Starry Messenger

I read this book with my daughter and we both just loved it! I learned more facts about Galileo that  I did not know. The  fun way the book was written (some of the text was even written in a spiral) made it fun to read to my daughter and she laughed watching me read all the information twirling the book around. She loved the pictures and even noticed items in them that I had not seen. I feel it is a must read, and is a GREAT intro to any science strands dealing with stars, or even just an book to read to your child then use a star map on a smart phone to start gaze at night.

                                                             


Here is a great teachers guide:

Messenger Teacher Guide

Traditional Literature

Traditional literature are stories, tales and poems that have been around for a very long time and have been passed down through the generations. Often many of the stories have been retold in a way that fits the current culture and/or the need of the audience.


I have read this Little Red Riding Hood Story and loved it!

           




 In recent years, authors have taken to retelling traditional tales from an alternate point of view.

 

Although this genre was not intentionally targeted towards youth, this has overtime become the main audience due to :

• Common characteristics these stories share are appealing to children such language use and the fantasy world created. 
• Stories that were told orally to children became a demand for publishing.   

Traditional literature helps students understand a variety of rich cultural backgrounds. These stories often contain moral elements along with standards of behaviors of c culture.

Many stories provide rhythm, rhyme and repetition of patterns.

Many teachers have become cautious in using traditional literature in their classroom. This is due to the elements of violence, sexism and even religion in these classic tales. Although I understand their concerns, I feel shielding students from these timeless tales does not protect them. We as teachers could use these stories in so many ways to provide richness to our classroom, and if content is a concern we can use that concern as a lesson to highlight the cultural differences from then to now.

Author Study

I just finished my first ever author study. I must admit that at first I wanted to run and hide from this assignment. I thought it was just to overwhelming to design and I even thought what could a student really get from this? Now that the long nights of research are over and my many thoughts and ideas are carefully combined to create a engaging and meaningful lesson, I can say I am very happy to have gone through this. I have learned not only about a wonderful author, Jean Fritz, whom I had not heard of before, but through creating this unit I have a very clear understanding of the learning experience my future student will have. Author studies create a higher thought process for students to get a deeper understanding and appreciation of both literature and the authors behind those great stories.

I invite you to take a look into a two to three week unit on Jean Fritz. She is an award wining author that write mainly in the genre of historical non-fiction. Her ability to write the facts but with a humorous and thought provoking tone has captivated the minds of student for over 40 years. With over 65 titles to her name, she was a wonderful author for me to learn about and design a unit around.  Enjoy!

Jean Fritz Author Study

More about Fantasy Books

 When choosing a book in the fantasy realm both the teacher and the reader need to consider the following:  

Qualities in Modern Fantasy

• stories must always meet criteria for excellence in narrative fiction
• effective settings are detailed and believable within the context of the story
• themes are meaningful, challenging the reader to ask questions and think about life
• writing is rich and structures, syntax and word choices are clear
• story events are imaginative, and logically consistent within the story world
• characters are multidimensional, with consistent and logical behavior

More Fantasy books by sub categories: 

Category:

Animal	human thoughts, feelings and language and characteristics attributed to animals	Mercy Watson by Kate DiCamillo	The Underneath by Kathi Appelt
Miniature Worlds/Enchanted Realism	miniature beings and worlds highlight the human desire and needs and emotions magical objects, characters or events appear	The Borrowers by Mary Norton

The Doll People By Ann Martin

  Time Warps

• the character goes through difficult periods due to being able to time travel.

11 Birthdays by Wendy Mass

Rapunzel's Revenge by Shannon Hale
Quest Tales

• characters meet challenges that seem endless and unbeatable
• characters are portrayed having inner and outer struggles, but the goodness of the character prevails (good vs.evil)

The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke

Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

Modern Fantasy for the younger ages

This fun and mind capturing genre has been a long time staple in the classrooms of your younger students. The magical and unrealistic characteristics makes the stories so appealing to our younger reader and for teacher read alouds. Modern fantasy are classified into two categories: low and high. Low fantasy books take place in the real world but contain elements of magic to make things normally impossible possible such as speaking animals or inanimate objects such as toys come alive. High fantasy books created a detailed and thought out "other world"  and are normally more serious in tone and have a deeper plot.

 Take a look at some of these books and see if you can recall being immersed into the captivating pages of adventures these stories provided:


                                                              


Here is a website full of great books in the Modern Fantasy genre:

Library Thing

Historical Fiction: Blending the past with a vivid imagination.

