Quirky Book Week: It's a Book

Today's book is a book (which I can also share with you via a video) about books.

Books remain wonderful bits of technology.  The day after I bought Press Here and All My Friends are Dead (Quirky Books blogged about earlier this week), was a Friday.  Staff morning tea at recess.  I brought them with me and slid them like contraband to this person and that.  Just try it.  Go on.  It's funny.  And they did.  PE teachers and Art teachers and History teachers and English teachers and more.  Not just people with a practical teaching need for a quirky fun picture book, but colleagues and friends who would enjoy the fun of them, their gift of laughter.  I didn't need a screen or a battery or a lead.  Just the books.  Which is kinda the point of Lane Smith's book.

Here's a book trailer that covers the whole book, pretty much, and will give you a good flavour of it.



And here's the link, if that doesn't work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4BK_2VULCU

For all the things books don't do, there is so much that they do so well.

One thing is share laughter, provide a shared experience.  That's what Quirky Books can offer, and how they can add value and fun to your library, as they do here.  I've already blogged about books with legs: http://skerricks.blogspot.com/2011/06/happy-life-of-teacher-librarians-books.html and they certainly qualify as Quirky Books too.

The wonderful local independent bookshop I mentioned yesterday was the one that got me onto this book, so props to them (after I bagged them yesterday!).

Hope you've enjoyed these five Quirky Books, and I hope to learn about more candidates from your comments - do leave one!

Cheers

Ruth

Quirky Book Week: Press Here

Today's Quirky Book is deceptively simple.  You will probably say, I could have thought of that.  But you didn't.  Nor (dangit!) did I.  But hurrah and hurray that Herve Tullet did.

But what happens when you open the book and press the yellow dot?

This, for starters:

What's not to like about a book that draws a crowd?

The Amazon.com page for this book has some pictures from inside.  It also has a link so you can create this minibook version (only a few of the many fun pages in the complete book, but enough to show you how it works). 

On one of the pages, the instruction is to clap to make something change in the book.  I can track the progress and location of this book around the library by the clapping...

Another one to make the library a fun place for happy discoveries.

My wonderful local independent bookshop and I disagree on this book.  I'm enormously amused (and so are the people at school, kids and teachers, with whom I share it).  The normally smart bookshop folk say, 'meh'.  So it's lovely and gorgeous to have people say to me, Where did you get it? and I can direct traffic to the wonderful local bookshop, adding that I hope the buyer will let the bookshop know that Ruth showed them this book.... 'meh' my Aunt Fanny!

I learned about this book from friends who had learned about it from the Children's Bookshop in Beecroft NSW: Paul McDonald from there always has good recommendations (as does my wonderful local independent bookshop; just on this book, they're wrong and I'm right!!).

Tomorrow, another favourite Quirky Book.  Have you enjoyed them this week?  Do leave a comment with your own favourite Quirky Books!

Cheers

Ruth

Quirky Book Week: Cherise the Niece

After yesterday's sweet little girl, today you can meet Cherise:

A sweet wee thing.  Well, kinda.  I was going to do a blog entry about books with n@ughty little girls, until I considered what search engines and their bots might do with that particular concept...

On the Amazon.com page for this book, you can take a look inside.  You can also buy a Kindle ebook edition, and download the first chapter free.  The product description on Amazon says:

The bloody footprints leading out of Cherise’s bedroom are the first clue that perhaps the little darling with the bow in her hair is not an angel. As Cherise is shuttled from one aunt’s home to another, her aunts vanish, meeting inventive and hysterical ends. With a killer punch line on its final page, Jim Benton’s Cherise the Niece will leave readers laughing.

I myself feel that it's important to let you know that there is a note at the beginning of the book advising that no aunts were harmed in its making...

Definitely black humour; if you're not in a high school, maybe one to read before adding to the collection. 

But fun?  Heck yes!  It's caused lots of chuckling in our library.

Tomorrow's Quirky Book is one of my favourites.

Cheers

Ruth

Image from www.bookdepository.com

Quirky Book Week: Constance and Tiny

Another Quirky Book for your delectation!

