Ricki – Page 97 – Unleashing Readers

Top Ten Tuesday: Blogging Confessions

July 8, 2014 by Ricki

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. The feature was created because The Broke and Bookish are particularly fond of lists (as are we!). Each week a new Top Ten list topic is given and bloggers can participate.

Today’s Topic: Top Ten Blogging Confessions

Ricki

1. On our #IMWAYR posts, I have said I’ve finished a book when I have a good chunk left to read. I race to finish it that night to avoid being a liar when the post goes live the next day.

2. I binge blog…writing five or six weeks at a time. When I get on a roll, I just can’t stop!

3. I spend hours trying to fix the spacing of blog posts because I am so obsessive. When I can’t get it right, I lose sleep over it.

4. I reread my blog posts five to ten times to make sure I avoided grammar mistakes. I am meticulous to a fault.

5. Our Monday blog posts go live at midnight, and more than once, I have leaped out of bed at 11:45pm to race to beat the clock because I forgot.

Kellee

1. I always put a positive spin on my Monday posts no matter how bad a week I had. It is hard for me to admit when reading just wasn’t a priority during my week.

2. I have written postive-ish reviews on books that I really didn’t like because I liked the author that asked me to review it for him/her.

3. I am not a grammarian. I do my best, but Ricki is just better at grammar than me. (And I type pretty quickly and have been known to make typos and not see them.)

4. I have to put reminders in my phone to blog each weekend because when I didn’t in the past, I’d forget to do the Monday post or some other post for the week.

5. I’ve had trouble writing teacher posts this year as I was not in the classroom and struggled in my new position, and I feel really guilty about it.

It’s your turn! Time to confess!

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Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos

July 5, 2014July 3, 2014 by Ricki

Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets
Author: Evan Roskos
Published: March 5, 2013 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary: “I hate myself but I love Walt Whitman, the kook. Always positive. I need to be more positive, so I wake myself up every morning with a song of myself.”

Sixteen-year-old James Whitman has been yawping (à la Whitman) at his abusive father ever since he kicked his beloved older sister, Jorie, out of the house. James’s painful struggle with anxiety and depression—along with his ongoing quest to understand what led to his self-destructive sister’s exile—make for a heart-rending read, but his wild, exuberant Whitmanization of the world and keen sense of humor keep this emotionally charged debut novel buoyant.

Ricki’s Review: Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets is such an important book. It captures depression and anxiety in a way that is both authentic and heart-wrenching at the same time. I wanted to reach into the pages of the book to give James a big hug. Similarly to It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini, this book employs humor without detracting from the very realness of James’ struggles with loneliness and isolation. Teens (and adults) will find themselves in James because he is depicted in a sympathetic way that is very human. This novel is brilliant and should be in every classroom library.

Kellee’s Review: I concur with everything that Ricki said. Dr. Bird’s is a very special book. On a Top Ten Tuesday list, I wrote that I wished there were more books about kids with chemical imbalances, and Dr. Bird’s is the closest I’ve read yet. Evan Roskos captures the feeling of a manic depressive state. The energy of the writing actually changes as James’s state of mind changes: anxious, manic, depressed. However, what makes it truly special is that even in the end, there is optimism. Although James is fighting his own chemical imbalance, he keeps doing just that—fighting.

Another thing I adored about this book is the idea of art and writing as therapy. James finds solace in photography and poetry, which is a positive lesson for teens because it shows the power of art, writing, and poetry.

Teacher’s Tools for Navigation: It would be interesting for teachers to do literature circles with texts that concern mental health. Students might read this book along with titles like: Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick, It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson, Everybody Sees the Ants by A.S. King, and 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher. I imagine that reading these titles would foster incredibly rich discussions about depression, anxiety, and suicide. In my opinion, we must have these conversations with our students.

Also, Walt Whitman is a huge part of James’s life, and Whitman is mentioned throughout the book. The Whitman references (and James’s poetry emulating Whitman) would great to be examined in a classroom.

Discussion Questions: If James didn’t have abusive parents, do you think his life would be the same? Do you think depression is genetic in his family?; How does James show bravery?; What role does Walt Whitman play in James’ life?

