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Spring into the meadows, find a clearing with a little running brook and read to your children.  A fresh early literacy booklist of picture books for your little one’s eyes abounds.  Books are blooming everywhere you look, each one addressing an early literacy skill.  Hopefully you’ll find it just as delightful to peruse this list as it was for me to create it: 

The Core Skills List-

Vocabulary:  Knowing the names of things.

First Picture Nature by Jo Litchfield.  (Usborne Books, 2007). A picture dictionary of nature in spring, bugs and slugs, flowers, birds, seasons and weather.  Helpful thumbnail pictures introduce the concepts of metamorphosis, germination, and the lifecycle of a frog in easy-to-understand sequences.

A Piece of Chalk by Jennifer Ericsson. Illustrated by Michelle Shapiro. (Roaring Book Press, 2007). A little girl with a box of chalk learns primary colors and the colors of the rainbow while discovering the art of drawing animals on sidewalks and appreciating the outdoors.

Drive by Nathan Clement. (Front Street, 2008). When daddy is a truck driver, he drives to work, looks both ways at the intersection, waves hello, and finds other things to do when there is a traffic jam.  At the end of the day, he fills up his gas tank and drives home.  Teaches good manners and kids will learn the meaning of the word, “drive.”

Rhinos Who Rescue by Julie Mammano. (Chronicle Books LLC, 2007). Rhinos who rescue hear the bell, are smoke jumpers and rescue even gomers! They are heroes, rain or shine.  Learn various definitions of words used at the firehouse and fireman slang in the “rescue rap” page.

Print Motivation: A child’s interest in and enjoyment of books.

Maybe a Bear Ate it! by Robie Harris.  Illustrated by Michael Emberley. (Orchard Books, 2008)  Imagine the angst and sadness if you’ve lost a favorite book.  Who are the book-knappers–maybe a bear, a stegosaurus, a rhino, a bat, a shark, or an elephant?  Hold on tight to your favorite book whatever it is and wherever it is.

My Book Box by Will Hillenbrand. (Harcourt, 2006).   There are so many things you can do with a box–make a bug box, pizza box, sock box or toy box.  But the best box to make is a book box.  Kids can construct their very own book box with adults at the end with easy instructions.

Letter Knowledge: Learning that letters are different from each other. Learning that each letter has a name and specific sounds that go along with it.

Lots of Letters from A to Z Tish Rabe.  Illustrated by Kevan Attebary.(InnovativeKids, 2006). Lift the flap letters delivered to a cast of animal characters starting with each letter of the alphabet.  Snail mail written in alliteration and are thematically centered around the alphabet letter like “Pigs in Pink Pajamas,” “Freddy Fish’s friend forever,” and “Rocky Raccoon who really rocks and lives on Red Road, Rainbow Ridge.”

Little Bitty Mousie by Jim Aylesworth. Illustrated by Michael Hague. (Walker & Company, 2007).  Itty bitty mousie snacks on food, tries on lipstick, sniffs the roses and drives toy trucks all the while, tip-tip tippy toeing around the house at night.  

Poor Puppy by Nick Bruel. (Roaring Brook Press, 2007). What happens when a mean old kitty cat doesn’t want to play with the new puppy dog?  We feel sorry for poor puppy as he tries to find other things to amuse himself.  But puppy doesn’t just sit there and sulk, he gets to play with an alphabetical list of toys from around the world.

Narrative Skills: Being able to describe things. Being able to understand and tell stories.

A Closer Look by Mary McCarthy. (Greenwillows Books, 2007).  As each page unfolds, take a closer look…and what do you see? Not your garden-variety picture book.  They all come together somehow and kids can provide the story.  Learn facts about bugs, birds and flowers.

The Butterfly Garden by Sue Harris. Illustrated by Stephanie Boey. (The Templar Company, 2006).  Lift the flap and explore with Tabby Cat and her friends as they try to catch butterflies.  Talk about the shiny surprises they find along the way.  Appreciate nature and pretty gardens everywhere. 

Two Eggs, Please by Sarah Weeks and Betsy Lewin. (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2003). How many different ways can you cook an egg? They can be different yet the same.  The waiter shouts all the orders into the kitchen at the end as a summary of all the different ways you can have an egg for breakfast.

Phonological Awareness:  The ability to hear and play with the smaller sounds in words.

Truck Driver Tom by Monica Wellington. (Dutton Children’s Books, 2007).  Truck Driver Tom vroom vrooms to rev up his engine, clank clanks through the farmer’s working fields, zoom zooms down the freeway, whooshes into the tunnel until the day is done.  Bold phrases instruct storytellers where to emphasize words while reading the story.  Sounds of city, country, construction sites, diners and grocery stores are covered.

