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For Dr. Suess’s birthday, I did three school visits this week. The schools were vastly different: two were rural districts and one was probably one of the oldest buildings in the state; the other was urban and brand-new, complete with every bell and whistle, rug and computer you could want.

Yet, three things were constant:

First, the library media specialist was a VIP in the success of the school. It was obvious that these librarians cared, not just because they brought me in to speak (though, caring enough to bring in authors is special), but because they knew all the kids AND their taste in reading.

For the second and third things in common consider this: when I visit a school, I ask two questions. While I’m waiting for everyone to get into the auditorium or room, I talk to kids–hey, that’s what I’m there for, to interact with kids. “So,” I ask, “what have you been reading lately? Or what’s your favorite book you’ve read this year?”

And I ask the librarian, “What’s your circulation like? How many books do you check out each day/week/month? (Whichever stat they want to give me.)”

From those two questions, I can predict with almost 100% accuracy school with good reading scores and those on 2nd- or 3rd-year improvement (A term from the No Child Left Behind legislation, which loosely means their test scores are way below par).

Schools with high test scores

Kids are excited to tell me about the books they’ve been reading. Across a class, there are a number of titles, most of which I recognize, but often some I haven’t read or even heard of. The librarian reports checking out at least 1 book/child/week and usually the stats are far above that. (Ex. 500 books/week for a school with 500 students.)

Schools with low test scores

Kids often give excuses for not knowing the last book they read: I don’t like reading; I don’t remember, I just took the test and then forgot it; I don’t read. When titles are mentioned, it’s the one title that the teacher is currently reading aloud. The librarian reports few check-outs, usually citing the difficulty of keeping everything shelved.

For example, I went to one middle school of 500 students. The school had no library media specialist (mistake #1); the library aide reported that sometimes they checked out 25-30 books/day, but she liked it a lot better when they only checked out 15 because it was an easier day. What? A school of 500 students and they only checked out a max of 100-150 books/week and usually less than 100. Totally crazy!

Guess what? That school was on 2nd-year school improvement and was heading for a third year, with no help in sight (WHERE are you Library Media Specialist?)

Start asking the Questions when you visit schools and report back. If a school checks out at least 1 book/child/week–are the reading scores for that school good? And the opposite, if few books are checked out, are the scores

The New York Times published an Op-Ed, “Playing to Learn,” today by Susan Engel, who is a senior lecturer in psychology and the director of the Williams College Teaching Program.  It’s about education reform, specifically curriculum reform.  Engel spent one full paragraph on the type of writing that she things should exist in elementary school [...]

Check out this CNN Overview on McCain and Obama’s Stances on Education.

The past week of my professional life has been dedicated to meeting with teachers and reflecting on their writing workshops.  The gist of our meetings involves discussing successes and general good stuff happening in workshop, as well as goals and hopes for next year.  I’m touched by how driven many teachers are in the quest [...]

Thousands of educators met this past week in Atlanta for the annual International Reading Conference where reading teachers, authors and publishers gathered to celebrate books and reading. This is one of the larger shows on the educational conference circuit as reading is such a foundational skill.

Some of the show buzz concerned the admission last week from the Department of Education that Reading First failed to make a difference in student's reading comprehension. The program has been under attack almost from its inception for cronyism and mismanagement. Although most educational publishers have been keeping close track of the program and have been aware of its deficits for some time, the announcement may have come as a surprise to educators whose districts and schools have benefitted from Reading First funding.

In a nutshell, evaluators agree that Reading First programs spend too much time on basic instruction and too little time on reading actual literature so that students have not substantively increased their comprehension. In fact, the decrease in reading actual books, both in the classroom and at home, is of great concern to those most passionate about the benefits of reading.

Reading First is inextricably linked to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation which is currently before Congress for reauthorization. Good teachers are leaving the field because schools are decimating their curriculums to comply with NCLB testing requirements. I have never read such a poignant perspective as Jordan Sonnenblick's essay in the recent School Library Journal article where he states:

This is a wonderful commentary from singer-songwriter Tom Chapin on the end-of-year tests that students and their teachers are now focusing on. In addition to core subjects that have been virtually eliminated from the curriculum (like social studies), art, music, drama and author/illustrator visits are almost things of the past.



What kind of society are we creating here? Anyone like to chime in?

Thanks to Lee Wilson at Education Business Blog for his post on this song.

