Why Read?
Reading unlocks the keys to all other learning, and learning to read begins at home. When you share a book with a child, you open worlds, help them in their journey toward lifelong success, and create great memories. The Reading Tub is a nonprofit for children's literacy. Here on our blog, you'll find news, book reviews, and reading ideas. Visit our website to learn more.
Welcome! As I mentioned in the January Books We Read column, we made some changes this year. One thing hasn’t changed … If you have read and reviewed one of the books, please feel free to add it to the Website or add a link in the comments here.
Received: 18
Read: 41
Reviewed (new): 26
Favorite Re-Reads
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nonfiction__________
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Reading Beyond the Books
Crossword Puzzles [image credit: Wikipedia]
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Bilingual Books (All Audiences)
Picture Books (All Audiences)
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Easy Readers (for New and Developing Readers)
Even though it is a picture book, Happy Valentines Day, Mouse! is an excellent candidate for this category. This is also true of In My Grandmother’s Garden.
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Illustrated Short Chapter Books
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Middle Grade Chapter Books (Fiction and Nonfiction)
Mia the Magnificent
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Young Adult Chapter Books (Fiction and Nonfiction)
Scars by Cheryl Rainfield
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Book Talks Updated with Teen Reviews
(Links go to Reading Tub website review.)
>Book cover images link to Amazon.com. When you buy a product via one of our links, we earn a small commission from the sale. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.
I’m up a wee bit early this morning, partly because I’m jazzed about Share a Story ~ Shape a Future 2010 which starts tomorrow, but mostly to enjoy a cup of coffee and a bit of quiet morning, and the Sunday *paper*. That’s what Sunday’s are for, right? Here are a few of the tidbits I’ve found this morning.
The cover story for this week’s Parade magazine is What America Cares About, which is covered in the article “Compassion Counts More than Ever,” by Michael J. Berland. It is very heartening to see the great numbers of people volunteering in their communities. According to the Parade.com poll, “Ninety percent [of parents] said that they are working hard to teach their children the importance of activism.” What is not so heartening is that when Americans were asked how they would donate $100,000 for charity, literacy comes in13 of 16. Wow! So many of the higher-ranked problems – research to cure disease (2nd), poverty relief/job assistance (6th), public health (10th), would significantly benefit from eliminating illiteracy. Don’t get me wrong, these are very important issues that take all of us, it is just disheartening to see the perception of what literacy is and how it impacts our world.
I wish I had an excuse to head to Massachusetts. The Wavepaint Gallery, Ipswich MA is hosting “The Illustrator Show,” a display of works by children’s book illustrators Jarrett Krosoczka, Ed Emberley, Jamie Harper, Andy J Smith, Mary Jane Begin, Pat Lowery Collins, and Julia Purinton. The exhibit includes original illustrations will be presented beside their printed books. The Exhibit runs from March 1 to April 23. There is an illustration lecture/reception on April 23, 2010, from 4 to 7 pm). The Gallery Della-Piana in Wenham will have their own exhibit of children’s book illustration at that same time, so grab the kids and have a fun afternoon traveling up or down route 1A admiring art for children’s literature. Maybe I’ll luck out and some of my Northeast-based blogging friends will visit and tell us more … or maybe there will be a virtual gallery, too. (via Andy J. Smith on JacketFlap.com)
In today’s Charlottesville Daily Progress, librarian Jacqueline Lichtman tells us about the Tumble Book library at the Jefferson Madison Regional Library. “Tumble Book Library, an online collection of animated talking picture books, … includes animated boos, reading comprehension quizzes and educational games. Kids love the movement and the voices, as well as reading along.” I’d love to link you to her article, but I couldn’t find it on DailyProgress.com. Grrr! Bottom line: TumbleBooks is purchased by schools and libraries, but is available for FREE to students and patrons. There are 30-day free trials ont he TumbleBooks.com website.
Oh, the shame! The 2010 Winter Olympics have come and gone, and not once did I mention them or how in love I am with Vancouver. What a beautiful place! I’ve only seen it from the deck of a ship journeying from Alaska. I definitely want Vancouver to be the destination next time. Now I have only memories …
We had an Olympics oops in our house … opening night, no less. (image source: 2010 Winter Olympics on Wikipedia). It’s one of those “funny thing happened on the way to the Coliseum” type stories, so bear with me a sec.
For weeks before the event, every time we saw a commercial about the Olympics, Catherine would twirl about pretending to be an ice skater. Having told her about all the pageantry, she wanted to see that, too. That first night, she was over the moon about being able to stay up late to watch the Opening Ceremonies. Here we are thinking she’ll get to see all the beautiful stuff and learn about Canada.
And what do the organizers do? They move the parade of athletes to the TOP of the program so the athletes could see it. Shift gears. The colorful uniforms were good for a little bit, but then Catherine wanted know when Team USA would come in, since “U” is near the end of the alphabet and the skaters would be right after that. Having listened to the stadium announcer introduce each country first in French, then in English, we assumed (ahem concluded) that everyone was entering the stadium using the French alphabet. SO-O-O thinking that we would be the États-Unis d’Amérique, we told Catherine she could stay up until the American team entered the stadium. Silly parents …
We were W-R-O-N-G, but there was no backing off that promise. Team USA didn’t enter the stadium until about 10:30, and as soon as we got the commercial break. The TV went off. By then Catherine was too tired to argue to see the show, and off to bed she went. The next day, though, our 21st Century girl asked if we could pull up the videos of what she missed. So we found the Opening Ceremonies Encore on MSNBC. [Note: Link takes you to the Encore on the MSNBC website. NBC/MSN make you downoad "Silverlight" to watch the videos.]
