What Boys Read

16 November

So many parents say, “I have no problem with my daughter, but my son just doesn’t like to read.”  Right now, I don’t identify.  My 4-year-old son loves to read as much as his sisters, but I worry that as he grows older, he will become a non-reader.  As explained in an Ontario study (2004), few boys have this attitude early in their schooling, but according to some experts, nearly 50% of boys call themselves non-readers by the time they enter secondary school.

If your son used to love reading, but you find he is increasingly disinterested, uncommitted or unmotivated, there is hope.  First of all, don’t give up.  Boys do read.  They just don’t like “school” reading.  It’s a matter of finding what clicks. What book is the right book for a boy?  “A good book for a boy is one he wants to read”(Moloney, 2002).  It’s a matter of having the right stuff. 

Boys like to read:-

Books about what they aspire to be and to do;

Books that make them laugh and appeal to their sense of mischief;

Fiction that focuses on action more than emotion;

Series books which provide a sense of comfort and familiarity;

Science fiction or fantasy;

Newspapers, magazines, comic books, baseball cards, and instruction manuals – materials that are often not available in the classroom.

Interestingly, when they read these materials, they are often reading above grade level but do not think they are reading at all, because these types of materials are not valued at school.

The Homerun Book

19 October

Think back.  Way back.  Is there one book or reading experience that hooked you for life? A favorite bedtime story, a book your teacher or librarian read to you, a book you were given as a gift or something you picked up “once upon a time.”

One very positive experience can create a reader.  In a study called, “The Home Run Book”, over 53% of students who said they enjoyed reading could identify a particular book that first interested them in reading (Von Sprecken, Kim, & Krashen, 2000).  What about those books you bought at the Book Fair, those books your children bring home from the IAA Library, the readers they bring home from class, the books they read from their libraries at home—has your child found his or her Homerun Book?  Have you?  

Please post on our Padlet Wall at http://padlet.com/kathleen_mckim/homerunbooks.  You might inspire someone else with your choice.

And, if your child isn’t a reader yet, don’t be disappointed, not every book is a homerun.  Some are absolute strikeouts. Some will get a man on third, others are triple-, double-plays, some are fouls for a walk.  Don’t give up.  Keep playing the game.  Sooner or later, there’s bound to be a homerun!

Don't Limit Reading Choices, 25 September

I write a weekly (or bi-weekly) news column for the IAA Parent Newsletter, so I'm posting them here.  I was a bit backlogged with work until just now, so I'll date the posts.

25 September

Every day, my route home from work inevitably finds me traipsing back through the Senior Library with my three KG children to retrieve a forgotten item from my office before our driver arrives. Often, by the time I’ve located the forgotten item, I come around the corner to pleas of, “Mommy, can I take this book home?” One day, Jana, 5, was standing on the library stool to reach up to the fourth shelf to pull a book with a picture of a cat on a spine.  “I want all these cat books,” she cried with delight.  Each “cat” book in the Warriors series by Erin Hunter is about 300 pages long, a bit of a stretch for a 5-year-old…even if her mom is a librarian. Did I stop her from taking them home? No way! Why?

Let me share a bit of what I’ve learned about choosing books, so that you can be prepared to help your children make some important choices for Book Week (adapted from “Help a Child Choose a Book,” International Reading Association, 2014, Web).

1.    Choosing a book independently teaches your child that we seek books for different reasons.  As early as possible, introduce the idea that we read for a purpose, even if that purpose is pure enjoyment.

2.    Encourage your child to spend time browsing a selection of books at a library or bookstore. If this is overwhelming, try organizing the books you already have at home and letting your child browse through them.

3.    Give your child authority over choosing books to read. Say “yes” as often as you can. A book that your child wants to read is the one you want to take home. And looking at the pictures is a perfectly acceptable way to read a book.

4.    Let your child know it’s OK if he or she doesn’t like a particular book. Use a not-so-great selection as an opportunity to understand more about reading skills and preferences. Could it be the book was just a little too difficult for the child to tackle alone?

5.    If your child really wants to read something you know is beyond his or her ability, solve it by reading it aloud together.

6.    Know that the IAA librarians are always available with reading lists and suggestions for you and your child.

With my daughter, I walked through steps 3, 4 and 5, and we enjoyed some mommy-daughter bonding over the adventures of the ThunderClan, the ShadowClan and an ordinary housecat named Rusty. 

