Booktalk: Sophie lives in the city, and her vegetables come from the supermarket. When she goes to visit her grandparents in the countryside — she discovers how things grow!
Snippet:
After breakfast, Grandad John took her out into the garden and gave her lots of tools, all just the right size.
“Oh, thank you!” said Sophie.
Grandad John showed Sophie a small patch of garden where she could grow her own vegetables.
“Before sowing the seeds, you need to rake the ground.”
Booktalk: Crackle! Crackle! Crunch! What’s hatching from that egg? It’s a young bar-tailed godwit. She will spend the summer in Alaska learning to fly, find her own food, and escape from scary predators. Her long, long journey begins in October when she flies to New Zealand. This 7,000-mile flight is the longest nonstop bird migration ever recorded. Follow along on her amazing voyage!
Snippet: The little female bar-tailed godwit at last breaks free of her egg. She steps into the world on long, wobbly legs. It’s nearly midnight, but it’s June in Alaska and still light. A cool wind blows the chick’s downy coat. She shivers, lifts her beak and squeaks, “Peep! Peep!”
STEM + the Arts = STEAM
10 Myths About Teaching STEM Books and How You Can Teach STEM in Your Classroom Now
Mark your calendars! STEM Friday is participating in the 2015 Summer of Learning professional development series brought to you by Share My Lesson. This free AFT webinar offers one hour of professional development credit.
Booktalk: His white teacher tells her all-black class, You’ll all wind up porters and waiters. What did she know? Gordon Parks is most famous for being the first black director in Hollywood. But before he made movies and wrote books, he was a poor African American looking for work. When he bought a camera, his life changed forever. He taught himself how to take pictures and before long, people noticed. His success as a fashion photographer landed him a job working for the government. In Washington DC, Gordon went looking for a subject, but what he found was segregation. He and others were treated differently because of the color of their skin. Gordon wanted to take a stand against the racism he observed. With his camera in hand, he found a way.
Snippet:
Twenty-five years old and all but broke
when a magazine spread
about migrant farm workers
inspires him to buy a used camera. That $7.50
is the best money he will ever spend.
Booktalk: Sometimes Sophie worries — not during the day when she is busy with family and friends, but at night when everything is calm and quiet. Her family all try to help, but somehow they just make her worries worse.
Until her mother thinks of a new approach … that might just involve an elephant or two! But wait, don’t think about purple elephants, whatever you do!
Snippet:
“How silly,” thought Sophie, but when she lay down, closed her eyes and tried not the think about purple elephants.
Straight away a friendly purple elephant appeared in her mind.
Booktalk: After he nearly drowns in a parking-lot puddle, Dinnn Needles is fearful of many things, including flying.
Snippet:
On quiet afternoon, as the family sat next to their puddle under a cloudless sky, Dinnn heard a dragonfly flying overhead. It made an awful sound as it went past.
Dinnn watched the faces of his mother and father closely. They were terrified.
Booktalk: Look at the Reconstruction period through the life of one of the first African-American congressmen.
Snippet: Searching for more satisfying work, he went from waiter to cook –ah, the freedom to make such a move!– then from cook to better-paid pantryman on board the Altamont a Union transport steamer.
The Ocean Story
by John Seven (Author) and Jana Christy (Illustrator)
Booktalk: The story of the ocean is as old as the earth itself. Overfishing, pollution, and oil spills have highlighted the need to take better care of our oceans so that the story can continue to be told.
Snippet:
(The words on this page are:)
BOY: Why is the ocean so big?
MAN: It needs to be big to hold a story that is very old.
You are part of the ocean’s story too. Find out How You Can Help the Ocean and see “how your actions have an impact.” Make a poster showing one thing that you can do right now and “share what you’ve learned with friends and family.”
It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
Booktalk: Buster Bickles’s big ideas are always getting him into trouble. But when Buster gets to test the newly invented What-if Machine, anything Buster imagines becomes reality…
Snippet:
From the moment he woke up,
Buster Buster Bickles was full of big ideas.
“Hey, Mom, Look! I’m a flesh-eating robot!”
“Mom, look out!
Laundry Monster!”
“Hey, Mom!
EGGS-ray vision!”
