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| our school has a really big rock out in front |
"Letter by letter, the bigger the better--
Great big words!"
--Michael Mark & Tom Chapin And so a new school year begins, with a change from the tiniest full-timers at the school--the kindergarteners--to the not-very-much-bigger second-graders. Looking back now at my consternation* over this change, I realize that I believed that 7-year-olds would be simultaneously* less innocent and more challenging* than 5-year-olds, less imaginative* and more conservative* than 5-year-olds, less new and sparkly and more ordinary*.
I must have had rocks in my head. Second grade
rocks, especially in the first week of school! They do not consider themselves too grown-up to enjoy the same greetings and singing games as the 5's, but when you say "Please line up," they already know how to do it. They were thrilled to climb all over the big rock, but they were able to stop climbing and thoughtfully describe it. And they are
very into vocabulary* and learning
great big words as well as different words for the same thing. Just yesterday we compared
vomit, puke, barf and
throw up in our discussion of the very few things that might interrupt our work on Independent Reading Stamina. (We reached 10 minutes by Thursday, without nausea* or emesis.*) Perhaps "Magic Pebbles" would not be a wrong class name after all...thesey are small and shiny and smooth and powerful, just like
Sylvester's Magic Pebble.
You'll understand why the following might be the first Poetry Friday poem for our Poetry Anthologies. I found it in
The Walker Book of Poetry for Children.
Flint | Christina Rossetti
An emerald is as green as grass,
A ruby red as blood;
A sapphire shines as blue as heaven;
A flint lies in the mud.
A diamond is a brilliant stone,
To catch the world's desire;
An opal holds a fiery spark;
But a flint holds fire.
The round-up today is with
Linda Baie at TeacherDance, one of the several Poetry Friday participants who generously contributed to my
DonorsChoose project. I'm thrilled and grateful to say that my request for 4 Kindle Fire HD tablets, intended for allowing kids to enjoy the ever-growing array of online read-aloud sites and apps, was fully funded in less than a week! However, it's not too late to help, Any additional donations will come to my classroom in the form of gift cards that I can use to purchase headphones and cases for the tablets. Long live crowd-funding, and thanks!
Welcome
Add your name to the birthday chart.
Look--on Wednesdays we have Art.
Choose three books for your reading box.
Let's all get ready 'cause Second Grade Rocks!
Not my very best little ditty, but it conveys the message: I am no longer a kindergarten teacher. I loved kindergarten and I'm sorry to leave it...but now that it's real and the room is set up (just about) I'm getting excited about 2nd grade. The one thing I'm really grieving is that first-day-of-school
Swimmy-Makes-us-Mighty-Minnows tradition. I have some of the same kids I taught, and they are bigger and more grown up. I don't think they want to be Minnows any more.
So, I'm starting the year with
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble instead, because we have some rocks-and-soil science in the first few weeks to connect to, and we'll also be reading and working with
Roxaboxen and
If You Find a Rock, books I adore. But I haven't figured out yet what we will become as a group. "Magic Pebbles" doesn't capture the characteristics I want to emphasize, and "Mighty Magnets" is a bit of a stretch....I'm hoping it will come to me over the weekend, but if you have any suggestions, PoFolks, I'd welcome them.
The round-up today is hosted by Sylvester I mean Sylvia Vardel at
Poetry For Children--enjoy the welcome there too, from Sylvia and my geographic neighbor Linda Kulp!
#55 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig (1969)
32 points
I know a little girl who cried when she thought Sylvester would be a rock forever. I’m not sure what it says about me, but that made me love the book even more. The best books are a little scary, aren’t they? – Jessalynn Gale
Overwhelming anguish and transcending joy. Not common fare for picture books. A book in need of an Amber alert. - DaNae Leu
I’ve talked about the psychology at work behind loving one children’s book or another. And no author better represents a person’s individual personality than William Steig. When I print the full list of all the nominations that didn’t quite make it onto the Top 100, you’re going to be shocked by sheer amount of Steig on that list. Everyone has their favorite. Sometimes it’s The Amazing Bone (that’s my personal love). Sometimes it’s Doctor De Soto (though not as often as you might think). But nine times out of ten the title that came up the most was Sylvester. That strange little story of magic, loss, and recovery strikes a deep chord in the hearts and minds of children and parents everywhere.