The Alchemy of Wisdom

Sheikha Intisar Al Sabah dreamed of a book that would honor inspirational Kuwaitis who were proud of their heritage and had made great contributions to Kuwait and the world, in part, because of the heritage of being Kuwaiti.  

What resulted is the photographic art collection of essays entitled The Alchemy of Wisdom.  Interviews with 48 influential and motivating Kuwaitis, accompanied by the insightful portrait photography of Cristian Barnett, are sure to enlighten and make students proud of who they are.  Some of the subjects interviewed for their pearls of wisdom are Ms. Laila Al Ghanim, Mr. Mohammed Al Shaya, Ms. Badria Al Awadi, Mr. Naima Al Mutawa, Ms. Fatima Al Essa, Mr. Ghanim Al Najjar, and Ms. Ayeshah Al Humaidhi, to name a few.  The book is bilingual, in Arabic and in English, for all to enjoy.  The black cover with gold embossing is elegant and formal, a fitting formality for the wisdom contained within its covers.  

Vital Stats

The Alchemy of Wisdom

Sheikha Al Sabah with Zeina Bitar

Photography by Cristian Barnett

Dekwaneh, Lebanon: Lulua Publishing, 2012.

ISBN: 978-9948-16-661-0

Review in Kuwait Bazaar Magazine, November 2012

Lulua Publishing

Using Your (Millennial) Powers for Good

This year at my school, there was a big debate (I'm sure) among the IT facilitators and Administration over educational use of cell phones in school.  Once again, the answer was no.  Facebook and Twitter are still blocked.  Even though our network still goes down, and the unspoken code is that cell phones and hotspots are used on a daily basis as back ups for downed networks and taking photos of lesson plans and teacher notes and homework written on the whiteboards.

I was, and always will be, a proponent of teaching students to learn how to use technology freely and responsibly at appropriate developmental levels.  So, I was glad when I ran across this infographic by Christian Brink (sorry, Christian, I can't follow you @christian_brink) who is working with the Family Online Safety Institute.  (Sorry, FOSI, your site is also blocked by our IT).

See, Millennials can use their powers for good, not evil.

Please include attribution to www.aplatformforgood.org with this graphic.

In addition, check out these goodies:  Digital Citizenship Flashcards!  Everyone should own a set!

I've Got (Civil) Rights, You Know!: a review of 'Birmingham 1963, How a Photograph Rallied Civil Rights Support' by Shelley Tougas and 'Marching for Freedom, Walk Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary' by Elizabeth Partridge

Partridge, Elizabeth. 2009. Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0670011896.

Tougas, Shelley. 2011. Birmingham 1963: How a Photograph Rallied Civil Rights Support. Mankato, MN: Compass Point Books. ISBN 978-0756543983.

Everyone these days has a general knowledge of the Civil Rights Movement.  Martin Luther King, Jr., has a public holiday.  Barrak Obama was elected as the first African-American President of the United States.  Black artists and entertainers are among the top-grossing and most beloved performers in the music, fashion, and television and film industries.  It is difficult for young people today to imagine a segregated world, the scary kind, where simply talking to someone with a different skin color could get you shunned, bullied, or beaten.  Because it is so hard to imagine, young people today are in danger of taking the fight for Civil Rights for granted, of forgetting the sacrifices of the generation who earned their freedom.  In Birmingham 1963 and Marching for Freedom, authors Tougas and Partridge narrow in on two harrowing years in Alabama.

With insightful, historical media analysis, Tougas tells the story behind one of LIFE Magazine’s “Great Pictures of the Century.”  Charles Moore grew up in Alabama during a time when segregation was an accepted way of life.  Although his father, a minister, did not allow him to use racial slurs or mistreat African-Americans, Moore paid little attention to their troubles, instead focusing on his interest in photography.  After serving in the Marines, Moore returned to Alabama to work at the Montgomery Advertiser.  Moore’s timing coincided with the arrival of Martin Luther King, Jr., in Montgomery, and he soon began to cover various speeches, rallies and protests organized by civil rights leaders.  This is how he happened to be in the right place at the right time to capture a photograph of 14-year-old Carolyn Maull and two teen boys being slammed against a building by a blast of water from fireman’s hoses in Birmingham, Alabama, on May 3, 1963.  This is how he captured a photograph that rallied Civil Rights Support from all over the world. 

