SOL February 25 - Preparing for Slicing with my Class

I'm excited, nervous and slightly dreading this upcoming month.  I've been intermittently Slicing since June and also posting books I've read for the "It's Monday! What are you reading?" blogs.  But I have not been very consistent, especially since things started feeling VERY busy at school, which seemed to happen about the first week in September.  Now I have challenged (actually required as part of their schoolwork) my class of middle school students to write every day in March.  I'm a little worried about the logistics of helping to make it all work, but we've been blogging about books all year and posting poetry and Slices of Life a few times a month for each other to read.  I actually believe that most to all of my students will post more than the target 25 times, and many will be successful in posting each day.

But what I'm anxious about is me.  My days feel so busy that I do not write as often as I hope to and it is so easy to just put it off for more pressing needs (like my family obligations or sleep or exercise or homework or..or...or). So this is my slice for today.  The part where I carved a few minutes to write (albeit at the end of the day it was "due"), hoping I find this time everyday, for thirty-one days, and can proudly co-write with the amazing class I work with every day.

Good luck to all the participants for the next month in the individual and classroom challenges.  We wil learn so much about ourselves and the people around us!

Max

It's Monday! What are you Reading? February 17 2014

This week I read far far away, a YA book by Tom McNeal. I also have the rest of the week off so hopefully I'll get some other good books read.

It starts...

"This is the strange and fateful tale of a boy, a girl, and an ancient ghost."

Tom McNeal does a wonderful job of incorporating the typical aspects of the Grimm fairy tales, while making it seem like a modern day story in a small town.  The character's are enjoyable, the story takes several twists and turns, and as in Grimm's original tales, there are some very real and slightly disturbing moments (although no one gets their eyes pecked out by birds or cuts off body parts to fit a glass slipper).  It is a enjoyable read, especially if you have a penchant for a good fairy tale and the Grimm stories.

far far away is a modern day Grimm fairy tale set in modern America, complete with mischievous children, heroes, villains, and a ghost.  The ghost is actually the spirit of Jacob Grimm, set to wander the Earth trying to solve the riddle of why he has not "passed on." The only person who can hear him is a lonely teenage boy in a small town.  After a prank goes wrong, Jeremy Johnson Johnson is shunned by most of the townspeople, except for the girl who made him take part in the prank, a kindly neighbor, and the town baker.  The baker makes Prince Cakes every few months and there are rumors that they are enchanted.  One other mystery, children from the town, and surrounding towns, have been disappearing for over twenty years.  The authorities believe they are runaways, but as with most fairy tales, the real reason is much more sinister.  far far away has love, friendship, loyalty, a misunderstood villain, a lonely boy, a ghost, and enchanted pastries.  What more could a reader want?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Go to Teach Mentor Texts to see what other educators are reading and recommending today!  I finished two very different YA books this week. I may join one of the various reading challenges I've seen the past few weeks or just keep reading the books my students continue to recommend.

The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata was a book I read aloud to my wife.  It would also be a great book to read aloud to a class of students, especially those with fewer rural life experiences.  Summer is a twelve-year-old daughter of Japanese harvesters who have been having a spell of bad luck for almost a year.  Usually her whole family, parents, grandparents and younger brother (who is intelligent but somewhere on the Autism Spectrum), spend the spring and summer harvesting wheat from Texas to Canada.  This year, her parents are in Japan helping dying grandparents and Summer must spend the entire summer with her strict but loving (and lovable) grandparents.  The kids help grandma with the cooking and the grandpa is a combine driver.  The challenges of the daily grind, family life in flux, trying to find friend for her brother, secret crushes, and fears (she did catch malaria from a mosquito the year before) are all compellingly told from Summer’s point of view.  She works to understand her grandma, her brother, the adult world, her own responsibilities, when to tell the truth and when to stand up for herself.  A few illustrations of combines, harvesting, and mosquitos help give the reader an understanding of some of the descriptions and also of Summer. A good story well-told and full of humor.

Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan weaves together the lives of several rural, gay, high school age boys around an attempt to break the world record for the longest kiss.  Craig and Harry have not dated for a year, but they are going to try and kiss for over thirty hours on the front lawn of their high school, broadcast live on webcam.  Two other boys have just met at a gay prom and are going through the initial excitement and palpitations related to first dates.  A third boy flirts online through a variety of gay hook-up sites while cutting himself off from the outside world.  The characters are wonderfully developed and told with such honesty that their emotions are relatable to all readers.  They deal with varying amounts of support or knowledge from their families and friends, bullies, and love won and lost.  The last character is the spirits or ghosts of all the gay men who have gone before them, many who have died from AIDS. They are written in second person and are an older, wiser and unheard voice commenting on the upcoming generation of gay men. They are cheerleaders, offering a mature perspective to the youthful up and down of emotions the living characters are feeling.  An intense book with mature content that does a great job of showing the human side of the characters rather than branding them with a broad a stereotypical brush.

