Read an E-Book Week

This week is National Read an E-Book Week. I feel a bit like a traitor for announcing that, but there; it's done.

Why should you care? Because this is your chance to visit several online publishers to check out their absolutely free (or deeply discounted) e-books titles. You'll find an extensive listing of partner sites, publishers, authors, and booksellers at the official site.

For lovers of picture books (yay! he's back! pluckin' that old one stringed banjo!) you'll find some terrific titles over at Sylvan Dell, including a free full-access look at Pandas' Earthquake Escape (doesn't work too well in AOL; other browsers seem fine).

While at Sylvan Dell, definitely check out their grant program, which allows schools and libraries access to all their books in e-book form.

That's a Good Question! Encouraging Inquiry through Nonfiction Texts

Students are naturally curious. How can we channel that curiosity into learning? By simply feeding it, of course, with books that not only provide answers, but ask more questions! The first step of our time-proven scientific method is, after all, to pose a question. What better way to open our minds to new ideas?

That's why I love books that encourage questions. One treasure I just recently discovered (which I wish I had owned when teaching third grade) is Does It Really Take Seven Years to Digest Swallowed Gum? and Other Questions You've Always Wanted to Ask.

In this fun, inviting book you'll find the answers to that question and more, including

• Does the average human consume four spiders per year while sleeping?
• Can reusing plastic water bottles cause cancer?
• Is there a special chemical that will detect urine in swimming pools?
• Is the number of people alive today greater than the number who have ever lived?
• Does Jell-O gelatin really contain animal bones and skin?

The answers, of course, are interesting to know (especially if you poll your students ahead of time to tally their responses), but the explanations of the answers are equally intriguing, and often invite further exploration.

The perfect classroom extension would be to collect similar questions to answer, and myths to debunk. You're apt to find out that many of your students are Myth Busters fans! Collect the questions, the urban myths, and the "folk wisdom" and post them for all to see. Discuss ways that students might possibly find the answers. Not only will this encourage critical thinking, but it's an easy and highly motivating way to interest students in the research process. Some suggested resources:

• Research Rocket (pictured) was recently featured at my Teaching that Sticks blog, and is highly recommended if you're looking for a fun, interactive way to teach the research process.
• Brain Pop is a popular site featuring short videos on many nonfiction topics. If your school doesn't have a subscription yet,
• Cool Science for Curious Kids explores four science "mysteries" by first posing questions.
• Did You Ever Wonder? is a cool site where scientists discuss what they're exploring. Each scientist is introduced with a question which reflects the kind of work they're doing on a daily basis. Nice exploration into careers as well.
• Exploratorium features explorations into many topics, using articles, simulations, and games.
• MicroAngela features amazing microscopic views of insects, organisms, parasites, cells, and more.
• ScienceMaster features articles, scientist biographies, and more; best explored using menu links on left.
• The Why Files is subtitled "The Science Behind the News," and that's exactly waht it provides: a kid friendly site which helps students understand the science behind the headlines.
• Wonderville includes age-categorized activities including 3-D animations, self-checking quizzes, printable at-home science explorations, and science career videos. Highly recommended!

Does It Really Take Seven Years to Digest Swallowed Gum? is written on a third to fourth grade reading level and its sections are short and well illustrated; your students will absolutely be able to read and enjoy it on their own. The best news of all, its a part of the Is That a Fact? series from Lerner Books which includes:

• Can an Old Dog Learn New Tricks? And Other Questions about Animals;
• Can Lightning Strike the Same Place Twice? And Other Questions about the Earth, Weather, and the Environment;
• Does and Apple a Day Keep the Doctor Away? And Other Questions about Your Health and Body; and
• Is There Life on Other Planets? And Other Questions about Space.

If your audience is a bit older, or if you're working with a gifted group, I'd also recommend The Nobel Book of Answers. Although not a picture book, this title aimed at young people features the Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, and other Nobel Prize winners providing answers to some of life's little known mysteries, including:

• Why can't I live on French fries?
• What is love?
• Why is pudding soft and stone hard?
• Why is the sky blue?
• Why do I forget some things and not others?
• Why does 1 + 1 = 2?
• Will I soon have a clone?

The surprising, humorous, and sometimes touching answers by these profound thinkers will answer questions while prompting others. Isn't that, after all, what a good book should do?

Ten Not-to-Be-Missed Picture Book Reference Sites

Almost daily I receive an email asking for a list of books on a certain topic, or genre, or time period, or skill. Many readers of this blog first came here from Google seeking just that.

Fortunately there are some terrific sites out there that can provide teachers with basic lists of picture books, categorized in almost any way imaginable. The ten sites I've listed below will help you locate "the good stuff." Also be sure to take advantage of the expertise available through your local librarian or media center specialist.

