Sands Shift in Summer Reading

Summer Reading, From Morguefile

Check out this article by Lisa Kocian for The Boston Globe, June 28, 2009:

Educators include unconventional picks on lists of required and recommended books to coax teens to bury their noses in pages, as cited in ASCD Smartbrief of July 6.

I noted with interest the variations on a summer-reading theme, from site to site, and was happy to see that students at Concord-Carlisle High School chose for their One Book, One School summer reading initiative the reading of Greg Mortenson and David Relin's Three Cups of Tea. This was one of the three books I had selected to recommend for Vancouver educators' summer reading. The others were:

• Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill because, although it is fiction, teachers might have pause to consider -- you just never know what your students face between when they leave at the end of the day and when they come back in the morning
  
• Jason Ohler's Digital Literacy because it makes such sense.

Planning for Italy is now in full swing ... everyone is confirmed for registration and flights. All other details are in progress. Presently the plan is that we will be five days in Rome, four days in Tuscany, four days in Venice, and eight days at the conference in Abano Terme and Padua. In preparation, Frances, Chris, Mary and I all went to see Angels & Demons on Saturday night. There is an A&D tour of Rome ... we wonder if we will be whisked around in black saloons. I am now the proud owner of an iPod so that I can download walking tour information, something new in the way of travel tips for which I am grateful to Al Smith in Kelowna.

I am hoping to stay at the Hilton Molino Stucky in Venice -- this is the roof-top pool -- but the group is balking. There's even a half-price deal, although it's still expensive. If you're still thinking about coming along ... well, we still haven't figured out how to rent a car and get all the luggage in. The thought of imposing our own luggage restrictions has us looking nervous.

Hope you are enjoying summer so far.

M

Reading Around the Summer Town

VPL Plans for Summer Readers:

• In July, there will be Chilean Poetry recitals (in Spanish), including works by Neruda, my favourite; Saturday morning Search Smart for learning how to use databases; the Summer Book Sale on July 3 (bring your own bags!); more chances to join One Book, One Vancouver author Karen X. Tulchinsky for discussions of her book The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky
  


• The Adult Summer Reading Club invites you to read in any language and at multiple locations!
  


• On August 15, 8 pm, why not attend the screening of the documentary The Riot at Christie Pits in remembrance of the 75th anniversary of the 1933 race riots in Toronto
  


• Check out the August TechnoTuesdays as they seem perfect for educators. Google Basics, Choosing a Digital Cameria, and internet tools and technologies for enhancing reading, a session called Fiction Resources.
  


• Looking for a Book Club for the Fall? There's the Thursday Night, or Saturday Morning, Non-Fiction, Classics, and/or Ancient Classics Book Clubs to choose from. The Classics include Jane Austen. The Non-Fiction readers will be doing The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester, a book about the Victorian "grand" project of researching and writing The Oxford English Dictionary, a resource that requires its own shelf and that researches the history of the use of each word in the language. I loved the tale and the writing, and I wish I'd been able to see him when he was here recently. Check for this and more information at the VPL website.
  


• For kids, there's the Summer Reading Club: Reading all Over the Map and the Multilingual Reading Club as well. Children are also invited to events that celebrate Korean, Russian, and Vietnamese cultures.
  
  
• For pre-teens, just teens, and other teens, there's the Canadian Book Camp: Read it Write Now! and speakers Richard VanCamp, Andrea Spalding, Norma Charles, Nikki Tate, and more. Information online.
  Read the research about Canadian children and summer reading -- here's the IRA report.

Other summer reading opportunities:

• Check out O (July) magazine; see Oprah's online Summer Reading lists for adults and for kids. While you won't find a lot of Canadian material, you have to love her spirited endorsement of reading, reading, reading.
  


• Library and Archives Canada, along with TD, have kids' reading lists in both English and French. This year's theme is LOL (Laugh Out Loud, if you aren't familiar with chat abbrevs).
  


• TeensSRC is brand new. Teens across Canada can submit online reviews, participate in discussion forums, and take part in librarian-moderated chats. The site is run by the British Columbia Library Association with support from the British Columbia Ministry of Education and the Greater Victoria Public Library.
  


• The Dewey Divas and Dudes blog is wonderful. This is a group of Canadian publishers’ reps who blog-talk their favourite reads of the upcoming season to librarians and school teachers. What a great resource this is.
  


• Maclean's senior writer Brian Bethune muses on all things literary in his infrequent postings to the blog: Bethune on Books
  


• Have a peek at what is suggested for St George's high-school-age boys' summer reading. I also liked these Washington International school lists (in French and Spanish, as well as English). Included in some of the lists are Canadian authors, non-fiction, poetry, and novels in translation. These are great lists.
  


• Canada Reads 2008: Paul Quarrington's King Leary
  


• You will love this one: travel to Reading Places! Check out the Wikireadia. Celebrate 2008 which is the national Year of Reading in the UK
  
• The LA Times offers summer book choices by month: June to August
  


• Read online: The world's 50 most powerful blogs! Now there's something to aspire to ...
  


