What will Grabby Bunny be for Halloween?

Inquiring rabbits want to know.  The kids had lots of ideas. 

We'll have to wait for the Parade of Books to see!

Yes, Haunted/Autumn House Museum in the Library!

(* Looking for info on the Stone Parade of Books?  Please click here.)

The tradition continues, by popular demand...the Haunted House Museum in the school library!

Want to participate? Here's how:

Take a cardboard box and cut holes in it for windows.  Paint or otherwise completely cover the box with a seasonal color like orange, black, green or purple.  Decorate the outside of your house with ghosts, trick-or-treaters, rotting trees…use your imagination!   If you don’t celebrate Halloween, that’s fine!  We welcome fall houses and autumn scenes as well.  

Here are a few rules:

* No blood or gore or headless dolls, sorry!  We are celebrating imagination and folklore, not horror.

* Please do not attach any real food or leaves to your creation. This creates problems for people with allergies, and also attracts bugs (too scary even for Halloween).

* Please do not include or attach anything valuable to your creation.

* Yes, you can partner up with a friend or friends or family! Work should showcase student efforts.

* You can light it inside with a flashlight or battery-operated lights!

* You don’t have to make it a house.  It can be a haunted apartment building, or a haunted theater, or a haunted sports event, or a haunted pet shop, or a haunted fashion show, or a haunted toy factory or…whatever idea you have! Since we have been doing this for a few years now, we are looking to "up the ante" on creativity, and encouraging older kids to participate or help younger kids.

* Please ask for a grown-up’s help for cutting out windows or when using new or messy craft materials.

* This is not an assignment for a grade or for a contest.  This is extra credit, optional and for FUN! Everyone should just do their best, and know that working together, we make a great museum!

Haunted houses and fall houses are to be made at home.  They can be dropped off in the library any morning between October 21 and October 29.  Remember to put your name and room number on your monsterpiece! 

UPDATE 10/31:  Thanks to everyone who contributed to this year's haunted house museum! So very creative, and such great teamwork.  Next year, we may be thinking of a theme to inspire more grade levels to participate.  Your ideas are always welcome!  Here are just a few of the eerie abodes...and even a haunted Quidditch game!  Boo-tiful job, kids! 

Ms. Esme down for the count

Sorry, gang, I've had to take a few sick days.  I do not have access to Gradebook from home, and there are still some grades in the middle school that may need entering or changing.  If you see a grade that needs updating, please don't fret or worry for a minute!  It will be repaired toot-sweet when I get back.  (Don't forget, middle-schoolers, you can e-mail me your "What Is Science?" citation project, which counts for two grades, by Monday.  All the info should be in your library folders, extra copies available in the display in the library as needed.)  

While I am out, please also hold on to your books.  We will have book check-out and return up and running upon my return!

Thanks for your patience!

The Great Debate: Banned Books!

(* Looking for information about Parade of Books?  Please click here.)

The subject of Banned Books Week was a lively topic for 7th graders.  Many students expressed great surprise that some of their favorite books have been removed from the shelves in some libraries; books like The Giving Tree, Green Eggs and Ham, Where the Wild Things Are, The Diary of Anne Frank, Harry Potter, Winnie the Pooh and The Wizard of Oz...even the dictionary!  We talked about the First Amendment in the context of the library, but our students wondered:  do kids have the same constitutional rights as adults?  Don't parents trump everyone else when it comes to the final say of what is allowed to be read?  Does a parent have the right to decide what other people's children read?  Can books harm us in their influence, or do they broaden us?  What happens if someone doesn't agree with content in a book, but the book represents a minority, and without that book, a group is not represented in the library...is that fair? How do we know if a kid really is mature enough to handle the content in a book? Oh so many questions, and our favorite kind: ones with many possible answers. 

The kids were so stirred up by the topic that they asked to pay a game that clever Ms. Saternus taught them last year called "On the Fence."  We created a general question:  "should youth be allowed to read banned books?"  Some students made arguments for, and some against (and some argued sides they didn't necessarily agree with, just for the fun of it). I was so impressed at how articulate our students were, and what good listeners. In the middle of the room was an undecided group, and they could go and stand on either side of the room as the arguments progressed.  The interesting thing was that even after many impassioned and intelligent arguments, many undecideds remained "on the fence" at the end of the game.  I asked, why aren't you convinced?  Even though the arguments were good, they explained, they were opinions, and lacked credibility.  (Be still, my librarian heart.)  There was not enough hard evidence to sway.  Now, students will be doing research to give their arguments some teeth, and we will have a more formal debate in the near future. There was a student request for a podium. 

