Dalton Middle School Library

Come to the MS Library and check out a stack of books for your summer reading pleasure!

The due date for the summer reading materials is September 22nd.  Please take good care of the books!

The Summer Reading Lists are published!  Click on the link in the sidebar and find your list.  Don’t forget to check out the Reading Requirement Letter from your next year’s English teachers! You can also click right here for the lists page.

Yesterday afternoon, we held the 2009 DYKB Show.  All the fourth graders who entered their names got a chance to go on stage and gave their best shots at answering some pretty tricky questions.

These are the students who answered at least 3 questions correctly in a row:

From Edinger House: Dara, Annie, and from Farnsworth House, Danielle.  They got SIX questions right!

From Vogelsang House: Josh, James, and Daniel.  The answered THREE questions correctly.

From Noble House: Tomas, Davis, and Amanda.  They got FOUR questions right.

From Vogelsand House: Will, Alana, Lily. They answered NINE questions correctly in a row.

Congratulations to these readers and to all who participated.

We are having our first of two Do You Know Books?! 2009 Game Show today.  Today’s show will be for 4th graders only.  Wednesday, April 8th, the 5th graders will have a chance to test their book knowledge.

The fifteen books are

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi
Tangerine by Edward Bloor
Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins
The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pène Du Bois
City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Mistakes that Worked by Charlotte Foltz Jones
A Mango-Shaped Space by Wendy Mass
Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
East by Edith Pattou
My Life in Dog Years by Gary Paulsen
A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck
So B. It by Sarah Weeks

Watch this blog for the results!

Former and current Dalton administrators, teachers, parents, and students gathered to celebrate the art, poetry, music, and life of Ashley Bryan on February 3rd. This school wide event took place on a snowy and cold day, but inside the library, we had warmth and brilliance: from the genius of Ashley Bryan. Ashley taught art at First Program in the 60s and 70s. He has enjoyed a long and wonderful career a much celebrated children’s book artist.

At this special occasion, the Dalton High School singing group Alabanza brought us the joyous sounds of three spirituals from Ashley’s gorgeously illustrated volume of Let It Shine. Ms Edinger’s 4th grade class read aloud his Beautiful Blackbird in a podcast (later made into a short iMovie for the event). And everyone was marveling at the tome of Biography that 3rd graders made for Ashley in 1993.

Ashley shared with us details of his life, as a child, as an artist, and as a humanitarian. His newest book, an autobiography, Words to My Life’s Song, has just been published. We encourage everyone to enjoy the book!

The event photos and videos will be up shortly!

I’m back from the American Library Association’s midwinter conference.  This was the second year of my Notable Children’s Books Committee assignment.  After a 5-day-deliberation-and-voting process (and a year of reading and thinking about hundreds of books), we finally made our decisions and annotated the list yesterday.

The results have been posted on the web.  The books range from toddler board books to books for 7th and 8th graders, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biographies, etc.
Here’s the link:

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/childrensnotable/notablechibooks/index.cfm

Enjoy!

Children’s Book Winners were announced this morning in a Press Conference at Denver.  (I am sitting in the Convention Center and reporting this post-Press Conference.)  For a step-by-step, at the moment report of my reactions to the announcements, go to: http://www.fairrosa.info/rj

Follow this link to see part the titles.

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/2009medawardwin.cfm

A more complete list will be here soon.

We looked at How A Book Is Made slideshow and made up a story and published it on the Web in December, 2008.  We made some observations and comments:

Similar:

1. Both have to go through editing.
2. They both have text.
3. Both books and web pages can be written by multiple people.
4. Both books and web pages can have different levels of qualities: good books/good web pages; bad books/bad web pages.

Different:

1. Web site did not get edited as much.  Actually, some web sites do not have to go through any editing process at all.
2. It was faster to publish a web page.  It’s instantaneous.
3. Books are printed on paper but web sites do not need paper. (Saving trees?)
4. Web sites have built-in spell checks.
5. You don’t have to PRINT things from the web to read them.
6. You don’t have to buy or sell the web stories.
7. The Book on the slide show came from one author but our story was made by the whole class.
8. Things on the web are very easy to find and access.

In December, 2008, we did two things in Library Classes: one, we looked at a slide show on how books are made; two, we made our own silly story that was published on this blog, on the Web.

We now are discussing the differences and similarities between these two media and two processes:

Similar:

1. You can read books AND web pages/ebook.
2. You can open a book and open a web page.
3. Publishing books and web pages in the 21st century takes TYPING/USING computers.

Different:

1. You can carry a book around easily but not always a computer, unless you have a laptop, internet connection, and electricity.
2. Publishing a web page does not take that many people and steps or as long as publishing a book.
3. Sometimes, it is easier to find your places (links, search, etc.) when you read a web page.
4. There is actually printing involved in making books (paper, printer, ink, etc.)  It takes longer to produce.
5. Publishing on the web saves paper.
6. Usually, you have to pay to buy books and their content, but there is a lot of free stuff on the Web, including stories, news, games, etc.
7. Almost anyone can put up web pages, but it still is not that common for everyone to publish books.
8. Web Publishing doesn’t always have to cost money, but book publishing ALWAYS costs money.
9. Web publishing does not always make money for the web authors.

After we examined the slide show of How A Book Is Made and made up a story as a class in December, 2008, we had a discussion of the differences and similarities between book publishing and Web Page publishing.  Also, some differences and similarities between a book and a web page.

1. Book publishing: you need a printer and illustrator, but you don’t really need it on the web.  You don’t HAVE to illustrate for the web pages.

2. The web page we made, we didn’t have to worry about whether it would sell.  For a book, you had to go through all the steps.  (This is true only for free web sites.)

3. Book Publishing can take longer.

4. When you publish on the Web/Net, you can make stuff up without worrying about it being true.  But when you make a book, you need to be more truthful.

5. As readers, we actually trust books a little more.  (Some people.)  Others trust web sites more.  Some people trust both.  Some people distrust both.

6. People can easily change and update a web page, but in a book, once it’s printed and published, it’s very hard (almost impossible) for these changes.