The Notable Children’s Books Submissions have been coming in, finally, at a steady pace. And here’s my little “lament” regarding some of the warehouse packaging practices:
Dear Publisher Warehouse Packagers,
Please remember a few things when you fulfill the orders from the marketing department for award or notable books consideration:
Please consider the possibility that the person opening your package might be wearing a black dress. And when she is opening a padded envelope (those padded with lots of fuzzy linty materials, not bubble wraps,) she will be faced with broken (more often than not) padding and thus suffer from the “you washed your dress with a whole pack of Kleenex syndrome.” So, please, refrain from using this kind of envelopes!
Please also consider the environmental impact when you send a SINGLE VOLUME of a slim book in a box designed for sending TEN to TWENTY books! Such disregard of our precious resources definitely does not make this reader happy.
Furthermore, when packing your book boxes, maybe you should not be so worried about the strength of the boxes? They are designed for shipping so there is no need whatsoever to use those space-age and impossible to cut packing tapes (lined with some form of enhanced strings…) It is grumble inducing and sometimes they draw blood! *gasp*
Thank you for reading and I look forward to a gentler, more environmental friendly, collaboration in the months to come.
I feel so blessed that both my 7th grade English teachers have been most receptive in allowing me to work with their students. Once a month, I get to share with the entire grade (about 95 students) in six sessions books that I have selected and loved. Through the year, the students are exposed to mysteries, Young Adult titles, fantasy and sci-fi titles, classics, historical fiction, non-fiction, Notable Books for Children, biographies, poetry, etc. The best part of this is that the teachers take me seriously enough to let me design the assignments and give me “grading power,” so the students naturally take the projects seriously, as well.
Of course, grading projects on this scale takes a lot of time and I often work on it at home in the evenings or over weekends. It is quite rewarding, though, when I am presented with work from diligent and often intelligent students. It does not hurt that the teachers require that the students read at least 20 books a school year and that they trust me enough to assist the students select books to read for pleasure.
This month our topic is Classics. We reviewed and discussed the definition of Classics and the students picked out their individual reading books from a limited pool of titles (about 40.) The assignment in its entirety is posted on The Reading Nook, a literary blog I have set up on the school’s server, powered by WordPress. Here’s the link to the assignment. And here is the blog address and link: blogs.daton.org/thereadingnook.
I am in the process of grading the entries — conveyed to students via the school’s internal email system. In June, there will be a Game Show, testing the students’ knowledge of these titles based on the summaries and the Q&A’s their peers have written. (I give out LARGE quantities of candies during this activity each year! Have to bribe them…)
The 4th grade Library Snapple Real Facts Buster wiki project was concluded a couple of weeks ago. The finished site features 2.5 sessions of group research work (45 minutes per session) attempting to verify or bust some of the Snapple Real Facts. Some of the students were really into it and had the tenacity to see the project through: from figuring out where to look for best information to meticulously record their findings. Many of them were excited at the beginning but had to be prompted to continue with more verification because they were easily satisfied with their first matching facts and were reluctant to continue, either to find more sources, or to record their findings. They thought that a URL should be sufficient! (I did explain to them how URL can change and the page can disappear so a title and a creator’s name will help future researchers to locate the information.)
There is also a general reflection page that does sum up the whole experience fairly well.
The history of Monopoly.
Congratulations to Charles Simic, the new Poet Laureate.
A great look at The Book Depository.
Ozomatli as Cultural Ambassadors?
Books, Inq, celebrates the anniversary of Wallace Steven’s death.
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