Super Bowl Sunday Salon

Photo from Seattle PI

Weather: overcast and cold. It has been rainy all week. This coming week the weatherman tells us will get cold, maybe even a flake of snow. We'll see.

Super Bowl today: The Seattle Seahawks vs Denver Broncos in the big professional football game. In case you are wondering who we are rooting for, it is the Seahawks. And they deserve to win. Why? Because this is only the second time they've ever been in this final game of the season. They are the only professional football team in this region of the country, so all of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, Montana deserve to have a winning team at least once! The team has really come together this year and so has the fan base. There are 12th Man flags everywhere, including our house. We will be watching the game with relatives who live nearby. Go Hawks!

Feed My Starving Children: is an organization that puts together nutritional food packets (called Manna Packets). The food is shipped to areas around the world experiencing high poverty and to feed hungry children. The branch in our town supplies meals for children in Haiti. A group of about 30 from our church donated a few hours on Friday to help put together the packets. We put together 936 packets which is 5616 meals. The room was electric with God's spirit as over 200 people packed more than 78,000 meals in less than two hours -- enough to feed one nutritious meal to 215 children each day for a year. What a night.  (See photo of us with our hairnets.)

Nearing the end of untangling the mess caused by the library system outage. It was down for almost six weeks, but the messes that were made to student accounts are still an issue. This past week we tried to finally identify all the weird fines and reassign books that were wiped off accounts. We are almost there. Then we can turn our attention back to just regular operations of running a high school library.

Printz book awards announced: The ALA made it's grand announcements of all the book awards for the year. Three of our Mock Printz books were selected, including the winner Midwinterblood by Marcus Zusak. Two honor books on our reading list were:  Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell and Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner.

Tailgate party at church: there was a lot of excitement at church today around the Seahawks game so we played it up. Our coffee fellowship was called a tailgate party and everyone was encouraged to wear the team colors. Children were called up to sing a song and most were sporting their Seahawks gear.

Notice all the Seahawks emblems and colors on the kids

100 years-100 Books: Our local library celebrated its 100-year anniversary last year. To mark the occasion, patrons were encouraged to read 100 books during the year. Those who accomplished the feat were honored in a reception yesterday and given a t-shirt, a shopping bag, and a new library card with the recognition on it. I was among those honored. Take a look at all my new gear and at the photo of what the first library in Puyallup looked like.

The first library in Puyallup.
 Books were loaned out of this shack!

I'm part of the town's 100 Book Club!

Soup of the week: Thai Shrimp and Corn Soup. It was different but good. I am trying to make a big effort at varying up the soups I make so we don't get sick of eating soup all the time. I learned a new skill making this soup, too, which was how to add eggs to soup to give them that stringy egg look. Easy.

Books read this week:

• March (Book 1) by John Lewis...a graphic biography about this famous Congressman and his work with Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights movement. I recommend it.
• The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell...not a favorite. I won't be recommending this book to anyone. If you have read this book and liked it, I'd like to hear from you.

Currently reading:

• Allegiant by Veronica Roth...this is book three in the Divergent series and it is my audiobook this week. I'm about half finished and the action just picked up.
• How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig...I am enjoying this book quite a lot. In fact I am currently working on memorizing a few lines from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and nodding violet grows,
Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet muskroses and with eglantine.

Have a hallelujah kind of day! 

Your teachers love...

Snapshot Saturday

I asked the teachers of the school to give me titles of books that they love and then made a display of those books yesterday after school. I can't wait for Monday when the students come in and they see all the books their teachers love. I also sent these photos out via e-mail to all the teachers hoping that all those who didn't participate after the first round would jump in now!

Snapshot Saturday is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads

2014 Printz Award winners...a little editorial comment

The American Library Association announced its book awards yesterday. After a long and tense Fall the Printz awards were finally revealed.

Award winner:

• Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick 

Honor books:

• Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell 
• Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner 
• Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susan Cokal
• Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool

