Monica Edinger's Blog, page 78
July 12, 2012
In the Classroom: Charlie the Pilgrim
This year I again did a study of Charlie Chaplin with my 4th graders. At first it mostly involved watching movies beginning with his earliest ones done at Keystone. The kids again connected immediately with Charlie and couldn’t get enough of him. I was inclined to skip around a bit with some of his earlier shorts, but my students wanted to see everything! They fell in love with him almost immediately — connecting to his playful, childlike character. At times I would also show them parts of th...
July 9, 2012
The Care and Feeding of Middle Grade Readers
Currently the ccbc-net discussion group is considering the following topic:
Rebirth of Middle Grade Fiction:Yes, young adult literature continues to outpace middle grade in terms of numbers, but we’ve noticed lately that tucked between the seemingly endless volumes of y.a. angst, dystopias and romance (supernatural and otherwise) is a growing number of solid middle grade novels. During the first half of July, we’ll talk about middle grade fiction on CCBC-Net: inviting you to share how do you d...
July 7, 2012
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Live
What with the two recent Sherlock movies, the wonderful British television show, the forthcoming American show, and Andrew Lane’s young Sherlock series, there’s been a lot of the detective out there lately. Of equal interest to me is his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, not just because of his famous fictional sleuth, but because of his interest in psychic matters. The story of the Cottingley fairies(more from me about it here), for instance, would never have gone viral (in the Edwardian sens...
July 4, 2012
Great Lists of Great Books for Kids
My pal Betsy Bird just finished a remarkable project, to get a sense of her readers’ (and those around them) idea of what the best children’s novels and picture books are. She put out a call for these and with the help of a number of people managed to crunch the numbers and come up with two top 100 lists. And THEN she took it farther than any other such accounting by writing posts about all the books. An incredible feat. And now School Library Journal has collected them and organized them int...
July 3, 2012
Summer Reading Suggestions For and From Kids
By now many have weighed in with their recommended summer reading suggestions for kids, but most who have are adults. (You can check out a video Betsy Bird and I did last summer with our suggestions here.) But what about the kids themselves? Thinking they needed a voice too, just before school ended this past May, I tossed out a whole bunch of new and about to be published titles (finished books and ARCs) and invited my students to each select one to review, saying I’d see to it that their re...
July 2, 2012
ARCs vs Finished Books
There’s a wide-ranging conversation currently going on about ARCs, those advance reader copies publishers make available before the books are published. Something I wanted to point out as I don’t see much about it is that ARCs are “uncorrected galleys” meaning they are not the finished books. In fact they are often quitedifferent from the finished books; I have editor and author friends whohate, hate, hate it when people see the ARCs as the final books as they fuss over their creations up to...
June 30, 2012
Revisiting: Chris Raschka’s Arlene Sardine
Then she was smoked, delicately. She was delicately smoked. Delicately smoked was she.
Those are my favorite lines from the book that introduced me to Chris Rashka, Arlene Sardine.When it was published way back in 1998it created a fair amount of controversy given the fact that the title character dies mid-way though the book. Some thought it hilarious (count me among them), some thought it dreadful, and some were simply perplexed. (You can listen to Daniel Pinkwater and Scott Simon read and di...
June 27, 2012
ALA Moments 3
This is really a coda featuring Long Beach Airport, an unusually small airport given its proximity to Los Angeles. That is, somehow you just don’t expect something that has the feel of the tropics more than that of the airport of media moguls and the like.
The afternoon before we left I stopped by the Hilton cab stand to check about when we needed to leave for the airport. A tall dud (he epitomized that term) in a black suit and an earpiece immediately told me I could “arrange” for a cab for t...
June 26, 2012
ALA Moments 2
Was surprised by how much I enjoyed the readers’ theater at Scholastic’s Sunday Brunch. The deal is that a group of writers each present a snippet of each of their books. This time I learned that Sharon Flake can do some very convincing wiggles, Sharon Cameron‘s got loads of good humor, David Shannonis ready to try out for High School Musical, Trent Reedy can do earnest with great conviction, Raina Telgemeieracts with her whole body, Eliot Schrefer is most convincing, and James Dashner can pu...
June 24, 2012
ALA Moments 1
Went to Disneyland for the first time ever four years ago so this time I had some sense of what to expect. We went to Fantasyland intending to do a few story rides. Got to the Alice one only to hear them announce that there was a problem and those on the ride should just relax as it would be repaired in 30 minutes. 30 minutes! That meant a lot of very small children in dark tunnels in small vehicles. We turned and did Small World instead. Came back later and did Alice, Peter Pan, and Toad. Ha...
