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This week many of us have been writing about the questions kids ask. Maybe you are tired of the subject, but frankly, I can’t help myself. To add a little variety, I’ll change up and talk about some of the letters and emails I’ve received from students.

Furthermore I’ll begin by quoting my favorite email from a kid, one which wasn’t even sent to me. I’ve asked Lois Lowry if I could borrow it for this blog entry and she graciously sent me the exact wording. It read:

I am working on a research paper and in my thesis statement I have to identify you. Would you be considered a 19th century author? Please let me know ASAP.

Okay, on to me. I love the thank you notes that teachers assign after I’ve made a school visit. Certainly my mother would have approved. Here’s an excerpt from one letter that came from a school where I talked about Ultimate Field Trip 1: Adventures in the Amazon Rain Forest, illustrated by my frequent collaborator, photographer Michael J. Doolittle.

Dear Susan Goodman, I’m one of the many people who were in your second grade group. Here’s one question I wanted to ask you: Is your photographer Michel Dolittle related to Dr. Dolittle?

Here’s another note that asked a question (name changed, mistakes included).

Dear Susan, Will you please dedicate a story to my bear Oatmeal and me. My name is Mary Jones. I am very happy to meet you. I admiare you a very lot. I have read 4 of your books. I am a big fan on yours. It would be a great honor to have one of your books dedicated to me. Please word it like this. I dedicate this book to Mary Jones and her bear Oatmeal because she admiars me so very much. Sinserly Mary

I couldn’t resist. I had a book going to press and my husband ended up sharing his dedication, although I did invoke poetic license and changed her suggested wording.

Last one for this post, although I keep going. One Sunday evening, I happened to be online and received a desperate email from a young lady with an assignment due the next morning. She asked me if my underlying reason for writing Ultimate Field Trip 4: A Week in the 1800s was…and then gave me two alternatives. I immediately wrote back saying that neither answer was right and then explained the message I was hoping to convey with the book.

Moments later I got another email, this time from her mother. She explained that her daughter was filling out a multiple-choice assignment created by the textbook company that had excerpted my book. And she provided me with all four possible explanations for my motivation. I studied them and decided the answer was E, none of the above. I wrote back and suggested her daughter bring this email chain between her and the author who explained her real intent to class. Who knows, maybe she’d get extra credit for taking some initiative.

HA! A week later I received an email from the mother who thought I might be interested in the upshot. Her daughter didn’t get any credit for the question, the answer was B.

As a lover of irony, I suppose this email exchange should be my favorite. But it’s just so wrong on so many levels. We can talk about: A) the issue of textbooks in general (although I’m grateful that this one used my writing as a good example). We can talk about: B) making children limit or reduce their interpretations of what they read to previously digested categories (which may well be wrong). We can talk about: C) the fact that assignments should help kids learn to think on their own rather than letting others tell them what they think (perhaps wrongly). We can talk about: D) not rewarding initiative and imagination.

Which do you think wins the “most wrong” award—A, B, C, or D? Give me your answer. But don’t forget that there’s always E, none of the above.

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Somehow October’s chorus about using our books in the classroom didn’t come everyone's way on the guitar until November, so kindly bear with me for a minute while I wrap up my part of this song with one last verse.

I hated history when I was a kid. The way we were supposed to learn everything was by memorizing a bunch of boring names and dates and battle sites. To me, the people in history were a lot like George Washington on the dollar bill; old and green and wrinkled and dead.

What a waste! The real George Washington wasn’t anything like that portrait. Just between you and me, our boy George was a stud. He was so tall that most other men only came up to his shoulder. He was a great athlete and his hands and feet were enormous—what a basketball player he might have made! This terrific horseman, dancer, and card player was also so fearless in battle that even when his horses were shot out from under him and bullets ripped through his coat, he never left the front lines. You can’t make this stuff up; it’s all true, and if I had known things like that about the dead people in my history books, well of course I’d have wanted to hear more.

So how can teachers make history spring to life for kids? Here are three of the ways.

