Happy Birthday!

For the week of September 12-16 we celebrated BIRTHDAYS in the Media Center.

For kindergarten - 3rd grade we read Birthday at the Panda Palace, by Stephanie Calmenson, illustrated by Doug Cushman .

"For monkeys like us, Bananas will please. But for you, birthday mouse, Here's a big chunk of . . ." Birthday cake? Mud pie? No, it's cheese!

Can you guess what the three pigs bring? Is it made of straw or wood or brick? How about Elephant? What is his present for Mouse? The students loved using the rhymes to figure out what gift they'll find when the page was turned. And the best surprise of all comes at the end when a special visitor arrives—because friendship is what this party is all about!

Complete with cake, candles, goody bags, and games, Stephanie Calmenson and Doug Cushman throw a party you won't want to leave!

For 4th - 6th grade we read 11 Birthdays by Wendy Mass.

It's Amanda's 11th birthday and she is super excited---after all, 11 is so different from 10. But from the start, everything goes wrong. The worst part of it all is that she and her best friend, Leo, with whom she's shared every birthday, are on the outs and this will be the first birthday they haven't shared together. When Amanda turns in for the night, glad to have her birthday behind her, she wakes up happy for a new day. Or is it? Her birthday seems to be repeating iself. What is going on?! And how can she fix it? Only time, friendship, and a little luck will tell. . .

Award Winning Books for 2011

The Caldecott and Newbery awards are the most prestigious awards given annually by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association, to American authors' books in the United States of America. Once the winning books are announced, book stores have a difficult time keeping their shelves stocked with these quality children books.

The Caldecott Medal for 2011 goes to A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip Stead, Illustrated by Erin Stead.

This book is about friends and how they take care of each other. The story is unpredictable and the illustrations are delightful. My favorite picture is when the animals are riding the bus. I highly recommend this book for all elementary students and their parents to enjoy reading. Though in the Media Center, we read it to the students from Kindergarten through Third Grade.

Read to 4th-6th Grade

The Newbery Medal for 2011 goes to Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool.

Abilene Tucker is the 12 year old daughter of Gideon Tucker. She loves to hear his stories of a town he lived in 18 years before called, Manifest. Abilene describes her father's stories about Manifest like "...sucking on butterscotch. Smooth and sweet...." The students savored butterscotch drops while we read this flavorful metaphor in chapter one.

Continuing with an introduction to the story, Gideon gets a job in Iowa with the railroad and sends his Abilene to this town of Manifest. She arrives on a train scheduled to meet Pastor Howard whom Gideon arranged for her to stay with. "Abilene's Manifest" is much different than the smooth and sweet stories Gideon told her about. The pastor she meets is an interim pastor who has been waiting 14 years for the real pastor to show up. His name is Shady and, yes, he is a bit shady. She makes friends when she goes to her first day of school which is the last day of school before summer break.

She comes upon some old Manifest Herald newspapers and reads them in hopes of finding information about Gideon's time in Manifest, She also discovers an old cigar box hidden under a board on her bedroom floor that is filled with trinkets, a map, and letters about suspicions of spies in Manifest during World War I. As Abilene and her friends begin to investigate the past, someone warns them to stop their investigation by inconspicuously posting a note to their treehouse. The adventure of past(1918) and present (1936) becomes too irresistible for the girls to leave alone!