It's Monday! What are you Reading?

Jen & Kellee over at Teach Mentor Texts host a meme every Monday that invites people to share the children's and young adult books they have been reading over the past week and what they plan on reading the following week.

You may find more complete information about what I am reading at Goodreads.com or by clicking on the Goodreads widget along the side of my blog.

The Past Week

Historical Fiction

Two of these are part of my effort to read many, many novels-in-verse this month as I am working on my NaNoWriMo project which involves poetry. Witness was powerful and I appreciated the many perspectives of the community as the KKK moved into this small Vermont town. This isn't the typical southern view. It was a bit confusing sometimes because there were so many characters to follow, but I am not sure another format could have handled that any better. Crossing Stones was also about rights, but this time women's rights. It is truly amazing to see in both of these books, how many people determine that entire groups of people are beneath them simply because of race, religion or gender.

Leon's Story grabbed my attention and was a very quick read. I was pulling biographies for fifth graders when it caught my eye. I couldn't put it down. It is essentially an oral history written down. Leon was a black man growing up in the twenties and thirties. He details many injustices and indignities that he and his family faced including the death of his father caused by young drunk white men. His story is one of perseverance and strength.

Picture Books

My favorite of these had to be hello! hello! Matthew Cordell speaks to us of unplugging and getting out to say hello to the many wonderful things in the world there are besides devices. I can't wait to share this one. I ordered it immediately after reading it. I think you will too.

Thanksgiving Books

Both of these excellent books contain a list of things that the narrator is thankful for and both are great books to use during Thanksgiving. The focus is on the act of giving thanks. They are great examples that many cultures participate in some form of giving thanks and that the Pilgrims were not the first or only people to celebrate Thanksgiving. I am looking forward to using them this week in some of my classes along with Grace Lin's Thanking the Moon: Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival and Our Journey by Lyz Jaakola. Pat Mora has a video here about writing the book Gracias.

Here is a video of Chief Jake Swamp explaining about sacredness of the eagle feather, but also about the importance of being thankful.

Poetry

I loved the poems in this collection. Since I lived in San Antonio, I especially appreciated seeing many references to places and things familiar to me. One of my favorites was the short prose piece titled Museum as it referenced the McNay which my aunt took me to when I was young. Many of the poems were hard hitting as they dealt with conflict and wars in the middle east and the people who have been affected the most. Here she reads two of her poems from this book.

This next video I am just including because I love the poem and it is fun and makes me laugh. This poem was not in the book, but happily, I stumbled across it online.

The Coming Week:
I am guessing this will be a slow reading week with the holidays, being almost 9,000 words behind on my NaNoWriMo project and having my son come home from college for Thanksgiving. I just started Because I am Furniture and I may read M.C. Higgins the Great for Nerdbery, but other than that, I may not get much accomplished and that will be just fine. Have a fantastic week of reading!

It's Monday! What are You Reading?

Jen & Kellee over at Teach Mentor Texts host a meme every Monday that invites people to share the children's and young adult books they have been reading over the past week and what they plan on reading the following week.

You may find more complete information about what I am reading at Goodreads.com or by clicking on the Goodreads widget along the side of my blog.

The Past Week

Newbery Challenge

Slave Dancer is a work of historical fiction (like MANY Newbery books) about the slave trade. It is raw and filled with horrifying atrocities. If it sounds like slavery that hasn't been sugarcoated much, then I have explained it appropriately. This is definitely a challenging read. I would think it may be a struggle for elementary students just with the vocabulary, but also, it is one heavy book. Reading it is like when you are witnessing something and you want to look away because it is so horrifying. I appreciated it, but it is hard to read without having your emotions pretty much thrashed.

