Book Club - Geronimo Stilton

I haven't posted since I took my new job up in Alaska. Being a librarian in Anchorage, Alaska is not too fundamentally different than being a librarian in Kansas City, Missouri. I get asked about Battle of the Book books instead of Mark Twain books, and I am learning about Alaska history instead of famous Missourians, but a lot of the same issues. I began the job in Feburary of 2008 and in September began a book club for first through third graders which was one of my favorite aspects of my job in Kansas City. Because the big dipper sign + northern star is so prominent in Alaska (appearing all over the place, most notably ont eh Alaskan state flag), I decided to name our book club Little Dippers Book Club. Hopefully in a couple of years we can grow the group to include third through fifth/sixth grade readers in a Big Dippers Book Club and perhaps even a sixth through eighth grade book club called Northern Lights Book Club. I get requests for the next age up all the time. But for now Little Dippers is a success. Our first meeting had only 4 participants and our last meeting had 17 participants (which is awfully close to my panic/full number of 20). I've made a few changes to the program. Instead of meeting twice a month on Tuesday afternoons, we meet once a month on Saturday mornings. It is 45 minutes instead of an hour (a much better and more managable amount of time). And no snack (though that more has to do with our food policy, and helps account for the change in time as well since when there was a snack it always took the last 45 minutes). I'm going to try to work backwards and talk about the various books we've used as well as other great programs held here at the Anchorage Public Library.

Book: The Lost Treasure of the Emerald Eye by Geronimo Stilton

Introduce Yourself: As always we start with introductions, including me. I also use nametags. Tell me your name, age, and what do you plan to do this summer.

Discussion Questions:

1. Who is more adventorous: Geronimo or Thea?
   
2. How are they alike? How are they different?*
   
3. Why do you think they are so different even if they are siblings?
   
4. How are you different from your siblings?
   
5. Geronimo, Benjamin, Thea, and Trap are all different? Is it better to have people who are different or people who are similar on a team? Why?
   
6. Do you think those four make a good team? Why or why not?
   
7. What qualities do they each bring to the team?
   
8. Why do you think they elected Thea leader?
   
9. Why do you think Thea didn't vote for herself for leader?
   
10. Was she a good leader? Why or why not?**
    
11. What was the emerald eye treasure?
    
12. Is that a good treasure? Or would you rather have treasure you could spend (like Trap)?
    
13. How do we protect such treasures (nature)?

Discussion Extention Activities:
*From the list of alike and different characteristics, have the children name them while you make a Venn diagram.
**Make a list of what makes Thea a good leader, characteristics of a good leader in general, characteristics of world leaders, etc.

Craft:
I made homemade playdough in yellow for cheese sculptures. I still need to post my playdough recipe, but any salt dough recipe will work.

Other Activities:
For a variety of reasons including space and time, I did not try these activities, but thought they were worth sharing.

• Cheese Tasting: It is not possible to have food in this library setting, but in Kansas City this would have been a go. Have a variety of cheeses, everything from cheese in a can to gourmet "stinky" cheeses and let the kids try them all.
  
• Newspaper Scavenger Hunt: I got this from another librarian's blog (the marvelous Children's Programming) and sadly didn't have time to do it. But a Newspaper Scavenger Hunt would have been fantastic. Read that entire entry for many other fantastic ideas.
  
• Treasure Map Search: Of course you can always hide "treasure" in the children's area, provide a map, and let them go for it. However I prefer to keep my group smaller and contained and didn't want them loose. You lose the "book club" feel, but it would be perfect for a Stilton party.
  
• Origami Boats: I really wanted to make origami (or newspaper) boats, but we just didn't have time.
  
• Mouse Trap: I have a copy of the old classic board game of Mouse Trap (still readily availalbe), but didn't know how to let 17 children have fun with it at once. I still think it could have been cool, I am just not sure how I could have worked it in.

Vote With Your Feet:
At APL, we're in a theater with the superwide stairs for seating. For this "game" everyone stands on the middle stair and I read a statement. If that statement is true (or you agree or the answer is the first choice) you step down one step (forwards, if it is false (or you disagree or choose the second choice in the multiple choice arena), you step backwards (up) one step. I announce the correct answer, and we all compare what we think. Especially on a "what do you think" type of question, this is a good way to get the discussion ball rolling.