About five minutes after settling in at the computer, Catherine came running out of the office asking for paper and a pencil. She wanted to create a list so she could remember “all the weird things I see.” Writing because she wants to? All right! She was busy writing for an hour!
Snow indoors … totomes (totems) … whales coming out of the floor … waves really making a circle and turn to samen (salmon) .. and turn to totemes … guy with tatoot belly … leaf exploshon (explosion) …
and so on. She filled both sides of a page and was so excited to read to us everything she saw. A gold medal performance. There are lots of lessons in this story, but my favorite is that you just never know where inspiration will come from. Even a video can be a writing prompt …
Was Catherine the inspiration for this month’s Prompt Idea post at Booklights? Well, head on over and tell me what you think …
Image source:
Opening Ceremony, Vancouver Sun
Team USA and Vancouver 2010 logos – Wikipedia
Welcome to the third Roundup of New Resources for the year. The RoNR is published during the first week of each month and is a collection of linksto and ideas for tools that parents, kids, and teachers can use to help kids add more skills to their literacy toolbox.
Franki and Mary Lee at A Year of Reading are my go-to gals for everything 21st Century Literacy. I have been enjoying Franki’s series on using video tools with students. If you’re not sold on the value for literacy, then listen to this: “I think if you walk in and see what kids are doing, it looks like it is just a fun thing. But in reality, I think creating video can be a key to becoming critical readers and viewers. As I continue to reflect on documents that help us think about how literacy is changing and growing as the tools change and grow, I am trying to figure out ways to get this into our kids’ days.” Click here to read the full post and check out how some of those tools are working. You can also learn a lot from their recaps of the 2010 Dublin Literacy Conference, which has been going on … wait for it … yep! 21 years.
Creative Literacy for Kids
Thanks to Educationtipster Kathy Stempke for introducing us to Guardian Angel Kids, a new interactive eZine for kids. ”Children will the love the mascot, an adorable angel gecko named GAK. Stories, games, puzzles, activities, videos and more to entertain and delight your youngsters. This is a site you and your children will want to return to again and again.”
The Book Chook does it again! I’d say that February was a Book Chook techno month, but that’s true all year long! First, Susan introduced us to StoryJumper, which she describes as “another exciting webspace where children can write stories for an authentic audience.” The emphasis is mine – I like the idea that the kids can share their creativity or collaborate with “co-writers.” In a post about Word Clouds, she introduced us to The other site is ABCYa, a free website with educational games for elementary-aged students. “ABCya! educational games are free and are modeled from primary grade lessons and enhanced to provide an interactive way for children to learn.” (emphasis creators) The games were created or approved by certified teachers.
Rather than repeat all of Kathy Stemke’s hard work … I’m going to send you to Educationtipster and her collection of interactive websites for kids. That is one awesome list.
Literacy and Reading Tools for Parents
Carryout Text – This one is good for ANYONE! It is a FREE text-to-audio converter. The potential is limitless … newspaper and magazine articles, books, oh my! (via LarryFerlazzo)
Fruitphonics.com – I found this on at the Scad blog in a post about Mennell Media’s efforts to build interactive online educational tools. ”The aim of the site is to provide all of the basic 44 phonemes and 20 or more more additional ‘blends’ together with the 100+ highest frequency words in the English language.” The videos can be used to help kids with letter sounds and pronunciation. This could be particularly valuable for complementing work with speech therapists and ELL educators.
The Kidlitosphere Yahoo! group doesn’t get many props, but man it is filled with some of the coolest people. One of the new members who just introduced herself is Elizabeth, who goes by the moniker TinyReader and has a blog of the same name. She created the blog to share the ways her roles as mom and teacher overlap. “A new mom brings what she knows about literacy research and teaching to the world of mommies and daddies.” Do check it out. You’ll love her theme posts, like this one with songs of love and peace.
Literacy and Reading Tools for Educators
In the course of clicking through a Google Alert about a literacy study, I found Mendeley Research Networks, which describes itself as “like iTunes(r) for research papers.” It is a FREE research management tool that you can use for organizing, collaborating, and sharing research. You can add additional work to your “library” from anywhere.
Kim Cofino teaches a technology class that helps sixth graders that emphasizes independent learning through project-based activities. She’s laid out the entire class in a post at Always Learning. In addiion to offering the basics of using computer programs, Kim also engages the kids in “digital citizenship” and understanding the ethics of 21st Century literacies. (via the 20 February 2010 edition of The Big Fresh, the Choice Literacy newsletter).
In case you missed it, Abby the Librarian and Kelly Jenson (Stacked Books) have launched AudioSynced, a monthly MEME to talk about audio books. So, what are you listening to? They wanna know!





























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