Partridge picks up the narrative where Tougas ends by detailing the impact that the Birmingham Children’s Crusade had on African-Americans in nearby Selma, Alabama, in 1964.  While their counterparts in Birmingham marched for desegregation in downtown businesses, the African-Americans in Selma were gathering peacefully to protest unjust laws which kept them from voting.  The narrative is set forth chronologically, following the events leading up to the organization of the famous Freedom March from Selma to Montgomery, including Bloody Sunday, a day-by-day account of the march, and the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

Both of these books are welcome additions to any Middle School or High School collection because they focus on the power of young people in the Civil Rights Movement.  Until reading these two books, I had never had a chance to study these movements in detail and was not aware of the great extent to which the movement was one of youth empowerment.  I didn’t know that children were jailed, some as young as 8-years-old, for peaceful protesting.  Both books do a fantastic job of setting the children’s movement within the larger context of Civil Rights and civil rights leaders like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and James Bevel.  Yet they go beyond, to capture eye-witness accounts from the children who marched at the time, the children in the photographs included in the book.  Both books talk about the power of images and the skillful ways in which MLK and the SNCC and SCLC manipulated the media to sway sentiment toward the plight of the African-American community, yet they do not dodge the difficult ethical question of putting children in harm’s way.  Was it right of Civil Rights leaders to ask innocent children to willingly march into situations where they were likely to be beaten with billy clubs, bitten by police dogs, jailed, or even worse, killed? 

These two books are full of primary source photography and interviews.  Their oversized formats make the pictures easy to read.  The texts are clear with adequate kerning and line spacing.  Tougas’ book is written at a slightly lower reading level, with more sidebars inserted for additional information.  Partridge’s book is appropriate for a slightly more informed audience, but is very clearly sequenced.  Both books contain excellent back matter, bibliographies and additional resources.  They would be excellent studies for individual or group presentations in a US history or social studies class, shedding light on some lesser known events in the timeline of the Civil Rights Movement.

Rewards and Reviews for Elizabeth Partridge, Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary

Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction, 2010

Jane Addams Children’s Book Award

Los Angeles Times Book Prize

IRA Notable Book, 2010

YALSA Best Book for Young Adults

ALA Notable Book

Effective and meaningful archival photographs, quotes, poems, and songs are woven throughout the narrative, giving readers a real sense of the children’s mindset and experiences. The bibliography, source notes, photo credits, and resources for further discussion and research are exemplary. An excellent addition to any library. School Library Journal, starred review

Partridge proves once again that nonfiction can be every bit as dramatic as the best fiction. … With a perfect balance of energetic prose and well-selected, breathtaking photographs, the volume portrays the fight for the heart of America. Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Partridge provides just enough context of the Jim Crow South to orient readers before plunging readers into the dramatic and harrowing events of the march. Partridge once again demonstrates why she is almost peerless in her photo selection. Horn Book, starred review

Reviews for Birmingham 1963: How a Photograph Rallied Civil Rights Support

…a motivating introduction to the period it describes, and the photographic analysis makes [it] a valuable source for team teachers of social studies and language arts. Lucy Schall, Voice of Youth Advocates, August 2011

Pair with...

Birmingham, 1963, a narrative poem by Carole Boston Weatherford, which combines primary source photography and commemorates the bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church and the death of four girls on Sunday, September 15, 1963.  This event takes place between the events of both books reviewed above.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham, a young adult novel by Christopher Paul Curtis, in which a young boy deals with the aftermath of the 16^th Street Baptist Church Bombing.

Related Websites

Elizabeth Partridge: Marching for Freedom

Shelley Tougas’ Blog

A Tragedy in the Making, a review of "Columbine" by Dave Cullen

Students and teachers thought it was a prank.  It was the week after prom, Seniors were getting ready to graduate, and the idea that this was real was unthinkable.  But the unthinkable happened on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School, as it had before at other schools, and would after.  Two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, would become infamous, remembered as deranged teenagers who attempted to blow up their school, and when that failed, kill 13 people and then themselves.

Cullen, Dave.  2009. Columbine.  New York: Hachette.