City Lullaby by Marilyn Singer. Illustrated by Carll Cneut. (Clarion Books, 2007). Baby needs to wake up but instead falls into deeper sleep with the sounds of the city from 2 bikes growling to 10 horns beeping.  Will baby ever wake up? Count from 1 to 10 with this light-humored book and find out.

A Perfect Day by Remy Charlip. (Greenwillow Books, 2007). A story in rhyme about a parent and child spending a day together.  Nothing can be more perfect than a father being with his son.  Turn the pages and find out all the things to do from morning until night.

Print Awareness: This is really just noticing print. Noticing words everywhere, knowing how to handle a book, knowing how to follow words on a page.

Lickety-Split by Robert Heidbreder. Illustrated by Dusan Petricic. (Kids Can Press, 2007).  Each page a symphony of sounds from thumpity tump, flippity flop, ziggity zag to clippity clop to mishity mash.  Fun-filled alliteration with compound words and words with musical sounds when put together.

The Adventures of Captain Candy by Ryan Lederer. (Seven Locks Press, 2007).  Can Captain Candy, Agent Mint and Fireball apprehend Professor Metal Mouth? A graphic novel style picturebook aimed at the preschool audience.  Action words have punch and words with intonations are highlighted in bubble letters of green, blue, red and every other color of the rainbow.

The Medley List:

Pholonogical Awareness/Print Awareness:

Bunny Fun by Sarah Weeks. (Hartcourt, 2008).  Chant along with Bunny, “bunny fun” while figuring out how to play on a rainy day.  What happens when the rain stops? Maybe some puddle fun.

Dino-Hockey by Lisa Wheeler. Illustrated by Barry Gott. (Carolrhoda Books, 2007). Hockey dinosaurs go against each other in the finals.  Meat-eaters versus veggiesaurs, T. Rex and Raptors, Pterodactyl twins and Diplo shins.  A dramatic finish by Stego and Triceratops advances them into the playoffs.

Phonological Awareness/Narrative Skills/Vocabulary:

Shape Capers by Cathryn Falwell. (Greenwillow Books, 2008). Learn your shapes with rhyme.  Shake, shake, shake the shapes.  What will they be? Circle, square, triangle, or semicircle and all you can see.  Find all the shapes at the end and talk about how you can play with shapes all day. Hooray!

Playground Day! (Clarion Books, 2007). Hurray hurray it’s playground day.  Be a bunny, squirrel, monkey…springing, wiggling; scurrying, scattering; stretching, swaying;  kids can talk about all the animals they pretend to be while playing on the playground.  A summary page at the end inspires narration from kids to adults about what they did on the playground that day.

Phonological Awareness/Print Awareness/Vocabulary:

Peek in My Pocket by Sarah Weeks and David A. Carter. (Red Wagon Books, 2007). Each animal has a different pocket with a different shape.  Lift-the-flaps make it fun to find out what each pocket holds as a surprise.  Children will love to chant “peek in my pocket” and will learn the name of each object in no time.

Note: Definitions of the Six Early Literacy Skills were taken from the KCLS Foundation “Ready to Read” Webpage:

http://www.kcls.org/parents/kidsandreading/readytoread/literacyskills.cfm

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free ;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.

–The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Coleridge)

What a year it’s been for the Great Interactive Software for Kids Committee.  The Samuel Coleridge poem above calls to mind the pioneering spirit of the committee members who served along with me 2007 to 2008.  Kirsten Freeman-Benson, Anna Healy, Angelique Kopa, Jane Ritter and Becky White could all be called brave mariners for the trials and tribulations we went through to get our committee work done. 

There were so many firsts this year I can hardly name them all.  We wrote articles and campaigned to be known to the outside world.  Thanks to the ALSC Board’s motion to approve last year, we had a ticket to sail, to “burst” into the sea of electronic media.  We went from evaluating PC-CD ROMs to evaluating multiple platforms like the Leap Frog Console, DS/Wii and Xbox360 and somehow we ended up on the virtual planet of Second Life discussing software in Cybrary City.  We reached heights we never thought were possible, all in a year’s time. 

I wish I could be on this committee forever…I have never felt so passionate about something I’ve worked on as GISK.  I cannot begin to articulate how much being the chair of this committee has stretched my mind, increased my opportunities for learning and ENLIGHTENED me.  It’s bittersweet that I must announce that I will be rotating off the committee as chair in March due to family obligations.  But I have faith and hope our work will continue to serve the ALSC membership and our audience of school libraries, public libraries, parents and their children, even without my presence. 

