The Book Club Shelf

The Giver

Author: Lois Lowry

Lexile Score: 760

Genre: Fantasy

Maturity level: 5th-6th grade.

Pages: 180   Chapters: 23  Average Chapter Length: 9 pages

Theme: free will, society/community, love/hate, utopia, euthanasia, equality, pain/pleasure, the importance of memory, individualism

Project ideas:  Discussion, discussion and more discussion

First Line: It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.

Main Character: Jonas

Review in 25 words or less:  An absolute must-have for upper elementary book club shelves.  Unsettling, thought-provoking, heavy.

Grade: A

If the ultimate goal of book club is to develop deep comprehension and critical thinking skills, then this book is the perfect tool.  There is so much for students to pour over in search for meaning.  It is unsettling at several different levels, and I would expect a fairly mature book club to find their way into conversation without much prodding from the teacher.

I would not start book club rookies out on this for their first book.  I think the group would need to be fairly comfortable with each other and have a high level of trust and acceptance - students (and even teachers!) would need to feel confident to try out ideas without judgement and be able to sort out their thoughts in an open, caring atmosphere.

In my experience, many book club books often have very superficial themes that students grasp and extract connections from.  I don't think such books propel them to higher levels of thought and understanding.  I often hear something like, "This book is about a brother and sister fighting, and I sometimes fight with my sister too."  There just isn't anything for them to take their ideas a step futher.  When the book clearly presents thought-provoking themes that students grab onto and want to discuss, it is a wonderful thing.  Book clubs are for books that MUST be discussed and CANNOT be read and understood (quite as fully) by yourself.  This is exactly the type of book that is made for book club.

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!

Author: laura Amy Schlitz

Lexile Score:

Genre: Historical Fiction/ Monologues

Maturity level: Hmmm, I really wish I could have my 3rd graders make a movie out of this RIGHT NOW! - but I have to admit it would work much better with maybe 5th-7th graders.  All allusions to mature subject matter are handled brilliantly so as to be both factual and realistic, yet in no way inappropriate for young students.

Pages: 81  Chapters: n/a - 19 different monologues, two two-person poems Average Chapter Monologue Length: 2-3 pages - all are very similar in length - indeed, that was the whole point!

Theme: Medieval history, celebrating differences, classism,

Project ideas:  Let's see, I know there must be something you could-- HOW ABOUT PERFORM THE PLAY!?

First Line: The Feast of All Souls, I ran from my tutor - Latin and grammar - no wonder!  (each piece has a delicious mouthful of a first line)

Main Character: equally divided between 23 main characters - can you count the vilage itself as the main character?

Review in 25 words or less:  A joy to read and how much more to perform!  Good Masters, Sweet Ladies, get yourself a copy and 22 friends and find a stage!

Grade: A

I guess the question that seperates this website from the rest is, would this book make a good book club text?  How close to you have to come to the original purpose of a text for it to be an authentic read?  Laura Amy Schlitz even adds sidebar notes as to pronunciation and when to breathe - hardly directions for silent independant reading!  I will put it thusly: if I were to get a set of these for use in book club I would certainly put the question to the students - both before and after reading - as to how they feel the text should most appropriately be interacted with.  Then I would force them to perform it. :)

It is a delight to read both as entertainment and as information.  I learned at least one new thing from each master and lady of the village.  The sidebars were always helpful, both for direction and for historical note.  They were never wasted or overused - one even withheld information and promted me to go brush up on my saints knowledge.  (and yes, Erasmus's martyrdom was disgusting)  Schlitz has made a masterpiece here, and was completely deserving of the Newbery.  Even if I don't have six copies on my book club shelf, I'll always have a copy available to students!

The bookclubshelf Newbery Predictions

So my school staff selected their Newbery choices, and I've been reading dozens of other people's predictions, and I'm thinking, WHOA I better get my own PERSONAL predictions onto the record before it's too late!

OK so here are my official predictions:

Newbery Medal:

The Wednesday Wars

Honor Books:

The True Meaning of Smekday

Feathers

Leepike Ridge

Haven't read, wish I would have so I could feel cooler on Monday if it wins:

Elijah of Buxton

The Mysterious Benedict Society

See you over at the live webcast on Monday morning!

I Was a Third Grade Spy

Author: Mary Jane Auch

Lexile Score: 510

Genre: Fantasy/ Science Fiction

Maturity level: 1st grade+

Pages: 86  Chapters: 17  Average Chapter Length: 4-5/ with pictures

Theme: Keeping secrets, Communicating with animals, Caring for animals

Project ideas:  Teach your pet a new trick

First Line: Today was my first day of school and could have been my last.  (says the talking dog, Arful)

Main Character: Arful the dog and his owner, Josh

Review in 25 words or less:  Solid cheap paperback, no downsides but also no real upsides.  Bread and butter of the 3rd grade book club shelf, but definately not the beef Wellington

Grade: C (as in, average)

Not every book choice in the book club shelf can be a literary masterpiece.  Or can it?  This book (and it's prequel -I Was a Third Grade Science Project) are definately on the list of books to be preened when better choices are available.  I'm not saying it is a bad book, but it just doesn't have easy discussion material the way a Despereaux or a Frindle does.  I asked the students what lessons were learned and how the characters changed from the beginning, and they responded: "They learned to never teach your dog to talk."  Well, great, but applicable to real life?  Several students mentioned that they enjoyed the book because it was "easy and fun to read."  I can't argue with that logic, but I am not so sure it's the food growing readers thrive on.

