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If you didn’t know, we have a great shop set up at CafePress with adorable Chipper Kids(TM) merchandise, like this cute teddy bear. He’s not Arnold or Albert Chipper, but he sure looks cute! Visit our CafePress store here.

For Teachers Only:

LeapFrog, the educational toys manufacturer, has heard educators’ requests for more learning-based activities. Link to Lessons is the new website that offers 6,000 standards-based activities to support existing LeapFrog School products. It allows teachers to design lesson plans at school or home, and provides an online community with other educators. Click here for details.

Confession time.  I regularly volunteer to read at my kids’ school, and I sometimes wonder how I stack up against the other moms and dads who lead story time.  Is my voice exciting?  Do the kids like my stories?  How can I be a better reader, and help the kids become better readers, too?

I never asked anyone for feedback, though it’s always been something in the back of my mind.  But a few minutes ago, I found this neat video from Scholastic that actually shows the best ways to read to your child.  The fact that they had to make a video about it seems silly, but watching it was really, truly helpful.  Now, I know I can hold my own with the other mommy readers out there.  So, here it is.  Go ahead, you know you want to see it.  I won’t tell.

Stumble it!

Julian Kreusser could probably tell Arnold Chipper a thing or two about how to cook real food.  According to Oregon Live, Julian is the five-year-old host of Big Kitchen with Food, a local TV program that airs on Portland Community Media.  In each episode, Chef Julian talks about such culinary concepts as how to mix smoothies, fry eggs, and master the chocolate chip zucchini muffin.  Wonder if he’d be interested in featuring a Chipper Kids Sweet Bread Treats recipe?

I’ve been reading the latest Chipper Kids(TM) story to area Kindergartners and First Graders (yes, school is back in session in Georgia!) and have been getting a lot of great ideas for the next book in the series. Many students want to hear about Arnold Chipper going to school for the first time. Others want to see him and his little brother Albert learn how to grow more food in their garden. Their suggestions really peaked my interest about the different activities children are involved in at different seasons of the year.

This summer, my kids really wanted to improve their swimming. I tried to play “swim teacher” myself, but it hasn’t exactly worked out. I wasn’t afraid to get in the water, but I could never keep a regular schedule. On the days we did go to the pool, we’d usually wait until late afternoon or early evening, when I was too tired to help. If you want your children to have swim lessons, I wholeheartedly recommend enrolling them in a class with a certified swim teacher. One California-based swim instructor Katrina Ramser, has a great blog called SquidKid that discusses swimming. She recently posted a “10 Minute Swim Plan” for parents and their children. I’ve found it to be helpful and I think you will, too.

LeapFrog, the educational toys manufacturer, is offering you a resource for your classroom. Link to Lessons will be leaping out this month. LeapFrog says that this new website offers 6,000 standards-based activities that support existing LeapFrog School products. It will allow you to design lesson plans at school or home, and will provide an online community with other educators for you to share ideas. Download a free sample activity lesson here.

Do you know any kids with artistic chops? Google has just announced a Doodle 4 Google contest for K-12 students. Kids will be challenged to personalize Google’s logo using a “What If…” theme. Participants will be judged in their respective age groups (the youngest is K-3), and Google is asking educators and schools to get involved. They’ve even posted lesson plans online. Only students at schools that have registered can participate, and there is a limit on the number of students at each school who can enter.

There are 100 finalists in each category. The national winner gets a $10,000 scholarship, and the winner’s school receives a $25,000 grant. That could buy a lot of gluesticks! (Okay, the grant actually goes toward the computer lab. That’s even better). If you’re interested, read their rules here.

The Chipper Kids memory game isn’t the only educational site available for your kids. We’re happy to spread the word about other offerings. One of them is the new PBS KIDS PLAY! site. This web page, which is still in beta, is designed to help children ages three- to six-years-old get used to working with a computer. The site offers several games and activities based on the characters that are featured on PBS. The goal is to help children meet their standardized objectives in the areas of math, science, literacy, language, social studies, and of course, creativity. The activities aren’t free–according to the registration page, it costs $65 a year to join. However, grown ups can sign up for a free trial (no credit card required) before committing.

How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World, and Drove Her Father Teddy Crazy! by Barbara Kerley illustrated by Edwin Fotherignham Scholastic 2008 Yes, a picture book biography about Teddy Roosevelt's tomboy daughter "running riot" in and out of the White House around the turn of the century. “I can be president of the United States, or I can control Alice." And so it is that while

Jacqueline Woodson
Putnam 2007

I've been floundering with this book for over a week now, trying to figure out what exactly it is I want to say. Twice now my attempts to review the book have quickly become examinations of the 1970's and why it feels like we're seeing more books set during that time and what, if any, relation all this has on our current political landscapes and whether younger readers really want to read about all this as "period" reading.

At it's simplest the story come from the wrong-side-of-the-tracks family. A boy with long hair transfers mid-year to the new school on the bad side of town, literally on the wrong side of the tracks. Being the new kid, the odd fish, makes him the easy target for the bullies and because he looks white and the other students are a rainbow of browns he is instantly viewed with suspicion. The Jesus Boy, nicknamed because of his hair and serenity in the face of his non-violent approach to life, causes unease because some of the kids begin to wonder if he isn't Jesus come back to test their faith. When finally pushed to the edge by Trevor, the class bully, JB finally lets lose a verbal assault that disarms Trevor but proves JB is like the rest of them, capable of cruelty and anger. JB's secret is that he was adopted by black parents who moved across the tracks because life wasn't any easier for them on the other side. Kids are egalitarian in their cruelty.

The story is told from the point of view of Frannie who, along with her deaf brother Sean, give us another perspective on being outsiders. Frannie doesn't feel she fits in with those around her who are more deeply connected to their church, and her brother Sean makes a connection between his deafness being a separate world that keeps disconnected. Frannie wants to believe as her friends do but she sees too many contradictions to settle her rational mind; Sean knows that no matter which side of the tracks he lives on he'll always be an outsider to the hearing world, a world he can never be a part of unlike his sister who can travel in his world through sign language.

The title comes from Frannie's book-long inquiry into a poem by Emily Dickinson which begins with the line "Hope is a thing with feathers." Indeed, it makes me wonder what Woodson herself hopes for both within the book and without.

Setting the story in the 1970's allows for a certain distancing from the idea of a segregated society, but the the ideas that lie beneath are as real today as they might have been 30 years ago. Somewhere between then and now American society has recreated new divisions and seems desperate to reclaim old one. Politics, religion and even music have moved to their respective sides of the track and don't take kindly to outsiders attempting to pass or blend in.

So why go there? Are we seeing an increase of writers who came of age during those times who feel the resonance so strongly with our current climate? The 70's are equally alive in Barbara Kerley's Greetings From Planet Earth so I'm wondering if this is a trend or a blip or just coincidence.

This perhaps moves outside the parameters of the review, but sometimes the universe sends a message and you have to puzzle it out the best you can. For a very long time now I've been wondering what to make of my particular generation, a shoulder generation who are alternately claimed as being either the tail end of the Boomers or the front end of Generation X. To my knowledge this generation is not formally recognized by marketers or the media and my experience has been that those born between 1958 and 1963 have a general sense of feeling left out. It was while I was at my wife's graduation ceremony this week that I had another old idea brought back to the surface. It was under the guise of referring to a graduating class as a karass, a term invented by Kurt Vonnegut, taken from Cat's Cradle (published in 1963 coincidentally), which is defined as "a team that do[es] God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing."

I'm beginning to feel as if my karass is making itself known in children's literature.