From the publisher: “One rainy day, Sylvester finds a magic pebble that can make wishes come true. But when a lion frightens him on his way home, Sylvester makes a wish that brings unexpected results. How Sylvester is eventually reunited with his loving family and restored to his own donkey self makes a story that is beautifully tender and perfectly joyful.”
I mean, just look at that cover image! Name me one other picture book where the defining shot of the book is two parents desperately searching and querying their neighbors about the disappearance of their son. It’s heartbreaking.
Now the reissue of this book did a rather wonderful thing that I’ve not seen repeated in any other picture book. When a “deluxe edition” of the book came out the publisher placed in the back the reprinted Caldecott acceptance speech Steig gave for Sylvester. This strikes me as a brilliant idea. Would that every Caldecott and Newbery Award and Honor winner had this reprinted in their future editions. For just a little bit of ink you get a pretty cool concept.
The Weston Woods video features the voice of John Lithgow, so I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t find a clip of it. Here instead is a glimpse of a cool looking stage production of the same book:
All right. I took my own challenge. I have finally managed to read a book I hadn't read before that has been banned or contested somewhere. Before I tell you which one, I would like to point out that I've read a bunch of new books that I think will get contested or that I'm surprised haven't been contested.
So, here's my book. Drum roll, please.
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
by William Steig.
I know what you're thinking. You haven't read this before? And it's true. I hadn't. I wasn't read to much as a kid, and once I could read not at all. I missed the whole picture book part of youth, which is probably why I don't have a lot of interest in them today. There just isn't a whole cache of fond picture book memories floating around my brain.
However, I broke away from my usual comfort zone and read a picture book. And I enjoyed it. It's a classic, award winner for a reason.
Now the text is too long for a modern picture book. Picture books are still trending to the minimal word to wordless picture book with long stories like Sylvester becoming rare. However, that doesn't make Sylvester any less charming.
I also enjoyed the change in point of view in the story. Flipping back and forth between Sylvester the stone and his parents gives added depth to the plot. After all, it wouldn't be all that interesting to follow Sylvester's month as a rock. Nowadays, though, books are more rigid in their viewpoints.
In fact, Sylvester reads more like a fairy tale than a modern picture book. I loved reading it, and I recommend it to others.
And if you were wondering why it was banned, police associations in 12 states asked librarians to remove the book because the police in it were drawn as pigs. Now, all the characters are animals, and the police are not portrayed negatively, but on the page they appear, they are drawn as pigs.
Hey, if it gets more people to read this magnificent book, I'm all for how the cops are drawn. To be honest, I'd never made the negative connotation about the pig-cops. They were just the cops, and they were trying to help find Sylvester.
Some people ought to quit thinking and start reading more books. That's all there is to it. Those pigs were cute.
Yes, the pigs were/ are cute. And all the characters are animals.
But, if you remember the times. Okay, most of you don't remember -- it was a time of protests and the worst thing a protester could think of to call the police was PIG! And they did it a lot.
So, it seemed a bit offensive to some people when this book won a prize -- with the police portrayed as pigs.
The rest of us simply enjoyed the story -- and waited for the objectors to realize that this was (Oh NO!) fantasy. With magic. For children.
The anti-fantasy crowd never noticed.
-wendieO
This was one of my favorite books as a kid. I carried it around with me for weeks. It's charming, and sweet and just lovely.
People are idiots.
I understand what you're saying about not being read to as a child. But how wonderful to see picture books from an adult perspective. What a great selection!