Archive for the ‘reading with kids’ Category

I spent an hour this morning taking photographs on St. Therese’s school grounds with third graders. We had 13 students with 5 cameras to share and two adults with a camera each. The kids ran for the grassy area with wildflowers. One of the students said: “I found a 4.” It took me a minute to realize that she meant a flower with four petals. Another said: “I found a five!” I had read Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature the previous day.

We were very excited to find this spiderwort, which is featured in Growing Patterns. It was this time last year that I was taking the final photographs for the book.

Day 1

6-10:30 a.m. Rise, walk dog with Richard, prepare boys’ lunch, walk dog with friend, Pilates.

10:40 -11:05 a.m. Conversation with filmmaker (who happens also to be a friend) about script for book trailer. Glad to be working with a professional. Moving images and audio are way out of my area of expertise. Grateful for grant from state and local arts agencies that made it possible for me to hire professional filmmakers for my book trailer.

11:10-11:30 a.m. Shower.

11:35-11:55 a.m. Start blog post for later this week, featuring an interview with video.

12:00-1:00 p.m. Re-heat lunch and eat with Richard. Sneak downstairs to computer for a minute to email some links and a still photograph to filmmaker.

1:05-2:30 p.m. Rest. A little longer than usual because I was savoring the end of a fun novel, American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. (The cover art bothers me a tad; Alice Blackwell marries in a cotton two piece that her mother-in-law dismisses as a pioneer girl outfit; the dress on the cover is NOT that.)

2:35- 3:02 p.m. Put finishing touches on blog post.

3:02 p.m. Email from magazine editor. Needs phone conference on piece slated for August. Reply that I am free until 3:50 p.m. when I must collect two younger boys from school.

3:05 – 3:35 p.m. Tie three split chicken breasts around two onions and two sprigs of fresh rosemary. Rub with olive oil, more rosemary, and some thyme. Editor calls. Use cordless phones and headset to discuss magazine piece. Concerns must be answered. A potential re-write angle is discussed. Editor promises to email the potential new angle. I promise to think — and figure out a direction by noon next day.

3:45 p.m. Start oven preheating. Bundle up for unseasonably cold weather. Gloves, hat, scarf, fleece. Go to door to let my oldest son in. “Is it that cold inside?” he asks. G’s always a bright spot in my day.

3:50 p.m. Pick up younger boys at school. Conference with teacher about blazers that need to be purchased with booster club monies. I am the keeper of the booster club monies, but I forgot to bring the total. Her computer is down and the Blazer company’s phone line is busy. We agree to talk next day. I promise her we have enough money for 5 blazers — even though I don’t know how much money we have, nor the exact cost.

4:30 p.m. Home. Put chicken in oven. Peel white and sweet potatoes. Add to roasting pan.

4:50 p.m. Print potential re-write angle.  Call critique partner to see if she can brainstorm later. Make 6:30 p.m. appointment. Sit in living room chair to consider rewrite.

5 p.m. Place call to editor — even though it is an hour after close on the East Coast. Editor at desk. (They work long hours.) Convey my belief that rewrite angle is bad idea, but promise to try something later.

5:10 p.m Wash and trim asparagus for steaming. Cut the chicken while Richard makes gravy.

5:30 p.m Sit down to roast chicken, potatoes, steamed asparagus, and gravy.

5:55 p.m. Walk dog with Richard. One boy does dishes, one boy feeds dog and takes out trash, and one waters the plants.

6:30 p.m. Home just in time for call with critique partner. Not really much brainstorming. I’ve decided I can’t rewrite from proposed angle. Back and forth. Discuss a small bit of school business.

6:45 p.m. Sit at computer. Bring up final, edited version of magazine piece. Pull out a few research sources, search internet for more information. Become more firm in my position that proposed angle won’t work. Write email to editor. At a loss for how to proceed. Suggest scrapping article or pulling byline. Am out of ideas. Give morning schedule so editor can reach me.

7:45 p.m. Read to D from Shadow’s Edge.

8:30 p.m. Seek to connect with N about science fair project that is causing problems. He’s in no mood for it.

8:30 – 9:30 p.m. A little kitchen tidying, a little web browsing. Eat popcorn with nice, warm cup of tea. 10 p.m. Asleep.

Day 2 (Today)

Early routine same. (substitute recumbent bike and treadmill for water aerobics because pool heater is not working and water is COLD.)

6:54 a.m. Editor replies via email. Editor ready to throw in towel, too, but only temporarily. Will sub another article for August. Will work through issues somehow.

9:30 a.m.  Take model airplane to school so youngest son will have it for Science Olympiad after school.

9:45 a.m. Re-heat black-eyed peas prepared two days ago for today’s church lunch for the food pantry customers.

10 a.m. Shower.

10:50 a.m. Hand off black-eyed peas to friend who is attending lunch.

