National Library Week - April 12-16, 2014

To celebrate National Library Week, we introduced Chris Grabenstein and his new book, Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library, which is an award winning chapter book and a Beehive Nominee for next year.

In Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library twelve-year-old Kyle gets to stay overnight in the new town library, designed by his hero (the famous gamemaker Luigi Lemoncello), with other students but finds that come morning he must work with friends to solve puzzles in order to escape.Destiny Quest

Meet the Author: As a child, Chris Grabenstein would perform puppet shows with his brothers. The only people who paid to attend were his parents. In middle school and high school his teachers told him he would be a writer when he grew up. When he was older he moved to New York with six suitcases and very little money. In New York he wrote advertisements for Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, 7Up, and many more companies. He wrote for television as well. He was part of a comedic improvisational group including a young Bruce Willis. Robin Williams would sometimes drop by and enjoy doing improv with the group as well. Chris has co-authored books with James Patterson. I, Funny is one of them. The sequel, I Even Funnier, came out in December, 2013. To learn more about Chris visit his website at chrisgrabenstein.com

April is National Poetry Month

April is Poetry Month at Bella Vista! We celebrated by reading five different poems about dogs from different poetry books and the students voted on which ones they liked. Their favorite poem was "Mr. Beefy" from Once I ate a Pie. The second favorite poem was the book, Dogku. These poems were shared during story time to help me complete a district media module assignment. 

Before the book, Dogku was read to the students they were taught what a haiku is. They held their fingers up for the syllables in each line: 5,7,5 as the haikus from Dogku were read to them. Third through fifth grade students had the opportunity to write their own animal haikus in class and return them to the library when done. A teacher commented on this optional activity being very refreshing for the students to be creative, write and color. She said it was a nice fifteen minute break from testing. The haikus have been hanging up on the library windows through the month of April.