Links:

Author's web site

Indus School Mock Newbery Award!

The Indus staff has selected its Mock Newbery - although someone may blow the whistle on us for bending the Newbery rules a bit.  We had an original reading list of 14 titles in December, then narrowed it to seven in early January.  Today we voted on the top five, then after some discussion, voted the list down to three.  After MUCH discussion between The True Meaning of Smekday and The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Hugo won out.  Reaching for Sun then joined Smekday as our two honor books.  Congratulations to Brian Selznick!

(links are to youtube videos of the books)

Indus Mock Newbery Winner:

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

Mock Newbery Honor Books:

Reaching for Sun by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer

True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex

Leepike Ridge

Author: N.D. Wilson (his first?)

Lexile Score: Seriously Lexile people, get with the program, this book has more buzz than a reanimated housefly in January

Genre: Adventure of the high variety

Maturity level: Hmmm, 3rd grade?  The death toll piles up near the end, but none are graphic or unwarranted (wait, did I just write that?  Could I ask a book club if the character deserved to die?  Does that somehow lower the maturity reading level?  "Yeah, it's really for upper elementary, but since the bad guys were asking for it, 3rd graders would be cool with all the gore.")

Pages: 240  Chapters: 13  Average Chapter Length: 18 pages, no illustrations

Theme: Survival, Perseverance, Hope, Friendship

Project ideas:  Prapare a baggy of supplies you'd like to have with you if you were stuck in a cave for three years?  Feidl trip to the local spelunking facility?

First Line: In the history of the world there have been lots of onces and lots of times, and every time has had a once upon it.  OK can we start giving out medals for first lines?  That is brilliant.  Made even more brilliant when one has finished the book and rereads the first page.

Main Character: Tom (the kid) and then Elizabeth (the mom) and then Reg (the skinny cave-dwelling comedian)

Review in 25 words or less:  Instant classic, required on your shelf, Adventure, humor, well-written, social studies connection, edge[ridge]-of-your-seat suspense.

Grade: A

I need to add a category of somehow ranking the titles according to their usability in book club - i.e. how well do the themes allow for discussion?  is the main character easily connected to?  Does the plot have controversial (or at least discussion-stimulating) twists or decisions?

This book has it all.  I definately recommend it for any student book club.  I am a little unsure about what grade level to recommend it for.  I need to get some advice on that.  It would be great to look at research of early North American explorers in conjunction with this read.  Maybe have a look at Who Was First?  by Russell Freedman or something similar.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I am certain that students would as well.  I found a great thematic discussion PDF file on the publisher website that I will post to the pages list.

Links:  Discussion sheet

Sony Reader ebooks

I recently was awarded a grant from the Sony Corporate Foundation of five digital ebook Readers!  My students and I wrote a letter to Sony asking for the Readers to compliment our already brilliant book club shelf of (analog?) paper books.  Then, a couple months later there was a box sitting in the school office with our name on it chock full of Readers.  It was so exciting!

The Readers are very elegant and bound in leather covers.  The students are currently using two of them at an independant "Futuristic" reading center.  Meanwhile, I am loading the others with as many books as I can scrounge up so they can eventually be put into rotation as book club choices.

Here is where I ran into a problem.  As you may know, many books are freely available under public domain laws.  (death+50 years in the USA I think?)  So Huck Finn, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island, The Call of the Wild, and others are all mine (ours, YOURS!) for the taking.  But here's the catch: for anyone even remotely visual - like me - they are unbearably ugly and in many cases too small of print to be readable.  (Not to mention, LACKING ILLUSTRATIONS.)  So, I have begun the task of reformatting the text to PDF formats which match the Sony Reader.

First, I find the book in a format which is not already formatted to size.  (tabs and margins make things very messy during cut-n-pasting)  Then, I erase the often ugly, boring first few pages and replace them with snappy images of the ACTUAL BOOK COVERS AND TITLE PAGES.  Novel idea, huh?  Then I insert illustrations where applicable.  Finally I resize the pages to 3.47x5.45 or whatever so that they fit to the Reader's screen - oh and increase the font to size 13 or 14.  8.5x11 pages are virtually unreadable on the Reader displays.

So, I mention all this because I plan to upload my work to this site for archiving.  Over to the right, there should now be a "page" with Sony Reader PDF files.  My first work is one of my all-time favorites, The Call of the Wild.  Enjoy!  I am currently working on "illustrating" (i.e. adding pictures from other websites, etc.) and reformatting Alice in Wonderland and The Magic Pudding.  Please check back for more!