Historical fiction has long been one of my favorite genres to read, both as child and adult.  In this genre authors write in a way that creates a sense a realism for the reader. They due this by remaining authentic to the time period. This can be in ways of events surrounding the plot, the scenery, the language and appearance of characters as well as the layout of the land or country they are creating the story in. The ability of the author to create this "world" for the reader allows the mind to fully emerge in the created surrounding and feel as if they are experiencing it for themselves because of the authentic tone. Our text, The Joy of Children's Literature states that historical fiction "transports readers to places, times, and cultures not otherwise possible." This experience gives our students a platform to broaden their perspectives on a variety of events.

As with all good fiction books the story must be interesting and engaging for the reader to stay motivated to read the story. You can use the following criteria when choosing a good historical fiction book:

• Does it have a strong character development?
• Does it have a credible plot that is also engaging? 
• Did the author use an effective writing style? 
• Is the scene detailed and believable? 
• Does the story contain a relevant theme? 
• Does the historical facts overwhelm the story as a whole?

Here are some good sites for learning more about and finding historical fiction books:

5000 Historical Fiction

Book worm


Here is one of my most FAVORITE historical fiction books:

 

Non-Fiction-- Just boring information or wonderfully fun facts?

I must admit before reading this chapter, there was some muddy waters in my mind on what constituted a non-fiction book. I mean I KNOW and UNDERSTAND that it means real and truthful. My problems is when I forget about text books and National Geographic books (which I do loooove to read) and those books that seem to be the size of my car that look boring and have titles like How the Western Expansion Came to be... I found it hard to find books that fall into that genre that did not make me want to poke myself in the eye to stay awake to read. So many books of my day (yes, I am getting old enough to say that) were just "dry replicas of information" our text states. Today there are so many wonderfully fun books that talk about real life historic events and are written in such a way that the reader is memorized.

There are two types of non-fiction books, informational books and  biographies. Both categories have smaller sub-categories with in them. Biographies and autobiographies are books written about a person. In biographies the story is written by a second party as autobiographies are written by the person them self. Both styles are based in fact and retell events that unfolded during a life span.  Informational book, does just as it says, if provides readers with information in a variety of topics; from nature and hobbies to people and finding out how things work. But they do not just list facts, they do extensive research and/or even write from personal experience, but their intent is to pull the reader into understanding and learn through being enthralled by the writer's use of words explaining the information.  History stories are one of those books, that if the writer intends to just present information, they lose the reader, but there are a few authors that have the skill of a pen, and their words make the past come alive and the reader is submersed in factual events and taken back in time. One of those great authors was the focus of my author study: Jean Fritz.

She is a historical non-fiction and biography writer. She has written over 65 books. She conducts thorough research of her subjects/events. She remains authentic by only constructing dialog that is present in letters and diaries. She does all of this with such wit and humorous tone, that her books have won several awards over the decades and she is a favorite if many teachers and students.

She has also written an autobiography about her childhood growing up in China until the age of 13. Homesick: My Own Story was a Newberry Honor book due to Fritz's ability to combine truth and storytelling that conveyed true emotions to the reader and made them feel connected to the events.

The ability of a non-fiction book to do this is the key for the books to be considered great. Our books states that children when given the choice of either reading a well written fiction book and a well written non-fiction book, children prefer non fiction. 

Chapter 7, Realistic Fiction

In this chapter, I learned the variety of identifying clues that helps to determine if a good fiction book you are reading falls under the realistic fiction genre. This can be a hard genre to identify because the lines between reality and fiction are so blurred. This is because so many elements of the story, from plot and setting to the characters are to realistic and plausible, it makes the reader wonder and/or believe the story could have been true. The book states and I agree," that a good realistic book lies in its credibility" (Joy of Children Literature, page 174).  To reach this an author must be able to present story without undo biases and stereotypes of the characters. The issues presented must have depth and emotional connections to it.

Below are some good reference sites with tips on how to identify good
realistic fiction:              

Characteristics of Good Realistic Fiction by Education.com

Genre Characteristic Chart by Scholastic





The chapter talked about a book titled The Bread Winner, by Deborah Ellis
This book talks about two girls in two vastly different countries, living to vastly different lives. Though fictional, through the authors ability to write so intimately about the lives of these two girls, bringing these fictional characters to life, the reader gains compassion about human complexity and interaction with the world around them. 




Using realistic fiction in the classroom is useful when wanting to connect students to events going on in the world. Reading a story that they can identify similarities between the characters and  the plots and events, provides us a way to scaffold concepts in a deeper more thorough way.


Realistic fiction also provides a way for controversial and sensitive issues to be explored.