I congratulate Angelique Kopa, a worthy successor and the incoming chair to the committee–I wish her the very best and am confident that the committee’s fate is in capable hands.  My fellow committee members are knowledgeable and tenacious and I am so fortunate to have worked along side each and everyone one of them.  Thank you for your hard work.  I told you to ”be the miracle” and you were! 

There is still so much to do.  There are so many learning opportunities, so many worlds to explore, so little time and we’ve only scratched the surface.  I learned that there was such a thing as videogame literacy and that vendors actually listened to our argument that there was educational value in the games they produced, if you deeply believed and showed your sincerity.  It was sheer will from the six of us that shook the videogame industry into recognizing ALSC and recognizing the GISK committee.  And when it rained, it poured–we had over 85 submissions.  Now that we’ve broken out onto the waves, it should be smooth sailing from here on out. 

Technology continues to be profound and ever-changing and we emerge victorious only if we stay abreast with the new developments.  In the 11th hour, we allied ourselves with Dr. Scott Nicholson of Syracuse University’s School of Information Science and his Games and Gaming Member Initiative Group which unites all gaming groups within ALA.  I am confident that our committee will  continue to represent ALSC in the technological world in the best way possible and make the Board proud.  Thank you all, very much.  It’s been a pleasure…

Signing off as chair,

Ann Crewdson

FYI-

Here’s some news from Second Life.  This might be of interest to you!

Virtual Worlds: Libraries, Education and Museums Conference

Join us in Second Life on March 8 for a conference on virtual worlds
and libraries, education and museums!  The purpose of this conference
is to provide a gathering place for librarians, information
professionals, educators, museologists, and others to learn about and
discuss the educational, informational, and cultural opportunities of
virtual worlds. The conference will be held at the lovely New Media

Consortium Conference Center.  There will be a variety of presentations to attend
including keynote programs by Kitty Pope, Executive Director of the
Alliance Library System, Barbara Galik, Director of the Cullom-Davis
Library at Bradley University, Doug McDavid from IBM, and Christy
Confetti Higgins from Sun. For more information on and to register for
the conference, visit the conference website at
http://www.alliancelibraries.info/virtualworlds/

The conference is organized by Alliance Library System, TAP
Information Services, IBM, and Sun.  For more information on attending
or presenting, contact Lori Bell at Alliance Library System at
[email protected] or Tom Peters at
[email protected]

We are still accepting proposals for the conference until February 11 and the

conference program will be available sometime the week of February 12.

Lori Bell
Director of Innovation
Alliance Library System
600 High Point Lane
East Peoria, IL 61611
(309)694-9200 ext. 2128
[email protected]

Friday, January 25, 2008 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time, 10:00 Central,
9:00 Mountain, 8:00 Pacific, and 5:00 p.m. GMT/UTC/Zulu:

Friday, January 25, 2008 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time, 2:00 Central, 1:00
Mountain, noon Pacific, and 8:00 p.m. GMT/UTC/Zulu:
lds for Kids, Tweens, and Teens: Whyville

According to a recent New York Times article, 2008 will be the year of
virtual worlds for kids, with rapid population growth and many
ventures. Libraries and other educational and cultural organizations
are exploring these virtual worlds for kids, too. This hour long
seminar will feature speakers Tom Peters of TAP Information Services
providing an overview of the growth of virtual worlds for kids, Cliff
Zintgraff of Whyville providing an introduction and tour of Whyville,
and Kelly Czarnecki of the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg
County talking about why it is important for librarians and educators
to be in virtual worlds such as Whyville.

To participate go to the OPAL Online Auditorium at
http://www.conference321.com/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rs1641902f62b4

New users will need to download a small software applet before
entering the room.

For more information contact Lori Bell at
[email protected] or Tom Peters at
[email protected]

–
Lori Bell
Director of Innovation
Alliance Library System
600 High Point Lane
East Peoria, IL 61611
(309)694-9200 ext. 2128
skype: lbell927
[email protected]
[email protected]

Ever wonder how to build your own objects or modify those you have?

Join the ELVEN Institute as we look at the basics of building. This workshop will show how to create a simple object, modify it, take it back into your inventory, and then make more copies of it in the world.  As a concrete focus, we will each build a couch, which will be a single prim: a tinted, translucent, textured, profile-cut torus.

