NEXT MEETING

Our next meeting will be Wednesday, 11/17/10 at 6:30PM in the cafeteria.

Please join us.

Our next book will be The Watsons Go To Birmingham 1963 by Paul Christopher Curtis.

More about that later!
Mary Ann Rupcich

A List of All The Books, So Far!

1. The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs
Betty Birney

2. Christopher Mouse, The Tale of A Small Traveler
William Wise

3. Ribsy
Beverly Cleary

4. James and The Giant Peach
Roald Dahl

5. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
Kate DiCamillo

6. The Ghost, The White House and Me
Judith St. George

7. Lawn Boy
Gary Paulsen

8. The BFG
Roald Dahl

9. The Great Gilly Hopkins
Katherine Patterson

10. Jack On The Tracks
Jack Gantos

11. Little House In The Big Woods
Laura Ingalls Wilder

12. Pinocchio
Carlo Collodi

13. Loser
Jerry Spinelli

14. The Magician's Elephant
Kate DiCamillo

15. Shiloh
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

16. The Trumpet of The Swan
E. B. White

FIRST MEETING OF 2010-11 SCHOOL YEAR

About 20 families including 35 children gathered on Wednesday 10/6/10 in the school cafeteria to talk about and celebrate Shiloh, our first book of the year!

Dave Bakke from the State Journal Register visited the event and the linked article about our club resulted. Thanks to the Tamam family for sharing about their involvement with our Family Read Aloud Club.

http://www.sj-r.com/bakke/x835151729/Dave-Bakke-School-book-club-helps-mom-too

The Davis family even brought their two beagle puppies to add a touch of realism to the event.

One of the puppies, Max (I think), even had stitches on his leg in almost the same place Shiloh had stitches. Dalton got down on the floor and demonstrated how Marty played with Shiloh. Daisy did what any beagle puppy would do, started licking his face and trying to get under him!

Parents talked about the book while kids drew pictures to share later. Some adults thought the book was a little heavy in parts and wondered about "editing" as they read. Others thought that it was not as "heavy" as some of our past selections and that the kids could handle the realism.

The kids seemed to focus on the German Shepherd's cruelty to Shiloh rather than that mean old Judd (the bad guy)!

Puppy Chow was enjoyed along with cookies and milk as was the playground until it got too dark.

Our new book is The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White and will be available on Friday 10/8/10 for $5.25. Contact Mary Ann Rupcich at marupcich@springfield.k12.il.us to receive your copy.

Shiloh, Our First Book of the Year!!!

About 30 families at Springfield Ball Charter School are reading Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor as our first book of the year. Our first celebration will be Wednesday, October 6 at 6:30PM in the Cafeteria.

At that time, our next book, The Trumpet of The Swan by E.B White will be available for purchase ($5.25). Audios of this book will be available to borrow.

Remember, reading aloud with children even after they can read by themselves is the best way to encourage them to become lifelong readers who choose to read!

Please let us know how the reading is going and what you and your family are thinking and talking about as you progress through the book!

Mary Ann Rupcich

MAGICIAN'S ELEPHANT

This is a nonreligious book that deals in miracles. People are the ones with the power to work magic. In an era when the feeling among us is commonly that "the world is broken," this story of a broken world that fixes itself through the goodness of people is heartwarming, uplifting and compelling.

I kept forgetting that this was a children's book as I read it yesterday. And now, I am trying to imagine reading it with a child. I think the story, the language both are straightforward enough that children would "get it" at least on a literal level. Perhaps what makes a better than average children's book is if there is more there for adults to take away.

I think this one had that. The characters are richly drawn and believable within a make-believe story. The make-believe story is believable even if we must believe that an elephant falls through the roof of an opera house during a magic show and then ...

The magic gets better as the story draws to its climax!

One of my favorite parts is when the six year old main character, Peter, decides that war, "soldiering did not, in any way, seem like a man's work...Instead, it seemed like foolishness-a horrible, terrible, nightmarish foolishness." Peter says of it, "I look upon it and wish that it could be undone." Out of the mouths of babes...

Thank you, Kate DiCamillo. You did it again!

Mary Ann

Jack On The Tracks...weird!

At times, I was laughing out loud at this book...Sunny Winterbottom!?!

At other times, I couldn't believe what I was reading...the kid is strange, cruel, nuts!!!

I am definitely in the mood to be inspired, uplifted, impressed and I think Kate DiCamillo is the just the writer who can accomplish it!

Come get your copy tonight!

Mary Ann

Kate DiCamillo's Website

Our new book is The Magician's Elephant. Find out all about this beautiful new book by going to the author's website and click on this book's title.

http://www.katedicamillo.com/

FAMILY READ ALOUD CLUB'S POTLUCK DINNER
6 hours ago
A celebration of family reading will be held on Thursday, 5/13/10 at 6:00PM in the cafeteria and on the playground and in the garden. Please join us! Everyone is welcome. Contact Barb Sherman about details. (502-2590)

MEETING POSTPONED

Our next meeting which was scheduled for Thursday, 3/25/10 has been postponed until Thursday, 4/8/10!

