Maurice Sendak, king of all Wild Things, has died May 8, 2012

The New York Times reported sad news this morning.  Maurice Sendak, the author of Where the Wild Things Are and many other children’s classics, died at the age of 83.

I love his books, and have long admired him.  As the Times said,

In book after book, Mr. Sendak upended the staid, centuries-old tradition of American children’s literature, in which young heroes and heroines were typically well scrubbed and even better behaved; nothing really bad ever happened for very long; and everything was tied up at the end in a neat, moralistic bow.

In the Night Kitchen was on my little sister’s bookshelf, and I loved the anarchy of it — the naked little boy off on an adventure with no parent-like grownups around.  His illustrations for the Little Bear books by Elsa Holmelund Minarik were wonderful, and his little Nutshell books are perfectly funny and quirky.

I loved, too, his grumpy persona in interviews.  He spoke his mind, and never went anywhere near the cutesy or sentimental.

But it is Where the Wild Things Are that has made the biggest impact on me.  It strikes me as one of the most perfect children’s books ever written.  If you have read it over and over again for years, like I have, his writing becomes more and more beautiful with each reading.  The words to Wild Things hang together as a stunning poem, and every time I read them, I bow down before Sendak’s artistry.

Fairy Tales March 16, 2012

This month our theme is Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, and we are concentrating on one story per week.  Last week’s story was “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” and this week’s was “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.”

A few lessons learned and observations noted:

*Preschoolers can be bloodthirsty.  We re-read “The Three Little Pigs” today, after having read it a lot last fall during our farm unit.  The class was thrilled to see the book come out again, and were enthralled the entire time.  They “helped” me read the story, all the way through.  In this version, the first and second little pigs get eaten by the wolf.  When I got to the end, when the angry wolf climbs up onto the roof, a small, feminine, quiet girl snarled, “Hah!  He’s gonna die!”

*Some preschoolers are not.  At the end of the Three Little Pigs story, one little boy said he thought that they should get a doctor so that the dead animals “can be alive again!”

*Always read the book before you read it to the class.  Let me repeat that:  ALWAYS read the book before you read it to the class.  I usually do, but for the “Frog Prince,” I didn’t.  There were other adults in the room at the time, witness to my discomfort as I realized that there was NO MORAL to the story.  The princess is spoiled, lies to the frog, breaks her promise to him, treats him with disgust, and then hurls him against the wall, for which dreadful behavior she is rewarded:  the frog turns into a prince who then marries her on the next page.  There is no lesson learned, other than go ahead and be mean and you’ll still end up with the prince.  The last page had a weird addendum about the prince’s assistant, who had felt tight gold bands around his heart while the prince was in his amphibian state, and on the wedding day heard the bands go Pop, pop, pop!  I skipped that page entirely, because I was so appalled (and the other adults were all laughing).  I googled it, and that is the original Grimm version.  We did talk about it today, and the kids laughed along with me — “Yeah, she threw the frog on the wall!  And then he married her!  But she was mean!  That was so weird!”

*Fairy Tales are exciting.  One boy in my class cannot wait for “Jack and the Beanstalk.”  ”Is that next week?” he keeps asking, only to sigh when I tell him that it is our story in two weeks.  The class loved the last two books, and has learned to tell the stories out loud, and are even starting to act them out on the playground.  The Big Bad Wolf is a favorite character, and the thing to say whenever we get to the “woods” card in our pack of vocabulary cards is:  ”Don’t go in the woods!”

joyous news on the Mo Willems front January 31, 2012

   

He has two new books coming out!  Listen to My Trumpet! will be released next week, on February 7.  The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? will be available on April 3.

I’m doing my happy dance!

on sharing, the little red hen, and teachers November 20, 2011

There is a new teacher teaching the afternoon class this year.  She is young, determined, and confident.  I had hoped to develop a mentoring relationship with her, but she doesn’t seem interested.  Which is completely fine.  She doesn’t have much overlap with me anyway, as she arrives from her morning class at another school across town right about the time when I am leaving to go home, or sometimes even after.