The text chat based instruction will be supplemented by a series of in-world dynamic exhibits that show the user interface methods required to perform each step of couch building.  The intention will be for people to observe the simulations, and then duplicate the steps using their own user interface.   These simulations will provide us with a shared perception that will be the basis for questions and comments.

All ELVEN workshops offer personal guidance in a small group setting with other educators.  Come increase you SL knowledge and meet other SL-using educators!

Join us Saturday morning, February 2nd, from 8 to 10 am SLT.  Please register now at http://elveninstitute.org/workshops.html. 

For more information, contact Dewey Jung in world or via email at [email protected]

—–

Craig A. Cunningham, Ph.D.

Associate Professor 

National College of Education

National-Louis University

122 S. Michigan Avenue

Chicago IL 60603

1-312-261-3605

[email protected]

http://craigcunningham.com

—————————————————

It’s about lighting a fire, not filling a bucket!

Are you one of those children’s librarians that’s always looking for something new to add to your story times–a new fingerplay, a twist on old fairy tales or an activity? As children’s librarians, we’re always looking for innovation in the most unlikely of places and transforming ordinary household materials into works of art.  I ran across this article in The Seattle Times about bubble wrap.  How many of us have used bubble wrap to create art projects?–It could look like corn for a thanksgiving story time or be used as a new art tool for orange tempura paint.  These 11-year olds were challenged to use bubble wrap, creating good for the world.  I think we can relate!

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004030348_bubblewrap23.html

Happy Thanksgiving fellow children’s librarians.  Hope that when you stuff yourself with turkey, surrounded by family and friends, you’ll reflect on all that you do for kids and their families.  You may not always get the feedback you deserve, but they will remember you.  One bright and sunny day in autumn, you’re paid a visit from a family you once served at another location (like I experienced this month), bearing gifts and the child you helped with reading–grown several inches more taller.  It’s especially rewarding to know that you are part of their lives when they wake up in the morning, eat breakfast or lunch and the child talks about you as if you’re part of their lives.  You’re not only the story time lady, but you are their teacher and their guide to life.  Through your lens, they see the world with wonder…

We all deserve a pat on our backs for all that we do.  This poem especially resonates our qualities as children’s librarians.  (Unfortunately, the authorship is still a mystery–linking to writings of Emerson, Stanley and Stevenson).

Success
To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
    and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
    and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better,
    whether by a healthy child,
    a garden patch
    or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier
    because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

So this Thanksgiving, I toast to you children’s librarians.  Thank you for all you do.  And I am a success too because I have “earned the respect of intelligent people” and I have won the ”affection of children” by making reading fun.  I say this more to remind myself because recent events–my father’s terminal cancer, and not having goals go the direction I want them to go–almost dragged me down.  Then I asked myself, “How can I be a failure when when I have “earned the respect of intelligent people” like the Federation of American Scientists and when I’ve “won the affection of children?”  My chubby toddlers always want to fly into my arms everytime I do “One, two, three, four, five–I caught a fish alive” during story time.  As children’s librarians we often don’t give ourselves enough credit.  So thank you Children’s Librarians.  And thank you God for my blessed life.  I am so thankful and grateful to be a children’s librarian. 

I was so excited when my article, “Discover Babylon: E-Learning Power on Second Life” came out in the November 2007 issue of School Library Journal, I couldn’t wait to share it with my mother.  My mother who is a non-native english speaker who immigrated from Taiwan and doesn’t have more than a 6th grade education in chinese was so proud of me but didn’t understand a word that was on the page.  I was really happy that my first magazine article would be celebrated by my mom but equally frustrated that the language and educational barriers prevented her from understanding the merits of the article. 

The second level of frustration comes from the fact that many of my colleagues do not understand what I have written despite the meticulous nature in which I approached the article with incessant phone calls to the Federation of American Scientists for clarification, consultation with a local psychologist I know and emailing to friends to verify that my writing could be understood at the most basic of levels.  And it is through no fault of my colleagues that the language to describe Second Life is still in its primordial stage, leaving a language and cultural barrier between those who have a presence in Second Life and those who don’t.

Communication:

The frustrations really underscore the “disconnect” between people who understand Second Life and those who’ve never even heard of it.  Not only are there divides between those who are educated and those who are not, but there are divides between those who are technically savvy and those who are not and the role-players and the real-lifers.  No wonder those who are denizens of Second Life are weary about teaching newbies the basics.   It’s analogous to helping a patron who comes into the library whose second language is english but has never touched a computer in her life, demanding to use Rosetta Stone fluently.  And the newbies are weary about taking lessons from avatars.  How do you take lessons seriously when the teacher standing before you looks like a dragon and lectures in a Carl Sagan voice? We tell ourselves it’s otherworldly–the stuff for “Star-Trek” fanatics and not for “normal” people.

