Monica Edinger's Blog, page 139
September 27, 2009
Candace Fleming's The Great and Only Barnum: The Tremendous, Stupendous Life of Showman P. T. Barnum
Candace Fleming does it again! She brings yet another larger-than-live individual from America; this one is a wild ride of a biography of the Barnum that many young readers may well recognize from the circus that still has his name. Filled with great stories, amazing primary sources, this is one terrific book. Now rather than going on, I'm going to turn you over to one of my fourth grade students. While I can't identify her, I can tell you that she is an avid reader of history and...
September 26, 2009
The Exquisite Corpse Adventure has Begun
The Library of Congress's Center for the Book and the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance have joined forces to create a very entertaining online serial story — The Exquisite Corpse Adventure.
It is that old game — having one person start a story, fold over the paper, and then give it to the next person to continue. At the end the paper is unfolded and the whole, usually hilarious story, is read in its entirety. In this case, the participating writers and illustrators are a very...
September 24, 2009
Marilyn Nelson and Jerry Pinkney's Sweethearts of Rhythm
With a twilit velvet musky tone
as the pawnshop door is locked,
an ancient tenor saxophone
spins off a riff of talk.
"A thousand thousand gigs ago,
when I was just second-hand,"
it says, "I spent my glory years
on the road with an all-girl band."
So begins Marilyn Nelson and Jerry Pinkney's outstanding collaboration, The Sweethearts of Rhythm: The Story of the Greatest All-Girl Swing Band in the World. Through the voices of the instruments, Nelson's series of poems capture the story of this...
Marilyn Nelson and Brian Pinkney's Sweethearts of Rhythm
With a twilit velvet musky tone
as the pawnshop door is locked,
an ancient tenor saxophone
spins off a riff of talk.
"A thousand thousand gigs ago,
when I was just second-hand,"
it says, "I spent my glory years
on the road with an all-girl band."
So begins Marilyn Nelson and Brian Pinkney's outstanding collaboration, The Sweethearts of Rhythm: The Story of the Greatest All-Girl Swing Band in the World. Through the voices of the instruments, Nelson's series of poems capture the story of this...
September 23, 2009
92nd Street Y Children's Reading Series
The venerable 92nd Street Y here in NYC (near by school , it so happens) has the Unterberg Poetry Center which is full of all sorts of intriguing programs. This year they've started a new Children's Reading Series on Saturdays featuring, "classic literature for children, read by actors and writers." First up is Rosemary Harris this Saturday reading from the fairy tales of Oscar Wilde. In December you can hear and see Lois Lowry, and in March they've got The World of E. B. White: An...
Not Your Grandmother's Alice
"Last time a girl called Alice came through here from your world she brought down a whole pack of cards."
Nope, those aren't Lewis Carroll's words nor are they from the forthcoming Tim Burton film. You see there is yet another Alice headed our way, this one coming to the Syfy channel in December. It is from the same folks who did Tin Man, a very urban fantasy-ish version of Baum's story. This Alice features Tim Curry as the Hatter, Kathy Bates as the Queen of Hearts, and Harry Dean Stanton...
September 20, 2009
In the Classroom: Bit o' Book
Sigh. From Bookwitch I learned about a new UK study looking at the practice of reading aloud parts rather than the whole book in schools. From the press release:
The first wide-scale research into the use of whole books in literacy teaching in the UK has revealed that a quarter of primary school children are reading just one whole book a year in class. Incredibly, 12 per cent of primary school teachers said they have never read a complete book with their class. If the findings were...
September 17, 2009
Yippee!!!
From this week's Children's Bookshelf (over on the right where these things are reported):
Karen Lotz at Candlewick Press has acquired world rights to Monica Edinger's Africa Is My Home. The book, 10 years in the making, is a fictional rendering of Amistad captive Sarah Margru Kinson's journey from Africa to America and back, told in scrapbook format. Edinger, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone, is now a teacher at the Dalton School in New York City, and writes the Educating...
September 16, 2009
That Potter Park
Three rides will form the center of the new park. Universal still will not talk much about the biggest one, a high-tech experience inside the castle called Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey that involves the likenesses of the heroes from the films.
Flight of the Hippogriff is described as a family coaster that simulates a Hippogriff (the half-horse, half-eagle beast from "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban") training flight over Hogwarts castle. Dragon Challenge is a twin...
September 13, 2009
New York City Kids Considered
I once had a job at a Subway Sandwiches on Broadway and 95th Street. I wiped down the counters, rushed to the grocery store when we ran out of tomatoes, washed greasy plastic trays and stacked cans of soda in the fridge. What's interesting about this story? Three things: I worked for exactly 40 minutes a day, during my school lunch period; I was having the time of my life; and I was 11.
A group of us worked there together, all fifth- and sixth-graders at the public school down the block, and...
