Just Like Jackie by Lindsey Stoddard

Just Like Jackie
Lindsey Stoddard
HarperCollins Children's Books
Release Date: Jan 2, 2018

It's been awhile....
Like four years. Whoops. It's not like I stopped reading or anything - in fact, I'd say the opposite.  And just recently I was given the opportunity to read and review some ARC (advanced reader copies) from a local book store.  The one condition to getting the free ARCs is that I must review the ones I particularly like.  So I figured why not review them here as well.  You know, dust off the ol' blog and get back at it!

Cover art courtesy of HarperCollins

Just Like Jackie is an amazing story. If you enjoyed Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt, or Counting By 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan, you will love this book.
Robbie Hart was named after baseball great Jackie Robinson, even though she's nothing like him.  Robbie wishes she could stay calm under pressure, but usually it just boils up and right out of her - like the time Alex Carter called her a motherless bird and she punched him in the face.  He may have deserved it, but when the principal calls Robbie's grandpa into school, she knows there will be trouble.  Robbie's grandpa is having trouble remembering things lately and she's afraid people at the school will find out and blame her.  She knows that if she would just be a better student, then grandpa's memory could rest and his word's wouldn't get confused.
This is an amazing story that, like Counting by 7s and Fish in a Tree is told from Robbie's point of view.  I really love these books because it gives kids a chance to hear their own voice in a novel.  In fact, while I was reading it, I couldn't help but think of a couple of kids at our school who would benefit from reading this book.
I can't help but wonder though, how much of the inferred meaning do kids get out of books like this?  When I read it as an adult, I know that grandpa's memory issues have nothing to do with Robbie's behavior at school...but will a 10-year-old know that when they're reading? And then I wonder - does it really matter? And the answer is no, not really.  I believe deep in my core that if a reader gets lost in a story, then the story has served its purpose, and it is not our place to decide whether or not the reader inferred enough depth of meaning from the story.  I've read the same book (The Book Thief by Markus Zusak) countless times, and each time I read it, I find something new to love and cherish about the story.  That's what makes a book great - one that you'll read multiple times and continue to lose yourself in it, love it, and learn from it. Just Like Jackie has the potential to be that kind of book for kids and adults alike.

Haiku Book Reviews

As a teacher, I know that what I do for my students each week has purpose and meaning.  I intend for every lesson to stretch their minds, grow their learning and help them become the amazing people they will become. I plan, prep, think, re-plan, re-prep and re-think lessons before I teach them.  After I teach them I think about how it went, did they learn what I intended them to learn?  Did they grow?  How can I make the lesson better?  What can I tweak to get just a little more out of my students?

It's exhausting.

And sometimes, I plan lessons that absolutely flop.  I'm human.  It happens.  All teachers learn to deal with lesson flops. But other times, I hit student-centered-learning pay dirt.  And when that happens, it's awesome.

Recently, I saw a post on Jennifer Reed's blog about people who made a difference in 17 syllables and thought it was genius.  I also happened to be working with our 6th grade team on how to best implement our new writing curriculum.  Our 6th graders struggle with using "vivid" words, so we decided to apply the 17-syllable idea to book reviews.

First, I made sure students understood what a haiku was and how the format of 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables worked.  Then they brainstormed words to describe their books.  That was all we had time for in our first 30 minute session.  I looked at the descriptive words they'd come up with and circled the words I felt could be more "vivid" - replacing "boy" with "young man" etc.  I really wanted the kids to think about synonyms and the meaning behind some of the words they chose.

The next week we worked on boiling our books down to two or three themes or lessons from the books they chose.  Then, the worked on the writing of their actual haikus.  The teachers and I were blown away with the amazing ideas they came up with!

Here's where the lesson absolutely took off. The kids floored us with their ability to come up with great haikus!  The teachers even got so into writing haikus that they created an instagram account to share their haikus with one another.  Originally, I wanted the students to use animoto to create short, quick animotos for their reviews - much like what Mrs. Reed did with her students.  However, using a free app called Color Cap, we were able to have the students create visual representations of their haikus in about 20 minutes.  The classroom teachers then published the haikus to their instagram account, and I was able to download the images and add them to our Kyffin LMC Book Blog.

Here are some of the amazing Haikus our 6th grade students created:

Dragonborn by Toby Forward

Dragonborn

by Toby Forward

Bloomsbury

2011

In my time as an elementary librarian, I've learned that dragons are awesome*.  Kids LOVE dragons.  Heck, adults love dragons.  At my local library, there are over 277 books about dragons.  And that's just at one branch of the library.  When I search all branches of the library for the entire county, we're talking thousands of books (okay, so just a thousand, but still).  So when I'm shopping for books, any books that are about dragons get put in the cart and read as soon as they come in.

I was pretty excited when Dragonborn finally came in.  It looked perfect for elementary - cool cover, not too thick, but not too thin, etc.  Turns out, looks can be decieving.  I think.  I'm not certain yet.  Lemme 'splain.