My thoughts:
     I was thrilled that three of our Mock Printz reading list selections were chosen, including the winner: Midwinterblood, Eleanor & Park, and Maggot Moon. Every year I worry that I will lead my students through reading books that are not even considered for the real Printz Award. In addition, several of my readers identified these three books as potential winners and fought for them valiantly. Midwinterblood wasn't anyone's favorite book but several students recognized its literary excellence.
     I was also thrilled that Eleanor and Park won an honor. In the weeks leading up to the Printz announcement yesterday the blogosphere was abuzz with chatter about books that were worthy and those that were not worthy of the big prize. Know-it-alls kept saying that they didn't think that E and P was good enough, that it wasn't perfect. I am so relieved that the committee didn't listen to all that chatter. After my deep disappointment over The Fault in Our Stars being passed over last year, I was really worried. Whew!
     Maggot Moon, which won the Carnegie Medal in UK back in June, was a very deserving book that didn't get the love I think it deserved during the period of chatter this past month. Students, especially my male readers, recognized it as superior writing, though many confessed that they weren't completely clear about all the action in it.
      The books I was sad/disappointed/dismayed that didn't receive any award were Boxers/Saints by Yang, and Far Far Away by McNeal. I am a fan of the latter book and thought it deserved something but one of the winners is a fairy tale, so it is understandable.  But Boxers and Saints were so, so excellent.  My only thought as to why the books didn't win is because alone each book was only half the story and the committee would have had to award two spots for the set or leave them both off. I'm guessing that is what they decided, two or none.
      By and large, however, I am quite pleased with this year's list of Printz winners. Congratulations to all the winning authors. What do you think of the list?

Read the ALA Young Adult Award Winners Challenge...just announced today, January 27

Just announced today: the American Library Association Book Awards. Join me in reading all the YA winners this year. Several of the categories have winners that I would consider Middle Grade books. I will note those and you can decide if you want to skip them. Sign up to join me by adding your name and website or email in the comment section.

See the whole list at the ALA website here. Honor books for each category will be listed there. This challenge is to read just the winners.

YA Titles, ALA Awards

1. Michael L. Printz Award (Best YA literature of the year) 

• Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

2. Schneider Family Book Award (Living with a disability)

• Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein

3. Alex Awards for the 10 best adult books that appeal to teen audiences (Pick one of ten)

• Brewster by Slouka; Death of Bees by O'Donnell; Golden Boy: a novel by Tarttelin; Help for the Haunted by Searles; Lexicon by Barry; Life of Tao by Chu; Mother, Mother: a novel by Zailckus; Relish by Knisley; The Sea of Tranquility by Millay; The Universe Verse Alex Wood by Extence.

4. Margaret A. Edwards Award (Read one book by the winning author)

• Markus Zusak (Choose one: Book Thief; I Am the Messenger; Fighting Ruben Wolfe; Getting the Girl)

5. Mildred L. Batchelder Award (Translation)

• Mister Orange by Truus Matti, translated from Dutch by Laura Watkinson (Book is aimed at the young end of YA or possibly middle grade readers)

6. Stonewall Children's and Young Adult Literature (LGBT)

• Fat Angie by E. Charlton-Trujillo

7. William C. Morris Award (First novel by author)

• Charm and Strange by Stephanie Kuehn

8. YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults

• Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Capture the World's Most Notorious Nazi by Neal Bascomb

9. Odyssey Award (audiobook)

• Scowler by Daniel Kraus, read by Kirby Heyborne

10.Pura Belpre Author Award

• Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina

11. Coretta Scott King Author Award (African American Author)

• P.S. Be Eleven by Rita Williams-Garcia (Aimed at middle grade or junior readers)

Sunday Salon, January 26

Lego Church

Weather: sunny and cold; it was foggy until 3 PM. Yesterday was gorgeous. Sunny and warm, around 50 degrees. People were out washing their cars, including us.

Pomegranates: I've decided that pomegranates are the perfect diet food because they take so much work to eat with each seed being so difficult to extract from the fruit without popping it. My husband bought some pomegranate yogurt and it not only had the fruit and flesh but the seeds. That is not my idea of a ladylike way to eat ones yogurt---taking a bite of yogurt and then spitting out the seeds. I just took a look at the health benefits and I'd say this is a very worthy fruit to eat.

Church leadership retreat: yesterday I attended a one-day workshop on church leadership. It really was well-done and gave me a lot to think about. One of the gems that has caused me to pause and think is the issue of people that volunteer to do everything at church (or in any organization) make it so that others won't step up. Our church is going through a time of change. One thing is for sure, we are not lego church. (See picture above.)

Mock Printz Workshop: Thursday, January 23rd after school, 25 of the 52 participants stayed after school and we talked books and voted on the books they thought would win the Printz Award this year.  That announcement comes tomorrow. The students passion for books and reading was palpable. It gives me goosebumps to think about it.  What fun.  If you want to know how I go about doing a Mock Printz event, here are the steps I follow. I wrote this up last year. The results of our 2014 Mock Printz vote is listed here.

