Coming Soon: Rita Williams-Garcia’s One Crazy Summer

My eyes stung. I was spilling-over mad. I couldn’t stop what I had to say, even if she stood over me and became my crazy mother mountain and knocked me down. I was spilling over.

It is the summer of 1968 and eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters Vonetta and Fern have been sent from Brooklyn, New York to Oakland, California to spend the summer with a mother they don’t know at all. A mother who abandoned them after Fern was born.

Cecile is still a mother who wants nothing to do with them. She refuses to call Fern by her name, leaves them to get their own meals, and makes it very clear that she wants them out of her hair and home during the day so she can do her work as a poet.  And so she immediately sends them off to the Black Panther’s People’s Center. “Can’t miss it. Nothing but black folks in black clothes rapping revolution and a line of hungry black kids.” They are to go for the free breakfast, stay there all day for the program, and just keep out of her way till evening.

Delphine is used to taking care of her sisters and while she is horrified at the thought of spending their days with the Black Panthers she also isn’t totally surprised — the stories Big Ma, her grandmother, has told them about Cecile are right in keeping with this sort of behavior. Clearly Cecile has zero interest in them. Zero. And so the three girls make their way to the Center where they meet Black Panthers, learn about them, and, as the summer goes on, contribute their own part to the movement. And by the end, they have gotten to know their mother, one of the more unique mothers of recent children’s literature.

Rita Williams-Garcia has created unforgettable characters in the three girls and their mother —they are sure to linger in your mind long after you have closed the book. Especially Delphine — she tells their story and she tells it straight. There are big and powerful moments in the book — say a poetry reading at a rally — and small sharp moments as well — say requests by whites to photograph the three girls. Big or small, they feel absolutely real and true to the characters, the times, and the ideals of the times. And finally, there is the writing — spare, poetic, and incredibly moving.

Come January, keep your eyes peeled for Rita Williams-Garcia’s One Crazy Summer. It is a keeper.

Holt’s Darwin Ladies

A few weeks ago I was in one of the coolest conference rooms, a prow-like space in the Flatiron Building, at the invitation of Henry Holt, to hear their Dynamic Darwin Duo, Deborah Heiligman, author of Charles and Emma and Jacqueline Kelly, author of The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate.  Afterwards I managed to get a very poor Iphone pic of the two signing (so I could tweet it, natch); please take it from me that Deborah’s face is as gorgeous as her hair and blue dress.

Coincidently, before the event I’d given Jackie’s book to one of my history-loving fourth graders to read.  Here’s her review:

This story is about a little girl named Calpurnia Tate of the year 1899. Calpurnia is eleven years old and the only girl out of seven children. It takes place in a little town called Caldwell County, near Austin, Texas.

Calpurnia’s mother wants her to learn what regular little girls of the time do; piano, knitting, cooking, and other house work. Because Calpurnia’s mother wants her to become a proper lady and marry to a nice man.

However, once her grandfather shows her his science abilities, she opens her mind into the world of science and begins dreaming to be a scientist. When she hears the stories about woman-scientists like Marie Curie and all kinds of history about them, she gets fascinated and wants to grow up to be one, too. They start identifying insects and plants. They find a new specimen of a plant Vicia villosa, a member of the lowly pasture. They finally get a certificate for finding a new specimen of the plants.

In the 19th century, boys could only go to college or university. However, the year of 1899 is over and the year of 1990 begins in the end of the story. So it may mean that Calpurnia’s hope of going to college and dream of becoming a scientist may come true in the new century.

The author is trying to give a message that whatever little girls wanted to be in the olden days, some had to quit because it made their mothers uncomfortable. But some worked hard enough to prove that they really wanted to be something that women usually didn’t do. I would recommend this to people who are into history and following their own dream.

This book was a fascinating and amazing. Even though it might take some time for some readers to get into it, I think it is a great book to read.

In addition, the book cover is beautiful and makes you feel like Calpurnia. At first when you look at it, it just looks like branches and trees. But if you look and observe it like Calpurnia, you can find many things; books, microscopes, jars, animals, and other kinds of creatures. It will feel like you are at the river with Calpurnia and her grandfather. You may feel like being Calpurnia in the story.