1) The Storyteller’s Voice- One of the main reasons that so many stories from history are still around is that they’re really the best stories of all time. I hated history because all those moons ago, my own teachers didn’t know how to tell a great tale. But if teachers can teach by using a storyteller’s voice, you can bet your boots that kids will beg to listen in. The best nonfiction books can show you the way and can add in fabulous pictures to boot. (And forgive me for mentioning that our INK THINK TANK has these books in spades.)

2) Tie-Ins- If you can get kids to relate directly to something in a book about history, you’ve got it made. Here are some examples from my book talks—no reason why with a little extra imagination teachers can’t do this kind of thing too. In one school, the students put on a wonderful play about Lewis and Clark based on my book How We Crossed the West and invited me to watch. When I visited their classrooms the next day, I surprised each actor and actress by telling them some incredibly happy and sad and funny things that happened to their own characters after the journey ended. This new information was a huge hit. When I presented the same book another time, we were able to bring a real Newfoundland dog (like Seaman, the one Meriwether Lewis brought on the journey) into the room. Bingo! I got to tell about all the funny and even life-saving adventures the dog had on the trip. Trust me—dogs are attention grabbers all the way. And during a previous Presidential election, an older group did a great job of comparing the gigantic role propaganda played in promoting George Washington vs. King George III back in Revolutionary times with the role propaganda played in that particular presidential election.

3) Lights, camera, action!- Younger audiences like nothing better than to sing, laugh, make funny noises, and wear costumes. As it turns out, these qualities are great tools for teaching history too. I love to use my book The Old Chisholm Trail; A Cowboy Song as a fun intro to those famously difficult cattle drives from the wild west. Very Short Version of how this works: I dress up as a cowboy and briefly explain how hard that trip must have been. Then I invite 3 volunteer cowboys onstage, where they don huge paper moustaches, and I give 3 more volunteers stuffed longhorn cattle to hold. As I (badly) sing funny verses from the real song, the cowboys and cows make appropriate cowboy and cow sound effects when I point to them after each verse, and the audience sings the chorus in their turn. It is hilarious, it’s the BEST teaching tool, and it all comes from a book. Try it!

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I’m taking an education class for people studying to become teachers. Assignment Task #1: bring to class six examples of award winning children’s books based around a theme. If I overlooked the part about the annotated bibliography, using APA format exclusively, and checking the rubric for possible point deductions, I could say this assignment was a no brainer. I headed straight to nonfiction, of course, and chose some of my favorite multicultural biographies without having to think twice.

Of the 22 or so students in the class, I was the only person who had chosen nonfiction books. Almost everyone chose the same themes: animals and family. I’ll admit that these topics are extremely popular with the elementary school crowd. But animals and family without nonfiction? How many times can a kid read about a duck that talks or a pig that flies without wanting some real information?

As any reader of this blog will know, there are a wide variety of quality nonfiction books on all aspects of these topics. But, as Levar Burton would say, don’t take my word for it. Go over to to the INK THINK TANK website to check out the database by subject.

I did notice that everyone in my group really enjoyed my selections. They thought my approach was innovative and they wanted me to present on behalf of our group OK, perhaps they just wanted me to get stuck representing, but at least they were encouraging. After mentioning my selection on MLK, Jr., one student started an interesting conversation on whether schools should be closed for the Martin Luther King day holiday. Another guy asked to borrow my book on the Negro Leagues.

I think I was making some progress. Perhaps even had a convert or two. Teach the teachers well. Even the newbies want to get off on the right foot. The students are sure to follow.

