Monica Edinger's Blog, page 36
March 28, 2015
Learning About Africa: How Does The US Media Represent Africa?
Taken together, this anachronistic style of coverage reproduces, in condensed form, many of the worst habits of modern American journalism on the subject of Africa. To be clear, this means that Africa only warrants the publics attention when there is disaster or human tragedy on an immense scale, when Westerners can be elevated to the role of central characters, or when it is a matter of that perennial favorite, wildlife. As a corollary, Africans themselves are typically limited to the role o...
March 27, 2015
Two School Stories, Sophia McDougall’s Mars Evacuees and Robin Stevens’ Murder is Bad Manners
Two new British imports, Sophia McDougall’s Mars EvacueesandRobin Stevens’ Murder is Bad Manners, offer middle grade readersclever young women, wry and witty authorial voices, hapeless teachers,excellent sidekicks, well-developed settings, and page-turningplots. Both are also just a lot of fun.
Mars Evacuees opens at the Muckling Abbott School for Girls where twelve year-old Alice Darelearns thatshe is one of a handful of kids being evacuated to Mars. This is most likely because of her mother...
Two School Stories, One on Earth and One on Mars
Two newmiddle grade British imports, Sophia McDougall’s Mars EvacueesandRobin Stevens’ Murder is Bad Manners, offer middle grade readersclever young women, wry and witty authorial voices, hapeless teachers,excellent sidekicks, well-developed settings, and page-turningplots. Both are also just a lot of fun.
Mars Evacuees opens at the Muckling Abbott School for Girls where twelve year-old Alice Darelearns thatshe is one of a handful of kids being evacuated to Mars. This is most likely because o...
March 24, 2015
In the Classroom: My 4th Graders Read and Respond to El Deafo
Every year I choose a newly published book for my 4th grade class to read in literature circles. It is fun to do a brand new book each year, one that is clearly going to be a classic. For instance, we did The One and Only Ivan shortly after it won the Newbery. This year, before it received its Newbery Honor, I decided it should be Cece Bell’s El Deafo.
Once I started thinking about how to do it I realized the usual literature circle format (especiallytheroles) weren’t right for Bell’s wonderf...
March 20, 2015
In the Classroom: Teaching Africa is My Home
Last month I wrote a post about the Blue School’s Keren Lilu’s fabulous unit on Africa is My Home. Inspired, a colleague and I usedKeren’s ideas with our own 4th grade studentsand it went wonderfully well. And so for others who might want to give it a try I’ve puttogether this page that detailsher methods so that others can follow them too.Keren also provided this video of the children’s wonderful paintings of Margru’s journey (inspired their study of Jacob Lawrence’s Migration series).
March 16, 2015
Coming Soon: Laura Amy Schlitz’s The Hired Girl (Cover Reveal and More)
Fansof Laura Amy Schlitz are a patient bunch. We know that it takes time for herbeautiful, unique, and complex stories to come into being. Happily, thewaitis alwaysworth it. Such isthe case for The Hired Girl, out this fall from Candlewick Press. In the form of adiary, the entries are written by the only daughter of a hardscrabble Pennsylvanian widower farmer with four sons. Eager to read, write, learn, and gain knowledge of every sort, 14 year-old Joan Skraggs, when we first meet her,has a b...
March 9, 2015
SLJ’s Battle of the Kids’ Books 2015
And we are off! Today is the first match of the 2015����SLJ’s Battle of the Kids’ Books. And it is a doozy — Brown Girl Dreaming versus Children of the King judged beautifully by Holly Black. We’ve also got our kid commentators — including one new 7th grader who is doing a fabulous job right out of the gate. You can see all the judges here and the contenders and the brackets here.��It is a lot of fun, I promise you!
March 7, 2015
Lena, Hilary, and Eloise
Lena Dunham’s Girls isn’t my thing, but I’m very interested in her forthcoming documentary, It’s Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise.
March 5, 2015
In the Classroom: the Irma Black Award
The Irma Simonton Black and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature (Irma Black Award) goes to an outstanding book for young children – a book in which text and illustrations are inseparable, each enhancing and enlarging on the other to produce a singular whole. The Irma Black Award is unusual in that children are the final judges of the winning book.
The��finalists have been announced. They are:
Blizzard by John Rocco (Hyperion)
Elizabeth, Queen of the Sea by Lynne Cox, ill...
