Anastasia Suen – Page 56 – Booktalking #kidlit

Friday Reads

Picture Book of the Day

The Berenstain Bears Go on Vacation
by Stan Berenstain (Author), Mike Berenstain (Author) and Jan Berenstain (Author, Illustrator)

Booktalk: It’s summer vacation, and the Berenstain Bears are off to the seashore for sun and fun. (Last chance to read this before school starts next week!)

Snippet:
They see the sea.
They hear it roar.
There is something special
about the shore.

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Poetry Friday

Poetry Friday

This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by Dori Reads

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Chapter Book of the Day

Junior Scientists: Experiment with Heat (Science Explorer Junior)
by Sophie Lockwood (Author)
32 pages

Booktalk: Find out how scientists work by doing simple experiments. (It’s been over 100 degrees here for WEEKS so this seemed like a good book for all of the kids going back to school on Monday…)

Snippet:
We will use the scientific method to learn more about heat. Heat affects almost everything in our world. We feel it in our weather. We use it to prepare our food.

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STEM Friday

STEM Friday

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
This week’s STEM Friday Round-up is hosted by Simply Science

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My Book of the Week

Block Party

Block Party by Anastasia Suen
A Bebop Easy Reader

Reading level: Guided Reading™: E DRA: 6 Reading Recovery®: 7
Paperback: 16 pages
Publisher: Bebop Books

Join two friends, Tanya and Rosa, as they ride in a patriotic bike parade through their neighborhood and end up at fun-filled block party.

Fiesta de barrio

Also available in Spanish as Fiesta de barrio.

Activities:

Host your own block party.

Have a block party for kids.

Use these Block Party book lesson plans.

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Literary Links

Free “back to school” e-books including Portable MFA, Organized Teacher, Happy Classroom, (and 7 more!) til 8/22

Profiles of real scientists at the Smithsonian make science come alive for students

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My NEW book is here!
Read and Write Sports: Readers Theatre and Writing Activities for Grades 3-8
Copyright © 2011 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

Hot Topics columns update

I’ve added links for my latest Hot Topics columns to my webpage.

Batter Up!

Hot Topics: Batter Up!

Summer at the Ocean

Hot Topics: Summer at the Ocean

And a column that led to a new Write a Comic workshop!

Creating Comics

Hot Topics: Creating Comics

You can have these columns sent to you by email each month by subscribing to Booklist Quick Tips for Schools & Libraries newsletter.

Here’s the 411: Booklist’s Quick Tips for Schools & Libraries delivers easy, practical ideas and activities that help you integrate children’s and young-adult books into the curriculum, and many of the resources may already be on your shelves. With thematic bibliographies, author interviews, and useful ideas for connecting kids and books, each monthly e-newsletter also features a sneak peek at what’s coming up in future issues of Book Links and Booklist magazines. You will receive approximately 12 newsletters per year.

My NEW book is here! Read and Write Sports: Readers Theatre and Writing Activities for Grades 3-8
Copyright © 2011 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

A new picture book!

I have a new picture book on the way! Road Work Ahead

Road Work Ahead

This one has been a lo-o-o-ong time coming. I started it when my son was 2…and now he’s 27! When he was 2, he loved to look at all of the trucks and machines along the road, so I started snapping pics for him, and made him a “look book” that later turned into a picture book. I loved that book, so I kept rewriting it, and sending it out…and now 25 years later, it’s a book you can hold in your hand.

Road Work Ahead is coming out with Viking Children’s Books on September 15, 2011! Viking published my very first picture book, Man on the Moon, in 1997, so I feel like I have come home.

The publisher, Regina Hayes, asked me to write a new beginning and ending, so we knew why the little boy was on the road looking at all of the road work. It also added a who, by showing us the little boy before he got into the car. I needed all 6 Ws (who, what, when, where, why and how) to make it a story, not just a list of machines along the road. Stories sell, but lists…well, not so much. Adding 2 short stanzas made it work. (A good editor can see what your story needs and give you the push you need to make it work!)

So I added my mother and her famous homemade oatmeal cookies to the book. (We used to eat them right after they came out of the oven. Yum!) Driving to Grandma’s house for fresh, warm, homemade oatmeal cookies is definitely a reason to keep going despite all of the traffic delays due to the work along the road. And when you get to eat them at the end of the book, ah, sweet reward!

Jannie Ho, the illustrator, and I, have created a Road Work Ahead Facebook page, and we post a new link with news, updates, or activities for kids there each week. This week I posted a link to the August 1st Publishers Weekly review.

