I had to run an errand after I picked up our four year old yesterday. For some reason, I thought out loud that maybe I would bring our iPad to help keep her entertained while I did some banking. Fortunately, my husband reminded me that we don’t do that. He said, “Are you doing to get a tv put in the car while you’re at it?” That’s a post for another day but our girls have never watched tv in the car so his comment brought me back to reality.

And thank goodness it did. As I stood at the bank, Katherine began to get fidgety. Suddenly, I notice that there were lines designing the glass doors of the bank. I suggested that she count them and she did. She then spent the next ten  minutes counting and comparing the number of lines of each door. Without knowing it, she focused on counting up to 50 and then comparing which doors had the greater or lesser number of lines.

And there was a teachable moment that never would have happened if I had brought along electronic entertainment…

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Today I went to local school to learn how I could volunteer. I am friends with their professor in residence and have listened to many stories about the community she serves. I had expected to be shocked and disturbed by what I found but my expectations could not have prepared me for the hours I spent at School 12.

While the students were well dressed in uniforms and on the whole well behaved (thanks to an apparently superior group of teachers), the halls were staffed with monitors and the doors guarded by police officers.

While the teachers gave up their lunch hour to work with students who read below grade level, some of the third graders that I read with, read only as well as my pre-schooler.

While the building was beautifully decorated for the holidays (by a janitor whose position was cut last year but who returned to carry on his tradition), the director of special education asked me to evaluate some students in need of speech services because many, many children were under served if they were served at all.

While the principal and vice principal were actively involved, walking the hallways, interacting with students and teachers the whole time I was there, teachers complained that they had received no money back from parents for a planned field trip.

But then there is this:

The school has no programs in art, music or library.

In September, the principal learned that he had no money with which to pay  a music teacher,  an art teacher or a  librarian.

I know there are bright and aspiring artists at School 12 and there is no one to watch their talent grow.

The vice principal told me that students come to her asking when they can bring books home from the library. There is no one to check out those books.

While the library at School 12 is small compared to the spacious libraries I have visted in my district, there were shelves of books waiting to be read. Instead of seeing a librarian doing her best to reach these children, I saw lights turned out and doors locked.

If you live in New Jersey, please share this story and any others you know like it with Governor Christie so he will know the damage that his budget cuts have caused. If you live outside of our state, learn what is happening in your own state.

Beginning in the new year, I will serve as the School 12 librarian, in a volunteer capacity for the hours a week that I can. While this will help, there has to be a bigger and better answer.

There has to be.

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Back in the fall I was thrilled to be selected as a panelist for the Cybils awards. I was happy for a number of reasons. I couldn’t wait to read lots of new books. I was excited to engage in conversation with other children’s lit lovers. And I was also hopeful that being a member of the committee would finally encourage me to blog regularly. Needless to say, while I am blogging more than I used to, it is still not to the level I was hoping.

So today marks the beginning of both more frequent blogging and the long overdue reviews of Early Reader and Early Chapter Book nominess for this year’s Cyblils award.

Drum Roll Please…

During the Cybils’ process I discovered one very important thing about myself as a reader. I have a bias toward non-fiction. My committee reviewed over twenty books in the Early Reader category including three non-fiction titles:

Ants by Melissa Stewart,

Bats by Elizabeth Carney and

Great Migrations Elephants by Laura Marsh.

At first I didn’t pay much attention to these books at all, choosing to focus my time on the easy readers that told stories. And then I noticed that all my fellow panelists were saying great things about these titles. I still thought maybe they were missing something. I mentioned how the titles seems formulaic. I suggested that the text might be challenging for early readers as it often overlapped with a picture making the pages visually confusing. I was still the lone person resisting these titles. That was when I stepped back and thought seriously about this group of books. I realized that I was rejecting an entire group of books based on genre alone.

I was so disappointed with myself that I promised I would join Non-Fiction Monday immediately.

Time and time again I tell parents how important it is to expose children to a full diet of literature. I tell them that kids should be reading both fiction and non-fiction. They should read newspapers and magazines. They should engage with comics and crossword puzzles and even the back of cereal boxes. They should read anything and everything.