First, a summary:  Sam is a wizard apprentice to the great wizard Flaxfield.  At the beginning of the book, Flaxfield dies and Sam must oversee his "finishing".  All the wizards who completed their apprenticeship under Flaxfield begin to return, and they doubt Sam's abilities and they even begin to doubt whether or not he really was an apprentice.  Sam, who has really only ever known life with Flaxfield, fears that these adult wizards plan to send him off to the coal mines to work and decides to run away with his pet dragon Starback. His adventures lead him to a wizard college and to the mines that he is so afraid of.  All the while, an evil...person? being? someone of indeterminate species... named Ash is after Sam...I think.  It seems that Flaxfield trapped her, and her creepy unexplained companion named Bakkmann in a tower somewhere and if they can get Sam, they can get out.  There are also roffles (they seem like dwarfs, but I'm not certain) and memmonts (no idea really - maybe they're cats?) and all kinds of other magical things that inhabit Sam's world that are explained only through excerpts from Sam's apprentice notebook.  Oh yeah, and dragons.  I almost forgot the dragons.

Was that summary odd?  Well, it makes sense because the book is rather odd.  The excerpts from Sam's apprentice notebook are meant to connect things together and to give background information, but often end up confusing the reader.  I went back and re-read the excerpts often, trying to make sense of the story line through the excerpts.  But usually, that didn't help.  The chapters and sections that relate to Ash and Bakkmann are just as confusing, but end up making sense at the end of the novel, even if they don't answer all the questions they raise at the beginning.  The book is clearly written to be part of a series, I'm just not certain its written well enough to encourage readers to read the rest of the series.

However, I'm an adult, and I read books very differently than my students.  There have been books in the past that are similar to Dragonborn that I didn't enjoy and my students LOVE.  Since the book is written for young readers, I think I should reserve my judgement about the book until I can get an expert opinion or two about it.  So I'm going to book talk it this week, hope someone checks it out and then ask their opinion.  I promise I'll report back if I can.

In the meantime, I would recommend this book to any young reader interested in fantasy, mystery and dragons.  The reading level places it at a 4th grade level (at least), and I think students up to 7th grade would enjoy it.

*I couldn't help myself.  That video is so unbelievably random and weird, it's awesome.  Also, I bet that guy is single.

Chomp

Chomp
by Carl Hiaasen
Alfred A. Knopf
2012

I've loved Carl Hiaasen since I read the very first page of Skinny Dip (read it, you'll agree).  I love his sarcastic wit and well-woven plot lines.  When I became a teacher librarian and found out he also writes books for young readers, I was excited and nervous.  Not many writers can write well for multiple ages (case in point: LOVE James Patterson books for young readers, can't stomach his adult novels).  However, Hiaasen nails it.

Chop stars two fantastic young people: Wahoo and and Tuna.  The only two kids on the planet named for fish (granted, Wahoo isn't named for the fish - he's named for a professional wrestler).  Wahoo's dad is a wild animal wrangler.  Tuna's dad is...not so great.  When Wahoo's dad is hired to help out with a survival show Expedition Survival, Tuna decides to tag along, especially since the host of the show - the famous Derek Badger - is her personal hero.  Tuna quickly finds out that Derek Badger (who is referred to not-so-affectionately by Wahoo's dad as "Mr. Beaver") is not the survivalist he claims to be on the show.  And when Badger goes a little crazy and wants to start doing all his own stunts, things get messy quick.  Wahoo and his dad can't back out of the job - they need the money, and Tuna doesn't want to go home, so they're stuck trying to make the best of a difficult situation.

As always, Hiaasen's dry humor and plot twists turn the book from just another book to an absolute page turner.  And I appreciate the fact that the relationship between Wahoo and Tuna never turns romantic - it would have been too cliche.  Wahoo's love for his family and his animals, and his desire to help Tuna are genuine and completely age appropriate.  And Hiaasen's portrayal of adults is also age appropriate: they are flawed but not to the point of being disrespectful.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who thinks Bear Gryls is a bit much.  Ok, seriously, I would recommend this book to any one who likes survival stories (both wilderness survival and tough-life-situation survival), any middle-grade student looking for a fun read, and any parent who wants a great book through which they can connect with their child.

Spy School

Spy School
by Stuart Gibbs
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
 2012

I picked up Spy School for two reasons.  First, it is  a Colorado Children's Book Award Nominee this year, and second, a student checked it out last week and came in two days later saying "Ohmygosh, Mrs.Covington this book is AMAZING howhaveyounotreadityet?!?!"

I didn't have an answer, and I didn't have a book to read that night, so I took it home. And I'm glad I did!  It's a great read - just enough suspense to keep me reading, along with some truly humorous moments.

Ben Ripley is a 12-year-old dork.  There's no two ways about it.  When he comes home from school one day to find out he's being recruited for the undercover CIA spy school, he's overjoyed.  Finally, he'll be able to do something cool.  Unfortunately, it's all top secret - he can't even tell his best friend.  However during his first day at spy school, after being shot at a few times and fighting off an attacker in his dorm room with a tennis racket, he finds out that he actually didn't qualify for spy school - they brought him in to use as a decoy to flush out a mole within the school.  Luckily for the CIA, Ben is actually smarter than he seems and he turns out to be a pretty good agent-in-training, especially since his life is on the line.

While the plot is extremely fantastic, and I was a little annoyed with how absolutely inept every single adult in the book was portrayed, Spy School is a fun read.  And though I'll admit I figured out who the mole was before the book actually revealed it, I will say it took some re-reading and deep thinking for me to actually figure it out.  I would say this book is a great read for anyone between 4th and 7th grade - depending on their reading level, and it's a great read for any kid who likes spy novels.