Semantics:

You say first-life, I say real-life.  You say in-world, I say in-game.  Game, serious, world, platform–let’s call the whole thing off…

It’s very hard to even start an intelligent conversation about Second Life because at present, the discursive language is constantly being invented and reinvented.  The MacArthur Foundation in their conference talked about how innovations are happening at such a rapid pace between multiple disciplines in virtual planets eg: Second Life, that there hasn’t been time to describe what is happening.  The language can’t keep up.  And as you can plainly see from my above phrase, people are still in disagreement about the terms used to describe the transactions in Second Life.  For instance, I would distinguish the differences between the term first-life and real-life because my first-life was Asheron’s Call (MMORPG), before Second Life was invented and my real-life is my physical life that I live right now as a children’s librarian in the King County Library System.  Those in Second Life, whom have never touched a MUVE before Second Life, would equate their first lives with their real lives.  And no one outside of Second Life understands jargon like “grid, rez, prims and terraforming.”

Education and Non-profits:

 It’s important to have educators, librarians and public, non-profit entities in Second Life so that marketers and commercial companies don’t dominate and influence the education emanating from virtual planets.  It’s important to have virtual planets as a tool for kids that teaches innovation.  Innovative teaching is very hard to do in the traditional classroom.  Take a look at this video of What Are Kids Learning in Virtual Worlds? which was a conference that took place at the University of Southern California on November 14th, 2007.  Put away all doubts that ALSC shouldn’t have a presence on Second Life.  600 librarians on Second Life couldn’t be wrong:  http://takeonedigital.blip.tv/file/488039/

 Being someone who is able to see both sides of the equation, having one foot in Second Life and the other Real Life, I am able to pinpoint the exact place where the real and second worlds collide.  For those staunchly rooted in real life, we have a hard time reconciling what’s tangible with the abstract, what’s theoretical and what’s already being practiced.  Furthermore, Second Life really tests our psyche and takes us to the limit of what is acceptable, unacceptable, sane and insane.  To our familiar mind, there’s something disturbing about shopping for eyeballs or taking classes from a furry wolf avatar.  We see with our lens of perception so ingrained by the society we’ve grown up in that it’s hard to be forgiving of avatars who are strange.  Consider the anti-furry avatar movement happening in Second Life which is blatant racist discrimination against avatars with furry characteristics–picketed demonstrations and islands that explicity state, no large non-human avatars allowed have been documented.

To those who’ve never touched an MUVE, it’s hard to see what’s so great about it.  They see it on a superficial level like the game, The SIMs.  Why would you want to play taking out the trash and washing the dishes when you can do that in real-life? For those in Second Life, the esoteric language, the thrill of the new technological frontier, social networking, explosion of creativity, the innovations are so amazing that it’s hard to fathom why people wouldn’t understand the importance of doing work on virtual planets.  From ignorance and misunderstanding prejudice is born.

Prejudices: 

 It’s important to go into Second Life with an open mind and not be afraid to have new experiences that are “alien” to us.  It’s important to take things at face-value and not project characteristics onto the avatars standing before you, not knowing the person in real-life.  In the short time I’ve been on Second Life, I’ve come a long ways from the vigilante attitude I carried into it as the “pillar of truth” to just taking it one day at a time and not assuming too much.  Maybe that avatar who bumped into you on Orientation Island wasn’t doing it to be spiteful but a vigilante himself.  He wants to rid the virtual planet of “zombies” or gold farmers who exploit a region for traffic.  Maybe that Harry Potter avatar who was speaking gibberish to you when you landed in Korea town was not trying to spook you but trying out a Linguiphile plug-in in Second Life chat to translate English into Korean.  Maybe throwing virtual stones like a zealot at the group called Babylonian Whores isn’t such a good idea because you take on the very griefer mentality you despise in other people.  And real-lifers, it’s important not to do the name-calling as described in Suzanne Delong’s article, “Nix the Name-Calling” from the October 2007 issue of American Libraries. 

If we take a good look at ourselves, we are all still people from the same human race–Baby-Boomers, Generation Xers, Millenials, Ys and Avatars.  Yes, let’s be polite and not call people “freaks” or “old fogies.”  It’s a misconception that older people are not on Second Life–after all, they have more time to spend on virtual planets than the average middle-aged person if they’re retired.  People playing Second Life are often told to get a life or named the ones who drunk from the “kool-aid.” It’s rude and uncalled for. Take it from someone who’ve drunk from the “koolaid.”  I’m still the person I was yesterday, performing story times for youngsters 1 to 2 years old at the library, except with that much more knowledge, enlightened by my virtual planet experience.