We Flagged: “People in the world suffer from greater calamities than I do. I eat, I have clothes, I have a house. I read about people around the world who survive on less than a dollar a day. I read about how there are hundreds of millions of widows living in poverty. I see ads for kids who are born with ragged lips and jagged teeth. I don’t have anything like that. I just wake up with a deep hatred of myself. How selfish is that?” (p. 115)

“Later, as my father drives me to the pizzeria, his gassy, grumpy body reeking of judgment and anger and disappointment, I can’t help but wonder how little he knows about the depth of my sadness. The depth of my very being. Will he be upset to find me dead, or relieved?” (p. 214)

Read This If You Loved: (Many of these are listed above.) Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick, It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson, Everybody Sees the Ants by A.S. King, Reality Boy by A.S. King, Dear Life, You Suck by Scott Blagden, 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Recommended For:

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One Year Anniversary Celebration Week: What We’ve Learned this Year

July 27, 2015June 26, 2014 by Ricki

As we wrap up our first year as blog partners, we can’t help but reflect on all of the lessons we’ve learned—both as a team and as bloggers. Sharing a blog requires a strong friendship, and while we were friends before the blog, our bond has grown much stronger from working closely together. We’ve learned:

Google Drive is a lifesaver.

We have a complex shared calendar. If an outsider opened the file, it would be like entering the Twilight Zone. There are sticky notes all over the place and a lot of jargon, but it makes sense to us. Having a shared file that updates automatically has saved us a lot of time and energy, so thank you, Google Drive.

Emails are not always the best form of communication.

Kellee and I exchange a few hundred emails a day. We have realized that, often, just picking up the phone and calling each other is much more effective when we have important questions.

We share the same taste in books but not in art.

You would think this wouldn’t be a big deal, but when it comes to designing the blog and posts like, “Top Ten Covers We’d Frame as Pieces of Art,” not sharing the same taste in art becomes very apparent. Luckily, we manage to compromise, and we think the end products (e.g. the new blog design) are a perfect blend of our styles.

Regrettably, we can’t take every book that is offered to us.

This lesson has been very difficult for us to accept (and we still struggle with it!). We are often contacted by authors and marketing companies with book review requests. We love to help spread the word about these great books, but we receive more requests than there are days in the year.

Babies do not make good blog partners.

As we both entered motherhood this year, we realized that our blogging habits would never be the same. Now, we both jump on the blog in those brief napping hours or after the babies go to bed. It is too tricky to blog with a baby in a sling.

Friends do make good blog partners.

Even with the stress that comes with co-blogging, having a friend there to do it with you makes it 100% easier and more fun.

What have you learned by blogging? Teaching? Living?

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One Year Anniversary Celebration Week: Why Do We Blog?

July 27, 2015June 25, 2014 by Ricki

Blogging is about building connections, and for that reason, we knew we couldn’t do this post alone. For the past two Monday posts, we’ve posted a request to our blogging friends, asking them why they blog.

Our Blog: Unleashing Readers

Our Blog’s Focus: We work to provide a blog that offers teaching materials and resources for K-12 educators. Our book review format is designed to help teachers navigate great books with their students. We try to write reflections that offer teaching tools for the instruction of these texts.

Why We Blog: Simply put, we love teaching. Sharing our love of literature with our students is incredibly rewarding for us, and we want other teachers to share this joy with us. It is our belief that many of our viewers share this mindset. We are dissatisfied with the current model of traditional classrooms (where boring, inaccessible books are the staple), and we aim to show that there are high quality, high interest books outside of the literary canon. We are not asking school systems to lock classic texts in the closet, but instead, we offer alternatives, such as bridging these classics with other texts and offering other alternatives for the one-text-for-all approach. We love sharing ideas and book titles with our blogging friends and have made some great connections with them and hope you will see what their blogs have to offer.

Alyson at Kid Lit Frenzy

Blog Focus: To share recommendations of children’s and young adult literature to teachers, librarians and parents, and to highlight educational literacy activities.

Why I Blog: I began blogging to simply share my thoughts on books that I was reading. However, it has evolved into much more than sharing thoughts. It has developed into a community in which I contribute to but also learn from.

Audrey, Crystal, Jessica, K. Imani & Jon at Rich in Color

Blog Focus: Rich in Color is dedicated to reading, reviewing, talking about, and otherwise promoting young adult fiction starring people of color or written by people of color.

Why We Blog: We believe that teens (and adults!) should be able to find themselves in the kinds of books they love to read. The discrepancy between books that feature people of color or are written by people of color and the actual composition of the U.S. population is a concern for us. We think it’s important to support these books/authors, and one way we can do that is to talk about them.

Beth at A Foodie Bibliophile in Wanderlust

Blog Focus: The theme of my blog is food, books, and travel but I write mostly about books.

Why I Blog: I started blogging because I realized that when I finished a book, I needed to talk to someone about it, and I didn’t really have anyone to do that with. I continued blogging because I found a wonderful, supportive community of teachers and book lovers on Twitter, the Nerdy Book Club, and with the “It’s Monday! What are You Reading?” participants. All of these elements of online community have made me a better reader and teacher.

Carrie at There’s a Book for That

Blog Focus: My blog highlights my addiction to and love of all things in the land of children’s literature. It includes regular updates of what I am reading and often has stories and examples of how I am using books with my primary students.

