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Teacher Feature
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This issue's special- 30% off!
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Teacher Feature (for parents, too!) “The most serious charge which can be brought against New England… is February”. (Joseph Krutch) Kansans can empathize; harsh cold and windy frigidity come with our winters. Pop in one afternoon to stay warm--– there’s nothing better than a hot coffee and book perusing to make you forget that spring is still two months away. One of our favorite new releases is Imagine a Day by Sarah L. Thomson (Atheneum Books, ISBN 0689852193, $16.95). Is it too early to choose a favorite for the year? I have a feeling I’ll be hard pressed to find something to rival the incredible narrative and almost M.C. Escher-like illustrations of this book. “(I)magine a day…,” she writes, “…when grace and daring are all we need to build a bridge.” Yes, imagine. Kids and adults have enjoyed the “Summer of the Sisterhood” series by Ann Brashares. The third installment, “Girls in Pants”, is now out (Delacorte Press, ISBN 0385729359, $16.95HB). The first book is going to be released as a movie this summer, so interest in reading this series will hopefully go up, as well. The new one promises to be as hilariously fantastic, nostalgic, and bittersweet as it’s predecessors. I can’t wait to dive into this one, as well. We’re very excited about a new Watermark book club starting in April – “Kid Lit For Grownups”, and I hope that many of you will join us the first Wednesday of the month starting April 6th, at 6:30pm. We’ll eat a little, drink a little, and certainly chat a little on these books, discounted 20%: April - “The Witches” by Roald Dahl (Puffin, ISBN 0141301104, $5.99) May - “The Thief Lord” by Cornelia Funke (Scholastic, ISBN 043942089X, $6.99) June - the first book in the “Summer of the Sisterhood” series mentioned above, “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” (Random House, ISBN 0440229707, $6.99) Our children’s book-of-the-week receiving a 30% discount is Orphan Train by Verla Kay (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, ISBN 0399236139, $15.99). Kay gives us the story of three orphaned children facing the harsh realities of street life in the early 1900s. They’re welcomed into an overcrowded orphanage, and then leave west on a train with thousands of other children to be parceled out to homes. Based on fact, this story is a great way to introduce elementary children to a difficult time in our country’s history of handling child welfare. For kids ages 0-7 years, check out the new “Harold and the Purple Crayon” books – “Big, Bigger, Biggest!” by Namrata Tripathi (HarperCollins, ISBN 006054368X, $5.99) and “Things That Go” by Jodi Huelin (HarperCollins, ISBN 0060543698, $5.99). “Big” helps young kids understand superlative differences between ideas such as tall and tallest, and wide and widest. “Things That Go” helps children connect words with the object presented in the illustrations by bolding the object in the sentence. The youngest readers will enjoy these simple, entertaining board books. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s birthday is on February 7. To celebrate, consider “My First Little House Books”. These books are wonderful for early independent readers who are not quite ready for the original stories in the series. Renee Graef’s illustrations are lovely in their simplicity, and the stories are as fun as the original they’re adapted from. Try “Going to Town” (HarperTrophy, ISBN 0064434524, $5.95), “Winter on the Farm” (HarperTrophy, ISBN 006440692X, $5.99), and “Sugar Snow” (Harper Trophy, ISBN 0064435717, $5.95). For older readers,
consider "A Little House Reader” by Laura Ingalls Wilder and edited by
William
Anderson (Harpercollins, ISBN 006026358X, $16.99.) In this compilation
of
Wilder’s writing before the “Little House” series, you’ll find poems,
essays,
and other pieces from her personal life, societal observations, and humorous
insights. Reading this will give you a broader perspective of the
woman outside
the girl on the prairie, and reaffirm that Wilder may be one of the most
gifted
writers in the last hundred years. Our website of the week – What’s more appropriate for the cold month of February than this site at http://www.vickiblackwell.com/lit/bentley.html? Here you will find lesson plans for the 1999 Caldecott Award winning book, Snowflake Bentley (Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0395861624, $16.00). From art projects to poetry, you can utilize this favorite book for lower grade seasonal and fun activities.
Shaunna
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