Failure IS an Option; A Really Funny One

Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made by Pearls Before Swine strip creator Stephan Pastis is a hilarious new title guaranteed to win big with fans of Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Dear Dumb Diary.

I read it with much amusement and delight, but thought that perhaps my own immaturity and snarkiness prevented me from qualifying as an unbiased judge of its greatness. I therefore turned to an expert on books of this type: my third grade daughter Mackenzie.

I decided Mackenzie could serve as an impartial judge due to the following qualifications:

1. Timmy Failure is aimed at her demographic, 
2. She's a voracious reader of this genre,
3. She regularly discusses and swaps books with her third grade posse, and 
4. She stole the advance review copy the day it arrived at our house before I even had the chance to open the cover.

I also felt I owed it to her after she scoured the shelves of our public library looking for Number Two in the series. I believe Mackenzie suffered intense emotional damage upon learning that the follow-up wouldn't be available for quite some time. Nonetheless, she graciously agreed to be interviewed.

Me:  So what's Timmy Failure all about?

Kenzie:  It's about this boy who's really bad in school that decides to open up a detective agency. The problem is, he's really bad at being a detective and he misses lots of obvious clues. And he owns a fifteen hundred pound polar bear named Total.

Me:  Is the polar bear real, or stuffed?

Kenzie:  It's real! (She shrugs her shoulders and lifts her hands up, palms to the ceiling  as if to say. "Duh!").

Me:  You're sure it's real?

Kenzie:  What does it matter?

Me:  Good point. So apart from this polar bear, does Timmy have any friends?

Kenzie:  He has one friend name Rollo, but Timmy thinks he's not that smart, which is crazy, because Rollo studies all the time and gets really good grades, and Timmy doesn't.

Me:  Any other friends?

Kenzie:  Well, he has an archenemy (speaking with increased enthusiasm now) and her name is Corinna Corinna, and what's funny is that at first he won't name her or even let you see her face. She has her own detective agency and Timmy thinks she's reeeeeally annoying.

Me:  Any favorite parts?

Kenzie:  I like when he tries to solve cases, because he always ignores really obvious clues. This one time a boy named Gunnar hires him to find out who ate all his candy. On Timmy's way out, he peeks in the room and sees Gabe, Gunnar's brother, his face all covered with chocolate, sitting on his bed surrounded by candy wrappers. You think he's solved the crime, but all Timmy does is write in his notebook, "Gabe: Not tidy."

Me:  Any other favorite parts?

Kenzie:  Well, I think it's funny that the librarian is really, really tough, and he has "Dewey" on a tattoo...

Me:  You mean like, the Dewey decimal system?

Kenzie:  Yeah. You don't really expect a librarian to look like that.

Me:  (picking up the book) I noticed some pretty hard words in here. Did you understand them all?

Kenzie: Yeah. If you read the book, you can tell what the words mean.

Me:  Really? All of them?

Kenzie:  Well, most of them. But you don't have to understand every word to get the story. Plus, I think that sometimes even Timmy doesn't know what the words mean. He names his detective agency Total Failure, Inc. because the polar bear's name is Total, but he doesn't even get why that's a really bad name for a company.

Me:  So who would enjoy this book?

Kenzie:  Anyone who likes funny stories. Every day I show funny parts to my friend, so she wants to borrow it next. And then her friend wants to borrow it... yeah. You might not get it back.

Me:  So is Timmy a failure?

Kenzie: Yes. Actually, no. He's not a failure. He's just clueless. Are we done yet?

# # #

There you have it: the insightful and thought provoking reflections of a third grader.

One point on which we both agree is the vocabulary. Stephan Pastis intersperses fantastic vocabulary throughout the book, purposefully heavier at times to indicate moments of importance. Check out how in the following short excerpt he combines specific vocabulary, repetition, sentence variety, and even sentence fragments, in a wonderful way:

But that greatness did not prepare me for what I would see at the Weber residence.

For today it is the scene of total devastation. All marred by the remnants of someone inhumane. Someone determined. Someone whose weapon of choice comes in packs of six, twelve, and twenty. If you are squeamish, look away.

Toilet paper. It is everywhere.

And this isn't one isolated and out-of-the-ordinary passage; this is how he writes the entire book. For that reason, I would definitely recommend this book for middle schoolers, and certainly reluctant and struggling readers. I could even see myself using several portions as mentor texts to teach sentence and paragraph structure, understatement, satire, and word choice.