My challenge then for myself is to take my own medicine. I am anxious to start my non-fiction journey so that by this time next year, if I am lucky enough to be a Cybil’s panelist again, I will give full attention to all titles including those that are non-fiction.

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Thanks to the inspiration of one of my favorite bloggers, Teach Mama, I have brought back our magnetic letters. They were on the refrigerator for years when Caroline was tiny and then went away in those  years when Caroline lost interest and when Katherine would merely teeth on them. I am thrilled to have been was reminded of this simple yet powerful teaching tool.

Throughout the weekend, the girls have stopped at the refrigerator to move letters, make words and read. Katherine has found all the letters in her name. Caroline has mixed up the order of letters in words and asked Katherine to rearrange them. After the girls struggled for my attention as I worked a bit, I wrote, “I love my girls” in magnetic letters and waited for them to find my note. Sometimes their attention was held by these activities for fifteen minutes. Sometimes they only paid the letters a passing glance. No matter their level of engagement, these magnets gave each girl a chance to experience literacy in action and to embrace the power that these simple letters can provide.

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  Both of my daughter’s schools encourage lots of parental volunteering and I have jumped in head first. I am a ‘reading mom’, a ‘read aloud parent’, a ‘library aide’ and and an ‘art docent.’ Fortunately, at the start of the school year, I realized that I had to focus on killing two birds with one stone or the few hours that have all been given in our days would seem even fewer. While many parents come in to the classrooms and read or do art projects that are not connected to the curriculum, I struggled with the randomness of it so I decide to interconnect two of my volunteer projects.

Once a month, I read aloud to my daughter’s second grade class and then a week later, I am an art docent in that same classroom. As part of the art docent program, I introduce the class to an artist and then lead them through a simple art project inspired by the artist’s work. I had a light bulb moment and decided to focus on children’s book illustrators, reading books one week and focusing on the art the next.

The school year began with a wonderful author visit from the super talented  Jon Muth so I jumped at the chance for the children to become acquainted with this author/illustrator before meeting him in person.

During our reading time we explored many of Muth’s popular titles like

 Zen Shorts and

 Zen Ties

but also some of his lesser know work like

 Come On Rain.

After learning about Muth’s background (no formal art education) we focused on his style, talking about his favorite medium (watercolors) and learning about his many inspirations.

And then based on the thoughtful and appropriately child centered ideas of  The Artful Parent, we created watercolor masterpieces of our own.

I look forward to sharing more collisions of story and art as they arise.

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This month has been all about planning.

Before Thanksgiving arrives, I will have given three presentations, begun teaching a parent-child literacy class and made significant progress toward deciding this year’s choice in the Cybil awards. While I may be struggling to find time to blog through all my planning, I do continue to read to my girls and thank goodness.

Last night, I was reminded why reading aloud is the most powerful thing we can do for our children. Because I have been reading so many new titles, I truly do not remember which book Katherine and I were reading last night when there was talk of toasting an animal. Of course, the animal was being toasted in celebration over a drink with friends but my little one immediately imagined pictures of the poor soul in the toaster. “Why are they toasting him!?”, she shouted in horror.

And there was a vocabulary lesson handed to me on a silver platter. We built background knowledge, discussed words with multiple meanings and realized the importance of asking for clarification when things seem confusing.

So let’s all say a toast and raise our glasses to reading aloud!

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I am in one of those points in life when my personal and professional life are completely intertwined. The reading I do for “work” is so directly related to my own children that I often step back and think how lucky I am to be  passionate about something that is truly important for my own children.

I recenlty read the fascinating and wonderfully titled book Readicide by Kelly Gallagher.

In this book, the author argues that well intentioned teachers in a quest toward better reading performance are actually killing the love of reading in children. I picked up this book after learning that my daughter, an avid reader, would need to complete a reading log each night as part of her second grade homework. She is required to read for 20 minutes, write down the title of the book and then ask me to sign off on the log.

I get it. I understand that children need to read. After all, I make a living helping to grow families of readers. I must say I worry though when I hear my daughter say, “Do I have to read tonight?” It’s the words ‘have to’ that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight. No, you don’t have I want to shout at the top of my lungs. You don’t have to because you already want to…

As I walked into my daughter’s room this morning, I found myself wishing that I could turn the scene into her teacher as  a pass for the rest of the year’s reading homework.