Favorite Thanksgiving Books

The biggest reason I like Thanksgiving at Our House is because it is simply about how one family celebrates. It doesn't even go into the whole "First Thanksgiving" myth. The Ugly Pumpkin is just a hilarious story that is kind of incidentally a Thanksgiving story. It looks like it might be about Halloween, but it only briefly mentions that holiday. I can't say much more or it will give things away. Both made me smile. This was good as I waded through quite a few Thanksgiving books that were less than pleasing first. See this post about National Native American Heritage Month for more about those.

Favorite Picture Book

Boot and Shoe is absolutely adorable. I love this tale of friendship. It made me smile.

I read more books that you may check out through Goodreads including some icky Thanksgiving books and some good novels in verse, but in an effort to meet my NaNoWriMo goal for this weekend, this is where I need to stop. 

For next week: 

I will do some professional reading, I will begin M.C. Higgins the Great for the Newbery Challenge, and will continue reading novels in verse as mentortexts for my own writing. I am in the middle of a re-read of Helen Frost's Keesha's House right now. I will also be reading several books I got from Oyate with my second grade classes to support their unit about communities and neighborhoods. Have a great week!

National Native American Heritage Month

I am feeling a little, no, a lot of conflict inside as I read through some of the books about Thanksgiving that we read to our children. There are so many that romanticize the original Thanksgiving story and make it a "feel good" experience. The only problem is that most of the materials we use to teach about and celebrate this holiday do not include the perspective of some major players. Books like those above that I read this afternoon, gloss over the experience of the indigenous people.

Today, a Presidential proclamation was released from The White House regarding National Native American Heritage Month. I learned of this through Debbie Reese's site American Indians in Children's Literature. One line stood out to me in relation to how we teach, As we work together to forge a brighter future, we cannot shy away from the difficult aspects of our past." As a teacher, I am compelled not only to educate students about our past, but teach them to read critically and question the stories that have been passed down for so many years that we accept them as the only truth and the only perspective.

Fortunately, there are also books like Thanksgiving a Native Perspective and 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving, that don't simply share the myth of the First Thanksgiving, but provide a whole other perspective. The facts have always been available, but since they didn't fit within the context of our myth, they haven't always been taught.

If you are interested in learning more about Thanksgiving beyond the feast of the Pilgrims, please read 1621, or stop by Debbie Reese's blog. She has addressed this topic several times over the years: Good Books About Thanksgiving and Native Americans and Thanksgiving. Oyate also has a fantastic online resource Deconstructing the Myths of The First Thanksgiving. It is hard to change lessons and the materials that we use, but we owe it to our students to go beyond the same old history we have been teaching. The Common Core requires students to read critically. We can be models in our classes and ask such questions as: Whose perspective is represented in this resource? Does the work accurately reflect the culture of those included? Are those voiced heard? Who benefits from this telling of the story? 

As we celebrate National Native American Heritage Month, I hope to evaluate materials carefully and as the proclamation encourages, "celebrate and honor the many ways American Indians and Alaska Natives have enriched our Nation."

Balloons Over Broadway

Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet is a wonderful way to learn the history of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  In addition, the book is a fantastic work of art itself.  Melissa used unique collages to illustrate the text.  The illustrations really fit in well with the picture she paints of Tony Sarg, the puppeteer that engineered the giant balloons in Macy's parade.  He was an inventor that used anything around him creatively to solve problems.  I loved learning that the parade grew as a way to honor the traditions of the immigrant staff members of Macy's and allow for celebration.  Mostly it was just fun to see the way Sarg invented whatever he needed and kept trying things that might have seemed impossible to other people.


Here is a video showing how the modern balloons are inflated before the parade.  In the book, it said they used sandbags to restrain the balloons, but now they use nets.

In the video below, you get to see how they test out the balloons and practice moving as a group.

A sample of some typical things seen in a Macy's Parade

It was cool to learn that Tony Sarg also had two apprentices.  One, Bill Baird, went on to create the puppets seen in the movie The Sound of Music (video clip on YouTube).  The other was Jim Henson, who created The Muppets.

Here's is the latest incarnation of The Muppets opening during Thanksgiving week.