Meet Constance, and her adorably sweet cat, Tiny:

Absolute angels, they are.  Take a look inside the book with this preview from the Book Depository website.

There is an utter (and very recognisable) disparity between what Constance says (in the text of the book) and what Constance (and Tiny) do.  Could be exploitable for English.  My name is Constance.  I am locked up in an evil mansion...

But mostly, it's just gorgeous fun.

Picked this up from a sale table, but it's orderable from bookshops in Australia or overseas.  Not expensive.

What are your fave quirky books?  I have three more to share this week - enjoy!  Constance and Tiny have another adventure in Constance and the great escape.

Cheers

Ruth

Quirky Book Week: All My Friends Are Dead

Welcome to Quirky Book Week on Skerricks!

Five books that are just great fun - the kids like 'em, and I like 'em, and they make the library a happy place.

Which you might start to question when you see the first book:

Cheer up.  It's a really really funny book.

You can take a look inside here (Google preview on the Book Depository website).  I rather like the pirate saying all his friends have scurvy....

Just make sure when you read the book that you read all the way to the very very last page.

It's a smallish book, gifty-sized, and not expensive.  It's making lots of friends here.  Another way to make this library a place where there is laughter, and fun to be had, and discoveries to be made.  So it's about library PR, too.

Tune in tomorrow for another Quirky Book!

Cheers

Ruth

Image from www.bookdepository.com

Blue eyes, brown eyes: Jane Elliott's exercise in prejudice

Photo used under Creative Commons license.  LINK

 Jane Elliott, a teacher, first tried her blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise with her class in an Iowa school in the 1960s, in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King.  You may have come across mention of it in your teacher training, or after.  While Wikipedia isn't the be-all and end-all of research, it's not a bad source for an outline of what she did, and what happened next (and check the citation list for further links).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Elliott

Photo used under Creative Commons license.  LINK

This came up at school recently when one of the seniors, from a Society and Culture class studying belief systems and associated -isms was asking me to help her locate information*.  Blue-eyed/brown-eyed came up in the discussion, and while looking for information we came across this 29 page pdf which covers the blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise and after in great useful detail (the Wikipedia article seems likely to have drawn on it, and it's not Stephen G. Bloom's only article on this topic).  Find it here:

Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes:

The Experiment that Shocked the Nation

And Turned a Town Against its Most Famous Daughter

By Stephen G. Bloom

http://www.uiowa.edu/~poroi/seminars/2004-5/bloom/poroi_paper.pdf

Here's an interesting fact from that document:

It was Jane, for instance, who complained to the Crayola Company about its single flesh-color crayon, and today there are ten flesh-color crayons — from ebony to sand. It was Jane who complained to pantyhose companies about nudecolored pantyhose, and today there are dozens of nude shades hosiery companies manufacture.

I have tried a version of this exercise with a senior class, some years ago: not as intensely/intensively as Jane; but it still had a distinct impact on the kids, got them talking and thinking. 

So, a link to share with your History/English/Society and Culture teachers, or any you think might find it useful.  Seemed a waste not to blog it.

The student also went away with a copy of The Wave, by Morton Rhue, a fictionalised version of a similar exercise.  Lots of different ways to approach and consider an idea.

Cheers

Ruth

* when we'd finished this discussion, the student remarked that the Pew Internet research site I'd referred her to for an earlier assignment had been just what she needed, so she had come back to me.  Nice to get repeat business from confident customers! - I hadn't remembered that occasion, as we have so many kids here and it's hard to recall every detail of every day's discussions and conversations.  I appreciated knowing.  The happy life of teacher librarians: repeat business from happy customers!



GIFSL* 66: Requests (made public) (+ Eragon, book 4)

(Two years ago)

Miss, I want to reserve Eragon book 4
Um, as far as I know it's not written yet - ?
No, it isn't.
So is he going to write it, do you know?
Probably.  Maybe.  I hope so.
Well...
I'd really like to reserve it, Miss.
OK then...

