China Text Set

During my last year as a librarian working in the middle school., I started to think about refurbishing the China section of the library. Many school libraries have books that are 15-20 years old. That really is a shame when China is growing and modernizing at a rapid pace. The next thing I knew, the economy went into a tail spin and my budget for books was frozen. This assignment is my chance to put together a text set that teachers at the middle school would love to have. It seems like fate, that the high school has been chosen as a Confucius Classroom and will be able to offer classes in Mandarin. I hope that when the economy recovers, I can once again work in the library and make this China unit a reality.
The first part of my text set is a list of books that are very readable (below 6.5 reading level) from the shelves of the library. Here are four examples:
1. Napoli, Donna Jo, 1948-. Bound. In a novel based on Chinese Cinderella tales, fourteen-year-old stepchild Xing-Xing endures a life of neglect and servitude, as her stepmother cruelly mutilates her own child's feet so that she alone might marry well.
2. O'Connor, Jane. The emperor's silent army : terracotta warriors of Ancient China. Describes the archaeological discovery of thousands of life-sized terracotta warrior statues in northern China in 1974, and discusses the emperor who had them created and placed near his tomb.
3. Borja, Robert. Making Chinese papercuts. Highlights the origins and uses of Chinese paper cutting and presents instructions for many projects, including decorations, greeting cards, and puppets.
4. Young, Ed. Night visitors. Retelling of a Chinese folktale in which a young scholar learns respect for all forms of life when he becomes part of an ant colony in a dream.

The next part is the books I would like to purchase. There is a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction which includes picture books, biographies, ancient and modern history books, culture, and stories. I even found a graphic novel I liked. All of these books are published after 2005 and are for grades 5-9. (I emailed the list to Dr. Dauer. If you would like to see it let me know.)

For websites that are fun, I choose one that generates a Chinese name using your English name and another from PBS Nova about mummies. Also, because I attended a seminar on the Chinese garden in Portland, here is the website with beautiful pictures and Chinese poetry.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/chinamum/

http://www.mandarintools.com/chinesename.html

http://www.portlandchinesegarden.org/

I would use Cobblestone and Faces magazines as resources because both are terrific for reluctant readers as well as the entire class. The website for magazines/news/encyclopedias that I always promote to students is OSLIS
http://secondary.educator.oslis.org/find-information

Week 8 Sci Fi

Sue- If you only have time to read one entry, go ahead and skip this one and read my Houdini blog entry (Sci Fi is not your favorite anyway).



For everyone else, science fiction and fantasy:

In my autobiographical blog entry I revealed that I met my husband in a science fiction class. Pam Cole wrote on page 380, "Science fiction and fantasy require a great deal of mental energy for understanding." I have always liked to visualize the other worlds that authors create, and I enjoy the complexity. My friend Christy just had her first YA book published, and I went to her book signing party last week. Her book is titled Prophecy of Days. If you look on the blogs I follow that are not from this class, you can find her blog, Juvanescence. In her book you will find a mixture of science fiction and magical elements. She even has a monkey named Mr. Papers in the book, that does Origami. She leans heavily on New Age symbols and includes a mystery. My point is that more and more of this genre has blurred lines.
I recommended a book titled Wings by Aprilynne Pike to some of the girls in my library that had finished the Twilight series. Wings is an urban fairy fantasy about a home schooled girl who decides this is the year she will attend public school. The trouble is that during her first year there, she begins to grown bumps on her back that turn out to be wings. The girls I recommended it to, loved it! And for those who want a guy's science fiction and are mature readers, I recommend The House Of Scorpion by Nancy Farmer. In its future setting, a boy is born who is a clone of a powerful drug lord. The boy, Matt, does not know that clones are used for replacement body parts for wealthy, old people. This is an action book that makes readers think about the ethics of science. I was surprised that it was not in the box page 363 Genetic, DNA, and Cloning. I was also surprised that I didn't see The Hunger Games by Collins because it was very popular.
One last thing to note (because I could go on too long) is that many authors of sci fi/fantasy for YA now have facinating websites. Take a look at this one http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/features/athertonseries/index.html

ESCAPE! The Story of the Great Houdini

I met Sid Fleischman during my last year at the middle school library. He performed magic for the younger students and talked about writing books with everyone. His hearing wasn't good, so the teachers had to repeat each question that the students asked him. That night some of the librarians took Sid out to Beezy's on the Creek for dinner. I sat right next to him as he told me about his son who is also a writer. Sid was patient and funny, and I was sad to see this on his official website:
Sid Fleischman died peacefully on March 17, 2010,a day after his 90th birthday.
Visit Sid Fleischman's Memorial Page

