Stor Starter Saturday

For a description of Story Starter Saturday or to continue a previous story, click on the tag below.

Today's beginning:

The horse pawed restlessly at the ground, a beast eagerly waiting for...

As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth, by Lynne Rae Perkins

Small problem with our new weekly structure: it meant we had to wait (picture three turtles bouncing up and down in anticipation) until today to review this one!


Perkins (Newbery winner for Criss-Cross) has another award-winner on her hands! We weren't sure what to expect from the cover and title, and the ARC (provided by publisher) didn't have a jacket description. We try not to read the promotional blurbs until after the book, so we sort of delved in blindly. And started alternately laughing and groaning almost immediately!

Ry is having a Judith Viorst kind of day (you know; terrible, horrible, no good, very bad...). He is on a train headed towards camp, while his parents are on their way to the Bahamas for a loosely structured vacation. He remembers a last-minute letter from the camp (they had been peppering him with daily missives like, "don't forget your sunscreen") that he had jammed in his backpack, and pulls it out to read. In brief: camp has been cancelled. Don't come. Oops!

Of course, he can't get cell service on the train to call either his parents' cell, or his grandfather, who is house/dogsitting for them (in the house and town they just moved into). Fortunately, the train has to stop in the middle of nowhere for repairs, which will take at least 45 minutes. Plenty of time for Ry to slip off the train, hike up a nearby hill, and see if he can get a few bars, right? Right? Darn those quick mechanics.

Within a few pages, Ry is stranded in the desert with a black eye, numerous scratches, a useless cell phone, about $80, and only one shoe. The phone thing doesn't really matter anyway, since his parents' cell phone has been stolen by a monkey, and his grandfather bonked his head while walking the dogs and is wandering around with short-term amnesia, in the town Ry's family just moved to, while the dogs take off on their own cross-country trip. Just a little bit of bad luck there. Then he meets Del, and his luck begins to change - or does it? It's a little hard to tell in places, but sometimes you just have to let things happen and trust them to fall into place eventually. Or not. Well, if nothing else, you can at least enjoy the ride!

There are so many great lines we want to quote. Anyone who came within range while we were reading it was hit with, "Wait, you have to let me read this part to you." A few that are within pages of each other:

"Ry glanced back at the truck as they headed down the shoulder of the road. It seemed at home there in the timeless earthy expanse. It blended right in. It looked like it was planning to stay. Marry a local rock and put down roots. By the time they got back there would probably be young tumbleweds nesting and mating in the cab." (pg 103)

Quite a feat to use words like "timeless earthy expanse" and be so funny in the same breath.

"The sediment of dirt deposited evenly across the windshield, punctuated by the dried fluids of unfortunate insects, glowed incandescent in the sunlight. It was like trying to see through dandelion fluff." (pg. 107-8)

Great description! Here's another:

"Del's face did its trick where without actually moving any of its parts, you could tell he was smiling. You could tell he was amused. If you want to see how this is done, watch an old Clint Eastwood movie." (pg. 165)

And one more:

" 'So, do you really have errands between Montana and Wisconsin?' he asked Del. Because looking around, he couldn't think what anyone would do here. No offense to North Dakota, but it was pretty subtle so far." (pg. 130)

Having trouble getting your students to stop using boring adjectives, like...well, "boring"? What better example than the North Dakota line! (Note: quotes and page numbers are from the ARC, and may differ slightly in the final version.)

And then there are the characters. Del is the kind of free spirit (and ninja cowboy repairman) we wish we could be. Carl, the semi-blind probable car thief with the two-minute memory span and no feeling below his knees...well, you just have to admire his joie d'vive! Some characters appear for only short bits, while others reappear periodically. All are memorable, as is this book!

As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth released two days ago, so run right out to your local library and check it out - and if it isn't there yet, stand on the counter and refuse to leave until they order and/or finish processing it! Better yet, order your own copy by clicking on the picture link. That way you can underline your favorite parts and dog-ear it all you want, and we will get a small portion of the proceeds for our library.

Picture Book Wednesday: Elmer and Rose, by David McKee

Published in the UK five years ago, but now here in hardcover. If you haven't been introduced to Elmer, the multicolored elephant, you need to get to your local library and check him out. The first book, Elmer, is a simple story about appreciating the things that make you different. We like to use it for story time and then give the children elephant outlines to decorate as they choose - sort of our own version of the Painted Ponies. The other books in the series introduce other 'different' elephants, and mostly follow the same themes of self-acceptance and friendship.
 
In Elmer and Rose, Elmer and his cousin Wilbur debate the concept of being unique (as this is a picture book, by "debate" we mean two or three sentences.)  Elmer's grandfather then asks them to escort a young, pink elephant back to her herd. They think her color is unique, but discover - surprise - that her whole herd is pink, illustrating that the conept of unique is relative.
 