'Tis the season of testing, so we couldn't resist sharing some "Holiday Music."

In today's Shelf Awareness, Jennifer Brown offers a thoughtful essay on the difference between the reader development of the Whole Language movement and today's emphasis on the narrow set of defined reading skills required by NCLB. The basic argument - whether phonics or language immersion is the better approach to teaching reading- has raged for a long time. For some years, phonics was omitted from teacher training programs while classroom teachers built large libraries and created a print-rich environment for their students. Students read from "authentic" sources - meaning actual children's literature as opposed to selections in a text book. The students selected the books themselves and were introduced to story within the context of a wide variety of situations and characters that reflected their worlds - their actual world and the world of their imaginiations. As a teaching methodology, whole language has waned under the onslaught of test requirements. One of the unfortunate casualties of NCLB is that while the whole language method empowered teachers , NCLB does not.

The truth is that the best teachers have always used both whole language and phonics to help students learn to read. Our human brains need context to learn and reading stories to children allows them to be captivated by story so that they seek out the learning for themselves. There is no substitute for self-directed learning. At its peak, whole language students spent their days in a print-rich classroom, spent time in their school library with a trained librarian, and optimally went home to read books with their families. Today, there is less money to invest in classroom libraries; librarians are losing their jobs because the library is deemed non-essential to schools struggling with funding issues; and fewer adults read for pleasure and are raising a generation of children who associate reading only with school.

In attempting to decrease the disparity between the lowest and highest achievers, NCLB is not accomplishing one of its primary goals - we are not creating more readers; we are not creating a culture of life-long learners invested in their own development. We are creating a generation of test-takers, not at all the same thing. The needs of children who are at the lowest end of the socio-economic spectrum have received the bulk of the attention from schools and districts as a result of the NCLB legislation. This is a good thing as every child in this country is entitled to a good public school education. But, as a practical matter, the needs of the rest of the children have been largely ignored. Some states are opting to lower their learning standards as bringing the children up to grade level proficiency is such a daunting task.

There is a lot of talk about teaching kids 21st century skills. The best way to prepare our children for life in the 21st century is to help them develop a hunger for reading and learning and self-directed exploration. Our approach to learning must expand not contract. Often, the greatest barrier to change is the teaching community itself. We need to put our money where our talk is and restore respect for reading, learning, and teaching at the core of our communities so that we do attract the best and brightest to teaching. We need to invest in our children by ensuring that they have the highest level of instruction so that they learn to exercise their highest order thinking skills - not rote memorization and mastery of non-contextual skills.

Our children and our future deserve more. Parents, educators, politicians, and every citizen of this country should be invested in education policy and practice. It's our future too.

Bow-Wow Bugs a Bug by Mark Newgarden and Megan Montague Cash. Harcourt Children's Books. $12.95.

Sometimes a book just falls into your lap without rhyme, reason, or explanation and you’re left gaping like a fish until someone’s able to tell you something about it. Well “Bow-Wow Bugs a Bug” fell into my lap and due to its very nature I’ve been left gaping for some time. I gotta say, this is one of the weirder creations to float down the river, and I’m torn between being utterly charmed by it and marching over to Harcourt Books to DEMAND the story of its creation. Basically, what we have here is softy Megan Montague Cash joining forces with Mark Newgarden to produce a picture book about a curious dog. Who is Mark Newgarden? Well, in a recent interview with MrSkin.com I learned that he’s an alt-comic mastermind with the book, “We All Die Alone,” already under his belt. He’s lived in a converted funeral parlor, has a great take on Tijuana Bibles, and once deconstructed the comic strip Nancy. The next thing you know he turns around and produces something called, “Bow-Wow Bugs a Bug.” An inconsistency? Not in the least. Though he’s curbed his style to the world of wordless picture book adventures, this title uses its misleading simplicity to lure the reader into a false sense of complacency. Then, BAM! It ratchets up the weirdness meter to 110%. With a clear sense of its artist’s comic-laden past, and a firm grounding in what makes a picture book “good,” Newgarden and Cash have produced the weirdest bit of kidlit fluff I’ve seen in a very long time. Their tongues are planted firmly in their cheeks and they know how to play for laughs by balancing out visual humor with sheer out-and-out ridiculousness. Impressive.