Jane Austen week is coming soon: right after the Mock Printz was over a girl came up to me and asked when Jane Austen week is going to be this year. I was so tired from the big event I couldn't get my brain around turning around immediately to next big event in the life of my library. But on my drive home I thought about it and decided that she was right. We need to turn our attention to the next thing before we lose the momentum. So stay tuned for details soon.

Spicy soups the order the week: Mulligatawny Soup which is an Indian-spiced soup with lots of veggies, and Senegalese Peanut soup which has pureed garbanzo beans and peanut butter along with more curry. Tonight we are having roasted vegetables---a new favorite dish to make.

Lacuna at book club a hit: This month my SOTH Book Club read Barbara Kingsolver's Lacuna which is over 500 pages on the dense topics of the politics of the first half of the twentieth century, mainly in Mexico and United States. It touched on the labor movement, socialism, Trotsky, Communism, and McCarthyism. I was just sure that I would be the only one to finish the book, let alone like it. But I was wrong. We had our best book club discussion ever. Of the fourteen gals in attendance, only two didn't like it/finish it. Everyone else really liked it and our discussion was so stimulating.

The Hobbit, Part two---my hubby and I finally got out to see the second of three parts of The Hobbit. I enjoyed it but it didn't seem to follow the book very well.

Books completed this week:

• The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown---last week I reported that reading this book was a little like doing homework. Around page 250 the narrative finally picked up and I was able to quickly finish the book. It is a very inspiring story, worth the effort to read it. A RHS book club selection for this coming Wednesday.
• The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje---a thought-provoking book about events that change the whole trajectory of our lives. This is about a boy who has a 21-day voyage from Ceylon to Great Britain in the 1950s and how this trip changed his life. Another SOTH book club selection

Currently reading:

• Allegiant by Veronica Roth, It is the third book in the very hot Divergent series. This is my audiobook selection right now.
• The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell---yet another RHS book club selection. This one I am not enjoying. I sincerely hope it improves soon or I think we have a dud on our hands.
• March (Book One) by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, with illustrations by Nate Powell---this graphic biography is about the early life of Congressman John Lewis and how he became involved in the Civil Rights movement.

Prayers for: our friend Marty and his wife, Janet. Marty has Lupus and is not responding to any treatments. Janet is so frustrated and sad.

Prayer for the week: "O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by aths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that you hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."---from the Lutheran Worshipbook

Have a lovely week. Look for the ALA Award book announcements tomorrow!  Can't wait!

2014 Mock Printz...the results are here

Today was the Mock Printz Workshop at GKHS!

Before I give you the results of our votes, let me tell you a little about the event.

Around 25 students joined me after school for two and a half hours of bookish fun. I started with an introduction to the Printz Award and talked about literary excellence. Next I asked seniors to read a portion of what the Printz committee said about some of the winning books in the past. I reminded them, with the exception of Looking for Alaska, most Printz winners aren't the most popular books of the year. I wanted them to hold this in their minds as we started to talk about the books. Next we voted without any discussion. Students were asked to only vote for their favorite book that they read. We were working off a reading list of 17 books. Most kids only read five of the books. I wanted them to identify what they liked in their favorite before they were swayed by talk from louder voices in the room.

At this point only three books were kicked off the list because no one voted for them. Now the book discussions began and kids were very articulate and passionate. After our second round of voting our winner was very clear. We continued our discussion to select three honor books. Two books that didn't end up with enough votes to make our list were valiantly fought for by several students, In the Shadow of the Blackbird by Winter, and The Summer Prince by Johnson. At this point a school administrator walked through the library. I was so proud of the passion this group of students showed toward books and reading and how well they articulated their arguments for their choices.

After the event was over and students were packing up to head home, two students stopped off the ask me how one becomes a high school librarians because THEY WANT TO BE ONE.  How fun! After a super fun bookish event to have a student recognize what a cool job I have.

Now for the results:

Winner of the GKHS Mock Printz Award:

Winger by Andrew Smith--- students just gushed their praise of this book. One student spoke for the group when he said that the author got teenagers just right. It was spot on.  They could imagine having the conversations, or being in the exact situations that were part of the story. The language, the drinking, the peer pressure, all of it was perfect,  just right.








Honor Books:

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell--- students actually didn't talk about this book as much as I expected but they sure voted for it. One girl said that this was by far the most touching book of the year. Another commented about the wonderful use of two narrators. Some students were unsure what they thought of the ambiguous ending. Others felt that it wasn't ambiguous at all.

Far Far Away by Tom McNeal--- three of the five senior boys on the team argued passionately for this book. They were very convincing and it ended up tying E & P as our second choice. They felt the development of the plot was so clever. McNeal obviously understands fairy tales.