Sturcture / Timeline:
Here's how we're organized. As kids come in, we sit in a circle and do introductions. Then we discuss maybe one or two discussion questions. Then there is a "vote with your feet" game and that allows us to have a few more discussions (and keeps us from getting too fidgety from sitting too long). Then we start the craft. While making the craft (once we're all started), we do more discussion. As the craft wraps up, there is more discussion. Then a discussion extention (such as the Venn Diagram), and we wrap it up by passing out the take home and reading a little bit of the first part of the next book if we have time. Basically at no point do we just sit still and talk for more than 10 minutes; I try to keep discussion blocks at 5 to 7 minutes if I can.

Take Home Activities:
There are a ton of great printables on Scholastic's Stilton website and they got a word search and maze.

It's cold up here...

I took a new job in a new library. Though I loved working at the Kansas City Public Library and would recommend it to anyone who is job hunting as a librarian, my dream opportunity came up. For years I have dreamed of living in Alaska. I have particular idea where this desire came from, but it's been there. (Also I'm ending a lot of phrases with prepositions, forgive me.) I've always watched the job postings on the Alaska state library jobline to see what was available. While Alaska appealed to me, I never really considered any city other than Anchorage. So when a job came open in Anchorage I applied, never thinking they would even call me for an interview. It was more of a "why not apply" type of situation. I got called for an interview and thought "sure!" and did a phone interview. Because why not? This is my dream. (As my best friend pointed out, at some point I'll have to stop with the "why not? might as well..." attitude and make the actual decision to uproot my life and move 3500 miles away.) I was shocked when they offered me the job, took a few hours to seriously consider it (something I'd been doing since the interview), and then accepted. Six short weeks later, and one harrowing drive up the Alaska Highway in January (a feat apparently even "real" Alaskans won't attempt), I arrived in Anchorage, found a place to live, and started at my new job.

So future posts should have an Alaskan slant to them. Though I've discovered that kids are kids and storytime in Alaska goes much like storytime in Kansas or Missouri. There are a few differences which I will post about later.

Book Club - Emperor's Silent Army

Here is another entry in my series of book clubs for 1st through 3rd graders. Some of my kids are homeschoolers and tend younger, so my activities tend to gear that way.

Book: The Emperor's Silent Army by Jane O'Connor

Introduce Yourself
Tell us your name, your age, and what you would put in a tomb like the Emperor made?
We start every book club with name, age, and some semi-related book question.

Discussion Questions

1. Why did the Emperor have the clay soldiers made?
   
2. What would you take with you to the afterlife if you could?
   
3. What type of soldier would you like to be in the Ancient Chinese Army?
   
4. What surprised you most about the terracotta army?
   
5. What would it be like to spend a very long time making something like a soldier and then have it buried?
   
6. Why did the emperor have the books (except medicine and farming) burned? (he thought ignorant people were easier to control)
   
7. What do you think of this? Are ignorant people easier to control? Why or why not?
   
8. What were some of the interesting things about the emperor’s life? (the 270 palaces, assassination attempts, etc)
   
9. Would you like to have been a first century emperor like that? Why or why not?
   
10. Can you think of other cultures that built elaborate tombs? (the Egyptians, the Mayans)
    
11. How do we honor the dead now?

Extention
There are all sorts of fascinating pieces of information about the teracotta soldiers on the web, including about the excavation of the Emperoror's tomb (and what is holding it up). We talked about that side of the story and looked at pictures and such.

Craft
Not a surprise, we went with making our own teracotta soldiers. I used self-hardening clay so the kids could take it home immediately and not have to worry about a kiln or the like. It was fun, but some kids were resistant and wanted to make their own images. After they made one little soldier, they were allowed to make other creatures, dogs and cats were especially popular. We used simple tooth picks to do our molding.

Snack
In keeping with our semi-Chinese theme, we had a semi-Chinese snack. We drank Green Tea a la Crystal Light. (In a powder, mixed up a pitcher, served chilled, it is rasberry enthused, etc.) All of the kids at least tried the Green Tea and only one didn't end up liking it. We ate snow peas (available in bags in the bagged salad aisle of my supermarket) dipped in ranch dressing (not at all Chinese, but very kid friendly). All the kids liked the snow peas, except for one (surprisingly not the same child who objected to the Green Tea).