The kids know I have a collection of requests on post-t notes on a laminated sheet in my office .  This is what it looks like pretty much all the time:

It's very much in plain sight, where the kids can see it and I can too.  When a book has been requested and ordered, if it's orderable; Eragon book 4 clearly wasn't) it goes onto a post-it note with the kid's name and goes on here (the white sheet was a rather long list a kid brought in with her).  When the book comes in, we marry it up with the note and the kid/s on the list get to borrow it first.

It's also really effective (in terms of me remembering and in terms of the kid making the request feeling nicely important and valued) to, if you can, ring your wonderful local independent bookshop at lunchtime while the kid is there, to ask them to get in/put aside a copy of this title.  Kids have this happy shine when what they want is treated this way - it's good library PR too. 

I put a lot of my orders through a wonderful local independent bookshop - they know their stuff, especially with young adult fiction, and are fabulously helpful.  And it puts money back into the local area's economy.  And they put up with lunchtime phone calls when I order a single book or two at a time; so the kids also are alerted to a wonderful local helpful bookshop, which is not a bad thing either.

So cut to this week.  Same kid, two years taller, two years older (but still at school.  I'd kinda begun to wonder if he'd still be at school when Christopher Paolini got around to writing book 4....) bounces into my office with a happy smile on his face:

MISS!
Yes?
ERAGON BOOK 4!
Yup, I know, that post-it note is still there...
It's coming out in November!
What, he's written it?
YES!
Really?  Wow.

We look it up.  He has. It will.

The happy life of teacher librarians: wishes do come true.

Cheers

Ruth

The happy life of teacher librarians: Inspiration for your library is everywhere...

As I type this, I'm on hold to a major newspaper publisher (problems with our subscription).  Instead of hold music, they are advertising at me.

"Subscribe to [publication X]," the smooth tones of the voiceover guy says, "and you'll never miss an issue.  In both senses of the word."  (or words to that effect).

My ears prick up.  There is inspiration for your library everywhere.  That's a tag line/slogan that a library could burgle and adapt...

[brainstorming here]

Come to your library and you'll never miss an issue

Research at your library and you'll never miss an issue

Learn at your library and you'll never miss an issue

Ask at your library and you'll never miss an issue

.....

lots of possibilities.

Fancy it up into a sign, and you've got free promo material (it could go on bookmarks, too) that Big Newspaper Company paid good dollars for from a smart advertising agency... and you borrowed for nix apart from being attentive

(or being on hold for longer than one would wish, if I take the half-empty glass view, which generally I don't!)

What have you seen in marketing/advertising that could be adapted to use in a library?

The happy life of teacher librarians: inspiration is everywhere (and sometimes, being on hold can be useful!)

Cheers

Ruth

The secret life of libraries

(The Mitchell Library in Sydney:: photo used under Creative Commons license)

From various sources on my Twitter stream, I have been following the stories about library closures in the UK.  The Guardian has a thoughtful, thought-provoking and sometimes rather amusing article about the secret life of libraries; it's by Bella Bathurst.  They have always had a dusty image – and never more so than now – but libraries are at the heart of our communities. With the axe about to fall, Bella Bathurst reveals just what we're about to lose.

Some more quotes:

Discussing the types of books stolen in various parts of the country, she observes: among all communities and in all parts of Britain, our old passion for self-improvement remains vivid.
...
But the cuts also underscore a deeper confusion about what libraries are: what they do, who they serve, and – in an age where the notion of books itself seems mortally flawed – why we still need them. What's the point of buildings filled with print? Isn't all our wisdom electronic now? Shouldn't libraries die at their appointed time, like workhouses and temperance halls?
...
The great untold truth of libraries is that people need them not because they're about study and solitude, but because they're about connection.
...

