(because this blog platform started putting annoying ads up)

Follett not only provided the Destiny Library Manager software, but their Titlewave service also provided thousands of our new library books — all barcoded and shelf-ready.  Of course, we’ll be adjusting some of the call numbers, getting the sections to suit our students, but for now it’s just nice to have them out of boxes.

The library search catalog will be available from the school website soon (utilizing the same login/password).  Meanwhile, we’ve set up a Pageflakes for the East Campus — with a tab for Library & Literacy.   On that page are links of interest to both kids and parents.  For example, Lookbooky, which allows you to view the latest picture books online.

• Authors Choose Their Top 10 Books on different topics, e.g., island books, romps and romances, black comedies, boredom, wilderness, etc.
• Literary Companions for Summer Travel — where authors suggest books perfect for particular destinations, e.g., Julian Barnes on Sicily, William Boyd on L.A., William Dalrymple on India, Maureen Freely on Turkey, etc.
• Digested Reads — the must-read books in 400 words — for those who have no time and don’t want to be left out of literary conversations…

Whichbook.net, a completely new way of choosing books to read, lets you specify the level of what you want in a book — the degree of happy/sad, easy/demanding, sex/no sex, safe/disturbing, etc.

Another fun one is Literature-Map, also known as the tourist map of literature — plug in your favorite author and see which other authors are located close to them on the map.

In the US the National Book Critics Circle has put out a list of Spring 2008 Good Reads.

I’ve also put together a list via WorldCat (a compendium of thousands of library catalogs from around the world): Summer Reading Suggestions. It contains both books I’ve read and books I want to read. Note that WorldCat also lets you type a city/country and it will find the libraries closest to you holding that book.

Here are a few book reviews that helped me determine my own to-read list:

• Say You’re One of Them — by Uwem Akpan
  

  “Poverty, slavery, mass murder: These are the torments that devour the children in “Say You’re One of Them,” a book so overwhelming that when you put it down — if you can — it takes a minute to adjust to the world around you. The writer is Uwem Akpan, a young Nigerian Jesuit. Each of the five stories in his debut collection is set in a different African nation; each is told from a child’s point of view; two are strong, three are devastating.”

• The Knife of Never Letting Go — by Patrick Ness
  

  “It’s hard to review The Knife of Never Letting Go without spoiling the story. It’s so cunningly written that I was 100 pages in before I even realised what genre it was.” (a children’s book — but don’t let that put you off…)

• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle — by David Wroblewski
  

  “Wroblewski creates a tender coming-of-age story and grafts onto it a literary thriller with strong echoes of Shakespeare and “The Jungle Book.” The result is the most hauntingly impressive debut I’ve read all year.”

She is in Singapore in conjunction with the iTheatre’s production of her picture book, Moonbird at the Alliance Francaise from May 20th to June 7th.

The K2 students are particularly looking forward to meeting Joyce as she is profoundly deaf and they did a unit of inquiry earlier in the year on the senses.

One of her most recent books, Shoe Baby, was illustrated by her daughter, Polly Dunbar, who is winning awards in her own right.

Joyce’s books will be on display in the K1 pod next week and her books can be ordered from Bookaburra Books.

There’s an overall wiki for the day:  TeachIT 2007

and within that, in Sessions 2 & 3, you can click on “Social Software in School and Life” to see what Barb Philip (the Tanglin junior librarian) and I presented.  Basically, we said it was not a “how-to” session — though we provided some links to define the software tools and get people started.  Instead it was a sampler of what we’ve used — and tools we can’t live without now — to help us collect, organize, and share information — both professionally and personally.  We thought more people in the audience would have already been fooling around with social software.  No matter.  The space is still there for participants to add their own experiments.   I still have hope….

During his own school days, Morris excelled at daydreaming — and considers himself now a professional daydreamer. He sees imagination as the place where we rehearse our lives and spending time in his imagination is his favorite part of being an author. As for the knowledge he missed thanks to daydreaming, he makes up for it by reading, which in turn often influences his writing. For example, catching up on microbiology led to Worm Story and Aristotle’s Nostril. He says continually learning new things is another aspect of the writer’s job.

Morris was encouraged to become a writer by all the books he read as a child. His favorites were the 38 volumes in the Just William series by Richmal Crompton. He also had one particularly memorable teacher in Year 7 in London (where he grew up) who used no set texts all year long, merely telling the class an ongoing story every day about the lives of three jewel thieves. The teacher’s ability to keep the story going that long fascinated him.

When creating a character, there are many things to consider, such as their name, gender, looks, personality, species, etc., but the most important thing is to know their problem. He claims it took him two years to discover that it’s problems that make stories. The very first sentence of Toad Rage reveals Limpy’s problem when he asks his uncle, “Why do humans hate us?”; and in Two Weeks with the Queen Colin has two problems: he’s afraid his parents love his younger brother more than him and he’s afraid his brother, who is ill, is going to die. So if you ever need an idea for a story, just think about what problem you would most hate to have in your life.