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick--- students felt that this was such an important story and the characters were well developed.










My one disappointment of the day was that Boxers/Saints had only one advocate. It was a late addition to the reading list so only a hand full of kids read the set. Unfortunately only one of these students was able to attend the event today. She just couldn't sway votes her way.

Now we wait for the actual Printz Award announcement on January 27th. I sure hope that we picked a few of the winners!

Top Ten Tuesday: My publishing wishlist

My reading wishlist could be summed up in a few words: more books for high school boys!

More specifically:

1. Adventure books for high school boys. I can't tell you how many times I have heard boys ask for books like the last book they liked, Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. There are adventure book out there but most are written at and geared toward the middle grade boy. 
2. Sports books for high school boys. They don't have to have a romantic aspect to them either, or an emphasis on steroids. How about a sports book where a kid works hard and makes the team and learns about himself in the process.
3. More teen mysteries where the main characters are boys. It is such an odd thing. Girls will enjoy books where the main character is either sex, but boys seem to only want to read books with male protagonists. So we need more of those type of books.
4. More nonfiction written for high school researchers. It is my observation that publishers of nonfiction either gear their books toward middle grade researchers or adults, skipping over high school readers. Now don't get me wrong, high schoolers are happy to use middle level books for their research so they don't have to work very hard to find the information. But we need to encourage students to read at or a little above their grade level, not below, particularly in this day and age of Core Standards.
5. More humorous books with male lead characters. I can't emphasize enough how important this request is. Boys love humorous books best and there just aren't enough of them to go around.
6. More books about Greek and Roman mythology. Boys love Rick Riordan books. Once they are done with his series they want to read something similar. Just wish these books were written at a higher level.
7. Books set in Pacific Islands. We have a lot of students whose heritage is the Pacific Islands (especially Hawaii, Samoa, and Philippines.) It is difficult to find books in these settings where the main characters are high schoolers.
8. Books about young soldiers. There are many of these books being published right now, but keep them coming. Boys want to read about the horrors of war and the heroic acts of young soldiers. These books are very popular in the library especially since we have a strong JROTC program at our school.

Not ten this week but if the publishers would get busy on my list, I'd be one happy librarian.

Sunday Salon...January 19, 2014

12th-man flag proudly displayed on our house. We are part of the 12th-man fans of the Seattle Seahawks.

Weather: foggy and cold. Yesterday was lovely, though. Clear with blue skies, the mountain looked spectacular.

12th-man: Seattle Seahawks (NFL football team) fans are called the 12th-man because they are so enthusiastic, loud, and spirited. It is as if the team has one extra man on the field with them for every home game. Everywhere in the Seattle area one can find 12th-man flags flying, including our house. (See photo above.) Our Christmas lights this year were blue and green. Don left them up and now they are Seahawks lights with a spotlight on the 12th-man flag. Go Hawks!

Musical memories: Yesterday as I sat in the chair at the hair salon I listened to the music in the background and was treated to a rush of musical memories that took me back to hppy times in my life:

• Eleanor Rigby (The Beatles)---when my parents were missionaries in West Africa our aunt sent my sister Kathy the Revolver album by the Beatles. It was our first Beatles album and we played it endlessly. Listening to Eleanor Rigby instantly called up that time, living in Liberia with my family yet loving the popular music of the day.

• A Horse with No Name (America)---when I was a senior in high school I went to an America concert with my friends. I was such a huge fan I uncharacteristically stood on my chair and screamed.

• Margaritaville (Jimmy Buffet)---Don and I went to a Jimmy Buffet concert at the amphitheater on the gorge near George, Washington about 150 miles from our home. It was a warm evening as we sat on the grass and ate our picnic dinner and watched people around us getting drunk. I wore my parrot earrings. When the concert was over, and it was a very dark night, we couldn't find our car because the landmark, a big motorhome, had moved. So we wandered around the field doubling as a parking lot. It is a funny memory.
• Below is a darling YouTube video of a young Elvis fan. Do you have a happy musical memory? Please share it in the comment section.

  

From the kitchen: lots of soup. Especially yummy---Coconut Chicken Curry soup. Also I made a delicious batch of chicken cacciatore with lots of vegetables so I could eat more with less guilt.