She had been teaching a class full of imaginary students a detailed lesson on genre. If you look closely at the picture you can read the following (with some liberties taken to spell check) written on her easel:

Biography- Meet the Obamas

Realistic Fiction- Fancy Nancy

Pattern- Harriet You’ll Drive me Wild

She had read and discussed each of these books with her pretend class before heading off to her real class this morning.

Now is this really a child who needs to fill out a reading log?

And on the flip side, does the child who would look at my daughter’s easel and think she was a bit nuts need to fill out a reading log either? Will filling out a reading log make a reluctant reader a lover of reading? What is the answer to the reading log discussion? If I knew, I would have met my goal of  finally creating a nation full of book lovers. Stay tuned…

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the most fantastic resource!

I am in the process of putting together a parent seminar anda parent-child class each called Growing Readers. The process is both exhausting and truly exhilarating. It is so wonderful to be doing work that really and truly does not feel a bit like work. As part of my preparation I am searching for new titles that will expand family’s books shelves of old favorites.

Bank Street College in New York has long been a loud and supportive voice in the field of children’s literature. Every year they put together a publication annotating the 600 best books of the year culled from over 6,000 choices. This year marks the first year that this resource is both on-line and free.

Follow this link to find the best of the best for 2010.

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This week, my oldest daughter read with her teacher. While she was excited to tell me that she had gone up a reading level, she was most excited to let me know about her teacher’s subjective comments. She let Caroline know that she read with beautiful expression. And then that teacher must have gotten her laugh of the week when Caroline responded, “Well, my mom’s a reading specialist.”

I too laughed when I heard this story. As I was laughing, though, I realized what an important message could come from this story.

 In fact, Caroline doesn’t read with expression because I am a reading specialist. It’s much more simple than that. Caroline reads with expression because I read aloud, with expression, to her all the time.

And reading with expression is so much more important than simply making the experience more pleasant for your listener. If you don’t read with expression, it is almost impossible to comprehend what you are reading. So with the simple act of reading aloud, I have given my daughter the gift of reading comprehension and her teacher the gift of a laugh.

By

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Yesterday, the girls and I were lucky enough to meet Tad Hills, author of the Duck and Goose books and most recently, How Rocket Learned to Read.

Rocket, we learned is modeled after Tad’s real dog which is no surprise. It was interesting, though, to hear how, when Tad decided that the bird in the story would be yellow he had to change the dog’s fur color. He even showed us earlier illustrations where the yellow bird camouflaged perfectly in to the dog before his coloring was changed. We also learned that Tad has super artistic kids who love all the materials that are always in their house. Tad even told us that he does all his painting on the kitchen counters. My first thought was that he must have a very patient wife. Then I learned that she really has no room for complaint as she was the one who got him into children’s illustrations. Tad also talked about the magnificent Halloween costumes he has made for his kids including the Leaning Tower of Pisa and an accordion. It appears there are many perks to having a children’s book illustrator for a dad.

The most fun was when Tad drew and painted Duck as we all watched. He showed how he sees each part of Duck as a separate piece and then puts them all together. He was quite a comedian explaining that the middle section of Duck looks like a banana that swallowed a grapefruit. The girls were still laughing about that one this morning.

Despite all the excitement, I left the event feeling pretty sad. There were about 15 people there including only my two children. The rest of the guests were grandparents looking for signed books for gifts and one teacher who stumbled upon the event while in the store for another reason. I found myself wondering sadly where all the children were.

Parents are always on the  look-out for ways to get their children to learn how to read. Author visits are such an easy yet powerful way to do this. Since coming home from the event we have read all of Tad’s books more than once and last night, I stumbled upon this scene of my girls creating their own versions of Duck using colored pencils and watercolors just like Tad did. It’s hard to get more engaged in a book than this.

 The message to take away from this event is that learning to love books is simple. It doesn’t involve worksheets, workbooks or computer programs. All that’s involved is engagement with books. And if you are lucky enough to engage with the creator of a book, run don’t walk to the event. Learn from the author and let his or her excitement for literature wash over you and your children. It will be time very well spent.

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