January and February tend to be the months when many new books are added to the library's collection. Did you know there is a feature of our catalog that displays which books have recently been added? It is in in the Destiny Quest version of our online library catalog (basically a different, "splashier" display function of the catalog). Once you are in the catalog, choose Destiny Quest from the functions listed at the left. You should see New Books right on the opening screen of Destiny Quest.
In class visits this week TK, K, and first grade will begin hearing nominees for the California Young Reader Medal (CYRM). This is a contest in which MBUSD schools routinely participate. The nominees for this year can be viewed on the CYRM website or on the Book Contests page of this website. The nominee we are reading today is Interrupting Chicken, by David Ezra Stein. Ask your children to tell you about it! Do they think Little Chicken will ever stop interrupting Papa Chicken?
Grade 2 will hear an inspiring picture book about Elizabeth Blackwell, who succeeded in becoming a doctor when this profession was not open to women. This is an exemplary "informational" text that teaches readers a little about what life was like for girls and women in the late 1800s and uses Blackwell's story as a model of persistence.
Grade 3 will be hearing The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos, by Deborah Heiligman. What an interesting person Paul Erdos was! One "trick" this remarkable mathematician could do was to figure out, in his head, how many seconds old a person was. For that I go to the Math Cats website and use its age calculator. It turns out I am 1,653,233,115 seconds old, and counting…
Grade 4 is choosing a novel that I will read aloud during library visits over the coming weeks. Each class will vote on three possibilities, and each class will be able to choose its own preference. It will be either When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead; The Good Dog, by Avi; or The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate.
Grade 5 has already completed its participation in the CYRM contest this year, having voted on the nominees during the week of December 16, 2013. The winner at our school was The Worst of Friends: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the True Story of an American Feud, by Suzanne Tripp Jurmain. I will send our vote count for tallying to the sponsors of the CYRM, as will schools all over the state of California. The statewide winner will be announced on May 1, 2014. Starting next week we will read Schooled, by Gordon Korman. This week we will read Belle, the Last Mule at Gee's Band: A Civil Rights Story since we will be busy with our novel on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day.