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Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor is a Newberry Medal winner and the beginning of a series about a beloved dog and a young boy, Marty Preston. I chose it for today’s “Timeless Thursday” because animal stories, especially well-written ones, are always a big hit with kids. This book, which I taught in a fifth-grade classroom, was a big hit with boys. Many of them were very upset at the treatment of Shiloh. Many of them can’t help talking and journaling about their own pets while reading Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s classic.

Don’t worry about Shiloh being outdated or not relating to today’s generation. It does. You can read this book out loud to students or use it in literature circles. While reading, discuss the themes of love, loyalty, friendship, honesty, and integrity. Discuss the characters of Marty and Judd Travers, and compare and contrast them. Let students make personal connections between the ideas in the story and in their own lives. You can do these same skills at home if you homeschool.

If your students love Shiloh, then they might want to check out Shiloh’s Season, too.

It's amazing that I managed to be thirteen around the time this book came out, and yet was never inclined to read it. I remember hearing about it, or at least being aware of it, but I never even picked it up. In fact, I had some half-baked notion that it was a novel about a summer camp where enormous holes start popping up, magically.
This however, was not the case.
When I picked Holes up to read it as part of my Newbery Challenge deal, I promised my coworker Robyn (hi Robyn!) I would read the book and watch the movie, then compare. Which I did. But I'll start with the book.
Which I loved. There are so many layers to the plot of this intricately woven tale of transgression and atonement, yet it remains incredibly accessible. Debts are repaid. Friends are made. Character is built. Adventures are had. However, all of this is pushed against the violent history shared by black and white people in America, giving the story more resonance than one might have imagined a story that features a kid called "Armpit" might have.
The unlikely hero of this story is Stanley Yelnats, an over-weight, well-meaning pushover with an incredibly sturdy moral compass. When he is sent to Camp Green Lake (for a crime he did not commit), a desert wasteland juvenile detention camp, to dig 5 foot holes on a daily basis as means of penance, he befriends a boy called Zero (short for Hector Zeroni) who is written off by all the other campers and camp authority figures as a failure. He teaches Zero to read, and when Zero runs away from the camp into the foreboding desert, Stanley follows him with intent to rescue.

What made Stanley so likable to me was his lack of cool. He's not a smart-talking, slick guy at heart, even if he manages to come across that way. And that to me, was one of the first things I did not much care for in the movie. Shia Lawhateverhisnameis is just too cool to be Stanley. That next to the fact that the warden (played by Sigourney Weaver) is way more attractive than she is described in the book, the man called Mom is a more bumbling idiot than calculating coward and Zero is far more adorable... well, you get the idea. It seems like in translation the characters became too smooth around the edges for my liking.
So read the book. But don't necessarily see the movie. Unless you like a LOT of meaningful musical interludes, of which there are plenty.

It's just a typical Saturday night-- you know, sex, drugs, rock and roll. Or, reading kids books. 

Neil Gaiman is a rock star. It's true. He wears a leather jacket and everything, and he collaborates with Tori Amos. He writes novels, short stories, screen plays, picture books, graphic novels, and god knows what else. His hair is always picturesquely tousled .
So even though I didn't like the Newberry winner, The Graveyard Book as much as I liked some of his other work (particularly Coraline and Stardust, which are two of my favorite stories) I still thoroughly enjoyed it. It's particularly awesome to listen to it on audio since Gaiman records it himself, and of course, does an awesome job at it.
Right before the Newberry was announced this year, two people returned The Graveyard Book to our store on the basis that it was too dark. I also got one adult who came back angry that Coraline had given her nightmares. And Gaiman's work is dark. But for those readers that like imagining all the creepy crawlies in the dark, like a world wrought with impossible imagination and like stories that are always positively affirming, then Gaiman may be a fun place to start.
Though focused around a world of death, Gaiman managed to craft a book entirely about life. Consistently, throughout his entire body of work, Gaiman explores positive representations of death not as a morbid fascination, but as a way of reducing fear. And the Graveyard book is no exception.

also, check out his awesome interview with Stephen Colbert: http://www.hulu.com/watch/63035/the-colbert-report-neil-gaiman

Also, thanks to my older sister for introducing me to him in the first place. He was her favorite for years, and she used to read his work to me. We read his story, Chivalry (from the short story collection Smoke and Mirrors), on Christmas with our mom, and it's still one of my favorite family memories. I also used to steal her Sandman Chronicles when she wasn't home. Sorry, Mikka.