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READING STYLE GUIDE

Top Ten Goes Down Under

2/27/2018

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Leaf Litter Critters by Leslie Bulion ill Robert Meganck

Who knew that decaying matter could be intriguing? Leslie Bulion knew. She has created Leaf Litter Critters, a fascinating look at the ins and outs of brown matter, AKA the leaf litter layer. From the cover to the last page, this is one amazing little volume. Here are my top ten reasons to read and share a copy of this book.
10. Cover
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Check this out: a blue bug-eyed frog with a humongous tongue, sitting on a pile of garbage with all kinds of crazy creatures twisting, turning, leaping, spying, escaping all around.
Wait! I think the frog has teeth. Really?  And what's with all those spinning things? Are they dive-bombing the frog or are they trying to escape that major-long tongue?
This looks like one wild read.
It's a slim book: only 56 pages. It slides easily into the front pouch of your hoodie. It can go wherever you go. Science made simple.

9. Subject matter
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Are you into gross? Are you into slimy? Creepy? Crawly? Are you ready to venture into the dark and dank area known as the "brown food web" ?
​Welcome to the world of bacteria, fungi, mites, earthworms, millipedes, beetles and many more critters. Probably best not to read this while eating chocolate-covered gummy worms. Just sayin'.

8. Comparison charts & MORE
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Just how big are these critters IRL? A comparison graphic gives you a good idea. Using a pin, and even the head of pin, scale renderings put relative sizes in proper perspective. You'll also find a glossary (with illustrations), specific information on how to conduct your own investigations, as well as additional resources you can access online. A selection of books will further your own  explorations.

7. Berlese Funnel
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You want to see these critters for yourself?  You can!  Build your own equipment to view these creatures. You're gonna need a one-liter soda bottle, a light bulb, a small piece of mesh, ethyl alcohol to preserve your specimens, and some tweezers to pick up the little critters.  You'll find more information on page 53.
Note: The soda bottle should be empty. That means you get to drink a liter of soda.  But it’s okay because you're doing this for science. View the berlese video

5. Big words
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Stop using those lame descriptions such as "those little white things with a ton of legs" and up your game by referring them as symphylan.
No no, my friend, that's not a squishy blob of oozing jelly. That's an amoeba.
​Amaze your teachers. Astound your friends. 
Bonus: that critter to the right is called a rotifer. 
​You're sounding smarter already!

6. Way-cool factoids
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Every poem is accompanied by a Science Note. If you enjoy collecting factoids, this is the place for you. Did you know that: One hundred million to one billion bacteria might live in the water film of one teaspoon of soil? It has been estimated that four out of every five animals on Earth are nematodes?  Mites are no bigger than a grain of sand? Centipedes have between 15 and 191 pairs of legs, one pair for each body segment?  You can own the "strange but true" catagory.

4. Illustrations
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Robert Meganck, how can you make such disgusting animals, living amid rot and ruin, so fascinating? The colorful comic-style illustrations are terrific.  Consider the expressive faces, especially those bugged-out eyes. Look at the springtale with multiple knives, forks, and spoons slurping up nematodes as if they were strands of spaghetti.  Check out the mites with ferocious features and sharp teeth for ravaging roundworms. Comics beneath your feet.

3. Poetry
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Leslie Bulion can wax poetic on denizens of decay. Seriously, she is the Shakespeare of duff. Yup. That's a real word. She uses cinquain, free verse, shape poetry, triolet, kyrielle, two voices, ballad, and clerihew. She also explains words like stanza, beats, rhythm, and poetic form. Yeah, it sounds like a lot. But you can skip the explanations, AKA  Poetry Notes found in the back. You don't have to know how they are constructed to just enjoy them. They are fun to read aloud. Try one of these in science class. Or if you are especially daring, share one in English.

2. FUN! 
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Why should science be boring? Seriously. Why should learning about your environment be an endless recital of textbook copy?
​Guess what. It's not. Remember when you were a little kid and used pick up rocks to discover what was underneath them? Did you ever squat down on the ground to play with pillbugs, watching them roll into a round little ball? Now you can do that for real. It’s called science.

1. STEM with a side of STEAM
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You want multi-disciplinary? This book takes STEM to the next level. Find basic science information and ideas for further investigations.  Get your observation, experimentation, research skills on. But wait... There's more. Use the left side of your brain to design imaginative collages, comics, or infographics for stunning visual displays.  Then get your word nerd on by composing poems, raps, song lyrics, and more to share the wonder of the world down under.

