News From The Library--September 17,2007

Do You Remember What Book Got You Hooked?

This summer I got an email about a program called First Book. First Book is a nonprofit organization with a single mission: to give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books. They provide an ongoing supply of new books to children participating in community-based mentoring, tutoring, and family literacy programs.

This summer First Book was celebrating its 50 millionth book given to children in need. They put out a survey asking people to remember that one book that got them hooked on reading as a child and then they published a list of the top 50 books.

It’s available at : http://www2.firstbook.org/whatbook/top50.php

It’s really fun to look over this list….kind of like a trip down memory lane…..and I’m pleased to say that we have all those books in our Library today.

For more information about the valuable First Book Program, please visit their website at: http://www.firstbook.org/


And yes…it was Nancy Drew that got me hooked!!


In the Library this week, we had our first week of regular classes (except for Kindergarten which will start the week of Sept. 24). After going over the library rules, how to check out and return books, we were off to a great start. One change this year…..we’re going to try this out….each grade can check out as many books as their grade! Kindergarten and first grade will both have one book for one week, and all the other grades can check out the corresponding number of books to their grade for two weeks.


Here’s what went on this week in each class….


First Grade—As this was our very first meeting we got reacquainted with how the library works and how to find and check out books. It was great to see all the students again and hear how much they read and traveled over the summer!

Second Grade—The students at Sunrise Elementary school have a new librarian this year in Carmen Agra Dreedy’s The Library Dragon and watch out…..she’s really a dragon when it comes to protecting those library books. Nothing can be checked out, nothing can be touched until one little girl stumbles into the library and transforms the “dragon” into a wonderful librarian. After all, the library is for the children, but we can’t forget there’s still a little dragon in all librarians when it comes to protecting the books. This was a fun way to remind the students about book care practices and that taking care of the books means that they will be there for everyone to use.

Third Grade—Last year I purchased a wonderful book entitled Library Lion by Michelle Knudsen. It’s the charming story of a lion who enters a library and has a little trouble following all the rules. When the librarian gets hurt, a rule must be broken, and the lion is the one who saves the day. Before we read the story, we had fun looking at a Keynote presentation I made on the two lions—Patience and Fortitude--that “guard” the entrance to the New York Public Library. They are featured in the illustrations in the book.

Fourth Grade—Our Librarian Won’t Tell Us Anything! is the humorous book by Toni Buzzeo about Mrs. Skorupski who won’t tell fourth graders where the books are in the library…..she makes them look it up for themselves in the online catalog!!! This was an introduction for fourth graders into how our catalog works and how to find books on their own. Using our projector, students had a chance to practice how the catalog works and then they were off looking up books on their own!

Fifth Grade--This week fifth graders heard The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Winter. First we used Google Earth and started at our own school library and traveled to Basra, Iraq. The difference between our locations was sobering. Then I presented a Keynote with some actual pictures of the Central Library of Basra which was destroyed during the invasion of Iraq in April of 2003.

This interesting picture book tells the true story of Alia Muhammad Baker who saved over 70% of the books in the Central Library of Iraq by removing them night after night in her car and hiding them in her house and the houses of friends. Even though the library was destroyed by bombs, Alia managed to save over 30,000 books.

Books "are more precious than mountains of gold" says Alia, and the message of this book is both the great importance of books in our lives and the terrible effects of war on everyone. A portion of the book's sales will go toward helping rebuild Basra's library and if you are interested in helping this worthy effort you can do so by contributing to a fund administered by the American Library Association. Make checks payable to ALA with "Basra Book Fund" on the memo line, and send them to International Relations Office, ALA, 50 E. Huron Street, Chicago, IL 60611. (For more information, contact the ALA's International Relations Department at 1-800-545-2433 x 3201.)

Sixth Grade—Sixth graders were introduced the Battle of the Books Program this week. They saw a Keynote of a previous Battle and we discussed the list of 30 books that are this year’s Battle books. To access the list you can visit the County Schools website at: http://www.sbceo.org/~ims/botb/index.html

The Battle takes place in April 2008 so there’s lots of time to read as many of those books as possible!



Until next week……happy reading and I’m so glad we are Back to School!