I have been concerned that she doesn’t feel like the room is really hers.  It has ME stamped all over it, for one thing.  It’s a tiny room, and is arranged the best way I have been able to figure out to do it, and the shelves are full of my books, curriculum, and materials.  I have made some space for her, but not nearly enough.

We had a teacher work day recently, and with a little help from me, our Americorps volunteer reorganized our art supply cupboard.  She was awesome — she got rid of tons of stuff, and reorganized/repackaged the stuff we want to keep, and now the cupboard is usable.  I thought that the afternoon teacher would be happy to see it.

She was.  She also took it as a sign that she could make changes, too, so she reorganized some areas of the room.  When I came in on Monday, the small drawer unit next to the teacher chair in the meeting area was tucked into a corner where it was difficult to reach, among.  I was dismayed — I use the top of the drawer unit to place all the things I will need during morning meeting, and the drawers contain things I use daily or almost daily.  When she came in that day we had a brief, intense, awkward conversation, and she made it clear that my drawer unit had been in her way, and she didn’t want it back.  I did get an okay from her to bring in a much smaller drawer unit, so I did.

That same week I read different versions of “The Little Red Hen” to my class, and we had a lot of interesting discussions about sharing.  The kids unanimously said that she should share the bread when I got to the penultimate page and asked, “what should she do?”  But then when we got to the last page and she ate the bread herself (or with her chicks), they all said that was the right thing to do, too.  We struggled with that idea — sharing is good but sometimes it’s okay not to share — all week.

Meanwhile, I felt bad for not sharing the room more, but for still wanting my stupid drawer unit back in its old place.  Sometimes it’s hard for grown-ups to share, too.

Barnes & Noble educators sale online July 20, 2011

I just got an email from “Barnsey” (as Mrs. Mimi calls it) and they are having an online sale for teachers.

Teach Like a Champion is only $15.37 on sale (instead of $27.95).

Vivian Gussin Paley has a new book!  Actually, it came out last year, and I somehow missed it.  It occurs to me that I have never posted about my deep, abiding love for the books of VGP, and I should remedy that soon.  Anyway, you can check out The Boy on the Beach for only $11.59.

The only-partially-hidden educational conservative in me hearts E.D. Hirsch.  You can get What Your Preschooler Needs to Know for $9.90 if you are a Core Knowledge fan.

Tools of the Mind!  It’s still expensive on sale ($23.45), but definitely worth checking out.  I have posted about this before, and probably need to buy this book.

There are lots more good deals for teachers, so you might want to check it out.

 

 

Mrs. Mimi has a new blog July 20, 2011

It’s called Mrs. Mimi Teaches, and is going to be full of ideas to help teachers in their classrooms.  I say “going to be” because as yet, it’s pretty spare on content.  However, as Mrs. Mimi is a fellow lover of books, school supplies, and being organized, I have high hopes.

(By the way, if you haven’t checked out her original blog, or her book – both of them called “It’s Not All Flowers and Sausages”–you should.  She is snarky and hilarious.)

classroom management and behavior July 18, 2011

In my internet wanderings, I found another interesting blog.  It’s called Smart Classroom Management, and the author, Michael Linsin, wrote a book called Dream Class that I think sounds really intriguing.

He’s got one post called 8 Things Teachers do to Encourage Misbehavior that I think is great.  He says what I have often thought:

Teachers cause much of the misbehavior in their classrooms.

True, students come to class with behavior issues and personal agendas. Some are prone to misbehavior and are difficult to deal with. A few may even enjoy trying to disrupt your class.

But more often than not, the teacher is the problem.

It goes along with one of my important rules of being a teacher:  you’ve got to question yourself.  When something goes wrong in my classroom, I always start with the questions “what did I do that made this happen?” and “what can I do differently next time?”

