The TeachingBooks Blog
At TeachingBooks.net we believe that books belong in every K—12 classroom and strive to support reading experiences by offering multimedia resources to enliven and expand on meaningful conversations about books in the curriculum.
I admit I gave a little sigh of relief when I saw that my publisher classified my book Ling & Ting (Little Brown, 2010) as an early reader. So many times titles for this level are referred to as easy readers. I know I am biased, but to me there is nothing easy about a successful book for beginning readers!
Students study the holidays celebrated in families and communities around the world to learn about traditions and cultures different from their own, and to honor the diversity in their own communities. For young students, literature is often a portal into these cultural explorations.
Although my books are printed on thinly sliced pieces of tree, they would be utterly impossible without the Internet. Paper Towns (Dutton 2008), for instance, is built around this weird cartographic phenomenon wherein mapmakers intentionally put fake places on their maps.
Did you know that nearly every U.S. state and Canadian province has a young readers’ choice award that allows students to vote for their favorite book? These tremendously successful reading programs lead thousands of children and teens to innumerable quality books each year.
While young children explore language through the rhythm and rhyme of song, music is one of the important bonds tweens and teens share with their peer group. But no matter what age your students are, it's likely they respond to music, providing you with an enjoyable way to connect with them.
It was a challenge coming up with a title and a cover image for the fifth and final book in the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” (Abrams) series. I always planned to call this book Rowley’s Revenge, so I sketched what I thought might make a good cover.
Designing the cover is my final step in creating a picture book. It’s only after spending so much time in the interior of the book—realizing the characters and their world—that I can stand back and consider what one picture would best sum up the experience of the story.
Elementary students love series titles. They enjoy the comfort of familiar characters, settings, and structures. This is especially true for emergent and newly independent readers, whose reading success with these titles encourages them to seek similar books. (Me personally, I learned to read thanks to Matt Christopher’s sports books.)
Usually, it’s the character I think of first. I never see that character’s face—even when I’ve written for months and the book is finished. Rather, it’s almost as if the character is whispering in my ear, saying, “Hey, this is what I need. This is what I want.”
Graphic fiction and nonfiction books are increasingly being used in schools to hook reluctant readers or to present topics in a different format. The multimedia materials recommended in this month's column provide you with instructional support to integrate these graphic books into your lesson plans.
The incredible thing about comics, to me, is the medium’s diversity. Some people hear the word “comics” and are reminded of newsprint pages filled with superheroes. Others see shelves of manga stacked tight, while some readers are more familiar with hardbound graphic novels and nonfiction volumes. All of these formats and types of books rightly describe comics.
In late April I attended the Jane Addams Book Award announcement at Chicago's Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, the actual location where the crusader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient supported immigrants and advocated for social justice and racial and gender equality.