Must Have Picture Books {LINKY}

 By now, y'all know I ♥love a linky party!  It focuses me and makes me remember some of the great books I've already read.  Since I am always reading new books, sometimes I need this reminder.  The Teacher Wife's {Must Have Picture Books linky} is no exception.

 

I've been watching others link up their favorite books for almost a week now.  Since a lot of my favorites  (Enemy Pie, Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge, and anything by Chris Van Allsburg or Patricia Pollaco), were already shared, and since I teach upper elementary students, I decided to focus on the non-fiction picture books I love.  Let me tell you, even with a 'theme,' narrowing my choices down to five was h-a-r-d.

Lady Liberty: A Biography

Here is an amazing tale of a nation that came together in little and big ways to build the Statue of Liberty and fund a pedestal for her to guide Americans and immigrants alike home to her shores.  Historically accurate and filled with famous and not-so-famous characters, Lady Liberty is poetically told in vignettes of those who created her.

I love to share this story around Memorial Day.  It is wonderfully written and tells of a time we should all wish to reclaim - a time when the entire nation was unified.  Oh, and did I mention how absolutely gorgeous the pictures are?

 Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek

In 2008, the publishing world celebrated Lincoln's 200th birthday with a plethora (great word!) of books honoring our 16th president.  This is my favorite.  It tells the true story of Abe and his friend Austin when they are young boys.  When the two boys try to cross the rushing creek after a heavy rain. Abe slips and falls in but is rescued by his loyal friend.  Imagine if Abe had gone alone that day.  What a profound effect Austin, a mostly forgotten character, had on our nation's history!  

I share this story with my class around president's day.  The message is clear: you don't have to be a president to be important.  In addition, it's a great story to use when discussing story elements like character, setting, and plot.

 Faithful Elephants

This is my favorite book.  Period.  It is sad and terrifying and beautiful and heart wrenching.  

In the 1940's, all of Japan was preparing for the inevitable.  The zookeepers at the Ueno Zoo make the terrible decision to euthanize the dangerous animals in case their cages can't contain them after the city is bombed.  This is the story of three elephants and their keeper who, when poisoning and injecting the elephants do not work, have no choice but to let the poor animals starve to death.  

I used to share this on Veterans Day, but kids seem younger than they used to, and I feel like they couldn't handle it anymore.  (Plus, I think one of my students 'borrowed' my copy; I haven't seen it in years.)  If you teach older students, I highly recommend this book as a discussion starter.  How many innocent victims of war do we not hear about in the news?  Who, besides the troops, are affected by war?  Faithful Elephants is a cautionary tale that everyone should read.

#4 Ruth Heller's World of Language Series

I love these books!  They are written in rhyme and beautifully illustrated.  I leave them out all year and let my little authors refer to them whenever they need help with word choice.  It's a great way to reinforce parts of speech lessons without always doing worksheets.  This is just a sampling of the books available.  My personal favorite is A Cache of Jewels: A Book About Collective Nouns.  (It's also the least useful in class, so I didn't include it in my picture above.)

#5 Old Turtle

 OK, this one isn't non-fiction, but I love, love, love it!  I had to include it in my list.  

From Barnes & Noble

In the time that animals could talk to one another, a great argument took place. Each animal insisted that God was in his image. The argument grew and grew until Old Turtle spoke. He told the animals that people would come, made in the image of God, and would act as keepers of the earth. But over the years the people forgot-until Old Turtle's message rang from the earth. Chee's watercolors adorn this gentle parable. 

I know most of you can't use this in your classroom, but I encourage you to share it with your own children.  It's beautiful message is timeless!

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The Word Nerd!!

An Honorable Mention to the books of Brian P. Cleary!  His "Words are CATegorial" books are great, and I have an author crush on him.  (He came to our Young Author's Night a few years ago, and I was hooked!)

Thanks to LetteringDelights.com for the clip art numbers!

Math Book Blog Hop

Boy, I wish I was more creative with my post titles!

Anyway.  I am joining in on this really cool blog hop started by Donna over at the Math Coach's Corner.  Two of my favorite things: reading and teaching math; how could I resist?

Here's my favorite math book {series} to share (well, favorite after Math Curse, which I already blogged about here and didn't want to be redundant):

Have you met Sir Cumference and his wife, the Lady Di of Ameter?  They have a young son named Radius who's exactly half the height of his mother. This is a very clever series of books!  There are about eight books in the series now, but these are the first three and my favorites.  Bonus: they do double duty in our annual fairy tale unit.  My favorite to share with my 5th graders is The Great Knight of Angleland.  In this book, Radius goes on a quest using his knowledge of the Mountains of Obtuse and 'a cute' little village.

Check out this great series, and then hop into the hop!

I Win ~ You Win {Freebies!}

I won a contest!  As many of you know, Michelle @ Making it as a Middle School Teacher just hosted her big birthday bash, and I was one of the winners!   But that's not the best part - there's more! 

So here's how it went down:

• Michelle gave my email to Tracee Orman who had agreed to gift one of her Hunger Games lessons. 
• Tracee emailed me and offered to swap that out if I wanted. (Since I teach 5th grade in a conservative Catholic (redundant?) school, AND I ♥love♥ her clipart, I was more than thrilled by her generous offer.)
• I emailed Tracee back, and said I would love any clip art she chose to send me.
• Tracee emailed me TONS of clip art - AND, as if all that weren't enough (it totally was), a copy of one of her best sellers Creative Activities & Project Ideas to use with ANY Novel, Story, or Unit!  OMGenius - this thing is chock full of great ideas and templates!  She was over-the-top GENEROUS!! 