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In celebration of our new Ink Think Tank Database, I would like to share a classroom activity for my book Action Jackson (K-4). I hope classroom and art teachers, as well as librarians, will find this teaching guide useful. The section called Responding to Art can be applied to other paintings, as well.
Begin by reading Action Jackson by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker. You can read it out loud, have the children take turns reading it aloud, or allow them time to read it to themselves. Then let everyone take good look at the reproduction of Jackson Pollock’s painting, Lavender Mist. Children should also have the chance to look at any work of Pollock’s that you have in your collection.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

The Abstract Expressionists abandoned the idea that painting is a picture window looking into the real world. To these artists and others who followed them, three-dimensional effects in painting were sheer illusion. A painting to them was a flat surface with paint on it, an object to be appreciated for its own sake. The subject matter of these paintings is not realistic image, as in a portrait or still life. The subject matter is color or line or shape or texture, or the relationships among these elements. The artists use color or line to translate their emotions on canvas, stressing risk and unpredictability, thus capturing the mood and rhythm of contemporary life.

JACKSON POLLOCK
Born 1912, Cody, Wyoming; died 1956, The Springs, New York.
Studied at the Art Students League, New York. His large paintings, in which he dripped and poured paint on canvas spread on the floor, are considered the most starling and influential paintings of his generation. Drip painting, action painting, and gestural painting are some of the terms that critics have applied to Pollock’s unrestrained creations.

RESPONDING TO ART
What do you say after you say, “I like this painting” or “I don’t like it?” For a moment, forget how you feel about the painting and think about what feelings the painting expresses. You can figure this out by answering some questions:
1. Do your eyes travel all around the painting, or focus on one spot in the center?
Is there a repeated pattern?
2. What do you see? Is it a house or a tree or a design without a recognizable
image?
3. Sensory words refer to qualities in the painting that appeal to your five senses: sight, touch, smell, sound, or taste. What are some sensory words that describe the elements of color, line, shape, or texture in the painting?
a. Are the colors bright or dull, soft or garish?
b. Are the lines straight or curvy, wavy or angular?
c. Is the paint thick or thin? If you put your hand on the surface would it be flat or bumpy?
d. What kind of shapes do you see?
e. If you were to step inside the canvas, would you move slowly or quickly? Would it feel as if you were walking on a soft cloud, on rocks, or through syrup?
4. What is the mood of the painting as expressed by the colors, lines, shapes, and texture?
5. What kind of music would you choose to go with the painting? Jazz, rock and roll, or classical?
6. Pretend you are holding a paintbrush or a stick. Move your arms following the lines of the painting as if you were a conductor leading an orchestra.

TAKE ACTION
Spread a sheet of brown paper on the floor. Moving around the painting with a paintbrush or stick dipped in black paint, make swooping line from one edge of the surface of the paper to the other. Let the paint dry. Add a new color. Use different arm motions-long and sweeping, short and quick. Notice that the way you use your arm changes the lines on the paper. Walk around the painting, working from all sides. You can let bare patches of brown paper come through. Make a handprint or two in the corner.
Put some music and paint in rhythm to the music. Now you will have an idea of what it felt to be Jackson Pollock working in that quiet barn.

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First things first, CONGRATULATIONS to all of the National Book Award Finalists! And huzzah, three out of the five choices were…drum roll, please…nonfiction. A special congratulations goes out to our own INKer Deborah Heiligman for her Charles and Emma!

And now, back to our regular programming.
As Dorothy mentioned yesterday, there is a new component here at INK—namely, our free database that allows teachers and librarians to find our books according to what keywords, topics, or curriculum standards they need. The database also notes the grades for which each book is appropriate. That will be the focus of my post today, as at first blush, some may wonder why certain books are listed as having particularly wide grade ranges. It’s an excellent question that merits discussion and I hope people will weigh in with their opinions.

I must admit that when faced with the task of actually assigning grades to each of my books, it gave me pause. The publishers do that. And of course that’s where I started. But I, like my colleagues, also began to imagine how I put books to use when I'm in a variety of classrooms. How do I present the story differently to different age ranges? And what is the role of the book in the classroom? To be sure, there are books with more limited age-range potential than others due to reading level, mature content, etc… But with nonfiction especially, the opportunities can be vast to use a book as a way to make lasting connections with a great variety of kids. In any of these books there may be words or phrases challenging for little kids and easy for older kids. But it’s not about vocabulary; it’s about a way in—a way to connect their feelings and sensibilities to the topic at hand so that it has particular meaning for them.