Here’s a snippet of the PW review: A batch of Grandma’s homemade oatmeal cookies beckons, but for this backseat narrator, the sights and sounds along the road to her house are equally compelling: “Road work ahead./ Move over. Go slow./ Jackhammers crack./ Look at them go.”

(Notice how the change I made is mentioned in the review! The quoted text is the original beginning of the story. I had jumped too far into the action. What worked better was taking a few steps back and letting the reader know who the narrator was and why he was on the road in the first place. As I always say, “Writing is rewriting!” And a good editor makes ALL the difference!)

My NEW book is here! Read and Write Sports: Readers Theatre and Writing Activities for Grades 3-8
Copyright © 2011 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

August 2011 online workshops

I begin new workshops on the first Wednesday of the month.
The August 2011 workshops will begin on Wednesday, August 3rd.

Which workshop is best for you?

New to children’s books?
Learn about the different types of children’s books in the Children’s Book Genres Workshop.

Ready to write?
Write and edit your book in the Intensive Picture Book Workshop or the Children’s Novels Workshop.

An online workshop does not have a physical meeting place or classroom hours. You will have 8 weeks to complete the 6 lessons in this online workshop. Turn your lessons in as you complete them, the next day…or on the due date two weeks later.

The August workshop dates are August 3-September 21.

My NEW book is here! Read and Write Sports: Readers Theatre and Writing Activities for Grades 3-8
Copyright © 2011 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

Join me on Google+

Have you heard about the new social media platform called Google Plus? I joined over the weekend and I have to say, I like it. It has the best of Facebook and Twitter.

I give it 4+!

Like Twitter, it allows people to connect with to me without any “approval” process. (In Facebook I have to take action on each and every connection before anyone is connected to me.)
Like Facebook and Twitter, it allows me to create lists…but the biggest difference is, I can read each list by itself! This is HUGE! (And also why I have churned through several Facebook and Twitter accounts over the years. I like to see info in small bytes. So I tried to make an account for each part of my life, but the people I wanted to connect with added themselves to the social media list they found first, whether it was for their “type” or not. So I regrouped and regrouped time and again… and now… I can have my lists… and
I can mail to ONE list at a time. (This is not possible on Twitter and too difficult to manage on Facebook.)
And to top it all off, I can EDIT my comments AFTER I post. (I can’t type and spell at the same time, so this is another HUGE development for me.)

So about those circles… how do you know who is where?

Well, I’m already on the Book Blogger Google + list and the Kidlitosphere folks to follow list. The Children’s Book Illustrators have a list and Susan Taylor Brown also has a Poets to follow list.

For me, the next step is, creating a new “list” for my picture book writers. If you’re on Google Plus and you WRITE picture books (whether you are published yet or not) add yourself to my G+ picture book writers list! Thanks!

My NEW book is here! Read and Write Sports: Readers Theatre and Writing Activities for Grades 3-8
Copyright © 2011 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

It’s STEM Friday!

I have a new blog meme logo on my Chapter Book of the Day blog today:

STEM Friday

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

I write a monthly column for Booklist’s Quick Tips for Schools and Libraries and as a result have stacks and stacks of GREAT nonfiction books. As you know, I created Nonfiction Monday a few years ago, and now we have a new Nonfiction Monday Round-up host each week.

Nonfiction Monday

The only thing is, once a week is NOT enough when you have all of these great books to share. So…I added another day for nonfiction! (Why not?) On Monday at Chapter Book of the Day I blog about social studies and on Fridays I blog about science and mathematics. Win-win!

(I’ve been blogging STEM Friday books since May 20, so I’ve gone back and added the logo to the older posts as well. I also wanted to send a very special thanks to my daughter, the designer, who created this new logo for me. You’re a genius! 🙂 )

My NEW book is here! Read and Write Sports: Readers Theatre and Writing Activities for Grades 3-8
Copyright © 2011 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

July 2011 online workshops

I begin new workshops on the first Wednesday of the month.
The July 2011 workshops will begin on Wednesday, July 6th.

Which workshop is best for you?

New to children’s books?
Learn about the different types of children’s books in the Children’s Book Genres Workshop.

Ready to write?
Write and edit your book in the Intensive Picture Book Workshop or the Children’s Novels Workshop.

The July workshop dates are July 6-August 24.