So pick up a copy of Timmy Failure for yourself, or visit the official Timmy Failure site for fun extras such as wallpapers, interviews, and videos.

Big Changes

Raina Telgemeier's Smile is about big changes in a young girl's life. No, not those kinds of changes (although as a father to two girls I'll have my share of those awkward moments). We're talking instead about subtler changes, hinted at from the start by the book's cover, which features a brace-clad smiley face. From Scholastic's Booktalk:

Aah, hanging out with your friends. You laugh. You go shopping. You have sleepovers and you always have fun. Well, imagine this: you and your friends are chasing each other one day and you trip. When you fall, you hit the cement. You hit the cement so hard that you knock out your two front teeth! This is exactly what happens to the character of Raina in the graphic novel Smile by Raina Telgemeier.

After an emergency trip to Dr. Golden's office, the dentist glues Raina's teeth back into her mouth. He covers them in gauze that soon becomes soggy and gross. When Raina takes off the gauze, she discovers that the teeth have been inserted too far. Now she looks like a vampire! Going to school looking like a vampire will definitely make boys notice her, but not in a good way.

While the book on its simplest level is the story of Raina's teeth trials, on a much larger level it's the story of a girl who struggles to maintain her own identity while still fitting in. One part I particularly love is when Raina comes to the realization that she has to move on from her former friends, who are acting less and less supportive, to a new circle of friends in high school. These transitions happen in real life, of course, but less often in middle school lit. Too often we're offered a much simpler, pat solution.

I love Smile for a number of reasons:

• It fits in with my year-long theme of Survival. While it's not survival in the life-and-death sense of The Devils' Arithmetic, it's as authentic (but not as gritty as) The Outsiders. Personally I'd rather face a multitude of other dangers before ever agreeing to be a middle school girl! Other themes for this book include Identity, Acceptance, Affiliation, Change, Coming of Age, Conflict, Choices, Relationships, Loyalty, Conformity, Belonging, and Differences.
• Its autobiographical format makes it more authentic. Truth is absolutely stranger than fiction, and we feel for our protagonist here because she is so true-to-life. (Learn more about Raina at her site).
• The narrative flows without gaps. Many graphic novels assume that readers will be able to plug bill holes between frames. At no time, however, does Telgemeier leave us wondering what we missed.
• The overall design and illustration are flawless. My six year-old was so taken with the illustrations that she squirreled away with the book for two hours, and "read" it from cover to cover, reading, of course, just those words she could. (She then asked to have it read aloud to her before bed each night). To get a good feel for the book's flow, check out this video trailer from Scholastic.
• Scholastic has printed it in standard paperback, rather than oversize, format. This not only allows the book to handled more easily, but avoids the look of a graphic novel. Some students would rather their friends see them with a chapter book than a "comic book." See how cruel middle school can be?
• It uses comic conventions. Thus readers who are successful with this book may move on to other graphic novels, which in turn will keep them reading. (Need some suggestions? Check out this previous post on Graphic Novels and New Literacies from this site).
• Scholastic has provided a very cool Make Your Own Smile Graphix site (see the screen shot here) where students can manipulate scenes, characters, objects, and speech bubbles to create their own stories.

A conference attendee once asked if I'd use a graphic novel (like Smile) for a classroom study, but I know full well that students would race to the end of their own. But I guess that's a good thing, right? And that's also why my classroom shelves boast a nice supply of these books.

Ten CC's of Books for Boys

Looking for a way to get your boys reading? Look no further than the book recommendations below, sorted into "10 CC's" guaranteed to inject some enthusiasm for reading!

1. Curious Critters

Boys love to read about animals, the stranger the better. What's really terrific is that so many animal picture books are written using nonfiction text conventions such as a glossary, index, text boxes, captions, boldfaced and italicized words, appositives (for defining words in context), and headings and subheadings. Boys who frequently read these books will later find content area texts easier to navigate.

So which critters to include? Insects and predators lead the list, although mythological creatures are also popular. Boys tend to leave books about horses, dogs, and cats to the girls. A great example of this critter category is Predators, one of Simon and Schuster's Insiders Series. Photographs, photo-realistic close-ups, and cool cut-aways give boys an unparalleled look at some of nature's most awesome hunters.

