If you’re looking for an activity that will get your kid writing, Breakfast on a Dragon’s Tail, by Martin Springett, is a new and interesting concept book.
Dragon’s Tail gives you the beginning of a story, and your kid writes the rest.
There are 13 book bites in all, each one an intriguing start, whimsically illustrated, to a story that your child will finish.
Here’s my favourite:
Dracula and Son
“Wake up, son! It’s time to terrify the neighbourhood!”
Papa Drac stretched and yawned, flexing his long, white hands and testing his bright, white fangs with a handy fork.
Ping! They were solid and scary–ready for all the terrifying stuff he had planned for the surrounding countryside, the lonely farmhouses, and the craggy castles.
“Nah, I’m tired,” said Drac Junior. “I wanna sleep in.”
“You’ve already slept in for nine months! It’s Hallowe’en–time to sharpen those pearly whites and to practise blood-curdling screeches, climbing down walls, and flapping about in a creepy way!”
It goes on, but you get the idea.
Dragon’s Tail would be great for homeschooling, for teachers and for parents with kids who are keen to write but need a bit of inspiration.
And best of all, kids can go to the book publisher’s website and upload the endings they’ve written for any of the stories. Fun!
The American Library Association (ALA) Youth Media book awards are huge.
You can be sure that the books they select are the best-of-the-best. In other words, great choices to add to your child’s collection.
This year, the Newbery Medal went to Dead End In Norvelt, by Jack Gantos. Read more about it, and the runners-up, here.
And the Caldecott Medal was awarded to Chris Raschka, for A Ball For Daisy. More, here. (They don’t have 2012 information posted yet – this announcement was only made this morning - but probably by this afternoon they will.)
Congratulations to all of the ALA winners.
For more information about the ALA awards, and for a look at the 2012 winners in all categories, click here.
“In The Bag!” by Monica Kulling, illustrated by David Parkins
Here is a lovely, empowering book you should read with your kid for a couple of reasons.
First, it’s a terrific book, a good story with wonderful illustrations. Second, it’s empowering for girls. It teaches a young generation—that sometimes can’t believe that women were ever discriminated against in North America—about women’s struggle for equality. Third, it’s a biography–a great way to introduce the genre.
In The Bag! tells the real-life story of American Margaret Knight who, in the mid-1800s, became an inventor.
Kids will enjoy reading about how she invented something we all take for granted: a flat-bottomed paper bag. (Before that, we learn, “bags” were simply scrunched-up cones of paper.) While Knight starts out simply trying to solve a problem, kids will be amazed when she comes up against the “how can a woman be an inventor?!” mindset of the day.
It’s a book that can open up a really interesting dialogue with your kid. Or, at the very least, get him thinking about paper bags a little differently.
This is the video that’s recently gone viral. If you (and your kid) haven’t seen it, you must – it’s lovely. One-minute and 52 seconds of delightful, stop-motion, book-adoration.
Visited the bookstore “Type” in Toronto this morning and got the back-story: Apparently a couple of filmmakers (Sean Ohlenkamp for one) have made these kinds of videos before on a smaller scale. They wanted a larger venue, so they approached the owners of Type, who were happy to accommodate. Type let them take over the store for a number of nights from 9 p.m. until the next morning, when all the books – of course – had to be back on the shelves, in order.
They had about 20 volunteers to help them reshelve each night. (The books didn’t go back by themselves, unfortunately.) It took over a year to edit.
The video came out a couple of days ago and it’s really taken off. Gotten coverage throughout North America. Yay for Type – and books! (And my friend Val, who originally sent me the link to the video!)
My bookshelf and my books have been held captive in my attic for eight years.
Last week I hired a professional organizer. Long-story short, my bookshelf is now where it belongs – in my home-office, with all of my favourite books on it.
There’s the Pelican Shakespeare, with the tissue paper leaves; The Tragedies, The Comedies, The Histories and The Romances. This is the Shakespeare that I used to lie in bed with, cram for my mid-terms with, enjoy with a glass of white wine in the days before I was sophisticated enough for red wine.
Timothy Findley, himself, signed that copy of You Went Away. I stood in line, he signed it, I slammed it shut and I scurried away with my autographed copy, like a squirrel with a treasured nut. Later, I opened it to read my sage’s inscription at my leisure, and share it with my friend. To our amazement, and then hilarity, we could not decipher what on earth he had written. “Cordially free”? I looked at her. We peered at the handwriting again. Cordially free? For years, my girlfriend and I would happily greet each other with, “cordially free!” It was only yesterday that I opened it again, 17 years later, and there – clear as a bell - it says “with cordial feelings.”
There is the copy of Marshall McLuhan’s Counter-Blast. Inside the front cover is a plate: Awarded to Joyce Grant of Woburn Collegiate Institute for Outstanding Achievement in CREATIVE WRITING; Dated this 20th day of February, 1981. A fittingly formal kick-off to what will prove to be a lifelong career in writing (albeit, not every word of which will turn out to be either creative or outstanding).
The first-edition Gone With The Wind from my first husband — now himself, gone with the wind.
My Norton Anthologies, from which I’d proudly slogged through The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost – until someone years later pointed out that both were “abridged,” and doused any hope I had of bragging that I’d read either of them all the way through.
Every book on my shelf tells a story.
I pass my fingers over the embossing on the covers. I open the older books and riffle the pages to smell the memories. The sight of my bookshelf, back where it belongs, by my side in the room where I write each day, almost makes me cry.
And that is why your kid needs a bookshelf of his own.