In the Classroom: Teaching Reading

In the past week I’ve read two completely oppositional articles on teaching.  The first was “Tyranny of the Test: One Year as a Kaplan Coach in the Public Schools” by Jeremy Miller.  It is a superb piece providing a disturbing, real, and moving view of the specifics of legislation that has made Kaplan such a player in the schools, the sad realities of testing, teaching, and more.  The second was “Students Get New Assignment: Pick Books You Like.”  This is a very different sort of article, Mokoto Rich is a reporter for the New York Times, not a teacher, and so she comes to this topic quite differently — following a teacher as she begins this “new” method in her classroom — children choosing their own reading material.

The method is one of choice — individual reading rather than the whole-class-reads-one book method.  It isn’t, for all Rich suggests it is, new.  It was around when I started teaching in the early 70s and was around even earlier among those with a progressive mindset.  Choice is at the heart of Montessori, open classroom, whole language, constructivism, and many other pedagogies that have waxed and waned in popularity over the years.  I’m glad Rich featured Nancie Atwell, someone who inspired me twenty years ago with her seminal book, In the Middle.  She, along with others, gave me some  excellent tools that helped me to fine-tune a method I already had been using — now known as readers’ workshop.

A few years after that I spent a summer at Princeton studying classical children’s literature. I came back to my classroom determined to bring some of that magic into my teaching.  Since then other experiences have helped me to continually refine how I teach reading.  At the moment, in broad sweeps (leaving out the specific lessons that I do), here’s an overview:

• Independent Reading.  My students are all expected to always have a book they’ve chosen to read.  The only homework I assign is to read for at least 30 minutes a night. I monitor the reading by having the children write the book title and the pages read.  I can easily determine how their reading is going by those pages.  If a child is only reading ten pages in 30 minutes night after night, for example, something is wrong and I will investigate.  I encourage them to drop books they don’t like and work hard to help them find ones they do.  Periodically I invite them to prepare readings from these books for the class for our weekly Literary Salons.   I have private conversations with them about their readings. They write about the books in response journals (and on blogs).  All the stuff mentioned in Rich’s article and many other places.
• Reading Aloud. I always am reading aloud a book, ideally one the kids can’t get themselves yet. Last year I read The Graveyard Book and When You Reach Me before they were published, for example.  I’m still mulling over the first book for this year.
• One Book for the Whole Class.  I do believe in occasionally reading a book together. I think that there can be a very special experience when a group comes together over a book.  And I have to say, I don’t get the vehemence some have against doing this. While I understand how it has been done badly, it can also be wonderful.  I mean, what about those communities that read books together?  Book groups?  Book clubs? Why can’t teachers orchestrate something similar in their classrooms?  Certainly, I hope I do.  We begin the year with Charlotte’s Web and end it with The Wizard of Oz. Both are wonderful experiences.
• Group Books.  We do a study of historical fiction prior to the kids writing their own.  As part of the preparations I have the kids read books in small groups.
• Research. Sometimes I think people are so invested in getting kids to love reading that they forget that there is all kinds of reading.  Sometimes it is to get information.  My students read widely when working on their historical fiction stories about Mayflower passengers. They read primary sources, secondary sources, all sorts of stuff.

Okay. I could go on, but I won’t.  Reading is so many different things to so many different people so it stands to reason there would be many different ways to teach it and many different ways to learn it.

Coming Soon: Katherine Sturtevant’s The Brothers Story

Katherine Sturtevant’s A True and Faithful Narrative was one of  my favorite books of 2006 so I am delighted to see that The Brothers Story is coming out this fall.  Here’s the description from her website.

The Brothers Story is set in the Great Frost of 1683-84, and tells the story of twin teenaged boys, Kit and Christy, who have grown up in poverty in their Essex village. Because Christy has been “simple” from birth, Kit has literally been his brother’s keeper. But the hardships that come to their Essex village with the frost bring Kit to frustration and despair. He abandons Christy and makes his way to London, seeking to better himself. There he finds much to take his mind from thoughts of all he has left behind: a master who paints pictures, a sharp-tongued serving maid, and a frost fair upon the frozen Thames. When the time comes that he can no longer evade the problem of his brother, Kit must make a choice between returning to poverty-stricken village life or seizing a lucky chance to advance himself–unless he can find a third way. The novel includes much authentic detail, including a frank portrayal of teen sexuality during this period.