Until Sandy Hook, Columbine was the worst school shooting on record.  Harris and Klebold have been villainized, psychoanalyzed, preached about and lamented, and yet, we know very little about the actual lives of the boys behind the media-created myth.  Journalist Dave Cullen, one of the first on the scene the day of the shootings, would remain with the story for 10 years, pouring over countless police records, interviews, and journals, in order to bring the definitive book.  “The result is an astounding account of two good students with lots of friends, who were secretly stockpiling a basement cache of weapons, recording their raging hatred, and manipulating every adult who got in their way” [book flap].  Cullen debunks many of the myths that were concretized during the media’s coverage of the shooting in the week that followed.  For instance, the shooters were never part of the Trench Coat Mafia, they weren’t bullied, they didn’t target jocks and Christians.  Harris was found to be a psychopath,  while Klebold was depressive, suicidal.  Both were bent on annihilation.    Together, they became a murderous dyad-the perfect storm of teenage boredom , angst, and testosterone. 

I picked this book off the shelves the day after the Connecticut shootings, to see if it would shed any light on the tragic events that happened there.  What I found was a book in the same vein as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.  Cullen carefully recreates the events of the shooting, piecing together interviews and police reports to flesh out a step by step plan.  He explains the science behind understanding the events, and he does a particularly good job of explaining how the media and new mobile technology played a role in forming the American opinion of Columbine.  He explains how good people made mistakes, how connections just weren’t made, and how much of that was kept on the down low.  For example, a police investigator had opened a file on Harris a year before the shootings.  Both Klebold and Harris were in a juvenile rehabilitation program to avoid jail time for breaking and entering a year before.  Cullen makes a firm case for the evidence being there prior to the shooting and our failure, as a society, to notice.  Particularly interesting are his interviews with local pastors about how the shooting galvanized the local Christian community and differences of opinion among the clergy about whether the shooting should be used to bring more people to God.  Most compelling was his explanation of the psyches of Harris and Klebold, mostly through the work of FBI criminal psychologist Dwayne Fuselier.  Cullen honors the victims and families of all the victims through his careful work. 

Rewards and Reviews

Edgar Award

"Top Education Book"--American School Board Journal

Alex Award Finalist--American Library Association

“Cullen, acclaimed expert on Columbine, offers a penetrating look at the motivation and intent of the shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Drawing on interviews, police records, media coverage, and diaries and videotapes left behind by the shooters, Cullen examines the killers’ beliefs and psychological states of mind. Chilling journal entries show a progression from adolescent angst to psychopathic rage as they planned a multistage killing spree that included bombs that ultimately didn’t detonate. Cullen goes beyond detailing the planning and execution of the shootings, delving into the early lives of the killers as well. Graphic and emotionally vivid; spectacularly researched and analyzed.” -- Vanessa Bush, Booklist (April 2009)

 “Any book about this tragedy can be hard to read, and Cullen's detailed account of the gruesome killings and suicides is no exception. Cullen's style can also make the book hard going, as he skips back and forth through time and among different people involved in the event and occasionally repeats himself. In the end, however, Cullen clarifies a lot of misconceptions that evolved soon after the tragedy and provides new insights into why it occurred, which makes the book definitely worth reading despite the disjointed narrative.”—Terry Christner, Library Journal (March 15, 2009)

“Cullen expertly balances the psychological analysis—enhanced by several of the nation's leading experts on psychopathology—with an examination of the shooting's effects on survivors, victims' families and the Columbine community. Readers will come away from Cullen's unflinching account with a deeper understanding of what drove these boys to kill, even if the answers aren't easy to stomach.”  -- Publisher’s Weekly (April 2009)

Ideas for Teaching

Using this with students might be difficult, but there are possibilities for teaching psychological profiling that would work with an AP class.  It would fit with discussions of teen depression and suicide; however, I would be cautious in using the protagonists as examples since their story ends in a worst-case scenario.  It could also be useful for media studies, religious studies or contemporary history.  Journalism and/or rhetoric teachers may find it useful for teaching students how journalists construct a story.  It would be a good read for any school administrator concerned with school safety. 

The author ‘s website includes a very comprehensive instructor’s guide which contains useful connections and study guides.  http://www.columbine-instructor-guide.com/