Find a new activity each week at our new Road Work Ahead Facebook page
Copyright © 2011 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

Going to ALA!

After months of planning, ALA is finally here! The conference begins today in New Orleans. As it says on the ALA website, “Scheduled for June 23-28, 2011 in New Orleans, the Annual Conference is the world’s largest event for the library community. Bringing together more than 25,000 librarians, educators, authors, publishers, literacy experts, illustrators and the leading suppliers to the market, the Annual Conference gives you a once-a-year opportunity to advance your career and improve your library.”

I’ll be there with my Nonfiction Book Blast panel. The ten Nonfiction Book Blast panel authors will each booktalk their books and provide a handout of an activity to accompany the book. We invite everyone at ALA to attend our panel presentation–it’s going to be a blast!

Nonfiction Book Blast: Booktalks and Activities for Your Library

Start school with new booktalks and activities from ten nonfiction authors: April Pulley Sayre (Rah, Rah, Radishes), Kelly Milner Halls (In Search of Sasquatch), Deborah Heiligman (Charles and Emma), Loree Griffin Burns (The Hive Detectives), Carla Killough McClafferty (The Many Faces of George Washington), Christine Taylor-Butler (Magnets), Shirley Duke (You Can’t Wear These Genes), Darcy Pattison (Prairie Storms), Carla Mooney (Explorers of the New World) and Anastasia Suen (Read and Write Sports). (Handouts)

Sunday June 26, 2011 8 am – 10 am
Morial Convention Center Room 243

After the panel, I will be signing my new 2011 books!

10:30-11:30am: ABC-Clio, Booth #2740

Read and Write Sports: Readers Theatre and Writing Activities for Grades 3-8

After years of helping students prepare for the state writing test, I have created a sports “reading and writing” book for classrooms and libraries. There are ten sports in Read and Write Sports: Readers Theatre and Writing Activities for Grades 3-8, so you can use it once a month during the school year. The chapters are filled with short mentor text examples for narrative, expository and descriptive writing exercises and the appendix has printables for all of the graphic organizer charts and student instruction pages.

1-2pm: Kane Miller, Booth #1147

All-Star Cheerleaders (Book #1) Tick Tock, Taylor

I’ll be signing the first book in my new sports series for girls, All-Star Cheerleaders (Book #1) Tick Tock, Taylor. (Books 2 and 3 are being illustrated now, and I’ll finish writing book 4 in July. These 6-8 year old girls are all on the same squad at the Big D Elite gym. Each book features a different girl.)

2-3pm: Lee & Low, Booth #1132

I have 2 new easy readers with Bebop Books, the school imprint of Lee and Low Books. The first one is a Level A book about healthy eating:

Can You Eat a Rainbow?

¿Puedes comer el arco iris?

Also available in Spanish: ¿Puedes comer el arco iris?

This Level B easy reader is about the Chinese New Year parade. (2012 is the Year of the Dragon!)

Golden Dragon Parade

El desfile del dragón dorado

In Spanish: El desfile del dragón dorado

Two more in September!

My first Boxcar Children book, The Zombie Project, comes out in September, so I have my Silly Zombie Story Writing Workshop page ready for schools and libraries to use in October. (It’s NOT about the zombie in the book. It’s a silly writing prompt: When I saw the zombie on Halloween… with printable graphic organizer charts for you to use.)

The Zombie Project

And last but not least, my new picture book with Viking will also come out in September!

Road Work Ahead

The illustrator, Jannie Ho, and I have created a Road Work Ahead Facebook page so we can share book news and activities once a week until the book comes out. I have the first activity up right now, and Jannie will share a new one next week (a coloring page from the book!) Yay!

Richardson Public Library 2011 Young Authors

On June 10, I will teach a writing workshop for the Richardson Public Library Young Authors program. Young adults entering the 5th-9th grades will write and illustrate a picture book that becomes part of the library’s collection. The creator of the book is the first one who can check out the hardbound copy. After that, anyone can check it out!

I have been teaching this workshop for several years, and each time the students come up with some fabulous books. I can’t wait to see what they create this year!

June 2011 online workshops

I begin new workshops on the first Wednesday of the month.
The June 2011 workshops will begin on Wednesday, June 1st.

Which workshop is best for you?

New to children’s books?
Learn about the different types of children’s books in the Children’s Book Genres Workshop.

Ready to write?
Write and edit your book in the Intensive Picture Book Workshop or the Children’s Novels Workshop.

The June workshop dates are June 1-July 20.