It's Monday! What are You Reading? January 6, 2014

Click the link here to see what other educators are reading and recommending today!

Happy 2014!  I hope everyone had a great break with plenty of fun time, family time and reading time. Hopefully, some of those times overlapped.  I really enjoyed being able to plow through some books over break and read several YA books as well as a few others. Other reading included two "Airplane Novels" and I'm in the middle of two books right now as well. I've read about 1/3 of a very interesting biography about Teddy Roosevelt, and am halfway through A Thing Called Luck, a book my wife and I are reading aloud.


Everybody Sees The Ants by A.S. King is a great book about a fifteen year-old boy, Lucky, who is dealing with a bully, two parents he refers to as "The Squid" (his mom because she swims so much), and "The Turtle" (his dad because he hides from all conflict and spends most of his time cooking at his restaurant).  He has very odd dreams about his grandfather, who never came back from the Vietnam War, that mostly involve him trying to help him escape from a prisoner of war camp in the jungle.  They have conversations, and while there are plenty of "normal" dream qualities like the ability to have control or choose to do things, they are also abnormal in that they feel too real and there are some surprising after effects.  While the book is mostly realistic, there are a couple of magic qualities related to the dreams and then of course there are the ants; Lucky's little cheerleaders, that only he can see (so he thinks), who say and do the things he wishes he could in the moment.  Overall, this book is a wonderful read about a boy trying to deal with family secrets, disengaged parents, and a bully that's been bugging him since early in elementary school.  There are a couple of other great characters as well that the author does a great job of making us love or despise, usually for each character as we get to know them. This is probably one of the top five books I've read this year and I highly recommend it!


Legend by Marie Lu is the first in a dystopian trilogy set in futuristic LA.  The USA is no more and the western part of the continent is controlled by The Republic.  There is war with the Colonies, The Patriots and massive plagues that move through the city's poor neighborhoods that strike fear into the citizens and also help perpetuate a police state. All children take the Trial on their tenth birthday.  The resulting score sets the person's place in society and the disparity between the haves and have-nots is striking.  The book is told in alternating chapters by two teens around sixteen years old.  Day is a boy who can move like a ninja through the streets and works to take care of his mother and two brothers, who think he is dead.  He also takes care of Tess, a thirteen year old orphan who lives in the streets with him and is treated like a little sister. Day is the most wanted criminal in the area although he does his crimes and sabotage against the Republic without actually killing anyone and his ability to climb buildings is legendary. The other side of the story is told by June, the only person to get a perfect score in the Trial.  She is a fast rising military star whose mission it to capture Day.  She goes undercover in the streets after her brother is killed when Day tries to steal some plague antidote from a hospital.  As the book goes on, the propaganda of the Republic is found to have many holes in it and I was reminded of 1984 and how propaganda was used in that book.  Both main characters are likable, have faults, and the readers end up rooting for both and hoping they can somehow end up working together.  I'm looking forward to reading Prodigy which is the second book in the series.

Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card, was better than I hoped for in a "sequel" to Ender's Game.  It actually is about the same time period as Ender's Game, but from the perspective of Bean, another character.  It starts with Bean surviving on the streets of Rotterdam as a very small but intelligent four-year-old. He gets bigger kids to gang up together in productive ways but they tend to think the plans are their own ideas.  Eventually his gifts are noticed and he gets tagged for Battle School.  Being a small and young, there are many parallels to Ender's journey through Battle School, but since they are such different characters with different motivations, they approach things in unique ways.  If you enjoyed Ender's Game I highly recommend Ender's Shadow, although it could be read on it's own.

Up Next on my TBR List:
Finish - The Thing About Luck
Finish - The Rise of Teddy Roosevelt (This will take a few weeks I'm sure since it's thick and dense)
The Prodigy  by Marie Lu
A Clockwork Three
Two Boys Kissing
Whatever else catches my eye!

Happy Reading!

It's Monday! What are You Reading? December 23rd

Click the link here to see what other educators are reading and recommending today!

Winter Break is a wonderful time for me to find some introvert time and do some significant reading.  So far, I've read two YA books since Thursday: Ender's Game and Lunch-Box Dreams.

