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!

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!