Know of a site that should be here? Email me and let me know!


Dr. Sue LeBeau's Links to Picture Books

This nicely categorized collection of picture books provides a comfortable starting point for any teacher looking to incorporate picture books in a purposeful way. Sue has categorized them by Math, Science, Social Studies, etc. A site worth bookmarking.

Help Readers Love Reading

Here you'll find short and fun reviews of picture books. It's hard to keep up with all the new books out there, so a resource like this is your best bet. Blogger Brian Wilhorn reviews a single book every few days, and he seems to have some passion for it.

Reading Workshop

This site features a list of picture books that you can use to teach specific reading skills and strategies (foreshadowing,, predictions, setting, etc). For those looking for ideas for incorporation, and for those seeking specific titles, this site is an excellent resource.

Writing Fix: Picture Book Prompts

This site is packed with tons of resources, although for our immediate purposes I recommend the 60+ picture book inspired writing lessons (that's what I've linked to). You'll find some of your favorites here, along with complete lesson plans and ready-to-go printables for student use. All free! No registration or membership needed. Equally cool at this site, however, is the chapter book excerpts as mentor texts section, which enables you to use just a few pages, or a chapter at most, of a novel as a writing model.

Storyline Online

Famous celebrities read aloud from popular children's books! A fine and growing collection of favorite picture books.

Picture Book Database

A really terrific online tool that allows you to search picture book titles alphabetically by theme or topic.

Trade Book Matrices

Although it says at this site that these are book for adult learners, many of the titles in these downloadable Word docs are picture books. Books are grouped by topic (Westward Expansion, Civil Rights, Grandparents, Immigrants, etc.) and some teaching ideas are included for select topics.

Book Wizard from Scholastic

At this site, Scholastic provides a really valuable tool called BookALike. This allows you to enter a book title, find the exact grade-equivalent level of that book, and then browse books of similar reading difficulty and topic. What's even more useful is that you can use a "slider" to choose books of slightly greater or lesser difficulty. So if a student loved The Magic Tree House as a second grader two years ago, you can simply enter that title and then slide up two grades to locate appropriate titles for fourth grade.

Database of Award Winning Children's Literature

This database allows you to focus a search for both picture and chapter books as narrowly or as broadly as you choose by selecting such variables as genre, historical period, grade level, and even genre of protagonist. And as the title says, the titles produced in your search are award winners, so you can be relatively sure that they're worth a look.

All Together Now

A really extensive clickable list of themes, read-alouds, values, and topics. So many ways to search similar ideas, and the results are pretty complete! What's really cool is that the list is now online as a wiki, which means you can easily add titles to the list, thereby increasing its value to teachers like you! I personally added a list called Focused Reading Skills, and I absolutely encourage you to add your recommended titles.

Recommended Picture Books for Black History, Part II

This post is way overdue! But the fact is, the books I'm about to share are great for any time of the year, and certainly need not be limited to Black History Month. Be sure to also check out Part One of this post for more great ideas!

George Crum and the Saratoga Chips, written by Gaylia Taylor and illustrated by Frank Morrison, is a terrific tale of invention. Having always felt like an outsider because of the color of his skin, George Crum thinks he's finally found in his place as chef at a prestigious Saratoga Springs restaurant. But when a customer's complaint makes him feel inferior, his inventiveness helps to create one of America's finest "delicacies," now enjoyed in almost every American home.

Students, of course, love to create, so some exercises in invention are in order as an extension to this fun book. There tons of sites on invention, but I'm a teacher, and I know you don't want messy, time-consuming projects to litter your classroom! Here instead are a few simple, neat web links to explore:

• African American Inventors is a site designed for upper grade students, but can be easily navigated with just a little assistance. There students can research achievements of an assigned Black American. If you need a few names to get started, see Cengage Learning's Invent-O-Rama page.
• Meet Me at The Corner is a cool virtual field trip site, and their video on Kid Inventors' Day is supplemented with some simple follow-up questions and activities.
• Whizzball allows students to either solve or create a pathway of gadgets to move a ball from one place to another in a Mousetrap-like environment. Extremely open-ended and adaptable to many skill levels.
• The History of Invention is a cool invention timeline which can be scrolled either vertically or horizontally. There students can learn about the origins of the "stuff" they use every day.

Jimmy "Wink" Winkfield is the inspiration behind The Last Black King of the Kentucky Derby, written by Crystal Hubbard and illustrated by Robert McGuire. Jimmy Winkfield is the only black Jockey to win two Kentucky Derby titles back to back, and for this honor was inducted into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs. This book chronicles his determination to win on and off the track in the face of increasing racism in the world of horse racing.