(Seattle Public Library::photo used under Creative Commons license)

...reading seems to be becoming an increasingly alien concept for children. "The pace of life is different now, and people expect art to happen to them. Music and film do that, a CD will do that, but you have to make a book happen to you. It's between you and it. People can be changed by books, and that's scary. When I was working in the school library, I'd sometimes put a book in a kid's hands and I'd feel excited for them, because I knew that it might be the book that changed their life. And once in a while, you'd see that happen, you'd see a kind of light come on behind their eyes. Even if it's something like 0.4% of the population that that ever happens to, it's got to be worth it, hasn't it?"

The article concludes thus:
The libraries' most powerful asset is the conversation they provide – between books and readers, between children and parents, between individuals and the collective world. Take them away and those voices turn inwards or vanish. Turns out that libraries have nothing at all to do with silence.


It's a terrific article, very much worth reading in its entirety.  I want to think some more about its ideas, such as connection, and conversation, and art happening, the sort of engagement involved in the act of reading.  This week, as every week, I will have the joy and pleasure and sheer bloody fun of putting a book in the hands of a kid and watching their eyes light up, or (they are teenagers after all) their body language just relax that small bit that is (in reality) a decibels-loud acknowledgement that the book and the transaction and the library were good things for them.  And so many of them have fabulous smiles, don't they?
 
Cheers
 
Ruth

10 ways libraries matter in the digital age

From Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Greg Landgraf has a short, sweet, to the point and pointed blog entry about 10 ways libraries matter in the digital age.  Here are his main points:

• Libraries serve the disenfranchised.
• Libraries are a gathering place.
• Libraries are a first step to literacy.
• Libraries are there for all ages.
• Libraries help people use the internet.
• … And libraries help people use the internet better.
• Libraries are interested in your privacy.
• Libraries are hubs for preserving the past.
• Libraries are there in a crisis.
• Libraries offer the human touch.

Read the whole article here on the American Libraries site.  I find lists like this useful to reflect on what my school library does, what my work is, what both are and could and should be.

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 58: Enchantment and your school library

@brainpicker on Twitter, and the associated blog Brain Pickings, provide a constant supply of inspiration and ideas on a huge range of topics.  Not narrowcast "teacher librarian-focused stuff", but all sorts of things from left field and out there and what about?, and hey, here's something to think about.  I love foraging among the wider world to bring back good things to inform my teaching (eg. this blog! - see the intro reference to a flypaper mind).

Take this infographic from a recently published business book, Enchantment: the art of changing hearts, minds and actions, by Guy Kawasaki.  Not something I've tripped over in education circles, but a great lens to use in thinking about our business as teacher librarians, promoting our libraries and their services.

Read the whole blog entry on Brain Pickings here, including links to an enchantment aptitude test, an interview with the author, and more. 

As school library staffing is being challenged, our work as teacher librarians evaluated, the ill-informed happy to spout that 'it's all on the internet now' and so forth, this infographic is, to me, valuable professional reflection for considering what I do and why and how, and how I can do it better.

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL: good ideas for school libraries

Library website design

Browsing around various library blogs (as you do), I noticed on the Librarian in Black this image of the updated website for the San Jose Public Library.

http://www.sjpl.org/

I'm mulling over ways to have a library website that's accessible to the kids (we don't yet have Student Sharepoint active, many online wiki sites are blocked and we don't yet have a DET wiki option, Moodle is a possibility...).

This provides an interesting idea of how to format/divide/categorise such a site.  It's easy to think, well, that would be useful to have, but the steps before that, the structure/organisation that will be durable and workable and effective - that takes more thinking out.

So, I'm thinking.  And this was handy.  Have you got any library sites you'd like to share in the comments, that you think are durable/workable/effective?

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* no.56: Valentine's Day 2011

What's a teacher librarian to do to fancy up the library for Valentine's Day? (note: as ever, not just for pretty's sake, but to change the space, add excitement and buzz and encourage reading, to get them through the door.)

Cast your peepers over this idea:

That's made from free stuff, folks.  Catalogue/magazine pages.  The tutorial (and source of the picture) is here  but it's not at all a hard idea to play with.  Is it?  Maybe you've got kids who'd like to help?  Maybe you could have some with the names of favourite books/characters on them?  Maybe...

