Book Corner

I just purchased a book at our school book fair. I stood reading and absorbed by the story before taking my purchase to the cash register. What delighted me, was seeing so many people from our community, parents and children doing the same. Others were excitedly comparing books, trying to narrow down their choices. What was so easily felt throughout Juarez Community Hall was the joy that books engender.

Karina A. Bolasco, book editor and poet, wrote:

When I publish a children’s book, when teachers teach children’s literature in the
classrooms, or when parents read good bedtime stories to their children, I think that what
we really want to convey and share with them is our very own joy, or pleasure, in
children’s books. It is one of our fondest remembrances of childhood: being lost in a
book, the illustrations carrying us out of ourselves and bringing us elsewhere many times
over. And even as adults, even after countless books later, we are still intrigued each
time we open a new children’s book. As people and events continue to shape and re-
shape our reading habits/preferences, the fundamental joy that is there in every
children’s book, that was likewise the pleasure derived by the author from writing it,
remains and awaits to be savoured as it is passed on from reader to reader. And what’s
simply amazing is when we make the right books, or as you introduce the children to the
right books, we don’t have to instruct them on how to locate that joy or pleasure. It is just
there and the child gets it the minute she or he turns the first page.

I want to thank all the hard-working volunteers from the book fair for giving us this opportunity to experience that joy.

Young readers who don't read during the summer lose crucial ground. Summer slide occurs when children lose learning and reading skills over summer vacation.

A few important facts about the problem:

"Regardless of ethnicity, socioeconomic level, or previous achievement, children who read four or more books over the summer fare better on reading-comprehension tests in the fall than their peers who read one or no books over the summer." (Summer Reading and the Ethnic Achievement Gap, Jimmy Kim, Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk. 2004)

"Of even greater concern [about summer slide] is the fact that these losses are cumulative, creating a wider gap each year between more proficient and less proficient students. By the time a struggling reader reaches middle school, summer reading loss has accumulated to a two–year lag in reading achievement." (Ameliorating summer reading setback among economically disadvantaged elementary students, Richard Allington. April 2007)

" Children’s reading frequency dramatically decreases after the age of eight and continues to decline through their teen years." (The Kids and Family Reading Report™ conducted by Yankelovich and Scholastic. 2006)

From Scholastic Summer Reading Facts

What Parents Can Do:

Provide access to books. Make sure books are available at all times.

Talk to your child about his or her interests and create a list of possible reading choices.
Children don't just need books; they need the right books. Providing children with good
choices, books that match their skill levels and their interests, is important in encouraging
voluntary reading.

Let children choose the books they want to read. Don't worry about challenging your child to
read more difficult books. Allow them to read for fun.

Use the library. Encourage your children to participate in the summer reading clubs at your
public library.

Be a role model. Talk to your children about books. Have discussions about what you and
your children are reading. Read-aloud to your children.

For ninety years, children, parents, teachers and librarians have been celebrating Children's Book Week. It began with the idea that children's books can change lives. In an article in The Horn Book Magazine about her mother, children's book writer Joan Aiken, Lizza Aiken describes how books can effect people. She writes that it was evident to her mother that "stories had a function, that they communicated the full experience of life and carried not only instruction but also hope, comfort, and company." During this week, be sure to share with your children books that can instruct, give hope, and broaden their windows to the world.

We had a lot of fun carrying poems in our pockets and sharing them with our friends. Today is also the last day of National Poetry Month, but we hope you will continue to select and share poetry with your children all through the year. You can hear poetry being read aloud at the Favorite Poem Project. There are poems for both adults and children. The Poetry Foundation also helps us discover and celebrate poetry. The website includes articles about poetry as well as a wonderful selection of poems. Finally, don't forget coming to the library and choosing books from a wide and varied collection of poetry. Discoveries await including poets such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Valerie Worth, X.J. Kennedy, Dennis Lee, and Francisco X. Alarcón.

The Poetry Foundation has launched a series of video podcasts that features the nation’s Children’s Poet Laureate, Mary Ann Hoberman, reading from her own work and from classic children’s poetry collections. As quoted in the Poetry Foundation's press release on the series Hoberman stated, “Above all in this series, I want to convey the joy of poetry—reading it, reciting it, sharing it with others ... I hope that the fun I had in making these videos is contagious and that they inspire their audience, young and old alike, to ‘learn a little poem by heart.’” The videos are available on the website of the Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org, and on iTunes. For more information on Mary Ann Hoberman and children’s poetry, you can visit www.poetryfoundation.org/programs/children.html or watch a short original author movie at TeachingBooks.net. To enter the TeachingBooks website from home, stop by or call the library so we can share with you the password.
(Photo from TeachingBooks.net)

A Pocket Poem

With a poem in your pocket
and
a pocket in your pants
you can rock with new rhythms.
You can skip.
You can dance.
And wherever you go,
and whatever you do,
that poem in your pocket is going there, too.
You could misplace your homework.
You could lose your left shoe.
But that poem in your pocket will be part of you.
And nothing can take it.
And nothing can break it.
That poem in your pocket
becomes
part of...
YOU!

From Pocket Poems Copyright c2004 by Bobbi Katz

Celebrate the second national Poem in Your Pocket Day on Thursday, April 30th. It's easy to do. Select a poem you love during National Poetry Month, which begins today, then carry it with you to share with friends and family on the 30th. The library will have a selection of poems that you and your children may choose from or visit us and check out some wonderful poetry books, including those shown here, to read with your children.