2. Caped Crusaders

Superheroes embody many of the traits that boys admire. What schoolboy hasn't dreamed of living dual lives? Superheroes, with their awesome powers and identity struggles, continue to be popular with boys right up through middle school. From classic superheroes such as Batman to newer, more unlikely protagonists such as Jeff Smith's Bone, this is a tradition that continues to reinvent itself for new generations of boys.

Need ideas for using superhero books? Check out the I Need a Hero post at this blog, and also click on the tag for heroism to the right.

3. Cool Cars

Cars, planes, motorcycles, and all things that go VRROOM! universally appeal to boys (and full-grown men as well!). In fact, researchers in a Harvard study of several hundred preschoolers discovered an interesting phenomenon. As they taped children's playground conversation, they realized that all the sounds coming from little girls' mouths were recognizable words. However, only 60 percent of the sounds coming from little boys were recognizable. The other 40 percent were yells and sound effects like "Vrrrooooom!" "Aaaaagh!" "Toot toot!"

Boys, it seems, do have a need for speed! Use this to your advantage by offering books such as the high-interest Torque series from Scholastic. While the reading level in this series is roughly third grade, the interest level is third to seventh. Some titles include Stock Cars, Apache Helicopters, and Motocross Cycles, all written by Jack David.

4. Comic Characters

In addition to superheroes, boys enjoy reading other materials in comic form. Many publishers recognize this, and now offer a fantastic collection of graphic novels in almost every genre (biography, mystery, history, science fiction, fantasy, poetry, etc.).

Graphic Planet's Bio-Graphic series title Jackie Robinson, for example, presents that hero's life story in comic format. The title also includes a timeline, glossary, index, stats, recommended further reading, and web links. For reluctant readers, this is a rewarding foray into biography which is likely to create a desire to explore additional famous men and women.

For more on graphic novels, see my previous post on Graphic Novels and New Literacies.

5. Comebacks and Conquests

The majority of boys who are obsessed with sports can be encouraged to read voraciously, given a library stocked with titles about players, teams, and championships. What's really awesome about many of today's titles is that they'll take a boy's love for a sport, such as baseball, and bring the context of a single game to life. In Phil Bildner's The Shot Heard 'Round the World, for example, young readers are taken back to Brooklyn in the sweltering summer of 1951 to see the Dodgers face off against the rival Giants for the chance to play the Yankees in the World Series. Illustrator C.F. Payne's images complete the time-machine transformation, and for just a little more than a dozen pages we are lost in a bit of baseball history.

If your students dig that one, be sure to check out Shoeless Joe and Black Betsy, by this same creative duo. Then, in a bit of what I call "stealth teaching," slip in Mighty Jackie: The Strike-Out Queen by Marissa Moss. They'll recognize C.F. Payne's style on the front cover, and that should be enough to draw them in.

Need some ideas for teaching with sports books? Check out my previous post on Going Extra Innings with Baseball Books.

6. Creeping Corpses

Almost every kid loves a good scare, and boys in particular love to read creepy stories. Whether it's a collection of Scary Stories which have been passed down orally for years, or a retelling of a classic ghost story, or a totally new take on this genre, boys love a good horror story.

Tales of the Dead: Ancient Egypt by Stewart Ross is a large format picture book that is part graphic novel, part cross-sections, and part nonfiction reference (a combination of three genres which are tops with boys!). This incredible book tells a tale of "murder, magic, and mystery" while simultaneously teaching the reader how ancient Egyptians honored their dead. The vast number of incredibly detailed and historically accurate illustrations were painstaking completed by a pool of talented artists and designers called Inklink. A fantastic addition to any library!

Lerner's Graphic Universe series Twisted Journeys is part Choose Your Own Adventure, part graphic novel, and 100% gripping. For example, the blurb on School of Evil (Twisted Journey #13) reads:

At Darkham Academy, the teachers are creepy, monsters lurk in the lab, and your dorm room is haunted! Can you survive the first day of school and finish your homework on time? Every Twisted Journeys graphic novel lets YOU control the action by choosing which path to follow. Which twists and turns will your journey take?

School of Evil's compact size, slick pages, masterful illustrations, and multiple opportunities for rereading (by choosing alternative endings) makes it a hit with upper elementary and middle school boys.

7. Close Combat

While many schools discourage war play, we can tap into boys' fascination with soldiers and guns by offering a wide selection of books on history. Books like 2010 title The Top Ten Battles that Changed the World are an easy introduction for boys into the wider study of world culture. Warring is, unfortunately, nearly as much a part of any culture as music, art, food, and dance. But a good book on the topic may lead students to want to explore more about a specific culture, beyond which battles it fought.