Go play.  Have fun.  Make your library special for your kids, so they say WOW and love being there.  Isn't that how it should be? And won't that be fun for you too?

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = good ideas for school libraries

Valentine's Day ideas for your library

Click on the link below for some Valentine's day ideas from our library in words and pictures.  I like Valentine's as a start of year theme because it's friendly and happy for our new kids (esp. Year 7).  Our SRC or Year 12 also use it for fundraising, so our displays support/promote that too.


The banners are back,

the posters are up (printed on reds and pinks this year),

Please note this is my original and copyright wording.  You're welcome to use it in your library, but it's not for commercial use.  Copyright © Ruth Buchanan 2009.

our entrance ceiling is awash with hearts

and the bookmarks are going out the door with every loan. 

I have some pink heart-shaped post-it notes and ideas about using them...more on that another time.  Oh, and our bookcase is loaded up with pinks and reds (which includes adventure books and so forth, not just love stories or girl-oriented stories).

Read all about these ideas at the links you'll find here: http://skerricks.blogspot.com/search?q=valentine

Cheers

Ruth

Parent-Teacher Night: reflections, and 10 questions for your child's teacher

We've just had a parent-teacher night here.  I make a point of attending, as a member of the teaching staff.  I may not, in advance, have many (or any) appointments with parents - kids tend to make them with their class teachers.  But I'm not lonely.  A number of parents stop by to say hello - I was year adviser to one of their older children, or am mentor to one of their senior students now, so I hear how the older ones are going, talk about the ones still at school.  Some I'm able to help find other staff members (the kids may know what each of their teachers looks like, but parents need the name tags on the tables). 

And my colleagues see me there, part of the teaching staff, spending my afternoon and evening at school the same as they are.  Good library PR.  A couple of them refer parents to me, or include me in a discussion.  The principal knows I choose to attend; a couple of times he's brought parents to meet me who may have asked about or been appreciative of the library.  As I said, good library PR.  I also have home-made muffins and make a cuppa for the teachers in the faculty to which I belong - they're deep in interview after interview, and I can escape for a few minutes to make a cuppa and bring it to them at their desks.

I've had some teacher librarian colleagues rubbish the idea of attending parent-teacher night, for various reasons.  Me, I know it's my time, I know I probably don't HAVE to be there, but I choose to be there and am happy to demonstrate my professional commitment.  I've had a couple of colleagues ask, bewildered, why are you here?  But they know I am, and will be.  It's my choice, as a teacher.

Years ago I got one of the best bits of advice about parent-teacher night from an English teacher (who I now can recognise was one of my most important mentors in teaching): the parents want to hear something positive about their kids - whoever their kid may be.  It works for me.  It doesn't mean you can't get down to brass tacks when there are problems that need addressing, but it's a useful mindset for a productive, appreciated discussion.

Darcy Moore's excellent blog has a brilliant entry on ten questions he wishes parents would ask him:

How would your child’s teachers fare if asked these questions:


1. What is your educational philosophy?

2. How are you assisting our child to become a self-directed learner?

3. What professional reading are you undertaking at the moment?

4. What are you reading for fun?


5. How do you use technology as a tool to leverage learning in the classroom?

6. What online resources have you created for your class?

7. How do you assist students to learn about digital citizenship?

8. What professional networks and associations are you involved with regularly?


9. What observations can you offer about our child’s happiness at school?

10. What reflections can you make about our child’s growth as a learner and citizen this year?

Useful for one's own reflection/professional development.  Do read the full blog entry and comments (it's a blog worth following, as are his Tweets).
 
Cheers
 
Ruth

GIFSL*55: Keep Calm and Carry On

It's become very popular, in the last couple of years, the WW2 Keep Calm and Carry On poster.  We have one in the library, a present from Year 12 last year.  The year group and their year adviser really liked the idea expressed and also giving this to the library for the whole school to be able to see, enjoy and think about.  It's a lovely focal point.