Books finished this week:

• Round House by Louise Erdrich ---a modern classic, for sure. Can't wait to discuss this one with my book group.
• Make Good Art by Neil Gaiman, designed by Chip Kidd---a graduation speech given by Gaiman last year, the book is a graphic design treasure.
• I Could Chew on This and Other Poems by Dogs by Francesco Marciuliano---bad poems but many are funny (see my favorite below.)
• Between Heaven and Earth by Eric Walters---the #1 book in the Seven series, seven grandsons, seven adventures. This one is set in Africa and a climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro. 

Unleashed 

I'm free!
I'm free!
I'm free!
I'm free!
I'm free!
I'm lost.
-Francesco Marciuliano (I Could Chew on This and Other Poems by Dogs)

Progress made on other books:

• The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje---this is my current audiobook. This isn't a book, it is literature. I am savoring it. I just passed the halfway point
• The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown--- a book club selection; I am having to read this book as if it were homework, slow-going. Page 225 of 370.
• Earth Girl by Janet Edwards---a dystopian novel. It is on my desk at school. I only read it at lunch so I expect the progress to be slow. Page 75 of 270.

Other bookish things:

• I transferred Allegiant from a wma file into a mp3 file so that I can transfer it to my ipod. It will be my next audiobook.
• I was invited to attend the Puyallup Library's 100 year celebration because I read 100 books last year. Cool.

Movie Nights: Don and I have figured out how to get movies on Amazon Prime so we have watched three movies in as many nights. My favorite, starring Al Pacino and Christopher Walken, is called Stand Up Guys. My husband found it so funny he was laughing out loud.

Remember---please leave a comment of a happy musical memory!

Have a good week.

Review: Boxers/Saints by Gene Yuen Yang

Boxers and Saints is a marvelous, and I mean marvelous, two book graphic novel set by the acclaimed author/illustrator Gene Lue Yang. In these books we learn a bit about the Boxer Rebellion in China from two points of view, because, as the info on the back says, every war story has two sides.

The Boxer rebellion was a violent peasant uprising in turn-of-the-century China. In Boxers Little Boa, a young peasant who learns to harness the power of the opera gods, goes after the European outsiders for destroying their ancient traditions and rituals. In Saints, a young Chinese girl, Four-Girl, converts to Christianity and finds acceptance and purpose that she couldn't find at home. Their stories collide as the two sides come to blows. David Berry, writing for Afterward sums it up this way: "Boxers and Saints is at once historical fiction, mythical tale, and modern dilemma."

I thought a lot about the modern dilemma aspect of history as I enjoyed these books. As a Christian I believe that "Jesus is the way" but do I have the right to go to another part of the world and tell people that their ways are wrong because they don't match mine? I would certainly hate it if someone attempted to do it to me or to my family members. It brought to mind books I've read in the past like Things Fall Apart by Achebe and The Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver which speak to a similar subject in Africa. And I continued thinking about the dilemma when I recently read The Round House by Erdrich which touches on injustices to Native Americans by the government and the church.

Because Yang uses the graphic novel so well information about this time period in China will be easily accessible to young adults. I wasn't the hugest fan of his award-winning graphic novel American Born Chinese, but I will fall all over myself with praise for this set and see it as one of the front-runners for this year's Printz Award.

I want to read what I want.

"I want to read what I want." Ever feel like this? I do!

Every day, as a public high school librarian, I feel like I need to read as many YA books as possible so that I can make recommendations to my students. Great books languish on the shelves if I can't talk kids into reading them, and I have a hard time talking them up if I haven't read them. So, even though I do make decisions of what to read within this category, I often feel like I "have" to read books that I'd really rather not read.

In addition, I am in two book clubs. Every month that means I "have" to read two books that may or may not ones I would have selected otherwise. This doesn't mean that I don't enjoy most of them. As soon as someone says I have to read book, a part of me turns all teenager inside and I drag my feet about reading it. It must be some psychological phenomenon---as soon as the words "have to" are spoken, I feel the opposite. Ha!

With these feelings of wanting to read what I want to read swirling around in my head I dropped by the public library to pick up a book I placed on hold for book club next month. As I walked in
I stopped off to browse the rack of new books. I ended up walking out with four books I had no idea I wanted to read until just that moment:

• I Could Chew on This: and Other Poems by Dogs by Francesco Marciuliano
• How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig
• Fantastic Mistakes: Neil Gaiman's 'Make Great Art' Speech
• The Maid' Version by Daniel Woodrell (this is the book I went for)

Now, to be honest, I probably won't read all three of these extra books, but it felt like an act of defiance just checking them out.  My-my, so pathetic, huh?

Am I the only person who experiences these feelings of wanting to read what I want to read and then feeling defiant when I do select them?