What’s happening in the library?

As the end of the year is coming, we’re displaying a lot of new books this week. As always, one week on display, then borrowing begins — next Monday.

The teachers’ reference collection also has new books on display, including:

• Kath Murdoch’s Classroom Connections: strategies for integrated learning (1998). This book lays out her well-known inquiry cycle, with chapters on “Strategies for tuning in”, “Strategies for finding out”, “Strategies for sorting out”, etc.
• Focus on Inquiry: a practical approach to integrated curriculum planning — by Jeni Wilson & Lesley Wing Jan (2003).
• Stirring the Head, Heart, and Soul: redefining curriculum and instruction, 2nd ed. — by H. Lynn Erickson (2001).
• The Rights of the Reader — by Daniel Pennac (1992). This is a new (British) translation of the French classic (which has been previously translated as “Better Than Life”). Note: this is the book that the Quentin Blake illustrations (on the pink background, above the Reference Section) come from, e.g., 1. The right not to read. 2. The right to skip. 3. The right not to finish a book., etc….

A few highlights for older kids:

• The New Policeman — by Kate Thompson. Winner of the 2005 Guardian Children’s Fiction prize as well as the Whitbread Children’s Book Award.
  “Set in Kinvara on the west coast of Ireland, where Thompson lives, The New Policeman makes the impossible credible in a seductive story about 15-year-old JJ, who visits the land of eternal youth, in search of Time – the perfect birthday present for his mother, whose constant lament is the shortage of it in her life.” (taken from a Guardian interview with the author)
• Thura’s Diary — by Thura Al-Windawi (2004). Subtitled: A young girl’s life in war-torn Baghdad.
• Letters from a Nut — by Ted L. Nancy, introduction by Jerry Seinfeld. My favorite collection of correspondence. Actual letters sent to American businesses and organizations — and the actual responses. In one he tries to convince a major department store to sell him one of their mannequins because it resembles a recently deceased neighbor of his. In another he writes to Kinko’s, a chain of photocopy centers, asking for a job for him and his Siamese twin (”We are connected at the shoulders. We do not face each other, so we both can do TWO DIFFERENT jobs at the same time.”) In yet another he writes to a fish restaurant and asks if he can dine by the garbage area of their restaurant because he has a personal odor problem that he can’t cure, yet he would really like to eat at their restaurant. (You get the idea…) Creative letter writing at its most bizarre.

Picture books for everyone:

• Owen & Mzee: the true story of a remarkable friendship — by Isabella Hatkoff, Craig Hatkoff, and Dr. Paula Kahumbu (2006). Photos illustrate this true story of two great friends — a baby hippo named Owen and a 130-year-old giant tortoise named Mzee — both living in Kenya. Owen was sadly orphaned in the 2004 tsunami and taken to an animal sanctuary near Mombasa where he bonded with Mzee. The two animals are inseparable and their friendship has become both a mystery and an inspiration. The sequel is also on display. Heart-warming, is all you can say.
• Tibet: through the Red Box — by Peter Sis (1998). An award-winning picture book based on the experience of the author/illustrator’s father who, as a Czech soldier in WWII, was sent to make a documentary film of the construction of a highway that would open Tibet to China. Sis has reproduced parts of his father’s diary as well as illustrating and commenting on it.
• Mom and Dad are Palindromes: a dilemma for words… and backwards – by Mark Shuman & Adam McCauley (2006). A book of wordplay with more than 101 palindromes hidden inside.
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves: why, commas really DO make a difference! — by Lynne Truss (2006). Based on the adult best-seller. Phrases with-comma and without-comma are illustrated, e.g., “Slow, children crossing” and “Slow children crossing” / “Go, get him doctors!” and “Go get him, doctors!” / “The kids, who got ice cream, were very happy.” and “The kids who got ice cream were very happy.”

For younger readers, we have a huge array of new picture books, as well as these three additions to our collection, all classics by famous author/illustrators:

• Through the Magic Mirror — by Anthony Browne. Surreal fun.
• Where’s Julius? – by John Burningham. A child’s imaginative life supported by adults.
• The Nickle Nackle Tree — by Lynley Dodd. An absurd rhyming, counting book.

Everyone welcome every Morning Break! We used to reserve MTW for Grades 4 & 5 and TTh for Grades 2 & 3 in the library during Morning Break time. But now every year band is welcome every day.

