tours Primary School in the northeast section of Melbourne was hit especially hard. About 4 inches of rain (96 mm) came down in a hour and overwhelmed the gutter system on the ceiling of the brand-new library media center. The water backed up and the weight collapsed the ceiling over the picture book section and office area of the library.
Forty brand new books waiting to be catalogued and placed into the library were destroyed. The S-Z picture book section was a sopping mess. You can read more about the damage and see a movie of the clean up on Miss Yeomans’ LRC blog.
So how can you help? Our friends may be many miles away from us physically, but they are readers just like us. They love books and when they come back to school they are going to need books to read. I thought it might be a great idea if our blogging friends sent them a favorite picture book.
I am going to buy a book this week and put it in the mail. Perhaps you could do the same and by the time school opens, the students at St. Martin our Tours Primary School will have new books to read. Please share this with your friends and fellow bloggers! A librarian friend is in need and we can help!
Please send your book to:
Miss Yeomans, Teacher/Librarian
St Martin of Tours
2-12 Silk Street, Rosanna VICTORIA 3084,
Australia
Fabulous Edublog Award News!
Dec 15th
Yesterday, the Edublog Awards were announced and it was a big
day for the Bulldog Reader Blog!
In the Best Library Blog category,
we were the runner-up!
Mrs. Hembree is the happiest runner-up Librarian in the world!
It’s quite an honor to be short-listed with all of these other fabulous teacher librarians! And it’s all because of our world-wide support system and your votes!
Big congratulations to Mrs. Ducharme the winner of the Best Library Blog category! TryCuriousity is located in Budapest, Hungary at the American International School of Budapest. We nominated her for this category and are so thrilled she won!
Thank you so much for voting! Edublogs had the most votes ever! There were a total of 35,083 votes cast on 1792 nominations in 18 different categories!
The Edublog Awards were announced in a ceremony via Blackboard Collaborate at 4pm yesterday afternoon. Anyone who wanted to participate could log into the live webcast and watch the proceedings.
People from every continent logged in and had fun chatting in the back-channel before the awards began. Many of the attendees were students who were nominated for Best Student Blog. I watched the event on my computer at home with my dogs Reese and Kasa next to me. They couldn’t figure out why I was home and not taking them for a walk!
When the library blog short-list was announced, I guess I got a little excited and pretty soon both dogs were barking and running around the house wondering what all the fuss was about! It was a fun and noisy afternoon at the Hembree house!
Many of our blogging friends either won or were short-listed in their categories!
Mrs. Yollis won for Best Class Blog, and Mr. Salsich’s Class in Connecticut and 2KM & 2KJ in Australia were finalists! These teachers also won for the Best Group Blog – Our World, Our Stories.
Mrs. Yollis also won Most Influential Blog Post and came in second in the Lifetime Achievement category!
Mr. Avery’s Classroom Blog was third in Best Use of Audio/Video/Podcast!
The Best Student Blog went to Jaden, a 4th grader in California! He was in Mrs. Yollis’s class last year!
A really special moment for me came after the ceremony was over when BB came on the microphone and congratulated all her friends and teachers! We get lots of comments from BB and I have even received packages from her, but I had never heard her voice before! She was in Mrs. Morris and Miss Kelly’s classroom for the ceremony.
BB hosts BB’s Awesome Blog and is an almost 4th grade student in Australia and always leaves us a comment! Our students love her and she is held in the highest regard around our school for her blogging skills! She will be going on summer vacation next week, and won’t be blogging much over the holidays, but I know she would love a comment!
My last big congratulations goes to Ms. Joyce Valenza who won for Lifetime Achievement. She is a fellow teacher/librarian and contributes so much of her knowledge to our librarian team.
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Have you ever won an award before?
Which are your favorite blogs to visit?
A Sweet Papaya Ending
Dec 14th
Where have you been on Tuesdays at noon?
We have been in the library for Read Aloud Tuesdays!
Since early November, the intermediate students and I have been reading Inside Out and Back Again by Thannha Lai. We come in, take our shoes off, find a comfy place to sit and relax for 30 minutes of reading time.
This book is told in verse and relates the story of Ha, a 10 year old Vietnamese girl who is forced to flee her beloved Vietnam when Saigon falls at the end of the Vietnam War.
With her father off at war and not heard from, the family decides the best thing they can do to survive is leave for America.
They end up in Alabama, where Ha and her family slowly adjust to life in a very different country, where she is treated with open hostility from the other children at school and neighbors near them.
Her poems are achingly true to life and capture the anguish of leaving home, learning a new language and the anger she feels during this transition time.