11 a.m. Prepare lesson on transferring digital photographs for 5th graders. Review script and time line from filmmakers. Field email query about macro lens. 12 noon. Eat reheated soup for lunch.

12:10 -3:45 p.m. Teach 5th graders. Computer glitch makes it impossible to transfer photos so we take more photographs. Meet with teacher after school.

3:50-4:10 p.m. Transfer students’ digital photographs to my computer.

4:15 p.m. Head to Post Office to send check for Blazers via Priority Mail.

4:50 – 5:20 p.m. Home. Brief chat with Richard about the day.

5:20 p.m. Take G to piano lesson. While he’s having lesson, run to library to get book.

6:10 p.m. Home to Richard’s tasty pasta salad (quinoa salad for me because I eat gluten-free).

Walk dog. Kids do chores. Blog. Review script with Richard. Read to Douglas. Sleep.

Our two copies of Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature arrived today. The books are beautiful! The colors are bright, the pages are shiny, and the shape is a golden rectangle. After getting some positive feedback on using video on the blog, I decided that this would be a good day to use it again. You can watch the brief video below and then read on for more information.

From my early days of writing for children, I have always read what I was working on to kids. At first, it was my own. Then, I moved on to sharing with kids at my kids’ school. In addition to reading my stories and poems, I read all kinds of books to small groups and entire classrooms. I could tell from the kids’ reactions what was working and what was not. I learned, too, that kids are not willing to sit still for version after version of the same story. I learned to get my stories into pretty good shape before I shared and to read once and move on.

One of the spreads in Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator is in the book because of questions I got from kids when I went to schools with my Highlights article about wolfsnails. Kids always asked if wolfsnails eat worms. I created a scene in which a wolfsnail encounters a worm (and does not eat it) so that I could answer the question in the text.

With Growing Patterns I pushed my luck with a few of the young readers, asking them to read it aloud to me. I know they felt a little nervous, but I kept my mouth shut and tried not to be too obvious about the notes I was taking. I was watching for places where they stumbled over my awkward constructions or where they needed more clarification. Two second graders wrote out a page of questions for me. Many of the questions were about how I took the photographs or got interested in the pattern. But they also pointed out their favorite photographs and patterns. I am very excited about going back to their school this week and showing these now third graders the final product.

Thank you, everybody!

I spent two very nice days this week at the Mississippi Library Association annual conference. Rick Bragg spoke on Thursday morning. He read from his latest book, The Most They Ever Had, a memior of the people in the milltown Bragg grew up in. I started reading it during the next break in the conference and finished it after I got home Thursday night. I really enjoyed it. He has such a way with words, managing to paint a complete picture through six or eight vignettes. One story of two women who met a seemingly impossible challenge (picking down and back on a very long row of cotton in one day) for two extra dollars was particularly good. I recommend this to people who are studying memoir or the use of detail to round out characters  or who just want a good read.

Nancy Opalko, children’s librarian at Oxford Public Library, introduced a panel discussion on greatstoriesCLUB, an American Library Association program aimed at putting books into the hands of underserved teens. Librarians can apply to launch a program (the deadline is Nov. 2) in their own community. Besides reading books with teens, some librarians expand the program to include visiting authors.

An author who has worked with several greatstoriesCLUB sites is Paul Griffin, a New Yorker who writes books for teenagers. He launched a “story jam” during his talk with a few lines about a librarian who received a letter containing a $100,000 donation and the promise of $900,000 more if the librarian agreed to meet the donor that night. The story was passed from person to person — with many zany twists — until a lbrarian wrapped it up in a most satisfying way. Griffin uses this exercise with teens in juvenile detention facilities to get them comfortable with storytelling as a bridge to writing. I am looking forward to reading Paul’s two books, Ten Mile River and Orange Houses.

Ken Waldman, who bills himself as the Alaskan Fiddling Poet, gave a talk on using poetry with kids. He incorporates music and movement into his very engaging presentation. In addition to his work as a traveling minstrel, he offers books, CDs, and cards. His talk prompted  an interesting discussion on the relative merits of rhyming in poetry. Waldman prefers to write without overt rhyme and encourages kids to write without thinking of rhyme as a constraint.

This was my first MS Library Association conference and I hope to return in future years. At lunch one day, I had a real treat. I had made plans to meet my friend Jackson S., a young reader who struck up a correspondence with me last year. He has found about a half dozen wolfsnails near his Hattiesburg-area home since he read Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator. I was happy to get his (positive) reaction to Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature. He and his mom took me to lunch and we had a fun time talking about reading, writing and publishing.

My cousin, Quinn, and his son James visited over the weekend. James enjoyed some of the books we got when our boys were little. This is one of Alexandra Day’s (nearly) wordless picture books about Carl. James also enjoyed getting to know our very real dog, Tanner. Does anyone know what relation James is to me? Also, what relation is James to my sons?