I’m going to see if I can find the book at my library, because it looks like worthwhile reading.

YA novels are my crack May 18, 2011

Yes, this is totally off-topic.  Well, sort of.  (At work, I am very interested in books and kids.  YA novels bring those things together, but just not for the age group I work with.)

For the last year and a half or so, I have been going nuts reading young adult novels.  Sometimes I read one in a day.  I used to be embarrassed about it — I don’t know any other women in my “real” life who read YA books.  But now I’ve got no shame.  My book club knows about it, and they think it’s one of my many amusing quirks.  Online there are many women who read them, so I know I’m not actually nuts.  (I wrote about this once here.)

I think it started some years ago when I picked up A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray on a display table at Borders, and didn’t realize until I was halfway through that it was a young adult novel.  I enjoyed the book, and I suppose that opened my mind to the possibility of reading other YA novels.  Not long after, I came across Twilight, and thought it sounded good.  I read it on a family vacation, and devoured every page.  When I got to the last page, I did something I had not done since childhood:  I went back to page 1 and read the whole book again.  (I’d like to add that this was 2006, when the paperback had just been released, and the whole Twilight phenomenon had not yet begun.)

About a year and a half ago I started noticing the YA book reviews on one of my favorite children’s book blogs, and began requesting them from my library.  Things just sort of spiraled out of control from there.

Here’s a list of some of my favorites, in case you decide to join me:

Jellicoe Road, Melina Marchetta

Shiver, Maggie Stiefvater

The Mortal Instruments series, Cassandra Clare

The Body Finder, Kimberly Derting

Just Listen, Sarah Dessen

His Dark Materials series, Philip Pullman

An Abundance of Katherines and Will Grayson, Will Grayson, John Green

and my all-time favorite:

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart

the library on a sunny day March 30, 2011

We walked to the local library today for story time.  Last time we were there, a baby toddled around and then plopped herself down on the lap of one of my little boys, who was both astounded and delighted.  She was our favorite part of that story time visit — she kept getting up and then sitting in the laps of various little boys in my class.

We talked about that funny baby today, actually, in keeping with my goal of telling stories with the kids about our shared experiences.  We had another exciting experience on the way to the library — one little girl fell down in the street as we were crossing and didn’t get up.  I was up front, leading the way, and oblivious.  My Americorps volunteer ran over and scooped her up and carried her across the street.

Roo thought it was thrilling.  ”I thought she was dead!” he cried.  Both Roo and the little girl who fell have a story to write about, that’s for sure.

At story time, the wonderful children’s librarian met us at the door, and led us to the story room.  We read three great books, including A is for Salad and Miss Brooks Likes Books, and I Don’t.  Then we went downstairs to check out the actual library itself, for the first time ever.  They weren’t as quiet as I had hoped, and they got tons of books off the shelves, which I had not anticipated (“I’m sorry!” I told the librarian, but she said not to worry, that is what she wanted them to do.)

We checked out the books we’d heard at story time (and I picked up the book I’m supposed to have read for book club on Sunday to discover that it is 500 pages long; I wonder if I can read 100 pages a day?), and then walked back to school in the sunshine.

The playground was free of snow for the first time, so I let them have a very long recess.  They ran and ran and ran, and played “Witch” and “Angry Girls” (?) and “I’m falling down the slide!” and I’m sure they all took nice long naps when they got home.

i broke my trunk February 27, 2011

Two weeks ago, I told my class that I was going to buy the new Elephant and Piggie book over the weekend.  When I got to the bookstore that Saturday, however, they didn’t have a copy.  When we came back to school on Tuesday, after our Presidents’ Day holiday, they asked me, “did you buy I Broke My Trunk?!”  I told them what had happened, and that I would try again this weekend.

One boy reminded me to buy it every single day last week.

And I did!  I had to go to two stores, but I did get my hands on a copy.  It is as silly as I had hoped, and I can’t wait to read it to my class tomorrow.