A beautiful illustration from The Crown On Your Head, by Nancy Tillman
To a pre-reader, words aren’t the main attraction.
As a parent, you can read the words to your child sometimes… and then other times, don’t be afraid to ignore the words.
You can go through an entire picture book with your toddler, pointing to the pictures and talking about them.
Identify the colours. Name some of the items in the picture. Ask her, “what do you see?” or “what’s that?” Let her point something out. (Make a big deal out of it when she does.)
Going through a picture book this way can also help to prevent some of the parent burnout that can come with reading the same picture book over and over with your child.
I recently came across a picture book whose pictures I absolutely adore… but I wasn’t that taken with the words.
It’s called The Crown On Your Head, by Nancy Tillman. It’s got a great premise, too – it talks about a “crown” each of us is born with, that we wear all our lives. The ”crown” signifies that we are important and special.
The book’s message about self-esteem and equality is lovely, and the illustrations are rich and luscious.
It’s a book parents could look at with a baby or a toddler and they wouldn’t necessarily even have to read the words. You could use the premise, point to the crowns on each page, and talk about how your child is special, too. And how we all have a crown, how each person is wearing one and it means that everyone can shine. So nice.
Thank you to Maile Carpenter for inspiring this blog post.
Barbara Reid, Alan Convery (TD), Jo Ellen Bogart, Charlotte Teeple (Exec, Dir. CCBC); image: Joyce Grant
This month, every grade-one child in Canada will receive a free book.
That’s every grade-one child, including those home-schooled, or in any school in the country, private or public.
What’s the catch? There is no catch. This has been going on every year for the past 11 years. A pile of books arrives for the grade ones (and twos, if it’s a split class). That’s more than half a million books—the biggest print run in Canada.
It’s a joint project with TD Bank Group and the Canadian Children’s Book Centre (CCBC). TD picks up the $1-million-plus tab for most of the program.
And it’s always such a great book. This year, it’s Gifts (Cadeaux, translated into French), by Jo Ellen Bogart and plasticine artist Barbara Reid.
Gifts is a book that kids will read over and over again—with an adult or by themselves. It’s great for shared reading because it’s full of lyrical phrases. It’s also great for kids to discover and re-discover because the words and the images have lots of things hidden in them to be found.
Gifts tells the story of a grandmother who travels to different countries over the course of a number of years. She asks her granddaughter, “What would you have me bring?” with the granddaughter asking for impossible souvenirs like, “a rainbow to wear as a ring” from Hawaii and “an iceberg on a string” from the Arctic.
Grandma is incredibly inventive as she comes up with solutions for each request.
The book follows the pair as they both grow older, eventually ending with the girl now a fully-grown adult with a daughter of her own.
There are lots of reasons to get teary-eyed, here. (Not that I am. My contacts are just a bit scratchy.) First, there’s the wonderful, multi-layered story. Then there are the colourful, detailed plasticine images. Then there’s the 500,000 free books. And then there’s this story:
The CCBC and TD get tons of fan letters after they distribute the books each year. One in particular stands out in the memory of TD rep’s Alan Convery.
They’d just distributed the books, a little before the Christmas season a couple of years ago. Convery got a letter from a principal in the Northwest Territories, thanking him. She said that for most of the children, this would be the first book that they would own. And then she added that this would also be the only Christmas gift many of the children would receive that year, since the families in that particular community were having trouble making ends meet.
(The CCBC later shipped the community another supply of different children’s books.)
It’s so important for kids to own their own books. It empowers them. It lets them feel entitled to use books. And statistics show very clearly that there is a link between kids who have their own books and those who go on to higher education.
I heard about this book and thought it sounded interesting.
Long-story (oh-so-long!) short, I ended up having to get a review copy sent to my vacation-hotel in California because the publisher wouldn’t ship to Canada.
Was it worth it? Yes. Memorable characters and interesting premise. Things get a little wild and crazy in the middle, which became a bit distracting for me, but of course that’s just the sort of stuff kids love.
It’s a story about a bunch of gifted kids who run into some bad guys and use their own gifted creations to get away from them.
Here’s my precis.
The School for the Insanely Gifted, by Dan Elish Daphna writes music that puts people into a trance. Harkin has developed a flying car. And Wanda is designing a bridge from New York to Moscow.
If these are the projects the students at the Blatt School for the Insanely Gifted are working on, just imagine what Mr. Blatt himself is creating!
As Daphna and her fellow students prepare for the upcoming Insanity Cup competition, they’ll also have to solve the riddle of her mother’s disappearance and reveal the enormous secret Mr. Blatt is hiding from the world.
Join in a race around the globe as the kids try to outrun the bad guys using their own inventions, clues from Daphne’s mother and their insanely awesome brains.
Probably the thing I like most about this book (besides main characters Daphna and Harkin) is the author. Dan Elish has written a number of kids’ novels, and lives in New York with his wife and two kids; he seems. from our email correspondence when he helped me obtain a copy of his book, like a truly nice guy. Check out his website.
Here is a wonderful trailer for Brian Selznick’s new book, Wonderstruck.
Brian Selznick’s the guy who wrote and illustrated the uber-brilliant The Invention of Hugo Cabret.
1) Read to your child. Every day.
2) Have lots of books in your home.
3) Let your child see you reading.
If you do these three things - even if it's all you do - the research shows that you are on your way to having a kid who loves to read.
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If you’re looking for an activity that will get your kid writing, Breakfast on a Dragon’s Tail, by Martin Springett, is a new and interesting concept book.
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