Another meeting was scheduled (tentatively) for the cafeteria on March 25 at the same time.

This gives all of us a little longer to read.

We will see you on Thursday, April 8 at 6:30 PM in the cafeteria to talk about Loser and to pick up a copy of our new book, Jack On The Tracks!!!

See you on 4/8/10

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Mary Ann

UNKNOWN WORDS IN TEXT

Jim Trelease, the read aloud expert, says that children hear "rare" words only in books. Rare words, right like seque or deliterious, but "parka."

The other day as I was reading Ralph S. Mouse to the class, this word came up. In the story, kids were putting their parkas in their cubbies and so I asked "what is a parka?" No one knew! The guesses were "glue" or some other supply that kids were putting away.

This is a perfect example of how meaning can get lost in text when kids read. I am almost certain that all the olders and many of the youngers would have been able to figure out how to say the word "parka" but none knew what it meant. Luckily, I asked and cleared up the misconception. It was an important word in this story because Ralph was going to school in the pocket of a boy's parka. I think most kids might have eventually figured out that it was something the boy was wearing, but...

This is probably the reason that research shows that it is not the reading aloud to kids that supports high achievement, but rather the conversation that accompanies the read aloud-conversation between adult and child.

Mary Ann

Little House seems dated to me now...

Funny when you love something, you tend to overlook the shortcomings staring you in the face.

Reading a Little House book again, especially this one, reminds me now that there are some offensive terms used. I know this is, as I have said before, a glimpse into our past. It is, for the author I think, a romanticized version of this past. I know this but the glimpse we also get is into the language and mindset of a society that hopefully has moved on and gotten better.

My question to you adults is, how did you read the words of the song Pa sang about the "Dark..."??? I can't even write the word. Did you have a conversation about this with your kids or did you just skip it?

Our class has just read again, Freedom Summer, which is about the summer of 1964, one I remember well, unfortunately! It was, however, an important moment in our history and this book shines a light on it. It is told through the words of a white boy in the South whose best friend is a black boy. As a teacher of 6,7,and 8 year olds, the challenge of reading this kind of provocative book is nudging but not cramming ideas and thoughts into these little minds. It is letting them take what they can from the content as simply as they need to but leaving the door open for more complex thinking about a difficult time when American life changed for the better!

This Little House book looks different to me this time around because it is in this context and blowing off the attitudes underlying the words is more difficult when I think of all of you reading it too! Perhaps as always we must try to accept Laura as a product of the time within which she lived and remember that the "good old days" are not always just that!

Mary Ann

ETHAN'S CHOICE FOR OUR NEXT BOOK

Ethan Perry is lobbying for Jack On The Tracks by Jack Gantos to be our next book. He has been told by a certain secretary at SBCS that her son laughed out loud as he read this book when this first book in a series was brand new in 1999.

I think Tim Reynolds would have been in about 3rd or 4th grade in 1999. We should probably take seriously such a recommendation! Check it out:

http://www.jackgantos.com/jackonthetracks.html

Then let Ethan and the rest of us know what you think! To read or not to read, that is the question!!!

Ms. R.

There's a sticky note in my copy of this book that says "the last page makes Ms. R. cry!"...

It's true and I guess this is from the last time I read this book to a class.

This is what gets to me:

"...What are days of Auld Lang Syne, Pa?" "They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,"... but Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting. She thought to herself, "This is now." She was glad that the cosy house and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago."

But it is, and it was when Laura wrote those words. The beginning of the book is "Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the big woods of Wisconsin..."

The magic of this and the other Little House books is, at least from an adult's point of view, that it is like a time machine. I picture an old woman sitting and writing the words which then magically bring to life all of those people of her childhood and all of those places of her childhood and all of those adventures of her childhood which have all gone silent and she brings them back to life through the bittersweet light of "long ago."

It is touching and I have put a lump in my throat all over again!

From a kid's point of view, I think it should be fascinating to hear and see how kids lived on this land in ways that are hard for twenty first century kids to imagine...and it was only 150 years ago! Only!!

The gift of this writer is that in simple words, she makes it real!

I hope you find yourself and your family getting into it easily and quickly...only 3 weeks to go!!!

Mary Ann

Pinocchio: the story of "every child"?

Well, I don't think Pinocchio is a complex work, but rather was painted with a broad stroke. But, I do think that for whatever reason, Pinocchio has been developed to show real love and caring for Geppetto. I think this is important. He does care, he just can't seem to help himself. I think kids can identify with some of this. He is not an evil character. He is a sympathetic character. He makes bad decisions.

Actually, what Pinocchio needs to do is internalize the voices of all those "conscience characters" who admonish him along the way and whose advice Pinocchio disregards again and again. When this happens, he will be a real human boy.

This is not unlike what happens to kids around the time they begin school. In fact, I sometimes tell my students that when I see evidence that they follow important rules "even when no one is watching them" it is a sign to me that they are ready to become Upper Primary Students. In some ways it is a "rite of passage" and I think Pinocchio is the story of this "rite of passage."

How about that????

Mary Ann