A single black dot makes a leap off a pure white page towards a sleeping terrier. The pup wakes up and begins his day only to find himself somewhat entranced by the insect in his presence. Without thinking much about it he proceeds to follow the bug around a single city block. Slowly the situation grows more and more surreal as Newgarden and Cash begin to play off of expected norms. When pup and bug meet their identical twins it’s a great excuse for a series of panels where they try to get the other to do something different. Things get curiouser still. Giant dogs follow tiny bugs. Hundreds of dogs follow hundreds of bugs. And then, in a kind of coup de grace, hundreds of gigantic bugs follow hundreds of tiny dogs. Exhausted and more than a touch weirded out, Bow-Wow heads for home where pup and insect can settle down for a good long sleep.

It’s not really fair when a reviewer is handed a book with a blurb like this on the back cover: “What an odd, sweet, surreal, and hilarious adventure from Newgarden and Cash. It’s what Crockett Johnson, Ernie Bushmiller, and Rod Serling might have come up with if they shared a bench at the doggie park. I love it!” Well thank you sooooooo much, Lane Smith. First of all, being that Newgarden’s a huge Bushmiller fan, I suspect Mr. Smith was being coy with his references. But the fact of the matter is that this nails the tone of the book perfectly. I’m jealous. I could never have paired these three artists together, and yet that’s exactly how the book feels. Reality is upended suddenly and regularly in this title and it’s a joy each and every time. I’ve tried to pinpoint the exact moment the book won me over, heart and soul, and I think it had to be when Bow-Wow runs into an enormous dog following an enormous bug. Still, there’s a subtlety to the illustrations in this book that rewards the careful reader. I’ve never seen a book so perfectly perform the old look–blink–look-again move. And when Bow-Wow’s face is reflected in the kaleidoscopic eyes of the lead bug, his oh-come-on-now expression (raised eyebrow and all) is priceless.

The problem with books that look this simple is that adult readers will often skim it once, assume there aren’t any noteworthy details, and put it down without a second glance. Kids, on the other hand, are bound to be rewarded time and time again whenever they re”read” certain sections. Did you notice that when Bow-Wow meets his virtual twin and his bug does the same, everything the dogs do the bugs do? If the dogs put on green cat masks, so too do the bugs. Balancing on balls while donning fezzes? So too do the bugs. The art in this book is fabulous and suggests a fun but twisted mentality. Now will someone please explain to me why it is that Garbage Pail Kids, that insane construct of the mid-1980s that, to any sane and rational mind, had NO redeeming qualities, managed to jump-start the careers of such artists as Art Spiegelman and Bow-Wow's own Mark Newgarden? You wouldn’t know it to look at it, but this book bears the weight of some serious alternative kid-fare.

Of course, the sheer simplicity of the title lends itself to a couple difficulties here and there. For one thing, forget trying to suck any authorial/illustrator information out of it. I had naturally assumed that Mark did the illustrations and Megan the plotting, but a quick glance at what passes for a publication page and you can see that this book was “designed by Megan Montague Cash.” So… so huh? We must assume that she is the artist here. There’s no sign of a title on the cover either. I appreciate the simplicity of the design, but this seems a bit silly. At the very least, mention who did what.

The wordless picture book is a peculiar beastie. They can serve as ways to get illiterate or struggling readers interested in the world of books and literature without scaring them off. How different is “Bow-Wow Bugs a Bug,” from the “Polo” adventures by Regis Faller, after all? Kids also often get assignments in school requiring that they find a wordless picture book and write a story about it for class. “Bow-Wow,” is a bit too simple for that particular assignment, but for anyone collecting picture books of the wordless variety, I won’t hesitate to recommend it in a heartbeat. There are only so many times you can hand someone an Anno or Lehman's “The Red Book” without feeling a bit drained.

Newgarden and Cash (sounds like an insurance company if you say it just right) have a business future together, no question. With its silent movie references, clean lines, and crisp storytelling, “Bow-Wow Bugs a Bug,” is a keeper. It’s fun and funny and bound to be overlooked unless you start telling your friends and neighbors about it pronto. I may find the design just a bit much here and there, but all in all this one’s memorable.

On shelves June 1, 2007.

Welcome to CLIP! In this show; introducing the podcast and 3-5 year olds take social action. Music : Little by Little by Justin Gordon and Quit My Day Job by Geoff Smith Participate in the show. Subscribe and listen in iTunes XML Feed Location : feed://www.bazmakaz.com/clip/?feed=rss2 Let me know where you are by clicking on ‘Join the CLIP Frappr [...]