I attended the workshop Saturday morning conducted by the ELVEN (Educators and Librarians in Virtual Environments) Institute in Second Life and it was tres excellent! Thanks to Teresa Walls and Kelly Czarnecki for the headsup, I went to their website and filled out a form that asked me to rate my interests from 1-4 from navigation, communication, clothing and shopping, use of SL for preK-12 education, to use of SL for teacher education.  Dewey Jung, Puglet Dancer and the team of ELVEN assistants conducted the 2-hour basic course on Second Life in a classroom-like setting using a virtual LCD projector.  The organization was impeccable with 4 main presenters (Blu Heron, Pia Klaar, Dewey Jung, Zotarah Sheperd) taking 20-30 minutes each to cover a topic.  Notecards and materials were passed out to each avatar between segments.  Student avatars were assigned an assistant to answer questions through IM.  My assistant was Bronte Alcott (yes, she was a former English teacher) and she was great! Many questions that had been bugging me in the back of my mind were answered–such as if you “forced midnight” does it make it midnight for everyone around you? The answer is no.  How do you get rid of avatars’ names when you’re trying to see the board? Going into Edit–preferences–general (tab)–and checking on “show names temporarily” will get rid of the names above the head.  If that big furry wolf avatar’s head is blocking your view of the instructor, use “camera control” to get around it.  Learning how to maneuver and use camera controls makes a huge difference on the quality of your Second Life experience from simple viewing to building prims.  And I even learned how to make a notecard from “Inventory” to take home my own notes on the lecture.  Please IM me (Gisk Akina) if you would like a copy of the workshop’s transcript.  I would highly recommend taking a class from them if you are new to Second Life.  Everyone at the Institute was so nice and helpful! Who says you have to have a physical person next to you to learn Second Life? Thumbs up ELVEN Institute! Taking the workshop made me realize that virtual instruction works for me.  Visit the ELVEN Institute’s web site for more information on their workshops: http://elveninstitute.org/ 

by Ann Crewdson

Print Awareness is one of the six early literacy skills that focuses on noticing print everywhere.  Print is in the sky.  It’s on the bottom of your shoes.  It’s on someone’s arm as a tattoo.  And what do you know?! Print is all over the books!

Here are some new and classic books to get your kids looking around for print:

Hurry Hurry by Eve Bunting

Chicken starts mass hysteria at the farm with her hurrying, rallying animals to see something big going down.  It’s a big rush of colorful words spilling out from page to page full of barnyard banter.

Bounce by Doreen Cronin

Unique presentations of the word “bounce” decorate the pages.  Hop, leap, pounce and bounce in ways your toddler may never have thought of before.

Snowballs by Lois Ehlert

Winter is almost here–the birds are expecting snow and the seeds are almost gone.  Flip through this book at 90 degrees and read about each member of the snowmen family.

Beetle Bop by Denise Fleming

Beetles on every page, doing everything imaginable from chewing, swirling, flashing, flip-flopping until they go “bop!”

Black Meets White by Justine Fontes

Black and White collide and become polka dots, a checkerboard and wiggles.  Alternating pages of black and white words bring interest to bold print, touching on gray areas.

Cover Art Not Available

I Walk and Read by Tana Hoban

Pictures of words everywhere in every day life are captured in photographs of roads, cars, stores, poles and signs.

Wake Up Me! By Marni McGee

Waking up is easier to do following words, one step at a time.  Bouncing words will show you the way…out to the playground to play.

Baby Goes Beep by Rebecca O’Connell

Baby honks the horn, messes up the kitchen, sings and flips the books around.  Here’s a book with words that expresses baby’s feelings.

Smash! Mash! Crash! There Goes the Trash! By Barbara Odanaka

A garbage truck wakes up two little piglets with words that follow its every move, smashing and chomping until black smoke belches indicate the truck’s belly is full. 

Clip-Clop! by Nicola Smee

Who wants to ride on Horse? The animals go clip-clop clippity, faster and faster on Horse’s back until ploppity-plop they all fall down and cheer, “Again!”

Who is Driving? by Leo Timmers

Elephant, Cat, Rabbit, Pig, Giraffe, Hippopotamous, and Stork are all in a hurry to get to their destinations with various vehicles while words zoom, putt and swoosh.