• Travelling in the UK? Here are Richard and Judy's TV Book Club choices for this summer.
  


• Here's a list in many genres from The Telegraph -- the best books for beach, garden or rooftop from those most enjoyed by Telegraph critics this year
  
• All right, so it's compiled in 2002, but I always think this is a great reference when you are looking for something great: The Top 100 Books of All Time from The Guardian
  
• The ALA's Reading List Council seeks outstanding genre fiction that merits special attention by general adult readers and librarians. Ten librarians, experts in readers’ advisory and collection development, select adrenaline titles in eight different categories: suspense, thrillers, and action adventure; Fantasy; Historical Fiction; Horror; Mystery; Romance; Science Fiction; and Women’s Fiction. The page reads, "This inaugural juried list features established voices and debut novelists and suggests titles that will thrill avid fans and entice new readers." See also the Notables List and the Current Notable Children's List for 2008.
  
• There are several booklists now available from Booklists on the VSB School Libraries and Learning Resources page. The most recent MARBLES (Multicultural, Anti-racist Book-Loving EducatorS) list features Canadian titles for K-12, is being regularly updated, and was developed by Vancouver TLs and Angela Brown, our Diversity Consultant.

How's that? Make sure to share this Summer Reading blog with your colleagues, and add other lists you use in the form of Comments (or email me and I will add them).

Here's My Summer Reading Pile

What Are Your Summer Reading Plans?

Here are mine. I've finally started Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I must be the fifth reader, 3.5 of whom have actually finished it. It promises to be a challenging read.

I recently read The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett's 1982 historical fiction. I have his most recent World Without End in the pile. It's a big read. While I am annoyed by his style which seems to need to give me all the details, even ones I can surmise, I love stories about the Middle Ages. The story of cathedral-building in a small rural village was itself fascinating, so I am looking forward to reading about the same community, two hundred years later.

The bedside pile is an impossible feat for summer reading, but it is good to have a choice, to have light to offset challenging. My pile also includes:

The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
Dancing in the No-Fly Zone by Hadani Ditmars
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Ladies Lending Library by Janice Kulyk Keefer
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James
Paris 1919 by Margaret Mitchell

On my list but not yet in the pile is the most recent of the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series. The gentle homespun Botswana wisdom of Mma Ramotswe is so uplifting. Be assured that all will be put aside by October as my absolute favourite author (I do love a good spy novel) is due for a new book: A Most Wanted Man, John le Carré's new novel, will be published in October 2008. I will be checking back to his website regularly for more information as the book nears publication ....

Of course, there are piles in my den: the early BC history/Gold Rush historical fiction piles on interlibrary loans (for which I thank so many of you) will be shaped into the cancelled BCSSTA (PSA) workshop, but I have no doubt it will be under development all summer long, between novels and non-fiction selected for its social studies themes!

Inspired as I am by my fellow-blogger and penthouse neighbour Meredyth, here's my first book review. I have just finished reading Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale and highly recommend it.

A first novel for Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale is a little reminiscent of the style of A.S. Byatt but a slightly less academically challenging read (Setterfield is also an academic). Set in Setterfield's home county of Yorkshire, one is beset by the bleak countryside even as one is mesmerized by the rich tale and contexts of the story told. It is a story within a story, about a biographer writing the story of the writer Vida Winter who never tells the truth about her life. Her last published book Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation is itself a lie, as it contains only twelve stories. The prologue begins:

All children mythologize their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind, and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won't be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.

In her letter inviting Miss Lea to hear the truth about her life, Vida writes:

I have nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fat that they make dull companions. Just so long as they don't start on about storytelling and honesty, the way some of them do. Naturally that annoys me. Provided they leave me alone, I won't hurt them.

My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succour, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold makes a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to you aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing rocking safety of a lie.

And so it goes ... a tale of twins -- or are they twins? -- of more than twins, of horror and hope, of destruction, despair, and complex misguided behaviours, a tale than unravels the truth, or is it as simply simple as it is told?

I invite you to enter additional reviews, notes about favourite authors, and recommendations for excellent summer reading titles as a comment (just click Comments below) here in the blog.

Field Notes

• From Pat and Celia: News they were the lucky winners of $500 worth of books, a prize from Rogers Chocolates and the BC Book Prize group. Check out the photo of Pat and Celia with a giant cheque!
  
• From Steve, Angela, and ME here at the "mother ship": Look for packages in the mail, if you are an elementary or annex TL, with a That's a Family DVD and Teacher Guide; elementary TLs will also find a book entitled The Misfits.
  


• From Meredyth, one "cubby" over, on the window side, Floor 4: ReadWriteThink.org [from the International Reading Association and the US National Council of Teachers of English] has just put up its new reading resource called Learning Beyond the Classroom, described as "a site designed to help children and teens continue to build their literacy learning outside of school, offers activities for children ages 4 to 18, as well as booklists, reading logs, book review podcasts, and best practice videos to help caregivers and tutors make the most of summer reading and writing opportunities."