People ~ You must go visit Tracee's store and check out her stuff!!  And if you do teach older students, you MUST check out her HGs lessons - she's a rock star! 




 

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To spread the bloggy love, I've created two new writing aides for my students and can't wait to share them with you as FREEBIES! 

The first was inspired by Emily at I Love My Classroom.  Don't worry, I asked permission first!  I plan to print these on sticky paper and stick them in the students writing folders.  The file prints two to a page, so they'll fit on the pockets very nicely.

I know it's fuzzy, but I promise the real one is crystal clear.

The second thing I want to share I came up with while I was writing the Rainbow Editing page.  Spelling is always a challenge for my students.  And I liked Emily's idea for using spell check, but I don't want my students to rely on it.  So I created the following anchor chart.  Again I will print these two to a page on sticky paper and add them to the writing folders.

Click either picture to download from my TpT store.

BTW - I love to print to sticky paper rather than glue stick things down.  Glue-sticked (love making up my own words!) papers never stay all year; the corners curl up and get gross.  Sticky paper works better for me and is totally worth the investment!

And, since I made these, I'm  thrilled to be linking up with Tara for the first time ever!

 

Let me know if you download these and what you think!

Addiction, Audio Books and A Giveaway

Here's a fact I should have shared in my "7 Random Facts" post.  I can't get enough of books.  I buy books waaayyy too often.  I take at least 3 books out of the library every week.  I stop strangers and ask them what they are reading.  I download books onto both my Nook and iPad weekly.  And I listen to books in my car instead of music.  (Which is kind of a shame because I also love music.  But that's another post.)

I want to share two audio books I have recently finished that were really, really good!  In fact both, I think, are better in audio than they would have been in print.  Anyone else ever have that experience?  Oh, and they're both YA books.

The first book I want to share is When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.  It was great.  Puzzling at times, but definitely worth hanging in there.  Here's the synopsis from Shelfari:

By sixth grade, Miranda and her best friend, Sal, know how to navigate their New York City neighborhood. They know where it’s safe to go, like the local grocery store, and they know whom to avoid, like the crazy guy on the corner. But things start to unravel. Sal gets punched by a new kid for what seems like no reason, and he shuts Miranda out of his life. The apartment key that Miranda’s mom keeps hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then Miranda finds a mysterious note scrawled on a tiny slip of paper: I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own. I must ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter. The notes keep coming, and Miranda slowly realizes that whoever is leaving them knows all about her, including things that have not even happened yet. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she can prevent a tragic death. Until the final note makes her think she’s too late. 

So I was listening to this in my car, and I kept referring back to the teaser on the case.  I couldn't for the life of me figure out where this was going.  Which, of course, is what made it so great!   One of the best parts (that I am willing to give away) is that Miranda's mom is trying out for The $25,000 Pyramid.  Remember that show?  (I'm old; I remember.)  I was thinking that it would be fun to create a Pyramid game on the ActivBoard for the kids to play as review.  

In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's a clip.

I don't see many of my 5th graders as sticking with this long enough to get into it.  (5th graders are a fickle bunch.)  For that reason I would recommend When You Reach Me as a read aloud in 5th grade.  Older students would love this on their own.
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The second novel I've been listening to is Skullduggery Pleasant.  This is the first in a series from Derek Landy. From Shelfari:

Meet Skulduggery Pleasant: ace detective, snappy dresser, razor-tongued wit, crackerjack sorcerer and walking, talking, fire-throwing skeleton - as well as protector and mentor of Stephanie Edgley, a very unusual and darkly talented twelve-year-old. These two alone must defeat an all-consuming ancient evil. The end of the world? Over his dead body.

The best thing about this book: the narrator!  Rupert Degas does an AHHH-MAZing job of differentiating between characters.  His voices go from creepy to silly and everything in between.  The story itself reminds me a lot of (text-to-text) Gerald's story in The Billionaire's Curse which I reviewed {here}.  This would be great in a Listen to Reading station for Daily 5 or as a read aloud for the whole class.  It's very fun!


I know this is a really long post, but I have one more thing to add.  Have you entered this amazing giveaway yet?  She is giving away a TON of stuff!  Plus, she's a Musical Theater Dork - just like me! (Her word is Nerd - I prefer Dork.)

 

The Best Day!

I had the best day today and couldn't wait to get it down for my blog.  This way, when I'm having a bad day, I can refer back to today.

First, my sister and I drove to Independence High School for a book signing by one of my absolute FAVorITe authors - Meg Cabot!  Have you read her books?  I discovered her books through Kelly Ripa's reading list of all things.  So we went; I showed some restraint and only took three and bought one book for Meg (cause we're on a first name basis now) to sign.

Her talk before signing was hysterical!  She is just as witty and cleverly funny as I would expect and sounds exactly like many of her characters (naturally!).  She was so sweet to answer questions from young girls about her craft and her characters.

I know it's hard to tell, but this was a slide in Meg's presentation.  It shows her book covers from other countries.

Then she graciously stayed and signed books until every person there got her books signed.  My sister and I waited in the line for more than an hour, and we weren't at the end of the line!  I know it's dorky, but I felt bad that she was sitting there for so long so we didn't take pictures with her and slow her down more.  But we did take pictures of her signing our books.  BTW, she's left handed - just like me!

My books she signed.  When I told her I reviewed the last two, she added hearts to the signatures!

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When we finally got through the line, we raced off to a graduation party for one of my friend's daughters.  My brother-in-law brought my nieces, and we had a blast!  Taco Bar, Chocolate Fountain, Homemade Cookies - de-li-cious!  (Yes, it's all about the food...)

All in all a great vacation from school planning, tutoring, laundry and all those other mundane things!  Happy Saturday, everyone!