Overboard! by Sarah Weeks

Baby bunny goes “overboard” over and over again with fun–flinging peaches, wipers, diapers and paint.

This is just a sampling of the wealth of books out there that demonstrate print awareness.  When I do my story times, I like to tell my parents to celebrate print awareness by finding some more titles in the library.  I say, ”Look around and you’ll be surprised by where print hide and reside!” Young children are especially amused by the print in their daily lives.  Activities like pointing to words while they’re brushing their teeth, shopping for groceries are taking a walk down the street all help to reinforce the skill of print awareness.  Suggesting that parents make a book out of the creative fonts available through Microsoft Word or the internet can be quite amusing.  Then urge them to read them out loud once they’re done and have fun!

I read a heartwarming article in the Seattle Times on October 7th about Second Life improving the quality of real life for many.  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003931084_netavatar07.html

It talks about a wheel-chair bound woman who is able to find physical freedom to walk, run and dance in Second Life, an autistic fellow who is able to learn social cues by chatting in Second Life and a man with agoraphobia (fear of going outdoors) who was able to conquer his fear of going outside by taking one step at a time from Second Life out to First Life.  Cancer survivors find support from other Second Lifers who suffer from the same disease.  These were only some of the many stories cited in the article which sounded too good to be true at first glance.  Could Second Life be this “panacea” that people have claimed it to be? Is it too good to be true?

Well, if we look at Second Life as serendipity, it could explain some of these benefits.  Did Philip Rosedale, the creator of Second Life set out to make a platform for civil engineering feats, sociological studies and medical practice when he first thought of Second Life? No, he based his vision on the movie MATRIX and the book, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.  I imagine this was how Alexander Fleming felt when he tried to cure syphilis infections, left on a weekend to discover that his dirty petri dish culture wiped out a colony of staphylococci in 1928.  Never in his wildest dreams did he think it would lead to the discovery of an important antibiotic, pencillin, that would save many lives.  Or more recently, NIMH was caught off-guard when they administered scopolamine (an anti-seasickness drug) to depressed patients to check for its effect on memory.  Instead of results on memory tests, they found happier, perkier people the next morning, leading them to a breakthrough in medical science. 

Second Life may not be a panacea but it sure comes close.  Its architectural, educational, business, medical and sociological benefits are only starting to come to light.  And that’s only the tip of the iceberg! With the announcement of of IBM and Linden Lab this month of their collaboration in researching the possibility of avatars transcending different virtual worlds, Second Life will have the potential to create more powerful solutions.  We should expect more serendipitous miracles in the future.  Picture your Level 54 Blademaster in Asheron’s Call reading an online book to your child in Club Penguin world.  Who knows? It may even lead to new research on Early Literacy!

by Ann Crewdson

Not only apples and pumpkins are plump this season but there is also an abundance of books, especially those emphasizing phonological awareness, one of the six early literacy skills (what children need to know about reading and writing before they actually read and write).  Phonological Awareness is defined as “The ability to hear and play with the smaller sounds in words.  Use the power of repetition, alliteration, rhyme and play on words in books to teach children language.  Check out this bountiful harvest of books at your local library:

Llama Llama Mad at Mama by Anna Dewdney

Llama Llama is forced to go to Shop-o-roma, put on sweaters, pick up groceries and decide on lunch until he realizes that he’s doing all of it with his mama.

Charlie and Lola’s Numbers by Lauren Child

Count to ten with Lola starting with one brother Charlie, through four moonsquirters and over ten elephants.

Baby Bear, Baby Bear What do you See? Written by Bill Martin Jr. and illustrated by Eric Carle.

Baby Bear searches for his mama, identifying all kinds of North American wildlife along the way.

Badger’s Fancy Meal by Keiko Kasza

Badger doesn’t care for the apples, worms and roots in his food storage but his fickle mealtime habit has him chasing the whole animal kingdom, which gets him his just desserts. 

Max’s Words by Kate Banks

Little Max has nothing to trade until he finds the words to negotiate with his two older brothers through story telling.

One Naked Baby by Maggie Smith

Naked baby runs through the household, trying silly hats, eating crunchy fish, exploring the garden, ending in a bath, counting to ten and back again.

Grumpy Bird by Jeremy Tankard

Bird wakes up grumpy, but the other animals convince him that there’s still fun to be had, even by mimicking being grumpy.

I Love Cats by Anne Mortimer

All kinds of cats, cats, cats from big cats, prancing cats to weirdy cats and beardy cats.   

