Read Aloud

I am taking a class at BYU that is focused on writing picture books for children and adolescents with professor Rick Walton. Basically the entire class is writing a picture book manuscript every week and reading 130 picture books throughout the semester. I highly recommend this class if you are interested in pursuing a career or dream in writing. In the class, he talked about a new blog that he and other authors created called whyreadaloud.wordpress.com which is all on why it is important to read aloud in your classroom. This is the opening of the blog:

Did your teacher read aloud to you?

Are you a teacher who reads aloud to your students?

Tell your stories here. Post them in the comment section.

And then we will figure out a way to get your stories to the administrators and teachers who need to hear them. Your story of how being read to made your life better might motivate a teacher to read to her kids and make their lives better.

Please add your name and your occupation to your story. (If for some reason you do wish to remain anonymous, for example, if your story is about how you were in the middle of committing a major crime and you suddenly remembered something your teacher read to you which caused you to turn your life around, or if you are in the witness protection program you don’t have to post any identifying information.)

I found in interesting to read the stories and realize that for me in 5th grade, the class read aloud is what inspired me to really love reading. If you have your own story, share it!

Maybe Not? and Keturah

My mentor teacher has been talking the past few days about reading. The school read-a-thon is coming up and her family is starting their book club back up. She kept talking about how she hasn't read any books for months. MONTHS! I wish I was going to be around for the whole read-a-thon because the prizes for the teachers are awesome (including a free dinner at Texas Road House just for participating and free massages and all kinds of great things). But really, she hasn't read a book in months? I know she's busy, but I don't know how I would survive without reading a book in months. It's too much a part of who I am. This is the book I just finished a book late last night (early this morning, rather): Keturah and Lord Death.

Several people have recommended this book to me (including Stephanie, one of the writers of this blog), so I picked it up. I had what I think are understandably high expectations for the book, and it fell a little short. The story was unique, but not in an overwhelming way. Rather it felt like the same old story I've read over and over about England back in the day before the world was what it is now and everybody lived in tiny villages and fairies were real. There's a little bit of witch craft, a love story, and the titular encounter with Lord Death. Don't get me wrong, it was a good book. I enjoyed the story and got pretty into it at the end (when I thought I had the whole plot figured out), but I wasn't overwhelmed by the greatness of the plot or especially enthused with the character development. It's a quick read, though, and worth a try.

The Westing Game

This is a book I absolutely loved as a child. I read it first in fifth grade and then at least three times after that. I saw it at the BYU book sale one time last semester for two bucks and got excited to read it again.

Mr. Westing is a millionaire in the Midwest (I want to say Wisconsin). When he is murdered, a group of seemingly random people are called together together as his "heirs" for the reading of his will. When the characters go to the reading of the will, it is extremely unusual. To receive the $200 million inheritance the heirs must work together with an assigned partner to solve Mr. Westing's murder.

It's still a good, fun story, but not what I remember. Raskin herself says in a blurb at the end that she purposely wrote her characters not to change, I don't like that. She says it's because children have change around them all the time, but I still think characters should have some progression. Also, the ends are far too neatly tied for my taste. Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great book to recommend to students, but it's just not the same as an adult, it just falls a little flat.

Book Clubs

So some people in my apartment complex and I decided to start a book club for this upcoming semester. With the demands of school, work, and everything else that may come up, it is hard to find that time to read. We felt by having a book club, it will motivate us to find the time to read for fun, even when a million things seem to take away that time.

If you are interested in starting a book club, which I highly recommend because it gets you to discuss the elements of the book with your friends and continue to read, here are some websites that will help:

Book Clubs Resources
Oprah's book club
Book Club Sets at the Provo Library

There are a lot more resources, but check your local libraries for book clubs and book clubs sets for your friends. There are books located in Barnes and Noble or Borders that have an outline of a book club as you get started. The main idea is to have each person taking turns "hosting" a book that month.They pick the book, have the discussion at their house with treats for the guests, and come up with discussion topics about the book. There are online book clubs that you can join, but I recommend getting one started on your own with some friends. That way you can vary the books chosen, or even theme them if you want.

The Line

I just read this book. I was really excited to find it doing a random walk-through in the library. Another dystopian novel, hooray (seriously, you have to know by now that these are basically my favorites and the plots have a way of drawing me in).

This book was kind of awful. It takes place in the future United States and the borders all around the whole thing have been shut down (there's an invisible barrier that keeps people in/out). The main character lives on The Property right near the border in this crazy society and wonders about what's on the other side. Turns out her mother and the owner of The Property have some secrets about the other side of The Line (which is what the barrier is called) in the land called Away. Sounds intriguing enough, right? Especially when you factor in the government secrecy and the changing of history and keeping secrets and militant enforcement of laws.

The writing is SO heavy handed. I don't know how exactly to explain what I mean. Her political point is thrown in with no delicacy and is kind of forced and the writing just isn't good (in my opinion). The plot isn't boring, but the writing is. I was trying to figure out why exactly when I was sitting in my sixth grade class (that's where I'm doing my student teaching) and the kids were learning about sentence fluency. The goal was for students to vary their sentence lenght and structure. I don't think Ms. Hall does this very well in this book. The writing frustrated me enough that even though there was a MASSIVE cliffhanger at the end, I won't be reading the others (if and when they are released).

Huck Finn

A new edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is being released and all instances of the "n" word will be replaced with the word "slave."

Read the article here.

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