My mother had a running series of photographs she called “Reading to …(whichever of my boys).” So, here’s a new entry: Reading to James.

Here’s another shot at the logo. We don’t think we’ll be able to incorporate a component that says “author”. We’ve simplified some, too.

I had fun this morning reading Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator to the storytime crowd at the Jackson Zoo. I showed them my newest animal — the Mediterranean House Gecko. I also taught them the correct way to use a hand magnifying lens — a skill I learned at the Writing From Nature workshop, sponsored by the Highlights Foundation. (Read about my WFN experiences here and here.

G took the photographs. (He was babysitting so we brought along his two charges.) I always enjoy meeting new readers — especially those who share my interest in animals and plants. It was great to see my friend Jody there with her four children (some of whom I used to babysit). She was often the first person I celebrated with when I sold a story. One of her sons found a peacock feather so he used his turn with the magnifying lens to look at it up close.

I will be at the Jackson Zoo on Tuesday, August 4, at 10 a.m. reading Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator. The rain we’ve been having recently makes for perfect snail hunting weather. I spent time outside this  morning helping my boys pick up sticks in our yard — and I saw bunches of garden snails, crickets, pill bugs, and, of course, mosquitoes. In addition to the book, I hope to have a few surprises. I hope you’ll come and see me.

Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature update: I am disappointed that the layout isn’t ready yet. I hope to see it next week. Keep your fingers crossed.

One of the books G picked up at ALA was WWW: Wake. Well, actually, he saw it at ALA and ordered for his Kindle. After he finished it, I read it. I found it interesting. The main story involves Caitlin Decter, a teenage math whiz who has been blind since birth. When she tries an experimental procedure to restore her sight, what she first sees is a visual representation of the world wide web. Alongside Caitlin’s storyline, the book also introduces a group of researchers who are working with a bonobo chimpanzee, a Chinese blogger who is concerned when his government shuts down the internet, and an inanimate intelligence that reaches out to Caitlin through her unusal “websight.” I have to admit the science started to get a little beyond me (Zipf plots, Shannon Entropy, and cellular automata), but it was fun to think about. (Reading the book on an electronic device, it would have been interesting if I could have clicked on one or more of the scientific concepts and/or the websites mentioned in the text.)

It was the kind of book that I wanted to keep reading past my bedtime and that pulled me back in after breaks. At one point, near the end of the story, I was reading in my bed and starting to get sleepy. I was holding the “book” in my left hand and I found myself reaching up with my right hand to turn the page. My hand hit the Kindle. It was one of those strange experiences when my brain went back to its usual behavior when reaching the end of a page — instead of hitting the next page button.

I found it hardest to read the sections about the artificial intelligence that reaches out to Caitlin. I couldn’t understand it so I found myself skimming. Also, I couldn’t believe that I had reached the end of the story when the book ended. When I said to G that I wondered why the other story lines hadn’t been resolved, he told me the book is the first in a trilogy. Ah.

WWW: Wake reminded me a little of Little Brother because it has modern technology as an integral part — a character, even — of the book. G says he’ll add his bit later.

This is my first wonky log cabin block. I have admired these in other places, but I hadn’t quite figured out how to do it myself so my friend Julie and I scheduled a wonky block get-together and I managed. I like the way it turned out and I’ve started the next one. This could be my next project.

In the meantime, I worked more on my other quilt and took some (hopefully) better photographs of it. I should have known better than to try to get a good picture in the house on the floor in bad light. This time I took it outside and used natural light. Like I said, I should have known better. This photo also gives you a better idea of the size of the quilt. It’s still little bitty.

I haven’t decided whether this is one long panel of a quilt with some long solid panels, too, or whether this is just a fraction of what will be a quilt that is all bits and pieces like this. Do you have an opinion?

Maybe I’ll figure out how to combine the bits and pieces and the wonky square??

My boys are into their second week of Campbell Boys Camp for Boys (or CB squared). Here are some shots of them.

I just finished Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett (my second time; we selected it for book group) and D and I are in the middle of The Magic Thief by Sarah Prineas. N just finished Unwind by Neal Shusterman. He liked it and requested more. I’ve put holds on several of his others. G just finished The Ancient by R.A. Salvatore. Soon it will be time for the official summer reading.

Here’s the beginning of my latest quilt project. I’m not sure what I’m doing, but I wanted it to be random and organic. I chose all shades of brown, black, and white. As I go, I’ll be adding some purple, gold, and blue. Some of the people in my life may understand the significance. We’ll see how this goes. It was so much fun to spend a few hours in the sewing room this week.

In the meantime, I have been doing lots of reading. Some is research: A Class of Their Own: Black Teachers in the Segregated South by Adam Fairclough. Some is for fun: SUM: Forty Tales of the Afterlife by David Eagleman. Some is for the boys: Max Quigley, Technically Not a Bully by James Roy and The Magic Thief by Sarah Prineas.