STEM + the Arts = STEAM
STEAM DIY Activity
Try The What-if Machine online and create some silly scenarios to write and illustrate.
My Dog Is the Best
by Laurie Ann Thompson (Author) and Paul Schmid (Illustrator)
Booktalk: What do you get when you combine one energetic, enthusiastic little boy with his sleepy but tolerant dog? Unconditional love.
Using simple words and spare illustrations, My Dog Is the Best celebrates the special bond that exists between a young child and a beloved family pet. It’s the heartwarming story of two best friends. . . told by a boy with a very active imagination.
Snippet:
He reads books.
I’ve known Laurie for ten years. (We started working together in 2005 when she signed up for her first online writing workshop.) Needless to say I was quite pleased when she emailed me last month to let me know she had another new book coming out! After I asked her if could share it on my blog, Laurie invited me to be a part of this blog tour and graciously agreed to answer my three blog tour questions…
Q. When did you start writing?
A. Well, I guess in some ways I’ve always been a writer. My mom says that before I could even read my favorite thing to do was tell her stories, on and on, hour after hour. Later, in school, I loved every assignment related to writing. As a teen, I kept a journal, including lots of really terrible, angsty poetry. And, just for fun, I pursued a technical writing minor in college. Still, I never considered writing as a career until I was pregnant with my first child. I didn’t know much about having babies or raising them, so that became my big research project. I read everything I could get my hands on, and—of course—passed all of that useful knowledge on to my friends who already had children. One day my best friend said, “You know, you should really write all of this stuff down for people. It seems like such a waste to just tell me.” I realize now that it was probably just to shut me up (tactful, isn’t she?), but her comment set me on a new course, and I started querying parenting magazines. After my child was born, however, I fell in love with the children’s books I was reading at bedtime every night. I knew I’d found my calling.
Q. Describe your writing process.
A. It really varies, since I write so many different kinds of things. If I’m setting out to write long-form nonfiction, such as Be a Changemaker: How to Start Something that Matters, I start with research, then I outline, then I draft the proposal. Finally, when I’ve worked on that for a long time and given it a lot of time to stew in my brain, then I start drafting sample chapters. Inevitably, that changes the proposal and the outline, but I just can’t start with the actual writing until I have a vision of how all of the pieces are going to come together in the end.
A. For picture books, even nonfiction like Emmanuel’s Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah, it’s more about trial and error, jumping in and playing with the story. I’ll usually just do just enough research or idea generation to have a basic idea of where I’m headed, then I’ll just start drafting. When I find a general structure that I like, then I’ll go back and research to find the facts and details that I need to flesh it out (for nonfiction) or I’ll work on developing the story arc and characters (for fiction).
A. In either case, my favorite part is revision. I was a software engineer before switching to writing, and revision feels just like debugging. I love taking something that is “broken” and fixing it so it’s just right, removing all of the errors getting all the parts to work perfectly alone and together as a whole.
Q. Tell us about your latest book.
A. I initially wrote the manuscript for my latest book, My Dog Is the Best, as an assignment for your Easy Readers/Early Chapter Books workshop! It’s very different from what I usually write. Be a Changemaker and Emmanuel’s Dream are both serious nonfiction, while My Dog Is the Best is sweet, humorous fiction. I wanted to play with simple language for very young readers, while using emotions and scenes to which many young children could relate. I tweaked a bit for rhythm, pattern, and word choice, but the draft came out almost the same as you can see it in its final form in the book today. I was pleasantly surprised to have something I liked result from an assignment in a genre I wasn’t used to writing in, and even more pleasantly surprised when others liked it, too!
Thanks so much for visiting the blog, Laurie! The book is adorable!
STEM + the Arts = STEAM
STEAM DIY Activity
The main character in My Dog Is the Best is a “maker” too. After he read a dinosaur book, he made a dinosaur costume he made for his dog. For your STEAM DIY Activity, you can make a costume for your dog, or make a small dog out of clay. If you have an adult to help you, try making a polymer clay puppy with this YouTube tutorial. (Click on the SEE MORE link under the video on YouTube to see the materials list.)
Visit all of the stops on the My Dog Is the Best book tour!