The same book may be a perfect tool to use as a jumping-off point for younger kids as well as a gateway into an in-depth discussion for older students. Take Deborah Heiligman’s Charles and Emma, for example, listed as appropriate for grades 5-12 in the INK database. Of course, there is a huge difference in reading and comprehension levels between a 10-year-old and a 17-year-old, but that shouldn’t prevent teachers from being able to use the book to introduce the concept of evolution to 5th graders or launching into a full-on debate about science and religion with high school kids. Likewise, my Almost Astronauts offers a way to highlight the issues of injustice and discrimination in the context of something as kid-friendly as the space program to 5th graders—and just as easily lends itself to high school students gaining insight about the dark side of power play and politics in the 1960s.

There are many books, too, that in younger readers can serve to plant seeds that will later flower. They focus on a topic that we, as educators, hope will become part of their consciousness and further down the road they may be inspired to delve into further. Consider Susanna Reich’s biography, Clara Schumann: Piano Virtuoso. This title is listed for grades 3-12. Susanna says, “I’ve done Clara Schumann school visits for 3rd graders and 8th graders. The eight-year-olds are interested in Clara as a child prodigy and want to play musical games. Fourteen-year-olds like to hear about the love story of Clara and Robert, about Robert’s mental illness, and about Clara’s relationship with Johannes Brahms.” I’m certain these same threads would appeal to the musically minded 12th graders, as well.

Another example of a book one might not expect to go past an often publisher-designated grade level of 4th grade is my picture book about Elizabeth Cady Stanton, which I listed in the database as good for grades 2-8. I have successfully taught Elizabeth Leads the Way to every one of those grades. For the 2nd and 3rd graders, the book whets their appetite. Who was this woman and what did she do that was so important? They understand unfairness on a gut level. They want to take that in and apply it to history, even when that may not be their conscious goal. With 4th and 5th graders, many of them can tell me why voting rights are important, and some have heard of Stanton. This leads to a discussion about suffrage and speaking out for what is right, and even what it meant to be an abolitionist. In 8th grade, it is an introduction to an issue that then takes on a much greater depth in our classroom discussion as they question and examine women’s rights, how long it took to achieve them, and the status of women today.

There are many more examples of books that can be used on multiple grade levels. Take a look at Remember the Ladies, by Cheryl Harness, George vs. George by Rosalyn Schanzer, or Christo and Jeanne-Claude by Jan Greenberg, just for starters. I've only touched on this topic. I'd love to hear what other people think. In what ways could you use one of these books to teach concepts and spark discussions to both elementary and high school students?

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With one exception, my school visits require that I perform. I do assembly programs designed to turn kids on to science and to motivate them to get involved in reading in general and reading my books in particular. It is this one exception that I want to talk about. This blog is part of our theme this month to share exciting classroom uses for our books, which you can find in our database on our new website, INK Think Tank.

I was invited to Cummings Elementary School in Alief, Texas back in 1986. Cummings was one of those Eisenhower Award schools. (I’m not certain if the award is still given.) The building was fairly new and the teachers were rightly proud of it since they had had a say in the design. Every classroom opened onto an atrium—the heart of the school— the library. The mission of the school, among other things was and is to encourage independent and creative thinking and to produce life-long learners. The thing that made this gig so different from all others was that I was invited to be an audience of one to view what the students had done from my books (most of them now out of print). They were not hiring me for my performance.

The first graders did the activities from Gobs of Goo. They made glue and mayonnaise and bubbles, among other icky things. The second graders did Lots of Rot. One boy wrote: “A grape grows gray mold. An onion grows black mold. Cake grows rhizopus mold. Cheese grows blue mold. Meat grows green mold. They all smell awful!” The third graders made paper and string from Fuzz Does It! and put on a science fair. The fourth graders did a magic show from Magic…..Naturally!, which they performed for all the other students during the day as I watched and applauded. And the fifth graders did tricks from Bet You Can’t and Bet You Can! with much verve and enthusiasm. (These tricks live on in my new book We Dare You!)