In the Classroom: Evolving Technology

Franki at A Year of Reading has been thoughtfully considering new literacy tools in a number of posts this year.  Now she is focused on how Ipod Touches can be used in the classroom.  Now I have to say that due to many years in a fourth grade classroom exploring new tools I am a bit cautious about any particular thing.  I’ve had an IPod Touch myself for a year and I love it, but I have to admit I haven’t been interested in using it with my students.  Why?  Because I’m fortunate in having more than I have time for to use with my students.  But I’ll be following Franki’s journey with interest and perhaps she will convince me to feel differently.

I am very fortunate in being in a school that is very focused on using computers in every possible way.  We do our reports to parents online and they get send out as pdf files.  We communicate with email, blogs, moodles, etc.  Starting in 6th grade, every child gets a laptop.  In 4th grade we’ve had some sort of portable wordproccessor since the early 90s. (For how we got going on this see my article “Empowering Young Writers with Technology,” Educational Leadership, April 1994.)  This year we got netbooks for every fourth grader and they’ve been fantastic.  We are using ee pcs, but I think there are now others to use as well.  The kids do all their writing on them, internet work, email, photos, and more. They have been just wonderful!  (Especially after years other machines that were not nearly as easy to use.)  They aren’t, I don’t believe, that much more expensive than Ipod touches, yet do so much!

As for using Ipod Touches in the classroom I have the same reservations with them that I had earlier with Palms (there were educational outreaches for them too), and other smaller objects that don’t have keyboards and such.  You see, I’ve been  involved in classroom use of technology for a very long time.  (Starting when I worked at an AV  Centre in Sierra Leone in 1975.  I followed that with an MA in educational technology and another in computers and education. Came to my current school as a computer specialist and have been variously doing this stuff for several decades.)  What I’ve seen is it is tricky to consider what is going to be viable and workable in classrooms and what is not. What follows are some thoughts on various tools Franki and others are using or thinking about using.

Blogs

I’ve been blogging with kids for three years now and it gets better every year.  Check out all my teaching with blog posts for more on this.  I’m a huge, huge, HUGE fan of classroom blogging! (Here’s a presentation wiki I did recently on this.)

Podcasting

I was skeptical of podcasts at first.  I paid attention to how others were using them in classrooms, but wasn’t sure what they really brought that was new and worth extra sidework (editing them and such).  A couple of years ago I started using them here and there in my classroom.   I do something called Literary Salon where kids do readings from books and we did a number of them as podcasts and I put them on the class blog.  My favorite of these were the ones we did with my (as I chose it as a member of the committee) Newbery winner, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! There had been questions about kid appeal and the podcasts were great at showing their enthusiasm.

Last year I came up with another way to do podcasts that worked even better this year.  Our theme in fourth grade is immigration and one way we consider it is the kids’ own “migration” from a small lower school to a big upper school.  At the end of the year I had a class of incoming 3rd graders interview my 4th graders about this. The questions were the same ones my students had used in the fall for an oral history of an immigrant and in the spring when they researched and wrote a work of historical fiction about the Pilgrims. The questions worked well for all three situations.  And the podcasts are terrific.  Some samples are here, here, and here.  This year I also had them do podcasts about their Pilgrim stories. I was so pleased with them — check out this one and this one for a taste.

I’m at a point where I can use podcasts as casually as I use chart paper.  The kids can do it too.  We taught them to do just about everything and I had to do nothing!  When that happens the technology works, in my opinion.  But whether you specifically need to do them with Ipod Touches, I don’t know.  With the ee pcs the kids are able to record, save, and then put the podcasts on their blogs.  I’m less clear how this would work with Ipod Touches.

Flip (and similar) Cameras

A couple of years ago a wonderful tech teacher I know visited my class and urged me to buy a bunch of flip cameras to use. But I was again skeptical.  I’d done a lot of movies with my class over the years, but they always involved a lot of editing on my part.  I didn’t see the point of non-edited films — they wouldn’t be good, I wouldn’t want to show them, and the kids could do just as well without them. So I thought.

This year I began using a flip camera in a few ways that got me very excited — I had someone film lessons for conference presentations and I realized that they were great resources for the kids too.  A few weeks ago my class did a debate that we filmed (Resolved: Is the MGM Wizard of Oz movie a good adaptation of the book?), but when it came to figuring out what to do with it I became overwhelmed. Because the raw footage was raw, the sound was bad and major editing is needed for me to use it.  I will indeed use it (for a presentation at NCTE in November), but it is going to take a lot of time to edit it into something worthwhile.  So I’m still skeptical.