This is 2m tall, vinyl over a wooden frame.  Remo General Store has two sizes, Regular and Big (ours is Big): prices range from $165AU to around $600AU, depending if you order it framed (add shipping to those prices - and the framed options are only for Sydney).   They have other vinyl poster designs too.  What's good about vinyl is its durability (no silverfish munching!) - this should last a long time we hope (it doesn't get any direct sun, either).  The link below shows you some of their other vinyl poster designs.  They also stock some other Keep Calm items, such as Tshirts.

OK, so now you're saying OUCH in a big way?  Keep calm....(but don't forget the possibility of seeing if your end-year group, whether it's 6, 10 or 12, needs any suggestions for their School Present...)

There are other options.

• Barter Books in the UK rediscovered this poster (read the story here) and sell copies at a VERY reasonable price (even with postage to Australia).  Keep Calm and Carry On is GBP3.60, and its companion posters, Freedom is in peril, defend it with all your might and Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution will bring us victory are GBP4.60.  They can fit more than one in a mailing tube (ie. keeping postage costs down).  They also have Tshirts, mugs, aprons, postcards and so forth with the Keep Calm design.  Think what you could do with a pack of postcards... (and note that I've given you an excellent bit of info for a trivia night question, with the two companion posters).  Framing doesn't have to cost a bomb: one neat inexpensive trick is to buy a slightly larger frame (I found one in Ikea for under $10), buy a mat board sized to fit the whole frame (ie. no expensive hole-cutting) and put the poster on top of the mat board in the frame.  Easy to switch them around, too.
• Larkmade in Victoria has the poster for $25 plus shipping (poster in a size to fit Ikea Ribba frames) and Keep Calm homewares.  They are also a very charming rural small business worth supporting.
• Real Shopping, an online shop associated with Real Living magazine, has a canvas version (size isn't given, but I'm guessing it's neither tiny nor huge), ready to hang.  $44, free shipping in Australia.

The poster isn't copyright, so there are a gazillion folk out there with versions (some more ethical than others). Try searching http://www.etsy.com/ for "keep calm" and you'll find colour variations, and all sorts of associated merchandise.  Dozens of ways to keep calm.

For a quirky twist, take a squizz at the Flickr pool of design variations - some very clever (hmmm, is there an English writing task possibility there???).  (Be warned, some of the Flickr suggestions are not school-age friendly, so don't show the site without previewing.)

Sometimes, it's handy to look at that big red sign and remind myself to keep calm.  Sometimes, kind kind people point it out to me (can't imagine why...).  Bless their little cotton socks.

Cheers

Ruth

gifsl = good ideas for school  libraries

Top 10 customer service skills for library staff

From this terrific blog entry at The Learning Round Table, A Collaborative Learning Experiment: Top Ten Customer Service Skills for Library Staff:

1. Greet every customer
2. Be aware of non-verbal clues
3. Listen
4. Restate the problem or question
5. Be empathetic
6. Provide alternatives to “No”
7. Reserve judgment
8. Get (back) to them as soon as possible
9. Follow your gut instinct
10. Thank them for using the library

Trust me.  Go and read the entire article.  Then (as I did) pat yourself on the back for what you do; and work out what you can do better, or start doing.  One to share with all library staff.  From a customer's point of view, that list is the service you'd like to get, isn't it?

And is this customer service replaced by the internet?

I think not.

Cheers

Ruth

Trailer Time Easter 2010

Today at lunchtime (in the second half, about 20 min) I plan to run Trailer Time, a bunch of book-related film trailers (candy-coated get-'em-reading propaganda).

Read all about the mechanics, hints'n'tips here at my original entry about Trailer Time (GIFSL* 42, and thus potentially the answer to life, the universe and everything). 

Below is the list of trailers (OK, Toy Story and Shrek aren't desperately book-related, but if I need a filler before the bell, they're fun).

