What's Happening at the BSS Library?

 I wanted to make sure that students understood why we have Monday off from school (NOT just a day to sleep in!), so we've been reading books about him this week.  I love this new addition to our collection called I am Martin Luther King, Jr. by Brad Meltzer, which is from the Ordinary People Change the World series.  Cartoon photos and engaging text talk about Martin from his childhood to his great moments organizing peaceful protests and marches.  The book  stresses how important it was to Martin that protests be nonviolent, and how his parents told him that "it's better to have more love in your life than more hate." March On! The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World was written by Martin's sister, Christine King Farris.  This book focused on The March on Washington where about a quarter of a million people gathered from all over the country to Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963, because they wanted a change.  It was here that Dr. ...

The Scaredy Squirrel picture book series by Melanie Watt is hugely popular. What’s not to like about a squirrel who is afraid of just about everything–most of all germs, tarantulas and killer bees!  So when Scaredy Squirrel has a disastrous day and falls out of his tree (after being all worked up about seeing a killer bee), he makes a brilliant discovery.  Instead of falling down into a bush of poison ivy (another fear!), he realizes he is a flying squirrel and he simply glides to the next tree.  How exciting! After reading Scaredy Squirrel I read a nonfiction book about flying squirrels.  We learned all kinds of facts about flying squirrels, and saw some cool features like a glossary, diagram and a map.  We compared the photos in each book–the picture book had cartoonish drawings and the nonfiction book had photographs.  Also, we learned that  flying squirrels were nocturnal (even though Scaredy Squirrel would go to bed every night at 8:0...

Even as the students get older, there are still many picture books that can entertain and inform them.  Black and White is a very sophisticated book, which won the Caldecott Medal in 1991.  The book is divided into what seems like four separate stories, but as we read the students begin to realize that these four stories are connected.  They are able to see how one story fills in the gaps of one of the other stories.  There was a lot of speculation about what was actually going on in this book, and maybe there was no one right answer, but the students did their best predicting what would happen and making connections. Listen to a reading of this book on You Tube here .