Smartboard

I’ve had a Smartboard for a few years and I do love it — I use it as I did chartpaper (and the way many teachers use overheads) — I can write with the kids, in front of the kids, show them something on the web, annotate something, and so forth.  I love it — but I can’t say I use it in terms of touching the screen — there are some games and such, but they seem very doodady and gimicky to me.  At least for language arts and history — seems much more worthwhile for math.

This coming school year I’m planning on a new afterschool club — book bloggers.  Kids who were in my class in previous years will be able to blog again and those who weren’t will be given blogs of their own as well.  We plan on having these kids read ARCs, new books, and generally give kid points of view.  We may do some podcasts, movies, and other stuff — who knows!  So that along with the work I do in my classroom shall keep me thinking about how we can best use new technology tools comfortably in the classroom.

In the Classroom: Kid Podcasts on Writing Historical Fiction

My fourth graders have spent the last few months considering historical fiction and preparing to write their own about the Pilgrims.  They’ve done a ton of research about these long ago immigrants (including an overnight trip to Plimoth Plantation) and are all diving into their first story drafts.  On Friday we taught them how to do podcasts and now you can listen to the ones they did in which they tell you about this project, their characters, their research and more.  I’m very proud of them!

Dorothy May Swan

Elizabeth Ann Warner

Dorothy May Rawlins

Samuel Hopkins

Mary Anna Dodge

Cooper Brewster

Dorothy-Ann Annie Cook

David Winslow

DW’s character on the journey

Elizabeth Brown

Does It?

Mary-Louise Jensen over at the new blog, An Awfully Big Blog Adventure, thinks historical fiction needs a new name. She suggests “romantic adventure” instead. But wouldn’t that create a different subset of kids resisting? There are, I must point out, kids who equate romantic with kissing. And kissing is something not a single one of my fourth graders can stand when we watch movies. Frankly, I think changing the name of something doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that kids will pick up books that look appealing and, most of all, have word-of-mouth street creed. Romantic adventure, historical fiction, fiction, chapter book, book — a really good story is what they care about.

Great Chicago Stories

Great Chicago Stories is a creative and engaging website full of history for kids.  It is the result of a two-year NEH project at the Chicago History Museum where teachers, museum educators, historians, technologists, professional writers, and a national board of advisors  (I was one) collaborated to create engaging stories, lessons, and units for students in both elementary school and high school.

History, Nonfiction, and More

Nonfiction Matters is Marc Aronson’s brand new blog at SLJ.  As of this writing there are three posts, two (on history in schools) which provoked me to respond in the comments.  Marc is straightforward about his passion for history, a passion I share for reasons similar to his.  Years ago when Marc was on child_lit we’d have a great time arguing about various things. (He tended to argue from the book editor/writer/creator POV while I argued more from the teacher/young reader POV.)  I learned a lot from Marc during this discussions and so I look forward to having an opportunity to discuss things again on his blog.

Those Unhappy Families: the Sopranos, the Baudelaires, and the Potters

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Leo Tolstoy

I tried a couple of times to watch “The Sopranos” but it was too violent for me. However, I did vaguely attend to the discussion about it, especially as it came to its full-of-unresolved-threads-final this past Sunday. And now I’ve just read Susan Lempke’s take on it, “Tolerance for ambiguity” which made me think of another vague final — Lemony Snicket’s The End. In both cases, the writers purposefully left threads dangling. I haven’t heard too many complaints about the Baudelaires’ story being left too open (but then I am of the opinion that we haven’t heard or read the last of them), but it seems that some (or many) were left gaping at the open-endedness of the final episode of “The Sopranos.”

Interesting. I’ve written about the need to tolerate ambiguity when learning and thinking about history, but hadn’t thought about it so much when thinking about story and fiction. Susan wonders what we will discover next month about Harry Potter. Will threads be left dangling in his story too? Somehow, I think not as Rowling’s series seems to be more traditional than either Chase’s or Snicket’s. But who knows? While Snicket’s ending didn’t surprise me at all, Chases’s seems to have for many. Perhaps there will indeed more ambiguity to tolerate when Harry’s final book appears.