Last Friday evening, we as a community celebrated parents reading aloud to their children. Today is Dr. Seuss's birthday, and all across the country people are celebrating reading. According to the National Education Association that annually sponsors Read Across America, the program, now in its twelfth year, focuses on getting children excited about reading. Throughout the country, schools, libraries, community centers, and more participate by bringing together kids and books. Please help us keep your children connected with books. The librarians love recommending books. Stop by the library, call or email us. Tell us about your children and the types of books they enjoy and we will suggest what to read next.

Do you want to connect with your children? Read to them. As you share books, the characters, both real and imagined people, change the way you see the world.

So many of us remember people from books. Their sorrows and difficulties help us to face our own. Their triumphs inspire us to dream and achieve. Here are just a few of my favorites:

Charlotte from Charlotte's Web, a true friend and a good writer
Wart of The Once and Future King, an unassuming boy truly interested in others who grows up to be King Arthur
Madeline, who may have been the smallest of 12 little girls in two straight lines, but was always brave and smart
Alexander of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, who reminds us that some days just don't go right
Miss Rumphius, who inspires us to do something to make the world more beautiful

And don't forget all those books about remarkable and real people, such as:


Diane Stanley's Saladin: Noble Prince of Islam
James Cross Giblin's The Amazing Life of Benjamin Franklin
Milton Meltzer's Frederick Douglas: In His Own Words
Anne Rockwell's Only Passing Through: The Story of Sojourner Truth or Pat McKissack's Sojourner Truth, Ain't I a Woman
Doreen Rappaport's Abe's Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln
Jean Fritz's You Want Women to Vote, Lizzie Stanton?
Marfe Ferguson Delano's Helen's Eyes: A Photobiography of Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller's Teacher
Barbara Kerley's What to Do About Alice?: How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World, and Drove Her Father Teddy Crazy!
Josephine Poole's Anne Frank or Anne Frank's own Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl
Judith St. George's Make Your Mark, Franklin Roosevelt
Candace Fleming's Our Eleanor: A Scrapbook Look at Eleanor Roosevelt's Remarkable Life
Ken Mochizuki's Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story
Kathleen Krull's Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World's Fastest Woman
Jennifer Armstrong's Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World: The Extraordinary True Story of Shackleton and the Endurance
Eleanor Coerr's Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes

Share those most important 20 minutes of your day. Read to your children. Help them discover their heroes.

Today begins the Family Read-Aloud Celebration. We hope all of our parents will read to their children at least 20 minutes every day. Sharing a book with a child is fun. By reading aloud you are helping your children associate reading with pleasure. None of us are gluttons for punishment. We do the things we enjoy doing. So if you want your children to become readers, not just people who know how to read, but people who choose to read and whose lives are enriched by books, then start reading aloud every day. According to Jim Trelease, a read-aloud advocate, "Every time we read to a child, we’re sending a “pleasure” message to the child’s brain. You could even call it a commercial, conditioning the child to associate books and print with pleasure." (http://www.trelease-on-reading.com)


Here a few tips to help you choose a read-aloud book.

Choose a book everyone will enjoy, but have several available in case your first choice
does not work out. Do not feel compelled to finish a book just because you have started
it.

Talk with your family about favorite books and authors that you would like to share.

Ask your school and public librarians for further suggestions. The UES Gonda Family librarians have suggested lists from the last two years and this year Upper students have provided read-aloud recommendations.

Check out these other resources on the web for book suggestions and tips on reading aloud:

Reading is Fundamental
Provides articles, tips and activities to help families get involved with books and reading
aloud.

Rose Diaz Pinan Reading Aloud Collection
A list to help parents and other adults choose books they can share with children.

Book It! 100 Great Books to Read to Your Kids
The National Education Association surveyed its members and compiled a list of 100
children's books as part of its annual Read Across America celebration.

Book It! Parents’ Reading List
The books on this list provide parents with information on helping their children become readers, including books on reading aloud

We hope to see everyone at our Family Read-Aloud Celebration party on February 27th.

When our children need to do research, both for school work and personal interests, they naturally turn to the Internet. Many of them believe that they can find the answer to everything on the web. Unfortunately, they often end up jumping from web site to web site, never actually finding what they need. The internet is an incredible resource, but children do need to know how and where to look. One place we want them to remember to look is their library on the web. Libraries offer free access to databases and other online resources that contain full-text magazine and newspaper articles, biographical profiles, full-text books, and much more. These resouces contain large amounts of material that you would never be able to access using a web search engine. What's more, you can access many of them from any computer connected to the Internet at any time, any day.

The UES Gonda Family library subscribes to a number of online resources that you can access at home, including World Book Online, Grolier Online, Bookflix, and BrainPop. To use these resources at home, you will need the user ids and passwords. Stop by the library and we can give them to you.

Public libraries also provide free access to many incredible resources. There is one catch. The libraries require you to have a library card in order to use these resources. But, its easy to get one. To obtain a card from the Los Angeles Public Library, fill out an application in person at any Los Angeles Public Library location, or pre-register over the Internet by visiting the Library's Web Pre-Registration Page. If you apply in person, you are given a library card immediately. If you pre-register on the web, you have 30 days to pick up your library card at any library location. Be prepared to show identification at the time you pick up your card. Once you have your card you can access their databases at http://databases.lapl.org. Resources for children can be found at http://www.lapl.org/kidspath/homework/databases.html.

Other local libraries, including Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and the County of Los Angeles, provide access to online electronic resources. You can find links to each of these websites on the Public Libraries page of the UES Gonda Family Library website.

In addition, every California resident can get an eCard from the San Francisco Public Library and have access to all of their electronic resources. The eCard Application is available online in both English and Spanish.

Use these amazing resources with your children. You may be surprised how much you can learn once you know where to look.