Anyway, I knew this book was in the library, but had not read it. It starts with an auction in New York of a monogrammed pocket from Houdini's pajamas. The fact that this pocket sold for $3,910 would capture the attention of a YA reader who just happened to pick up this book from the non-fiction section. The type is large and the book is illustrated with pictures of Houdini locked in chains, dangling upside-down in a tank of water while handcuffed, etc.
Sid Fleischman easily draws you in with his storytelling. He tells of Houdini's birth in Budapest, Hungary to a Jewish family. He then tells how Houdini erased the parts of his life that he felt held him back, and reinvented himself. Sid Fleischman lets his readers know that Houdini had many failures at first and learned by hours of practice and reading about magic. I liked the part about Houdini's wife Bess. They travelled and performed together in many European countries. Russia was one place that Sid Fleischman was surprised Houdini was able to escape. He writes, "No foreign Jews were allowed into Russia." the author makes a guess and says that Houdini's wife was a Catholic and "converted Harry on the spot."
I have not finished the book yet, and I am interested to read how the other Y Book Group members are enjoying it.

Y Book Group Check In

I'm creating a place for the group (Kristina, Kim, Sarah, Rebecca and Orchid) to choose a non- fiction book. Please reply to this post with your choice or comments.
I would rather not read another Nazi book, but will bend to peer pressure if that is what all of you want. Sid Fleischman's Escape: The story of the Great Houdini is one I'm interested in. I would be happy to read Freedom Writers, but I see Artist to Artist on the list page 481 and I am also wanting to read that book. What interests you?

-Orchid

Historical Fiction

Over the weekend I read The River Between Us by Richard Peck. This book not only gave me shivers, but also taught me something new about the female Civil War experience. It starts with a 15-year-old boy and his family driving in a Model T Ford to visit the boy's grandparents in Southern Illinois. Chapter two is set in 1861, so there is a jump back in time, and the boy's grandmother Tilly tells the story of her growing up right as the Civil War was starting. She lived by the river, and the steamboats carried people but sometimes blew up. "Bodies boiled alive would wash ashore for days after. But we'd all seen that." The book tells of a rich woman and her black servant arriving in town, but not being able to go any further because all boats had been drafted to carry soldiers. These two women pay to board with Tilly's family, and they change her life. The secret is that one of them is part black, but passing for a white lady from New Orleans, and the other is her much darker-skinned sister. They help Tilly when her brother gets sick fighting the war.
This book is about the feelings women had when their brothers and husbands went to war. It is also about some of the things they did to keep the towns and families going. The author's note at the end gives more details about the Civil War. "The custom of placage, of white men fathering families with their mistresses who were free women of color, shook the American newcomers to their shoes." He talks about how the custom ended after the war. Then he says that hundreds of the women who could pass for white went North and those who appeared Spanish went to California.

Topics For YA Readers

Here are a couple more YA picture books and graphic novels I read last week:
A Midsummer Night's Dream retold by Bruce Coville--There are young adults who can not understand Shakespeare. The book jacket reveals, "Like a classic fairy tale, this retelling is ideal for older readers who will find much to savor." I would use this to introduce the play before having the students read it or see it. In it Hermia is in love with Lysander, but her father wants to give her to Demetrius instead. She will be put to death if she refuses. Lysander comes up with a plan to run away with Hermia to his aunt's house. They will meet in the forest at night. I'm sure you all know this famous Shakespeare play, so I will not retell the whole thing. Bruce Coville does a great job of making the four lead character distinguishable from on another. He also cuts short the retelling of the last part of the play when Bottom acts in "Pyramus and Thisby."

The Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman--A boy is visited by four magic strangers who decide to teach him the ways of magic power and see if he wants to use his talent. The first stranger takes him back to the beginning where we see Lucifer's fall, the demons that inhabited Earth for millions of years after, the Mage-lords of millions more years who watched civilizations come and go, more recent Greek and other cultures, and finally those who are magic in the present world. The book is illustrated in a dark, graphic novel style.

Picture Books

The book I chose is Dragonology because many YA readers (grades 5-8) have an interest in fantasy and dragon books. It is one of those books that pretends to be a rare or lost account of a scientist who studies "real" creatures. There are similar books about gnomes, monsters, and fairies. This one has little inserts that are supposed to be real documents such as, "A Dragonologist's Personal Record Book." There are many detailed illustrations of dragons from all over the world. This type of picture book is often found in the library right next to the fairytale and folktales from around the world (non-fiction section). Folktales are often illustrated in picture book format and are used in the middle school to enhance country studies or for storytelling.
Some other picture books I remember the teachers using were Shakespeare plays, Sir Cumference: A Math Adventure, and the Ruth Heller World of Language books.