Objections
One parent objected to the book and would not let his daughter read it because it "wasn't a story book" and was perhaps a bit too scary. Another parent thought it was rather "intense". They are primarily referring to the parts where the workers are shut in (to die) in the Emperor's Tomb. However, I strongly believe in tossing in the occasional non-fiction into our book club. A lot of kids respond very well to non-fiction, it stretches them, introduces them to types of literature, etc. The vast majority of the kids and parents had fun with this book.

Harry Potter News

J. K. Rowling just completed a new book, a book of fairy tales called “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” which is of course the volume that (WARNING SPOILER!) Dumbledore leaves Hermione in his will. (OKAY SPOILER OVER). Only seven copies have been made, one of which will be on sale in an auction house for charity.

Read the story
Sadly our entire book budget for the year probably wouldn't buy it. We could pay the starting price, but it is going to rise so fast...


Also, Ms. Rowling is suing to block a publication from a “lexicon website” because she plans to publish her own HP Encyclopedia. So that is good news for all the die-hards out there.
Read that story

I see another party in our future… Or at least a massive trivia night.

State Award Nominees

The 2008-2009 nominee list for the William Allen White Award is now available. Right now it is primarily for ordering purposes for teachers and librarians. Remember this is the award voted on by students in Kansas. I see some of my favorites on it:
2008-2009 William Allen White Award Nominees

Of course, I'm not a Kansas librarian anymore. I'm in Missouri now. That means I wait upon the Truman and Mark Twain Awards. The Mark Twain award which for years covered grades 4-8 is being split with slightly older than the Mark Twain Award and younger than the Gateway (high school award). Books can appear on multiple lists though. So it should be interesting.
There is a preliminary reading list available and I see many favorites on there as well.

Words to remember

Too late for Banned Books Week, but always good to quote again...

"All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us."
-- Katherine Paterson, American author of childrens books (1932-)

Book Club - Bailey School Kids

Remember that I do book club for 1st through 3rd graders. So we stick to simpler books. This time, for our pre-halloween meeting, they got to read any book in the Bailey School Kids series by Debbie Dadey. This was a bit harder because everyone read different books (well some books were read by multiple children, but not many). So the discussion questions were vague and the activities less tied-in. This is the most purely "let's just have fun" book club that I have ever run. Here basically is what we did. (Personally I read Ghosts Don't Eat Potato Chips and Mummies Don't Coach Softball).

Discussion Questions

1. Tell me in three sentences or less about the book you read.
   
2. What sort of "unreal" creature were they investigating?
   
3. Did the children decide that the adult was that creature?
   
4. Do you think that adult was that creature?
   
5. Are the Bailey School Kids brave? How were they brave (or not brave) in the book you read?
   
6. When was a time you were brave?
   
7. In Ghosts Don't Eat Potato Chips, they learn to play poker, what is your favorite card game?
   

Activity: Compare and Contrast with Venn Diagrams
In each of the books, the Bailey School Kids have to decide if an adult is or is not some sort of unreal creature. What type of mythical creature does the librarian most seem like? (With no prompting whatsoever from me the children chose angel). I had a big sheet of paper on the wall and we talked about Venn diagrams (the two circles that overlap) and how they could be used to compare and contrast. So we wrote down the things that were true only of librarians, only of angels, and true of both (we're both smart, and we both like to read). At the end, most things were not in the overlap of the circles, so it was decided I was probably not an angel. In a really intense book club, you could do this with the characters in the book.

Activity: Games
I read Ghosts Don't Eat Potato Chips in which they play poker. I didn't think I had enough time to teach poker, plus I wasn't sure about parent reactions. So I just pulled out board games for some fun.

Craft: Monster Masks
We designed our own monster masks (or cat or dog or angel or whatever). Cardstock or paper plates, markers, feathers, pompom balls, scissors (though I ended up cutting out most of the eye balls) and a jumbo craft stick to glue to the mask to use to hold it up. And we were good.

Snack: Potato Chips