Info Soup


Tips for teacher when utilizing realistic fiction in the classroom:

• Know you schools policy and seek approval if question or doubt exists.
• What book are you personally willing to fight for?
• Evaluate your own personal biases on topic.  
• How does the book influence you?
• Maintain open communication with parents on books reading in the classroom.
• Stay current on recommendations from books available and their reviews.
• Horn Book Magazine
• School Library Journal

List of good realistic books for 2013:

Good Reads 2013

Chapter 12, The New Literacies: The World of Online Children's Literature

Our book (p 344) defines new literacies as the skills and strategies that have become a necessity to successfully use and adapt to the constantly changing information and communication technologies of today. As much as technology can intimidate me, I know intertwining the many facets the of 21st  century technological world into our classroom literature experience will only make it a more complete and rich experience for our students. It incorporates skill building for our students in using technology, as this is a rising skill demand our student are facing to be successful in life and work. But how do we do incorporate all these different technical tools into our lessons? Surprisingly enough, our text gave me several easily understood ways to do so; below I have made some suggestions:

We all know that our students love it when we read to them, but how much more exciting would this reading influence be if our children had their favorite celebrity read to them? Well they can with an online read aloud. 

• BookPALS Storyonline 
• StoryOnline

Reading nowadays no longer requires turning a paper page. With technological inventions such as the Nook and Kindle and simply downloading to a computer more and more books are becoming widely available in digital form. Today thousand of online books are available in the digital format.

• International Children's Digital Library

Besides reading a book from some of our students' favorite authors, how about having the children visit the author them-self?  Now they can. It is called a virtual author visit. Some sites host authors throughout the year and provide online discussion board for student and teacher where the author corresponds for two weeks with the class and other even provide opportunities to skype with an author.

• Virtual Author Visit Kit
• Skype with an Author

Lastly another approach that caught my eye from this chapter was literature-based WebQuests. 

• Questgarden Search
• Literature Learnign Ladders

All of these tools, plus many, many more provide such a wide variety of ways for us as educators to bring the joy of children's literature to life in our classrooms. 

  

Chapter 11, Diverese Perspectives in Children's Literature.

     In this chapter I took a deeper look at how culture is transcended into literature.  The general popular perspective that books were written in in the middle 1900 were that consistent with the predominate white culture. This means children were only exposed to racially mainstream characters. The characters and plot of these stories were morally aligned with one generally excepted insight, leaving those students that did not fit into"mainstream" with out the ability to identify with a strong character.  I don't need the text to tell me how vitally important it is to a child's full development that they are immersed in a variety of experiences. A truly diverse literature library provides a wonderful way to take the entire world and bring it into the four walls of your class, giving students a magical journey through through different countries; race; traditions and beliefs. It also provides a platform to introduce a variety of disabilities and other controversial social issues such as sexuality and religion. Opening our student eyes to the world around them with out having to leave the room sounds like a no-brainier but many would argue that introducing students to cultures and perspectives different from theirs is to "risky" to do at school.
   
     I admit, I too have found myself wandering where is the invisible line drawn. Is it a wonderful book or a "risky" book?  How do I know that the books I feel provide our students a multicultural exposure, will not be viewed as controversial by others?   Surprisingly to me, our text states on page 310,  that there very few  "safe" children's books out there. Almost every book has an underlying theme.  Researcher Vivian Yenika-Agbaw wrote in 2003 only permitting students insight that fall within their own culture would "exclude too many voices and experiences, hence depriving our children of the opportunity to understand facets of our humanity."  So I am taking the stance of the result of the rich exposure outweighs the concern of the controversial concerns.  Table 11.1 on page 310 provides the following additional reasons for sharing "risky" books:

• It promotes critical thinking through text to self and text to world style discussions
• It promotes the value of diversity and difference through exploring  multiple perspectives
• It encourages cross-cultural perspectives

Books within the diversity genre are placed into three cultural specificity ranges:

• Culturally Neutral--includes diverse characters but the topic is not on culture or diversity, it is about something different. Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr.

•  Culturally Generic--the book does focus on it's diverse character, but, few details differentiate the given culture(s) from the American culture. Emma's Rug, by Allen Say.

• Culturally Specific--includes specific and authentic aspects of culture that define the characters, plot and theme portrayed. Dragonwings by Laurence Yep

Wanting to find a list of recommended multicultural books and see how many I have of those recommended I came by this wonderful website. This Reading is Fundamental website provides book lists for students pre-k through 5th grade.

"Little one, whoever you are, there are little ones just like you all over the world. Their lives may be different from yours, and their words may be very different from your. But inside, their hearts are just like yours."

                                                                          ~ Mem, Fox, 1997