Why I Blog: I blog to tell stories of my learning and thoughts about children’s literature and teaching in general. Blogging has allowed me to be part of a learning and reading community that shares. The more I write, the more I learn. I also love the opportunity to share little windows into my classroom and the thinking that happens there.

Crystal at Reading Through Life

Blog Focus: I share kidlit and yalit and also share about teaching in my elementary library. I have an emphasis on diversity in literature.

Why I Blog: I wanted to be able to communicate with more than just the teachers and librarians in my area. My blog is also a great place to store things that I can access from my own classroom.

Debbie at The Styling Librarian

Blog Focus: I believe books are your best accessory. I blog about new and old books, celebrate authors and illustrators with interview posts, share technology that I find useful, and share about my life as an expat living in Hong Kong.

Why I Blog: I love connecting with others out in the blogosphere, have developed relationships and gained so much inspiration from them, especially for my professional life. It is fun to express myself and also keep up with family and friends with my posts. Celebrating books, authors and illustrators, and techology is something that keeps me going, appreciating, and following through week to week.

Earl at The Chronicles of a Children’s Book Writer

Blog Focus: My blog focuses on the books I’ve read. I occasionally post about my writing as well.

Why I Blog: I blog because it is such a great way to connect with so many other like-minded people all over the world. I love the give and take of it.

Karen at Ms. Yingling Reads

Blog Focus: I concentrate on books for middle school students, especially humorous, realistic fiction and books with culturally diverse characters.

Why I Blog: I am a school librarian who tries to read all of the books I buy before I purchase them. My blog serves as my auxiliary memory, helps me connect with my students, and is hopefully a good resource for other teachers and librarians who don’t get a chance to read all of the books that I do.

Linda at TeacherDance

Blog Focus: I love to share about literacy in all aspects for helping children learn, integrating across the curriculum. The focus most of the time is reading and writing in the classroom, including book reviews.

Why I Blog: I blog to write, to share aspects of education I believe are important to learning for all children. And I blog to connect to the broader education world in order to meet people everywhere who inspire me when they write of their own personal and educational experiences and practices. An added aspect of my blogging connections has been to read and learn from good writers.

Michele at Mrs. Knott’s Book Nook

Blog Focus: I want my blog to focus on giving practical resources to teachers and parents to support themselves in the areas of reading and writing. My hope is to inspire and get people excited about the wonderful books that are available to us!

Why I Blog: I blog because I love talking about books and having conversations about them with anyone who wants to discuss. I have gotten so many wonderful ideas from other blogs, I wanted to share too. One of my goals is to work on my writing, so for me, this is a chance to do this several times each week!

Thank you friends in sharing why blogging is important to you! We love having you as part of our community!
Why do you like blogging? Or visiting blogs?

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One Year Anniversary Celebration Week: Top Ten Favorite Posts in the First Year of Unleashing Readers

June 29, 2014June 24, 2014 by Ricki

Today’s Topic: Top Ten Favorite Posts in the First Year of Unleashing Readers

For our one year anniversary, we want to share with you our favorite posts during our first year.

1. Launch Week: Our Favorites and the Blog Hop of Other Bloggers’ Favorites

In these posts, we shared our favorite books to use for: Read-Alouds, Literature Circles/Book Clubs, and Close Readings. We also included our favorite classroom library texts and all-time favorite titles.

2. Top Books for Struggling/Reluctant Middle School Readers

When Kellee switched to teaching all struggling readers, she saw a definite trend in what they read and found success sharing these books with her students. She wanted to share them with other teachers to hope they find success as well.

3. Walden Award Finalists and Walden Award Winner

As members of the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award Committee, we were proud to share reviews of the 2013 Finalists and Winners.

4. What Being Married to a Non-Reader has Taught Me

Too often “non-readers” are put to shame and frowned upon, but many of these people read more than we do, just differently. We can learn from these “non-readers” rather than judging them.

5. Helping Our Students Achieve the Reading and Writing Flow

After reading Murray’s Write to Learn, Ricki was compelled to reflect about how this might look in the classroom.

6. Genre/Format Introductions

One of the ways Kellee makes sure her students can find the books they need is by introducing them to the array of genres and format they can find within the world of books. This is the lesson she uses to teach these.

7. Balance, Where Are You?

As teachers, balance often feels elusive. Ricki reflects on this struggle.

8. Academic Games

When teaching any child, if you make it fun, they are more likely to retain the information. Here are some academic games Kellee has found to be successful in her classroom.

9. 20 Moments I Will Miss With My Readers

When she decided to pursue a doctoral degree, Ricki began to reflect on the moments she would miss most.

10. Novels with Science Content and Novels with Math Content

As a person with a huge classroom library and extensive reading knowledge, Kellee is often the go-to person at her school for book advice. When a science and math teacher asked her for cross-curricular books, she decided to make it a blog post to share the list.