For lots of great titles and activities for teaching about the Revolutionary War, see my previous post, Crossroads of the Revolution.

8. Cut-Throats and Cutlasses

There's something about the pirate life that's enticing to boys. Is it the sword fights and the buried treasure, or the absence of nagging mothers and the lack of bathing? Whatever its allure, the pirate life can be explored through such books as How I Became a Pirate, Everything I Know About Pirates, and Pirate Bob.

If you have older readers, Candlewick's more sophisticated Pirateology would be an excellent choice, and your boys would absolutely want to visit the related web site at Ologyworld.com. There they'll find games, downloads, and extracts for all the Ology books.

9. Corporeal Crud

"Boys are gross!" is the oft-heard lament of school-age girls. Whether or not that's true, it does seem that boys love stuff that is really gross. Case in point: Jurassic Poop: What Dinosaurs (and Others) Left Behind, a fun and fascinating look at scatology (the study of poop). Author Jacob Berkowitz and illustrator Steve Mack might do for this field of science what CSI did for forensics.

Boys also love to find out cool stuff about their own bodies. Place a copy of Clot and Scab: Gross Stuff about Your Scrapes, Bumps, and Bruises on your classroom book shelf, and you're not apt to see it again until year's end! Filled with disgustingly real photos, gross facts, microscopic close-ups, and just enough text to answer students' questions, this book will be of interest to future scientists and physicians alike. Author Kristi Lew supplements all the "cool stuff" with some really solid, fact-filled writing. Chapter One, for example, begins:

Have you ever fallen off your bike and dragged some poor body part along the pavement? YOW! Not only does it hurt like crazy, it looks nasty too. But don't worry. While you made hamburger out of your knee or elbow, your body got busy repairing the damage.

In that short paragraph, we have an awesome model of writing: all four sentence types, varied sentence length, and a metaphor! Trust me, if every textbook were written with this much skill, students would be far more successful in reading them than they are! (Clot and Scab is just title from Lerner Publishing's Gross Body Science series which includes Crust and Spray, Hawk and Drool, Itch and Ooze, and Rumble and Spew. What awesome titles! Also be sure to check out my prior post on Does It Really Take Seven Years to Digest Swallowed Gum? That post discusses ways teachers can use disgustingly cool books like these to encourage inquiry and research).

10. Cross-Sections and Cut-Aways

What boy hasn't taken apart a favorite toy or household appliance, just to "see how it works"? Books that offer detailed diagrams of the workings of helicopters, the human body, pyramids, the Titanic, tanks, and the Millennium Falcon are guaranteed to attract crowds of boys, anxious to read and discuss the tiniest captions offered to explain the most detailed drawings.

DK Publishing has dozens of these titles, and what's incredible is that the cross-sections of things that don't even exist in real life (such as the vehicles and spacecraft found in Star Wars: Incredible Cross-Sections) are often the most popular. My guys will sit and pore over a single diagram with a degree of studiousness I could only wish they would apply to their other school work.

Need even more recommendations? Check out Deborah Ford's recently published Scary, Gross, and Enlightening Books for Boys Grades 3–12. About this resource, School Library Journal says

Citing studies and describing the academic risks boys face, Ford challenges educators to help boys become more successful readers and students. Nine chapters cover nonfiction, graphic works, sports, mystery and adventure, humor, fantasy and science fiction, war and history, books with male characters, titles that have become movies, and read-alouds that meet national curriculum standards. Entries include a brief synopsis along with the publisher's interest-level recommendation and a reading level calculated by averaging three standard tools. Throughout, activities are highlighted, and Web resources are included at the end of each chapter.

 Know of other great titles and topics to get boys reading? Leave a comment below.

And Yet Still More Free Resources from Children's Publishers

This is my fourth, but probably not the last, post focusing on free resources from children's publishers. If you're just arriving, you'll want to check out the older posts to see parts one, two, and three. If you know of a publisher I've missed, drop me a line!

Salariya is the UK publisher of the immensely popular Scholastic "You Wouldn't Want..." series which I discussed in a previous blog. They've put four of their more popular titles online for direct viewing, with a little bit of interactivity and related links to boot. Check out the online versions of You Wouldn't Want to be a Roman Gladiator, You Wouldn't Want to be an Egyptian Mummy, You Wouldn't Want to be a Polar Explorer, and You Wouldn't Want to Sail on a 19th Century Whaling Ship. Some of the links which appear at the end of each book are equally worth exploring.