Review copy provided by publisher.
Pub date: March 1, 2018 Publisher: Peachtree Publishers ISBN: 978-1561459506
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Monstrous Tale

2/26/2018

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The Boggart Fights Back by Susan Cooper

"Most of the time we choose what we believe in, but sometimes it just comes to you and it says, 'Here I am.'"
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Susan Cooper has worked her magic again. Yes, the Boggart is back and this time he's bringing reinforcements, including Cousin Nessie of the Loch Ness. Boggarts are "Very ancient creatures, of the Wild Magic...They are shape-shifters, they can become anything they chose." The two, along with siblings Allie and Jay, find themselves at odds with William Trout, a real estate developer who plans to turn Castle Keep, the family's ancestral home, into a resort complex. He has already purchased much of the property. Bulldozers have commenced tearing down existing forests surrounding the castle.
To thwart his plan, the kids and monsters begin scheming. When ordinary pranks such as dumping a bulldozer into the Loch fail to stop Trout, it is time to call upon Scotland's mythological creatures to save Castle Keep. Note: The premise of a real estate magnate, declaring that the project will "be a huge success, huge...bringing hundreds of jobs...I'm a very smart businessman..." may sound familiar to today's readers.
With help from Scottish creatures and support from the local citizenry, the children manage to thwart Trout's enterprise.  His dignity is temporarily destroyed and he slinks off, taking the secret of his humiliation with him. Cooper's tale, while poking gentle fun at the developer, never stoops into the realm of nasty or vicious. Brimming with snippets of Gaelic phrases, ballads, and mythological monsters, The Boggart Fights Back is a magical tale that will charm young readers.​

Mythological Creatures

Cooper weaves some of the most terrifying monsters from Scottish mythology into her story.  Meet them here. Warning: best to cover the eyes of those who are prone to nightmares.  This is the stuff that after-dark fears are made of.
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Caointeach
A highland banshee. In this tale she is a small old woman in a green gown, found at the base of a waterfall.
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Each Uisge
A shape-shifting water horse who kills and then devours humans.
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Blue Men of the Minch
Denizens of the Western Isles, possessing blue hair and long blue beards. They prey on passing ships and are responsible for fierce storms.
Hold on.  I have saved the most horrifying, most terrifying monster for last: The Nuckelavee. With the body of horse and a head with one glowing red eye, a man's torso arises from the back with a head that lolls "to and fro."  Most frightening is that this monster has no skin. Flesh covers the monstrous body and black blood runs through its veins.  If you're reading this at bedtime, be sure to leave the light on.
​Review and quotations from an uncorrected text.
Pub date: February 27, 2018       Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books     ISBN: 978-1534406292
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Listen!

2/21/2018

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Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners by Naomi Shihab Nye

"All the voices we ever loved or respected in our lives..."
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In the busy-ness of my day, things seemed to get scrambled. Falling into bed, I congratulated myself on completing all the mailings.  Then a quick check of email reminded me that I had missed one important item to be mailed. How did I miss that one? I worried as I tried to settle down and prepare for sleep. One more thing to add to tomorrow's To-Do List.  I set aside the phone.  This was madness. The mailing could wait.  Instead, I picked up Naomi Shihab Nye’s Voices in the Air ​and began to read and to listen.  Shihab Nye introduces this collection of poetry with a reflection on the value of listening. 
"Might we pause on our way to everywhere we are rushing off to and hear something in the air, old or new, that would help us?"
My evening and subsequent morning, afternoon, and evening were spent with this slim volume. Each poem is an homage one who inspired the author. The list of individuals ranges from poets, musicians, world figures to childhood acquaintances and family members. The ideas are compelling, succinctly and poignantly expressed. 
Here are samples of her exquisite poetry
Some days     reviewing everything from brain's
     balcony
                      filigree of thinking    a calm comes in
     you can't fix the whole street     change the city
     or the world
                      but clearing bits of rubbish possible

                                                          moving one stone

                  from Time's Low Note
down by the Charles River we will go
when daylight shines. I wish I had known you,
Longfellow, but truly I did, as a small reader
with a book cracked wide, speaking aloud
on the old wooden stairs of my grandparents' home,
saying your words, between the daylight
and the dark, swinging them like small lanterns

     from ​Longfellow's Bed
I write her back
     Slowly      slow
Clean one drawer
     Arrange words on a page
Let them find one another
     Find you
Trust they might know something
     You aren't living the whole thing
     At once