Fix It, Sam by Lori Ries

Sam helps his little brother fix things around the house from trucks to pillow cases to make-shift tents.

Let’s Play in the Forest While the Wolf is Not Around by Claudia Rueda

Follow forest critters through traditional French and Spanish play and music, as the wolf gets ready for the day.

I’d Really Like to Eat a Child by Sylviane Donno

A young crocodile whines that his favorite food, children, is not available for him to eat.

Orange Pear Apple Bear by Emily Gravett

Bears, oranges, pears, and apples blend into one in beautiful water-color pages. 

The Bear and His Boy by Sean Bryan

A bear named Mack wakes up with a boy on his back leading to all kinds of adventures running around like a maniac, until they stop to smell the lilacs.

To learn more about early literacy skills and the King County Library System’s Ready to Ready Initiative through its Foundation, please visit http://www.kcls.org/parents/kidsandreading/readytoread/

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. 

–Margaret Mead

This summer when the ALA Annual Conference was held in Washington DC, I paid a visit to the FAS (Federation of American Scientists) on K Street.  As the Chair of the newly revamped Great Interactive Software for Kids Committee, I wanted to make sure that our committee had a solid foundation other than playing games for fun.  And although we have expanded our criteria to include the evaluation of console games and other digital forms, in addition to pc cd-roms, I wanted a deeper philosophical backbone to our committee.  So I turned to the scientists for help and decided to pay them a visit since our conference was in their neck of the woods.

I didn’t really know what to expect as I walked into the gray building, heavily guarded by security guards.  Michelle Roper, the Director of FAS Learning Technologies had said that the emergency drills after 9/11 had been frequent, although not so often now.  I don’t think I could ever imagine what it must have been like in DC on September 11th, 2001 when one of the planes crashed into the Pentagon.

FAS was located in one of the top floors with an intercom to let visitors in.  When the receptionist let me in the door, I found a starch-white office complex with multiple cubicles surrounded by pristine walls.  There was little sunlight and the air was thick with concentration and severity.  As a children’s librarian doing story times in lively colorful areas, I felt completely out of context.  I was temporarily relieved when I spotted an adjacent room filled with books on a bookshelf.

When Amy Nicholson, the Program Coordinator for FAS Learning Technologies greeted me, I was surprised to find she was an attractive, energetic woman with a way-cool demeanor.  We instantly got along as we talked about playing games like World of Warcraft, Asheron’s Call and Guitar Hero II.  I admit that I had a stereotypical image of what the scientists might be like after reading their profile on the webpage (since they described themselves as the predecessors of the atomic scientists having worked on the Manhattan Project).  My expectation was to meet people like my undergraduate Chemistry Professor–eccentric, introverted with coke-bottle glasses, pocket protector and gingivitis.  Instead, Sachin Patil and Adam Burrowbridge, the Research Associates, looked like they could have walked off the cover of GQ Magazine.  And although I had never met Michelle Roper, I’m positive that she is just as lovely in person as she is over the phone.  In fact, I was embarassed that I was the one with the glasses, a geeky personality and loud laugh.  Had they decided that I was just a children’s librarian that had nothing to do with their research world, they wouldn’t have given the time or day.  Instead, they were delightful, and patient, helping me understand, in layman terms, different aspects of their project.  

Sachin flew around on Second Life, Discover Babylon, showing me how he was reconstructing the city of Uruk (ancient Iraq) from blueprints.  I had to tell myself to overlook the cosmetic interface and forget that he was flying around in a cartoon body.  I found it challenging not to be overly-conscious and move past it, even though I had been in a multi-user virtual environment before 7 years ago when I played Asheron’s Call.  Second Life is not a game but the Internet in a different skin.  Amy described it very clearly to me that it was a wikipedia of MMOs (Massive Multiplayer Online) worlds.  Once I suspended my disbelief, something amazing happened.  I saw the beauty of the technology–that it rolled everything into one–IMing, emailing, podcasting, videostreaming, weblinking (Web 2.0 features) into one.  I finally understood what all the rage was about!  It was truly the internet in its next evolutionary stage.  And a great platform to ally ourselves with other open-minded, public-serving organizations.

At the end of my visit, toting my dictionary of computer terms,  and enlightened by my new-found friends, I left the building with renewed hope for my committee.  The scientists sensed my desperation to help them and invited my committee to become part of their focus group.  And I  became an FAS groupie that day, fueled by their desire to bring learning to the world and their mission for public good.  Thank you FAS.  You rock!

For more information about the FAS and its Learning Technologies Initiatives, visit http://www.fas.org