I don't know how I mentioned Candlewick in my previous post without noting their very cool Ology World site. While this is topic of a post on this site, I'll leave it to you if you wish to sneak a peek. Your boys especially will like the interactive approach to nonfiction.

I also mentioned the Walker US site and the Walker Australia site, only to find out that there's an equally impressive Walker UK site. The Kids Den presents the user with the option to explore several minisites devoted to specific titles and characters (such as Judy Moody, Alex Rider, and Anthony Horowitz's Power of Five). A page for grown-ups features short yet comprehensive articles on topics such as Learning at Home, Reading Aloud, and Rereading. One resource I highly recommend you download right now is a poster titled The Rights of the Reader (see thumbnail to the right), written by Daniel Pennac and illustrated by the quirky Quentin Blake. A must-have for any classroom or library. Other cool resources they offer directly (posters, teaching guides, podcasts, videos, etc.) are available from a single page where they're organized by age group. Additional literacy links which will take you off the Walker site are also provided at Links We Like.

Abrams' most famous titles for children come from their Amulet Books imprint. Leading the way is The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, now a best-selling series (visit the minisite here). Gaining ground, however, is the The Sisters Grimm, which appeals to a slightly different demographic. This title has its own minisite where teachers can download a teaching guide, allowing them to make natural connections to the fairy tale genre. Coming in third place is NERDS (National Espionage, Rescue, and Defense Society), also by Michael Buckley, author of The Sisters Grimm. This site, again, features its own minisite, author video, and first chapter online preview.




Abdo Publishing Group incorporates a number of imprints at its site, and it's worth a look. The printable activities change often, and offer seasonal connections to many of its titles. One handout which teachers might find useful is the Create Your Own Superhero Handout. This is a terrific page to accompany the Hero Factory online activity which appeared in one of my previous posts on heroes in picture books (you can also check out Marvel Comic's cool Create Your Own Superhero interactive site). Teachers interested in making a case for using comics and graphic novels in the classroom may also appreciate the two page pdf Comic Books and Literacy Studies (also required reading if you need some convincing yourself). In that document some notable folks, such as Bishop Desmond Tutu and Jim Trelease, make a case for reading comics as a part of their own character development.

While we're briefly on the topic of graphic novels, another terrific resource for librarians and teachers is a pdf created by Scholastic and Bone series author Jeff Smith. Using Graphic Novels in the Classroom is a straight forward guide written in Q and A format which answers many questions and counters many arguments about comics in school curriculum and libraries.

Kane/Miller Book Publishers shares ideas (teacher to teacher) in single page Teaching Tips sheets (they download as Word documents). You'll find a decent list here to many favorites, including one of mine: Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox (see my dedicated post for this book). The Fun Page features printable games, coloring pages, bookmarks, etc.

Nomad Press seems to specialize in nonfiction books, particularly those focused on history and the people who made it. Their Activity Pages contain crafts and explorations from their titles, and you'll find about four or five dozen to explore (all available as pdfs from Scribd). Each featured book also has a full-page layout, featuring not only a summary, list of references, and information about the authors and illustrators, but also web links, downloadable Facts and Q and A sheets, plus a link to the activity sheet for that title (see Tools of Ancient Romans for a sample). Pictured activity is Make Your Own Tabletop Victory Garden from Great World War II Projects You Can Build Yourself.

Peachtree Publishers allows you to see all teacher's guides on a single page, and they're accessible by clicking on any book's cover (this one page includes picture books, middle school novels, and YA lit). I was pleased to see a teaching guide for The Yellow Star: The Legend of Christian X of Denmark, one of my favorite picture books for discussing the Holocaust (see others at a previous post). Peachtree is also creating a collection of story kits, meant for teachers of lower grades, which contain many more activities, templates, and picture resources than the above teaching guides.

Although I mentioned Harper Collins in the first installment of this Resources series, a reader suggested I also point teachers and students to the Harper Collins Children's Video Player, which offers snippets and full video versions of books from this publisher.

Are there more resources out there available from publishers? Absolutely! Let's find them together. Email me or leave a comment below if I've neglected to mention some great resources available from a publisher, not only here in the states but anywhere in the world!