That's what a minute     said to an hour
Without me     you are nothing

​     from To Manage
The glory in the doing. The breath of the doing.
Sometimes the simplest move kept fears from
fragmenting into no energy at all, or sorrow from
multiplying, or sorrow from being the only person
living in the house.
     from Loving Working
To live with what we are given-
Graciously, as if our windows open wide as
     our neighbors',
as if there weren't an insult at every turn.
How did you do that
​               from Break the Worry Cocoon
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There are so many treasures within these pages. Shihab Nye's verse introduces "listeners" to voices spanning both the globe as well as periods of time. The stories, the voices, are rich and real.  I was surprised to learn that at age twenty, Naomi traveled to Florida to meet Stella Kerouac, widow of Jack Kerouac.  While she was there, she picked up the phone.  It was Allen Ginsberg calling. Voices. More Voices. Back matter includes Biographical Notes for each of the individuals who inspired these verses.
I recently read Sarah Aronson's Writing Tip: Read a Poem. One A Day. Aloud.  Voices in the Air offers an excellent opportunity for me to begin this practice.  So I shall begin, searching for a peony and give away the collection of skeins of wool, waiting to be knitted into the sweaters, socks, hat, and gloves that I needed when I lived in New York.  Now in South Texas, the wool has lost its usefulness. "give it away” Unsung - On Finding advises. I will give away the wool and, in its place, take up a word:  Yutori. Shihab Nye introduced me to "Yutori", a Japanese word meaning "life-space".  I want to make more spaces in my life. Moving without haste, Making room for mistakes. Opening to possibility.  Thank you, Naomi Shihab Nye.
"Slowing to a more gracious pacing- trying not to hurry or feel overwhelmed- inch by inch-one thought at a time- can be a deeply helpful mantra. It's a gift we give our own minds."
​Review and poetry excerpts from an uncorrected text.
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Power of Poetry

2/13/2018

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Between The Lines by Nikki Grimes

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Welcome to Mr. Ward's classroom, where poetry is studied, composed, celebrated, and performed. Between the Lines paints poignant portraits of students who are members of this unique class. With the encouragement of a caring teacher, these high schoolers endeavor to understand and express themselves through verse.
Through the eyes of Darrian Lopez, an aspiring journalist of Puerto Rican heritage, readers follow the lives and dreams of this diverse group of teens. Grimes uses newspaper headlines written by Lopez and personal narratives, interspersed with student-created poetry to tell the individual and collective stories of these promising poets.  The volume concludes with a school-wide poetry slam. Many of the stories are painful. While the portrayals are realistic, the finale affirms the value of each individual and offers hope.
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We throw words on the wind,
poems, stories.
We hope they rise
like bubbles,
then hitch a ride
on a cool cloud
or cold current
and return to earth
as nourishing raindrops
​or fragile snowflakes,
Even the invisible
occupy a certain space.
Me? I can't seem
to find a single place
it be seen.
​To be heard.
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Numb, I sit on the edge
of the bed
Mami y Papi share.
Shared.
I feel light as the ghost
my mother has become.
Her picture
on the bedside table
looks blurry until
​I wipe my eyes.
Don't tell me 
my beautiful Black mind
is a terrible thing to waste
if you're gonna let the world
toss it aside.
Please!
Say there's a way out,
a way up.
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Picture
"Troubled kid"
tells you exactly nothing
about the trouble
my pops has seen
or Moms
​or me.
Every breath I take
is dedicated to pressing
back the walls,
forcing them to move
by the sheer strength
​of my stubborness.
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Picture
It's time for me
to tell the mixed-up girl
in the mirror that,
as a matter of fact,
she's more than enough.
​She's plenty.
Review and poetry excerpts from an uncorrected text.
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Go! Go! Go!

2/8/2018

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Girl Running: Bobbi Gibb and the Boston Marathon
​by Annette Bay Pimentel ill by Micha Archer

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 Meet Bobbi Gibb, a determined young woman. Annette Bay Pimentel chronicles her story in Girl Running: Bobbi Gibb and the Boston Marathon. The narrative begins during a bleak New England winter.  Bobbi, a young student, gazes longingly out the classroom window, turning her back on the students’ domestic activity. Bobbi is a runner and she wants to run. After viewing a Boston Marathon, her goal becomes to participate in this annual event. Wearing a pair of nurses' shoes (running shoes for women have yet to be manufactured) she trains for two years.  When her application to participate in the Boston Marathon is denied "women are not physiologically able to run twenty-six miles and furthermore the rules do not allow it"​, Bobbi decides to participate anyway. 
She runs alongside registered competitors, completing the entire marathon and crossing the finish line with them. Sadly, her effort was ignored by the marathon director and her results received no official recognition. Nonetheless, her achievement was a seminal moment in the struggle to erase misconceptions of a woman's ability to compete in arduous athletic contests. Echoing the pace of the race, the text keeps readers engrossed in the story as it builds to a triumphal conclusion. Readers will find themselves cheering for her.
​
Go Bobbi! Go every girl and woman who wants to join the race!
​Back matter includes an afterword, a note of the use of Bobbi's name, a selected bibliography, and attribution for the quotes used throughout the text.
Poignant. Inspiring.
Collages created by Micha Archer are stunning.  They add important details and context to the story. When Bobbi attends the Boston Marathon as a spectator, points along the 26.2-mile route run across the bottom of the two-page spread. When Bobbi secretly enters the Boston Marathon, Archer begins to chronicle her route from start to finish on the base of each page. She ingeniously depicts the elevation as well as the distance of the entire course. The final spread features Bobbi running up a hill, leading a pack of girls running.  Beneath their feet the names of previous female marathon participants are inscribed on solid ground. The symbolism is exquisite.