I love when learning happens organically, and is student-driven.  Yay, Stone 7th graders! 

It's that time of year again...PARADE OF BOOKS!

Hooray, it's time for our 3rd Annual Parade of Books!  This year's parade, in which children dress up as their favorite book characters and carry the book to match, or create wearable book covers, will be held on Thursday, October 31st and grades K through 3 will be participating. (Read the 4-1-1 from super awesome parades past and hints for homemade costumes here).

You are welcome to watch the parade outside on the Stone playground at 1:45; bring little brothers and sisters to cheer, and don't forget the camera! This is a great opportunity for us to celebrate Stone as a community of readers, and to create home-school connections.  We still are asking if at all possible costumes should be book related, and that each student carry a book related to the costume they are wearing. Chefs can carry cookbooks, Cleopatra can carry a book about ancient Egypt, baseball players can carry sport biographies, for just a few examples...and for more inspiration, check out some costumes from parades past here, or some ambitious online costume leads here!

So! Checklist for K-3 parents on October 31st:
* Please send your child to school with the book-related costume (or poster) in a bag, to be changed into (or carried) in the afternoon. Please keep it simple. Mark all belongings with name and room number.
* Please send your child to school with the corresponding book to carry in the parade.
* Cheer and take pictures on the school playground at 1:45, if you are available. If you are not available, we love you just the same, and we'll take pictures.

Again, a gentle reminder:  this is not a Halloween parade, this is a reading celebration.  (For any details regarding Halloween, please contact your room parent or check your child's classroom newsletter/website for details.)   Children should not wear masks (which also present a safety challenge when small children march), any horror themes involving blood (zombies or vampires), or television characters/video game characters that were cartoons before they were books.  Please save those costumes for trick-or-treating after school!  As far as books to carry, there are some resources available in our school library and your child's classroom library, but this is also a perfect opportunity to visit the Chicago Public Library.

Additionally, We ask that this year parents please do not follow children back into the school after the parade, as this presents security issues. Thank you for your support and cooperation!  Can't wait to see what our creative community comes up with this year...every year has been so full of amazing surprises!

Illustration from Lily's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes.
Ms. Demonte sporting stripes a la A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon.

Have you read it, read it?

From the Swansea Public Library blog:

A chicken walks into the library. It goes up to the circulation desk and says: "book, bok, bok, boook." The librarian hands the chicken a book. It tucks it under his wing and runs out. A while later, the chicken runs back in, throws the first book into the return bin and goes back to the librarian saying: "book, bok, bok, bok, boook." Again the librarian gives it a book, and the chicken runs out. The librarian shakes her head. Within a few minutes, the chicken is back, returns the book and starts all over again: "boook, book, bok bok boook." The librarian gives him yet a third book, but this time as the chicken is running out the door, she follows it. The chicken runs down the street, through the park and down to the riverbank. There, sitting on a lily pad is a big, green frog. The chicken holds up the book and shows it to the frog, saying: "Book, bok, bok, boook."  The frog blinks, and croaks: "read-it, read-it, read-it."

This same scenario is played out with more animals in Book!  Book!  Book! by Deborah Bruss and illustrated so cheerfully by Tiphanie Beeke, which we enjoyed as an anticipatory read-aloud for second grade check-out, right around the bend (be still my heart).  As good as that book is, it had nothing on the reenactment by students.  What a wonderfully grumpy and perplexed librarian dealt with the insistent barnyard.  Good gravy, our kids are FUNNY.

Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Aaaargh!  In honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day,  The mateys be enjoyin' book larnin', with fun fiction like Pirate Pete's Talk Like a Pirate by Kim Kennedy, Pirates Go To School by Corrine Demas, Pirate vs. Pirate by Mary Quattlebaum, Do Pirates Take Baths? by Kathy Tucker, and my favorite, The Skeleton Pirate by David Lucas (though many of the kids thought the ending was too mushy, but they liked the whale, so all was not lost). In honor of the popular pet of the high seas, we also met a very sweet parrot puppet who ate a lot of crackers, and we made our own pirate face puppets so we could keep practicing the swashbuckling vernacular ("shiver me timbers," "ahoy," "avast," etc.).   Thanks to fellow educator Ms. Star for getting me in the mood for this storytime...I actually don't much care for pirates, I think they probably weren't very nice people in real life (which I point out to older kids, when we study ballads and encounter Captain Kidd).  But I like treasure, and the library is full of that...I'm sure any pirate would find plenty to dig here!