I really enjoyed Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Several of my students recommended this book highly to me and I finally got around to it. It's one of the best YA science fiction books I've read and I hope to read more like it so I can help build a Sci/Fi section in my classroom that does not have to start with Dune.  In this book, the survival of the human race hinges on Ender, a young boy we first meet at age six, who is a potentially gifted military leader.  The humans are fighting against the "buggers," an insectizoid alien life form that have invaded the solar system a couple of times already.  The plot follows Ender through his military training. He struggles with being obviously different, being much younger than the other cadets, who are also children, and being obviously separated out by the military leaders.  He deals with bullies, friends, loneliness, his own inner demons, and not wanting to be a puppet of the adults.  Through it all, he shows himself to be a creative and exemplary leader.  One subplot involves his siblings back one Earth.  His brother is a gifted but scary child the reader expects to become some sort of serial killer.  His sister is brilliant and especially good at influencing people with words and writing.  This book deals not only with the struggles of gifted children in tough times, but is also a nice introduction into political influence.  While some are focused on the bugger war, others are positioning politically and militarily for after the war and humans don't need to be allied together against a common enemy.  I agree with my students and highly recommend this book!

Lunch-Box Dream by Tony Abbott follows three story lines through the South in 1959. A white family from Cleveland is on a road trip to Florida, seeing Civil War battlefields along the way.  A black family in Atlanta sends their nine year old boy to visit family in the country for the summer.  Each chapter is told from different character's perspectives and that makes this book a  little challenging, despite it's shortness and lower reading level.  This book poignantly shows racism both overtly and its more subtle institutionalized ways.  The white family is not a typical racist Southern family, but their fear of the "chocolates" and various comments they make mean they probably don't actually know any African-Americans personally.  The black family deals their fears of the actions of their lively, quick-witted, but ignorant boy. Acting "right" around white people is just part of their lives and is a clear sign of the times they are living in.  Overall, I found the story in this book hard to follow, although each scene was told well.  Since it's relatively short, it's a worthy read to glimpse race issues in an very personal and emotional way, but I did not get into this book like most I read.  It would be a good pairing with The Lions of Little Rock or perhaps Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry.

Up next are The Thing About Luck and Everybody Loves the Ants.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, Happy New Year to everyone and I hope you have some time for family and reading over the next couple of weeks!

Morning Shave - Slice of Life December 17

Go to twowritingteachers to read slices
and link up with dozens of others each
Tuesday.

My middle school class has been sharing the books we've read throughout the year on the class blog.  The past few weeks we have been sharing poetry on our blogs.  This week, we started writing and sharing Slices of Life!  It has been wonderful to see them writing and sharing and I'm excited as we move forward as a reading a writing community!

Morning Shave

The bathroom door opens and Clara squints into the bright light.  Her hand reaches up and lowers the lights with the dimmer switch to just above dark. “It hurts my eyes Dada,” she states.    

Towel around my waist, condensation on the mirror, and the cold bedroom air seeping through the open door, I usher Clara in as we continue a ritual that is becoming familiar to both of us.

First, I close the door to save some of the heat from my shower and keep the light out of my wife’s eyes as she dozes in bed.  Clara climbs up on the toilet seat and searches through the cabinet for my shaving cream.  I surreptitiously brighten the lights a few lumens and ask her about her dreams.

I go through the motions of getting shaving cream put on my face and the razor out.  We both wonder how blue gel becomes white once it’s rubbed on my face.  After the first swipe, Clara wants to test how smooth my faces is, her finger gliding along the strip of skin devoid of shaving cream and whiskers on my right cheek.  I crank the lights up a little more and continue shaving. 

Like most men, I have a pattern to how I shave my face.  Clara knows it well enough to tell me where I should shave next and be mostly correct.  Once I’m done, she directs me where I need to wash the remnants of the shaving cream off my face, usually around each ear and under my nose. 

Once I pass her careful inspection, we steel ourselves for the colder air on the other side of the door and go to her room to choose clothes for the day.  This task can be the start of the typical child/parent struggles that lead to frustration, tears, timeouts (for both parties), being late, and continual conflict throughout the day.  But whether it is an easy day or one of the difficult ones, the morning shave is always familiar, cozy and smooth.

Poetry Friday - Intro to Max and "First Snow"

Welcome!  I have been lurking through the Poetry Friday blogs and postings for a few months now and meaning to write and link up myself.  Since my 6-8th grade class is doing a unit on poetry, I've been doing a little writing and wrote this yesterday in class as we played with free verse.  Cheers!
Max


First Snow
The first real snow of winter invigorates me to action
Even though the covers are extra heavy
And the dark room is uninviting.

No snooze alarm today!
Shower, shave.
And then my daughter appears
Rubbing sleep from her eyes,
To help me choose a tie.

Tigger, Eeyore and Winnie the Pooh animate my blue shirt.
We part the red curtains and gaze into the white world below.
She is excited by the snow she sees
And the snow she remembers licking
Last winter.

"You get me some snow Dada,"
She commands as she climbs into my bed.

Snow sparkling in my hair,
I return with a bowl filled with the bright, crisp smell of winter.

Her mouth greedily consumes
Cold flakes as she snuggles
Next to the orange warmth of my
Snoozing wife.