Images from Girl Running

Women Who Dared

Try these picture book biographies 
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Picture This

2/7/2018

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​Judging a Book by Its Cover: Twitter Thread

​“We love the things we love for what they are.”  Robert Frost
A Twitter thread requested followers to "upload a book cover they love, without saying why; mention who invited you and invite 8 others to do the same."  I decided to play along.  But first had to decide: what book cover should I post?  It seemed clear to me that the directive did not relate to the contents of the book.  This wasn't about a book that I loved. It was about a cover.
This required a bit of research.  Naturally, I first went to Chip Kidd for information on book cover design and creation.
I like his assertion that good design is a balance between clarity and mystery. I immediately thought of Jerry Spinelli’s Star Girl, a cover that encapsulates this book design concept.  I was ready to post that iconic blue cover when my eyes happened upon Draw the Line by Kathryn Otoshi.  I was captivated. Look at the boy on the front cover: his jubilant face, standing barefoot on tiptoe, body stretched to make a line. LOVED this. But wait. The back provides an important clue to the story. Someone else is also creating a line. What will happen when the line meets? Where will the boys draw the line?  With both clarity and mystery, Otoshi invites readers to open this book. 
Below is a selection of some covers favored in the Twitter thread.  Each image was to be posted without comment. Some of these books are old and dear friends of mine. Some are titles that I have yet to explore. What say you? If you were allowed only one book cover, what one would you post?
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Limiting colors to complimentary purple and yellow, opposites  on the color wheel, is brilliant.
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Long Lonely Battle

2/1/2018

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Charlie Takes His Shot:
​How Charlie Sifford Broke the Color Barrier in Golf
 by Nancy Churnin ill by John Joven

"I am so tired of waiting" Langston Hughes
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The color barrier in USA professional sports has a long and painful history. Probably the most well-known athlete who pioneered entrance into major league sports is Jackie Robinson, who first played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Over time, gradual advances in overcoming bigotry within the major leagues have been put into place.  Removing discriminatory practices has been a long time coming. Take professional golf. Because it is an individual competition as opposed to a team sport, overturning discrimination has been a slow and lonely process.
Nancy Churnin's Charlie Takes His Shot chronicles the story of Charles Luther Sifford, the first black man to gain admittance into the Professional Golfers' Association of America. ​
This story begins at night, as a young Charlie practices swinging a club under the cover of darkness on a private green, where he is forbidden to play.  Unable to compete, he can only set foot on the grounds as a caddie. Sifford dreams of someday competing in the PGA. His talent is apparent. He wins the National Negro Open numerous times.  Despite his skill, the path to professional recognition is an arduous journey. Jackie Robinson becomes his role model and mentor. He encourages Charlie to persevere. "Nobody can do it but you,” Jackie tells him.  
A big break comes when Robinson writes a column for the New York Post, pressing for Sifford's admittance into the PGA. Later California's attorney general Stanley Mosk petitions the PGA to remove their "Caucasian only" clause.  Finally, in 1960 the offending clause is removed and Charlie Sifford receives his PGA card. The book concludes with his win in the1967 Greater Hartford Open.
An inspiring story well told. ​​
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Back matter includes a time line and an author's note with supplemental historical background.
John Joven's Illustrations bring vitality and a sense of determination to each page. Action is evident, particularly on the golf course. Golfers taking shots give the story extra pizzazz. Joven also does a nice job of showing the passage of time as Charlie progresses from an aspiring youngster in knickers to a seasoned athlete mopping his brow.
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    Barbara Moon

    I like talking about books and  interesting ideas. I like thinking about how books affect my life. Not particularly interested in giving out stars or in rating books. 

    Audio Publishers Association
    2013, - present  Audies judge 
    American Library Association Book Awards and Lists 
    ​2017 YALSA Award Nominating Committee
    2016 Excellence in Nonfiction 
    2014 Margaret Edwards Award
    2012 Odyssey Awards.  
    2009, 2010, 2011 Great Graphic Novels for Teens.

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