• After reading this book, students may want to explore the world of horse racing, and the Reading Recommendations page from the official Kentucky Derby Museum is a good place to start.
• For more information about black jockeys, and Isaac Murphy in particular (mentioned in The Last Black King as one of racing's most successful riders), check out the article African-Americans in Racing.
• Lee and Low books provides an interesting interview with author Crystal Hubbard. In addition to speaking about The Last Black King, Hubbard discusses what readers can learn from books about sports. Reading that interview may spark an idea for a wider reading of sports picture books (see Floyd Cooper's titles below). Also be sure to check out Hubbard's most recent book, Catching the Moon: The Story of a Young Girl's Baseball Dream.
• And of course, here's a silly horse racing game your students will probably enjoy.

Muhammad Ali: Champion of the World, written by Jonah Winter and illustrated by Francois Roca, tells the tale of the man who would be King, not on the race track, but in the boxing ring.

This is the true Ali: proud, controversial, devastating. Roca's thick, sculpturesque paintings are the perfect complement to Winter's narrative, which echoes the language and rhythm of the Book of Genesis. All in all, a satisfying, fact-filled tribute to the Champion of the World.

Be sure to check out Ali's complete biography, as this book is certain to prompt questions from many students. From Ali's own official site, you'll find many video segments of his greatest fights.

Willie and the All Stars, written and illustrated by Floyd Cooper, is one of that author's finest titles. While many of us know Floyd Cooper as simply an illustrator, providing beautiful images for the words of others (as in Brown Honey in Broomwheat Tea, by Joyce Carol Thomas), Willie and the All-Stars establishes Cooper as a double threat talent.

Young Willie dreams of playing professional baseball one day, but is dissuaded from pursuing that dream because, after all, Blacks don't play in the major leagues in 1942 America. He's close to giving up hope until one day a neighbor gives him tickets to an exhibition game between Negro League and Major League All-Stars at Wrigley Field. The Negro League players, led by Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, quickly impress the crowd with their determination playing style, and through their grit edge the much-favored major leaguers for the win. The book ends with a glimmer of hope for Willie and boys like him as white and black players shake hands on the field at game's end. An author's note adds a bit of history regarding the Negro Leagues.

This book would, of course, be a perfect companion title to Let Them Play, mentioned in my Recommended Picture Books for Black History Month, Part I post. Let Them Play details the struggle of young players which mirrored those of their idols.

Following a reading of Willie and the All Stars, students may wish to explore the history of Negro Leagues. A good place to start would be Carole Boston Weatherford's A Negro League Scrapbook or Kadir Nelson's excellent We Are the Ship. See my Going Extra Innings with Baseball Picture Books post for questions, lessons, and more online extensions.

For further research and activities, you'll find everything you need at the Negro Baseball League site at 42Explore (Four to Explore). Using the resources there, students can create a baseball card, player biography, or team poster, or complete a webquest on Negro Baseball.

Focus on a Skill: Elaboration

So often student writing efforts are what I call "bare bones." Student writing lacks muscle and flesh and features, due to a paucity of specific verbs, adverbs, and adjectives. Students often have also not had instruction in showing versus telling.

The best remedy for this, of course, is for students to examine excellent writing. As students read exemplary passages, they need to ask:

• What's happening here that's not happening in my own writing?
• What choices has the author made?
• What has been included to provide me with a picture of what's happening?
• What has the author deliberately left out for the reader to piece together?

Sometimes the missing piece of the puzzle is simply word choice. When teaching my students the importance of using alternatives to "said," for example, I assigned pairs of students two chapters from Gordon Korman's Swindle. Korman is a master at crafting realistic dialogue, and in one chapter alone a student found thirty speaking words other than said, and the word said itself was used just five times (and most often with an adverb). (Using just a portion of a novel like this to examine craft absolutely works! You can use online book trailers to fill in the missing information, or to give a complete picture of the story line).

At other times, the details which are important and of interest to the reader simply aren't fleshed out. If you need a wonderful example for this skill of elaboration, I recommend Daniel Boone's Great Escape, written by Michael P. Spradlin and illustrated by Ard Hoyt. This book, filled with action and suspense, and described with strong verbs and vivid details, is inspired by just a single line in Boone's diary!

A great extension would have students choose historical events from their typically brief descriptions in textbooks and "blow them up." Will some imagination be involved? Yes. Will some "liberties be taken"? Yes. But I think if we resign ourselves to those concessions, and rightfully call our pieces historical fiction, we can then focus on the craft of elaboration.

Need a couple more books for ideas? Check out the extremely descriptive language of The Scarlet Stockings Spy, written by Trinka Hakes Noble and illustrated by Robert Papp, or the humorous, fictional retellings of great lives in Lane Smith's John, Paul, George and Ben. Both books are described in a previous post on The American Revolution.

For upper elementary and middle school writers, see more suggestions for improving elaboration in my post Narrative Writing that Makes a Point.