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

Off to MLA

MLA (an oft used acronym, in this case the Missouri Library Association) Conference is this week. Tomorrow morning early (very early considerintg I work until 9pm tonight and haven't packed) I leave for Springfield Missouri for this year's conference. You can catch me as part of the blogging team over at the official blog. I may try to double post/cross-post back here, but you never know. This is my first conference (PLA was a symposium) and I've heard they can get pretty crazy...

Happy Reading!

Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week is upon us. Go here to get your web badges. (I've got mine.)