The lesson is fairly obvious, but not delivered in a heavy-handed way, and obvious is a good thing with younger readers. We would have liked to see uniqueness demonstrated in areas other than color, but a teacher/parent/librarian can easily make that connection in discussion after reading.
 
Our favorite part of McKee's illustrations are his trees. From twisty trunks to ball-shaped foliage and triangular red tops, his wide variety of shapes and colors are sure to inspire your kids' imagination. For another fun extension, ask children to follow his example and come up with wildly different flowers, or fish, or cars. This could even be an art lesson for older kids - maybe something for substitutes to keep in their emergency back-up kits. (For those who are new to substitute teaching, an emergency back-up kit is a bag of any-age-level-activities you can turn to when you show up to teach middle school social studies and discover the regular teacher was kidnapped by aliens who apparently also took her lesson plans. You need a kit, trust us.)
 
Copy provided by publisher for review. If you purchase a copy by clicking on the picture link, we receive a (very) small portion of the proceeds, which then goes to our local library.

Nonfiction Monday: Sea Creatures You Can Draw, by Nicole Brecke

Drawing books are always popular in libraries, whether public or school. They also make great gifts, even if the recipient is not an avid artist. There is something about the idea that even the most fumble-fingered (or flipper-fingered) can draw something recognizable by following a few easy steps. To test this out, we tried drawing our cousin, the sea turtle (see him on the cover there?)

Here is the result:

We said "recognizeable", not "good", so we'll call it a success! (Freaky thinks he looks like he has eaten a few too many fish).

The directions were fairly easy to follow, although some of the more vague shapes were hard to copy. It might have helped to have a small version of the finished product on the page for reference, rather than just at the end of each set of directions. Each set starts with a paragraph of factual information about that animal, and the book ends with a further reading/web site list, so kids might get away with calling this a reading book during SSR. Hey, we'd count it!

Review copy received from Lerner Publishing Group. To see more reviews of great nonfiction books, follow this link.

Story Starter Saturday

A new feature in which we will start a story, and we invite you to write the next part! Just read what we have here, read the posts following it, then compose the next few paragraphs in a post of your own. Remember this is a family-type blog so keep it appropriate for a young turtle's eyes:)


     They were in the grocery store, in the freezer section, when it happened. Colin heard it first - a slight rumbling, a sort of muttering sound coming from the direction of the rump roasts.
    
     "Do you hear that," he asked Liz. Liz was about to say something smart in reply, but stopped short when she heard a tiny voice say

Karaoke Night

While we have different teen programs throughout the year, there are several that have become tradition. September, of course, is Talk Like a Pirate Day. In February, shortly after Valentine's Day, we have the annual chocolate party. April is always Open Mic Poetry/Karaoke Night.

This year, due to the two-day remodeling project that took two months to complete, followed by the birth of Miss Ami's baby, we missed a few months of programs, so earlier this week we combined two favorites. Mountains of chocolate, 25 teens, and a microphone - what could possibly go wrong?

Of course nothing did (we take no responsibility for anything that happened after the highly caffeinated urchins arrived home), and a good time was had by both regulars and newbies. We even finished scheduling our summer activities (and for the last time, we are NOT having a food fight/World of Warcraft Party). Here are a few pictures from the singing portion - wish I could figure out how to embed videos without putting them on Youtube (any blogger techies out there?)

Nobody wanted to sing standing up for some reason!

We know that's not 25 teens, but not all parents were available to give permission, and we're sticklers about that:)  We are also looking for something to replace our dinosaur of a karaoke machine - any suggestions?

A Little Restructuring

We are coming up on 5,000 visits! A drop in the bucket compared to many of our favorite blogs, and not nearly as many as The Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay (our hero!) but not bad for less than a year. During that time we have changed our name once and experimented with different voices and structures. We have also had a few lapses in which our typist was unavailable, but we think we have her a little better trained now.

Beginning next week, we are going to try to give our weeks a little more of a permanent layout. Mondays we usually participate in Nonfiction Mondays, hosted by different members of Kidlitoshpere. Tuesdays will continue with Retro Tuesdays, when we review a book (usually YA) that isn't new, but that we somehow missed the first time around, under the premise that perhaps someone else missed it, too.

Wednesdays we are going to devote to picture books - some fiction, some nonfiction. Thursdays will be for chapter books, either juvenile or YA, possibly an occasional adult novel as we get more of those in to review.

Fridays and Saturdays we are going to try some new things (for us, anyway). Fridays will be "book club" days, when we will discuss something we have all read, either amongst ourselves or with library patrons, putting the gist of our conversations down in print.

Saturdays will be "Story Starter Saturdays". Readers are often writers (albeit closet ones), so we are going to throw out a story starter each saturday, and let you, ou readers, continue the story in the comments section. Knowing some of our readers, that could get interesting:)

Of course, we have never managed to post six days in a row, so we probably won't hit each of these every week. Hopefully, however, this general structure will keep us on track and give you an idea of what to look for each day (aside from counting how many times we can use variations on the word "structure" in one post.)