As I walked through that beautiful library and hallways festooned with displays of all the work the kids had done from my books, I was deeply touched and honored. What a validation of my work! This was my dream fulfilled! How do I remember it so well? The school produced a book for me entitled, “Getting Ready for Vicki Cobb.” It’s in my lap right now as I write this.

But the biggest bonus was the surprise lesson the teachers learned from this venture: They had never gotten so much writing out of the kids as they did when they had to write up their science projects! Think about it. Writers, even kids, have two problems. The first is having something to say. The second is finding a way to say it. Obviously you can’t do the second without the first. A science activity is a specific, finite act with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Students can use the way it is written in the book as a model. But they can also put their own spin on it because they have actually experienced the activity. The Cummings faculty decided that they would routinely incorporate hands-on science activities in writing lessons in the future. Can you understand my frustration with schools that say they don’t have time to teach science because they’re too busy teaching reading and writing?

Those kids are all grown up now. I’ll bet they read and write and think quite well.

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Let’s face it. Some elementary teachers don’t feel completely comfortable teaching science to their students.

Let’s face it. Many schools have scaled back on science education so they can devote more time to language arts and math, with the goal of improving student scores on assessment tests.

That means many elementary students are receiving limited science instruction, and that’s a shame. But there is a solution, a way to sneak science into your lesson plans. Teach science through literature.

Coupling inquiry-based science and language arts instruction allows educators to prepare students for the critical reading and open response portions of assessment tests without neglecting science education. It’s also a more comfortable approach for teachers who don’t feel adequately prepared to teach science concepts to their students.

I’ve talked about teaching science through literature before on this blog. Take a look here and here. Today I’m going to focus on a third technique for sneaking science into elementary classrooms. I call it Perfect Pairs—pairing fiction and nonfiction titles with a connection to the science topic you’d like to teach.

Different students enjoy different kinds of books and learn in different ways, so Perfect Pairs can be a great way to introduce and reinforce science concepts. Here’s a pair of books that is perfect for discussions of weather, habitats, or animal adaptations. One looks at how people sometimes react to rain and emphasizes cause and effect. The other shows young readers how a variety of animals behave during a rainstorm.

Using clear, simple language and gentle watercolor illustrations, When Rain Falls by Melissa Stewart offers young readers a lyrical look at how animals living in forests, fields, wetlands, and deserts behave during a rainstorm. The book is sure to tap into your students’ natural curiosity about the natural world.

Discussion Questions
--Ask your students what the two books have in common. [They are about what happens when it rains.]
--How are they different? [One focuses on people living in a neighborhood. The other looks at animals living in a variety of natural habitats.]
--Discuss what makes one book fiction and one nonfiction.

Related Activities
Read students the following poem by Aileen Fisher:

How brave a ladybug must be.
Each drop of rain as big as she.
Can you imagine what you’d do,
if raindrops fell as big as you?

Ask students to write a story that answers the question in the poem.

Have your class to bring raingear to school and take them outside while it is raining. Ask students to use their five senses to observe the rain. They should consider these questions:

—How large are the drops?
—What sounds do the drops make?
—Does rain have a smell? (Rain can be polluted so children shouldn’t taste it.)
—How does rain feel?
—What happens to rain when it hits the pavement, the grass, or the school building?

Discuss the questions when you go back inside.

Do you know another great book that could be paired with the two I’ve discussed today? Can you think of other related activities for students? If so, please add a comment below. This blog is all about sharing ideas.

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It’s good that a book can be about different things to different people. A biography about Lincoln is, of course, a book about Lincoln. But one reader might be captivated by the portrait of a marriage, another by the polarization of nineteenth century America, still another by the amazing triumph of such a melancholy man under unspeakable pressure.