As each week passed, we often stopped and spontaneously discussed historical references and questions we had. Questions were free flowing and the answers weren’t always easy to explain or understand, as any question about war can be. Still Thannha helped us appreciate the beauty of her Vietnamese homeland…and of papaya!
Ha’s love of papaya was woven through the novel like a golden thread. Since most of us had never tasted or even seen a papaya, we had some for our last reading.
I have never bought or cut up papaya before, so it was a completely new experience for me! The inside has lots of round brown seeds. It almost looks like caviar! Then the fruit is a reddish-orange color and sweet. Our papaya wasn’t completely ripe, so it probably didn’t taste as wonderful as it should. Still, we had fun trying it out to see why Ha liked it so much!
It was a sweet and fitting ending to a very special book! Now we have a new decision to make. What should our next Read Aloud Tuesday book be? If you have an opinion, leave a comment and let me know!
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What do you think about Read Aloud Tuesdays?
Do you like tropical fruit like papaya or mango or kiwi?
What book should we read next?
A Visitor from Zambia
Dec 9th
This week we have been having a lot of new visitors. We think it’s because we are in the voting round for Best Library Blog! The voting ends on Tuesday, December 13th at 9pm PST. You can vote everyday until then. Go here to vote.
This morning when Mrs. Adair’s 3rd graders came to class, we looked at our flag widget and saw this.
Our newest country visitor was from Zambia on December 7th! It was very exciting to have a visitor from Zambia. However, we looked at each other and asked, “Where is Zambia?”
That question led us to our district databases to find out. Databases are like online filing cabinets. They have lots of great information for reports and research.
We decided since we were looking for information about another country, Culture Grams was the best database to use for our research.
Where in the world is Zambia? We knew it wasn’t in North America. One person said they didn’t think it was in South America either. Someone guessed it might be in Africa, so we clicked on the continent Africa and this is what we found.
Zambia was in Africa! Then we clicked on Zambia and then used our Netbooks to research and learn more about this country.
Here are some facts about Zambia:
The eagle on the flag stands for freedom.
English is the official language, but most of the people speak tribal languages too.
They have dry seasons and wet/rainy seasons.
Victoria Falls is in Zambia.
Zambia is ahead of us in time.
When it is 4:00pm here, it is 2:00am the next day there!
We decided that since Zambia is half-the-world-away from Seattle, Washington, it was amazing that they found our blog. We wonder how they did it! Chances are we will never know! If you are our Zambia visitor, thank you for visiting! It was fun learning about your country and we would like to know so much more from you! Next time you visit, please leave us a comment!
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How do you think our visitors find our blog?
How would you find a blog in another country?
Vote for the Bulldog Readers!
Dec 5th
We have unbelievable news!
The Bulldog Reader Blog made it to the voting round for
Best Library Blog in the Edublog Awards!
This is our first time being nominated and we are thrilled that we made it to the voting stage! Now we need your help!
You can vote for our blog from your home computer, your work computer or your smart phone. Voting ends on Tuesday, December 13th at 9pm Pacific Standard time.
Please note, you can only vote one time per day per category from an IP address. So please vote daily! Here is the direct link to the voting page for Best Library Blog!
Once you open the page, you will see a drop down menu. In category select, Best Library/Librarian Blog. Once you do that, another drop down menu will open with all the nominees. Select Bulldog Readers Blog. It will look like this.
Then push the Vote button and you are done for that category.
Your family, friends, neighbors can all vote for us! It doesn’t have to be just someone at our school.
This is world-wide voting, so as long as you only vote once from the same computer per day, you are free to vote from anywhere in the world. Once per IP address per day means you can’t vote from the same computer more than once per day. You can however vote from your work, your home computer and your smart phone as many days as you can!
You are also encouraged to vote for other nominees! We wouldn’t be where we are today without the support and encouragement of some of our favorite bloggers. They would love your support too.
Here is a listing of other nominees who have been very supportive of our blog. We encourage you to consider voting for them too!
Best Student Blog - BB’s Awesome Blog
Best Use of Educational Audio, Video or Podcast - Mr. Avery’s Classroom Blog
Best Group Blog - Our World Our Stories
Best Class Blog - Please spread out your vote! All of these teachers have helped us tremendously in the last year. Mr. Avery’s 6th grade class blog, 2KM and 2KJ, Mrs. Yollis’ 3rd grade class blog, Mr. Salsich’s Class, and Mrs. Watson’s 2/3 Class.
Best New Blog- Traveling with Mr. Davo Devil and Two Libraries/One Voice
Best Teacher Blog – Integrating Technology and Teaching Literacy in the Early Years
Lifetime Achievement Award – This is the most difficult category to choose because every person on the list deserves the award. Have fun choosing!
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Happy voting!
Leave us a comment and let us know who you voted for!