11. As we blow out the candles of this blog anniversary, we can’t help but add one more post beyond the top ten. After all, we need one candle for good luck and to grow on!

Our Babies’ Favorite Picture Books: Kellee and Trent (first three months) and Ricki and Henry (first six months)

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The Here and Now by Ann Brashares

July 27, 2015June 19, 2014 by Ricki

The Here and Now
Author: Ann Brashares
Published: April 8, 2014 by Delacorte Press

Summary: An unforgettable epic romantic thriller about a girl from the future who might be able to save the world… if she lets go of the one thing she’s found to hold on to.

Follow the rules. Remember what happened. Never fall in love.

This is the story of seventeen-year-old Prenna James, who immigrated to New York when she was twelve. Except Prenna didn’t come from a different country. She came from a different time—a future where a mosquito-borne illness has mutated into a pandemic, killing millions and leaving the world in ruins.

Prenna and the others who escaped to the present day must follow a strict set of rules: never reveal where they’re from, never interfere with history, and never, ever be intimate with anyone outside their community. Prenna does as she’s told, believing she can help prevent the plague that will one day ravage the earth. But everything changes when Prenna falls for Ethan Jarves.

Review: I particularly loved the first half of this book. While time travel is at the heart of this text, I think it would be a great book to give to readers who love dystopian fiction. Prenna’s memory of her futuristic world was fascinating to me. At times, I found Brashares to be a bit didactic, but overall, the book is very well-written and will entice readers from the first page. I always enjoy reading books about time travel because my mind spins as I try to grapple with the paradox time travel provides. If we change the past, will we exist in the future? And how can this work, if we are living in this previous time? Ah! My brain hurts. I enjoyed this book because it made me think.

Teacher’s Tools for Navigation: Similar to my review of All Our Yesterdays, I think students would have a lot of fun selecting a time period to travel to, and perhaps, picking one event in history they would change and how it might impact the future. This could develop into a research project, and I can imagine there would be fantastic interdisciplinary connections with the subject of history. Alternatively (or additionally), teachers could link this text with the subject of science–where students research ways we are destroying our planet.

Discussion Questions: How are we destroying our planet? Do you think Ann Brashares’ prediction of the future is accurate? What is Brashares’ tone in this text?; If you could travel in time, what is one event in history that you would change and why? How might it change events in the future?

We Flagged: “People here act like the great things have already been lost, but they are wrong. They have so much still to lose” (Chapter Three).

“I guess memory is a deep well, and you don’t know what’s down there until you lower the bucket and start hauling it up” (Chapter Fifteen).

Please note: The above quotes are from the advanced reader copy. The quotes may have changed with publication.

Read This If You Loved: All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, The Giver by Lois Lowry, Legend by Marie Lu, Divergent by Veronica Roth

Recommended For:

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books on our Summer TBR Lists

June 17, 2014 by Ricki

Today’s Topic: Top Ten Books on our Summer TBR Lists

Ricki

I can only pick five?

1. Life in Outer Space by Melissa Keil

Kellee mentions this book about three times a week, so I know it has to be good!

2. The Storied Life of A.J. Fickry by Gabrielle Zevin

I have heard wonderful things about this book. My friend just downloaded the audiobook, and we are going to listen to it together. 🙂

3. Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley

I found this book on NetGalley, and it looks phenomenal. It is set in 1959 Virginia and about two girls who are on opposites sides of the civil rights movement. They are forced to work together on a school project.

4. Hidden Like Anne Frank by Marcel Prins and Peter Steenhuis

This book is a collection of fourteen true stories about children who were hidden in World War II. It sounds like a very emotional read.

5. Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

Grasshopper Jungle was on my TBR list for the winter. I read Winger and haven’t gotten to this one yet!

Kellee

I am so bad about planning what I am going to read, these TBR lists are so hard for me! So, today I decided to share what I plan on reading Trent this summer.

1. If You Were a Penguin by Wendell and Florence Minor

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Such a cute penguin! I love penguins, and I cannot wait to share this penguin book with Trent.

2. Trucktown: Truckery Rhymes by Jon Scieszka

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I love Jon Sciezska and this poetry anthology is so much fun!

3. Never Play Music Right Next to the Zoo by John Lithgow

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My parents gave this to me as a baby shower gift, and I just haven’t gotten to it yet; however, I really want to this summer! It also has a CD with it that John Lithgow reads which I know will be very entertaining.

4. You Can Be Anything by Charles M. Schulz

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What a perfect introduction to Snoopy for Trent!

5. Life Doesn’t Frighten Me by Maya Angelou

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I want to share this beautiful book with Trent in honor of Maya Angelou’s life (and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s illustrations are superb).

What books do you plan to read this summer?

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