Morris is definitely a planner when it comes to writing and, after deciding on the character’s biggest problem, he makes a list of all the possible ways to expand the problem. In his recent book, Doubting Thomas, the main character’s problem is that his body reacts whenever he hears someone lying. At first Morris had burning ears as the reaction, but then he changed it to be itchy nipples, thus adding embarrassment to the boy’s problem.

He also makes a list of all the possible solutions to the problem, because when more than one ending to a story is possible, things get interesting.

Unlike some other authors, Morris never plans series of books in advance, preferring to wait until characters like Rowena (from Blabbermouth), Keith (from Misery Guts), and Limpy (from Toad Rage) come back to haunt him before writing a sequel. He just finished writing a sequel to Once, his novel about an orphaned Jewish boy searching for his parents in Nazi-occupied Poland. It will be his 27th book and the tentative title is Then.

At the age of 10 Morris wrote his first story and at the age of 17 he first got paid for his writing (a story sent off to a magazine). He worked for ten years as a scriptwriter before being asked to turn one screenplay — The Other Facts of Life — into a book for young people when he was 32. He’s never written a book for adults and so far none of his stories has been autobiographical, though he’s now contemplating a memoir.

Someone asked him what he would be doing in life if he hadn’t become a writer. His answer was, something to do with books and travel, e.g., driving a mobile library van around Australia or driving a tour bus while reading from a guide book.

Morris loves all his own books and characters equally, but the book he is most proud of writing and which has a special spot in his heart is Once – because it took so long to put together (ten years of thinking and one year of writing). The character he appreciates the most is Colin from Two Weeks with the Queen — as that book has made him the most money!

It’s a collection of blogs of educational video content, all related to one theme, e.g., Rainforests or Water. (Hello, Grade 5, Grade 3, are you listening? Want something to play on your new interactive whiteboard??)

Note:  The Rainforest theme blog has a link to this Blinkx collection of rainforest videos.

Thursday is also Roald Dahl Day, designated last year in the UK as an annual event, falling on his birthday.  He was born in 1916 and died in 1990, so he would have been 91 years old.  There’s a big table display of his books in the library now, but if you’re interested in online resources, check out the following:

The publisher’s home page for Roald Dahl Day
http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/childrens/roalddahl/day/home.html
– See also their page of downloadables — including posters, stickers, etc.
http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/childrens/roalddahl/day/downloadables.htm

The Roald Dahl Fans website — with pages on games, trivia quizzes, timelines, interviews, etc.
http://www.roalddahlfans.com/index.php

The Roald Dahl Foundation provides practical support for children with brain, blood and literacy problems: http://www.roalddahlfoundation.org/

Lesson plans related to Dahl’s books — on Web English Teacher
http://www.webenglishteacher.com/dahl.html

As you’ll soon notice by strolling around, the library now has four general areas: the Picture Book area, the Fiction section, the Non-Fiction section, and the Computer/Study area.

The new Fiction and Non-Fiction sections are the result of the merging of the old EL (Elementary) and LS (Lower School) fiction and non-fiction collections. The distinction only remains on the spine labels of books, where they indicate a rough division between lower primary and upper primary texts (I’ll write more about labeling standards anon). So we are truly now a shared resource.

Note that the Fiction section has only soft seating (as befits pleasure reading), while group table seating for 22+ students is available in two different areas — the Non-Fiction section as well as the Computer/Study area.

The Computer/Study area, just inside the entrance, can now accommodate a whole class. You can still find the magazine/newspaper rack and a couple of sofas to sit on there, but we have added tables and chairs, as well as 25 stackable stools, which should make sharing computers a bit easier. Not that we need to share anymore. Within the next month we will be receiving a cart of 15 laptops to supplement the 10 desk-based computers, as well as a portable projector and wall screen. And we’ll be wireless, of course. I’ll let you know when everything is in place — and a booking system has been set-up.

The Picture Book section has been expanded to include the “Over Sized Fiction” collection (i.e., all those picture books with the big green dots that were located between the old EL and LS sections, including Asterix, Tintin, etc.) on the shelves where the Infant Non-Fiction collection used to be . I’m going to review and rename this collection — as “Over Sized” isn’t really an accurate description — perhaps it will be called “Older Picture Books”. New free-standing book display units are being built for the Infant Non-Fiction collection which is temporarily being stored opposite the Teacher Resource collection. Again, give us a few weeks to get it all perfect!

Kalimah wrote a love poem which won first prize (worth S$ 1,500) in a Malay newspaper contest in February. The contest, in honour of Valentine’s Day, was open to couples who had been married at least 30 years — and Kalimah celebrates her 40th wedding anniversary this year.

Kalimah’s poem in Malay [Word document]
Kalimah’s poem translated in English [Word document]
Here she is in the newspaper, with her husband (click on it for a larger view).