• From Alan Z: Parents can access All the Right Type cheaply for student home use. There is a $12 home user download price.
  
• From moi: The "hybrid" Google Tools after-school workshop was attended by over 20 educators, more teachers than TLs, some elementary, some secondary. Alan Z, David, and I co-presented ... well, Alan and David did most of the presenting. I did a little show-and-tell and the organizing, promoting, and delivering of food. It was a great session.
  
  Part 2 is May 21 at Kerrisdale and will feature the collaborative capacity of Google's applications and tools. Homework: Find Waldo atop a building in Vancouver, using Google Earth (but before you spend too much time on this, the maps have probably not been updated since when Waldo was painted by a local artist). Also, create your own iGoogle. Sign up for gmail. Check out Tools for Educators, including Page Creator, Earth, Picasa, iGoogle, and Notebook.
  
  Here's my Poetry Notebook; it's an annotated bookmarking site with organizational capacities. The opening paragraph explains Google Notebook. The categories of poetry sites are found in the lefthand sidebar. It can be "published" (as this is) or open only to invitees. Nice possibilities for having students collect "websites" and construct projects.
  


• From Sylvia Z: The first completed order form for BC Books for Vancouver Kids, joyfully submitted! Way to go, girl!
  
• From Gwen: Word that Moberly is buying a cow ... for a village in Uganda. It's true, and it all began with a collaboratively developed Global Issues unit that incorporated resource-based inquiry in the school library. Amazing!


• From Webbits: Study the Earth using Digital Library for Earth Sysem Education, an easy-to-search site with "electronic materials for both teachers and learners, such as lesson plans, maps, images, data sets, visualizations, assessment activities, curriculum, online courses, and much more" in the area of the study of the Earth
  
• From our unretiring Karen C: Susan Juby grew up in Smithers, BC, and is the author of the popular and multi-award winning Alice books: Alice, I Think; Miss Smithers; and Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last. They were adapted into a television series which aired on CTV and the Comedy Network. Her new novel will be released in September 2007. Susan Juby's course, Writing for Children and Young Adults, is July 14th to 18th.
  
  From the UBC website: "Join Susan Juby, the popular author of the Alice series, for this intensive workshop. This writing workshop will inspire you to start or complete your own work and will teach you how to understand the components of successful children’s books. Guest speakers including a publisher, an illustrator and a children’s literature professor will share their expertise in what will prove to be an informative and enjoyable week in the land of imagination. " For those of you who didn't hear Susan speak at the VPL or at the BCTLA Conference, she's a dynamic and engaging presenter ... I bet this class will be loads of fun.
  
• There are also some other courses worth considering, including spring session evening courses - Children's Book Workshop and Children's book Illustration among others. Check out the UBC Writing Centre course descriptions.
  
• From Sarah Bagshaw, Web Manager, Vancouver Kidsbooks: "We are hosting a Mo Willems event. He is the author of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Knuffle Bunny picture books. This will be a great event for all teacher/librarians in elementary schools as these books are hilarious read alouds for the primary grades. This event is going to sell out -- it's on Friday, April 25, 6:30pm, Our Lady of Perpetual Help Gymnasium, 2550 Camosun @ 10th Ave. Tickets are $5.00; everyone attending has to have a ticket and they must be purchased before the event. For more information, see Kidsbooks' Events page.
  
• From Amanda Holland: "Journey through the pages of time. The Province Newspaper published its first edition on March 26, 1898. To celebrate our 110-year anniversary, we're providing an historic front page from our archives on every day we publish until the end of 2008. You can download the page and see it just as it appeared on the day it hit newsstands. On some pages, particularly older ones, the text may be slightly difficult to read. We've done our best to make it readable. If you have trouble, try zooming in close using Adobe Reader. Please check back every Sunday through Friday for a new page to download."
  
• From Carol H, busy Kitchener weeder: I have been weeding ... but as I do [it, I see] how behind we have all got, partly I'm sure for not wanting empty shelves. Today I just deleted Cybersurfer the Owl Internet Guide for Kids, which I'm embarrassed to say has a 1996 publication date. But the real horror is that 66 schools still have this in their collection.
  
  Here's a weeding suggestion or two -- have a look at the time-sensitive areas of your collection and at least weed those. Some books have just lost all their relevance. As you delete, you will see the circulation records of that item for other schools. Many times the number is 0 or 1. Try running an IGE for "last CKOs prior to" to get an idea. As you catch these embarrassing items, post the information to the email as a "Weed Alert"!
  
• Finally, from Glenys at Tupper: Thanks for the lovely note about this blog which made my week and nicely offset the tooth I broke on a late-night snack of Grape Nuts! I will endure the drills and needles more readily knowing that the blog is read and appreciated. Thanks again, Glenys.
  
• The Comments feature is available for you to post to this blog if you have a gmail address. As those who attended this week's Google Tools workshop saw, gmail is the key to a great little system of online applications and tools. Get yours now.