Not long ago, I wrote a blog entry on why I wrote On This Spot, my book that describes a specific place in New York City from present day all the way back through geologic time. If you want, you can read it at http://inkrethink.blogspot.com/2009/08/sometimes-truth-finds-you.html. In it, I said that the book was inspired by my wanting to convey to kids that things change. That was true, but I also loved intriguing kids with the mind-bending idea that one spot could be home to everything from wooly mammoths to mountain tops to a tropical sea. The book meant both things to me. Someone from New York told me he loved the enduring quality it gave to a spot in lower Manhattan very close to where the World Trade Center once stood. Many kids mention loving the fact that dinosaurs walked on what became Fifth Avenue.

Teachers have told me that they like the book for different reasons too. One used it to teach a math lesson. She had her kids compute the number of years between each event and space themselves on a timeline of correct proportions down the school corridor.

Another teacher had his students use their town as Their Spot and see how far back in time they could go.

I did a workshop at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan where I presented kids with many objects from my cell phone to a rock to Barbie to a pocket watch and had them arrange the items from newest to oldest. If they had been older and in a classroom, I would have brought in more objects and helped them learn to research to determine the right chronological order.

I have assembled some of these ideas and others in a teachers guide for On This Spot. You can access them at http://www.susangoodmanbooks.com/educators/spotguide.html. Or, you can make one up that speaks to you.

I’d love to hear about it.



Part of a 20-foot scroll in which kids illustrated the book with their own pictures. What a welcome into their school!

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The I.N.K. bloggers, past and present, are pleased to announce the launch of our new website: INK Think Tank: Nonfiction Authors in Your Classroom. The main feature of this website is a FREE, searchable database of hundreds of in-print books all written by the 22 award-winning I.N.K. authors. Now you can find lists of books for all grade levels covering content mandated by National Education Standards and your state curriculum. Instead of feeding kids material from bland, uninteresting books, we offer a cornucopia of delicious, appetizing titles guaranteed to nourish both reading and learning. No single book can be all things to all students, but the LISTS of books generated by our database will come close. We believe that if kids learn through these high-interest, well-researched books that have been vetted for accuracy, they will perform better on the required assessment tests. We have included, on our new website, a page of references and studies that support our position. Now you can have fun playing with our database. For teachers, it’s designed to give you peace-of-mind that you’re fulfilling the requirements of your school district while you’re rediscovering the joy of teaching. For parents and librarians, it will provide you with a quick reference to pull books from shelves that tie in with children’s interests and classroom content.
We built our database from the ground up. The books were analyzed for it by those who know them best, their authors. Like any new idea in today’s technological world, our database is still a work in progress. We expect it to grow and change, depending on feedback from you, our users. We will be adding books of new author/bloggers to give you increased breadth of subject areas. And, of course, we will be adding our new books as they are published. We want to know how you search so the database can be as user friendly as possible. There are links on our website for you to contact us with your suggestions. You can also email us at: [email protected]


In addition to our books, we authors are also an under-utilized resource for classrooms. So, through the Ink Think Tank website, we are making ourselves available to teachers. You can see our encapsulated author profiles on our INK Thinkers page. We are an amazing group! There is probably no corner of the globe that one of us hasn’t visited. Without exception, we are all life-long learners. We are not afraid to admit when we don’t know something. Indeed, not-knowing is a welcome opportunity to learn something new. Now we want to inject our enthusiasm for learning into your classroom. We have included our email addresses and links to our websites. Many of us are available for school visits and professional development. We will also answer questions related to our books. (BTW, the word “author” means “source.”)

This month our blogs will be devoted to creative ways our books can be used in classrooms. We want to excite you to the possibilities!

The internet has spawned behemoth websites that seem to require a Ph.D to navigate. There is so much information and so much choice! The INK Think Tank is a boutique. We’re small so the choice is not limitless. The selection is made for you. For many, that may come as a relief! On the other hand, as a group we are quite powerful. We are prepared to work as teams to help you and your district. We offer guidance and professional development unique to the worlds of both publishing and education. The launch of the INK Think Tank: Nonfiction Authors in Your Classroom website is just the beginning. Contact us. Let us help you empower your students so that they love to learn!

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