Cheers

Ruth

Trailer Time: Easter 2010: Ruth's list

Twilight Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer (10 sec teaser)
http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/8509/The-Twilight-Saga-Eclipse-Trailer-Preview  

Robin Hood (we have a couple of Sherwoody books in the library including Robin McKinley's Outlaws of Sherwood)
http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/8512/Robin-Hood-Trailer-HD

How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell
http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/6282/How-to-Train-Your-Dragon-Trailer-HD

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling (teaser)
http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/7066/Harry-Potter-and-the-Deathly-Hallows-Teaser-Trailer-HD

Beastly by Alex Flinn (clip)
http://yourmovies.com.au/news/?action=news&i=182747

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/7705/Diary-of-a-Wimpy-Kid-Trailer-HD

Twilight Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer (teaser)
http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/8567/The-Twilight-Saga-Eclipse-Teaser-Trailer-HD

Twilight Eclipse (longer sneak peek)
http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/8726/The-Twilight-Saga-Eclipse-Extended-Sneak-Peek

Twilight Eclipse (scene, follows from above)
http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/8726/The-Twilight-Saga-Eclipse-Extended-Sneak-Peek
Toy Story 3 Trailer 2
http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/8091/Toy-Story-3-Trailer-2-HD

Shrek Forever After
http://www.trailerspy.com/trailer/8568/Shrek-Forever-After-Trailer-HD

Skulduggery Pleasant Book 4: it's EARLY!

I've had a waiting list for this book since last April (2009):

It wasn't due out till April 2010, but it arrived at our excellent local independent bookshop early, and they phoned me to let me know (see what I mean by excellent?).  There are several very happy borrowers as a result.

Skulduggery Pleasant book 5 will be out in September 2010 - yes, this is a double Skulduggery year - and Skulduggery Pleasant book 6 a year later, in September 2011 (according to the information at the back of this one).

Cheers

Ruth

PS. I now have a waiting list for Skulduggery Pleasant book 5.  Of course!

PPS. IMDB still shows the Skulduggery Pleasant film as having a 2010 release, but as it's in development, early days by the look of it, I'd not be holding my breath.

The library is for all the kids

Among the classes coming to the library for wide reading in the last while have been 10E8 and 9E8 - classes composed mostly of boys.  The classes are streamed, so these are classes where I want to put out books that will catch their attention.  Graphic works can be a great way to go.  Some of these kids struggle to learn, others are focused on other things - I've had some great conversations with them about all sorts of topics.  They don't like being patronised, and they don't like books that patronise them either, 'stupid-simple', childish covers, or such.

I put books out for them as I do for all the other visiting wider reading classes, all around the table to give them plenty of choices.  A couple of successes recently:

The Osprey Graphic History series is one (that's the publisher website).  They're thin (never mind the quality, feel the width) and high interest - battles include Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal and several US Civil War ones.  9E8, to whom I showed them first, had some kids who were pleased (and surprised) that when I realised how much they liked  them, I offered to add the remaining titles to the library's collection (we had five of the twelve, as I wanted to see if they would find friends).  10E8 liked them just as much, and were very pleased to know more were coming (collection development and library PR, there).  Several boys who had never borrowed from the library EVER borrowed from this series.  (My excellent local independent bookshop is able to supply these in Australia with no hassles, so check with your local independent bookshop if you're after some).  We had conversations about the planes illustrated (luckily the male teacher of 10E8 knew more than me about planes) and looked to see exactly where Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal were in the atlas (I could do that better than plane identification), but most of all we wanted the classes to engage with books, and most of them did (you can't win them all, but you can keep trying).

One of the charming smart-alecks in 9E8 thought he'd catch me out (or end up with Where's Wally) when he asked for a book 'with no words'.  Ha, buster, I've got YOU sorted...

In this book, about five pages of detailed drawings in, it goes surreal - the man, having packed, arrives in a place where there is a dragon-like tail shadowed on a building... the kid got interested in spite of himself, and spent  a goodly slab of the lesson reading this book.  His mate got kinda interested too, so I gave him this Shaun Tan book:

which he liked; and you can still access, online a pdf of my favourite story from this book, Eric.

The teachers of these (sometimes challenging) classes have been positive about these visits, and the classes will be returning.  Which is great.  The library isn't just for good kids or top classes, it's for all the kids.

Cheers

Ruth