Celebrate Earth Day! Grab a book from the Earth Day display in the Younger Readers section of the library. Standard classics such as “The Lorax” and “Where the Forest Meets the Sea” are there, as well as plenty of non-fiction about environmentalism and recycling.

“All wars, just or unjust, disastrous or victorious, are waged against the child.” (Quote by Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children foundation). In light of the Grade 5 unit of inquiry into War Through the Eyes of a Child, the display bookcase next to the check-out desk is now full of books, including picture books, novels, and non-fiction, related to war and conflict.

See, in particular, the wordless picture book “Why?” by Nikolai Popov. (Backcover blurb: “A frog sits peacefully in a meadow. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, he is attacked by an umbrella-wielding mouse in a confrontation that quickly turns into a full-scale war.”)

See also Mem Fox’s fable, “Feathers and Fools“, about the peacocks and swans who start to fear one another because of their differences. The preparation of weapons leads to war and total annihilation — except for one peacock egg and one swan egg. Will the baby birds recognize each other’s similarities, or differences?

<NEW> books on display until end of Thursday: Forty <NEW> books went on display last Friday and borrowing/reserving of them starts this Friday. Students are encouraged to keep track of which new books they want to read, then it’s first-come, first-serve on Friday morning for both borrowing and placing reservations.

Highlights include:

* 4 new Michael Morpurgo novels: “Cool“, “The Nine Lives of Montezuma“, “The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips“, and “Alone on a Wide Wide Sea“. (This last one features a man who is shipped from Britain to Australia as an orphan after WWII and suffers the equivalent of child slave labor on a farm before escaping and growing up to become a boat builder. His daughter later sails single-handedly back to England to try to track down his long-lost sister. Note: the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is a recurring theme throughout the novel.)

* “The Greatest Power” (picture book) by Demi, a sequel to “The Empty Pot“. In this story Ping, now emperor, asks the question ‘what is the greatest power?’. Only Sing, a young girl, comes back with a lotus seed and the right answer.

* “Beastly Tales: six crazy creature capers” by Richard Tulloch, his most recent book, suitable for Grades 2 and upwards.

* “On the bike with… Lance Armstrong“, a biography for younger readers.

* Two Dr. Seuss classics we didn’t have before: “Horton Hears a Who“, one of his longer rhyming stories about caring for others (because “a person’s a person, no matter how small”), and “Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now“, one of beginner reader books. Note that the Marvin K. Mooney book is supposedly a political allegory about Richard M. Nixon (see the Wikipedia entry on the book).

* “Shrek” by William Steig — the picture book that inspired the popular movie. We also have his award-winning picture book, “The Amazing Bone” on display.

* “The Tough Guide to Fantasyland” — Diana Wynne Jones’s satiric A-Z of the elements of the fantasy genre. As the Amazon.com review says,

“The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (U.K. Edition) was a 1997 Hugo and World Fantasy Award nominee. It’s a good companion to Jones’s Dark Lord of Derkholm, a fantasy about what happens when your land is turned into a theme park for questing tourist parties. Fans of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books will enjoy both.”

* “Seeker“, the first in a new fantasy trilogy (’The Noble Warriors’) for older readers by William Nicholson, author of the ‘Wind on Fire’ trilogy.

This blog will be my new means of communicating what’s happening in the library. While you could (if you are up to speed with it all) subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed in order to know when new information is posted, rest assured I will notify you teachers via standard internal e-mail whenever I post something relevant to you.

SHIFT OF SHELVES: Over the Xmas holiday we made some changes in the library, the main one being a shift of the shelves in the Older Readers (LS) section. The bulk of the tables are now against the window, creating a more private space for classes. We also moved the PYP “Books in Languages Other Than English” collection to the little alley (one side of the blue wall) between the Younger Readers (EL) and Older Readers (LS), providing us more room for expansion of the collection. In addition, the two “Oversized” collections (Younger Readers (EL) and Older Readers (LS)) have now been merged in that same alleyway.

NEW DISPLAYS:

2007 anniversaries: Upon entering the library, you will see books reminding you of historical anniversaries hit in 2007, e.g., 1400 years ago the world’s oldest wooden structure still standing was built in Japan, 780 years ago Genghis Khan died, 300 years ago Scotland and England merged into the United Kingdom, 140 years ago Russia sold Alaska for S$11m, and 60 years ago India and Pakistan became independent nations.

Experience a Time Slip: What would it be like to travel backwards or forwards in time or to peek into another time and space ? Try one of the novels on display.

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