Author: librariantiff

The Hunger Games

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I just finished The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

Ohh. Emm. Gee. This book is incredible. I cannot believe that it’s taken me this long to pick up this book and read it! Now I can’t wait to get the next one in the series. I’m fanatical about dystopian and science fiction novels, and this one does not disappoint. Even if you aren’t into the the 1984/Handmaid’s Tale/Brave New World type novel (and if that’s you I promise I’m trying not to judge), you should still give this one a shot because the characters and plot are so incredible. I dove into this one without even reading the blurb on the back (which I’ve been doing lately to add to the fun of reading) and I was hooked from the start. I brought it along on a girls weekend trip and my BFF had to say, “Tiffany, put the book down!” It’s that good, I promise. I will recommend this book over and over again, and it’s going on my list of favorite books I LOVE! Honestly, I don’t want to tell you what it’s about. Don’t read a summary, just read this book, already! Like right now. I’m serious.

My First Graphic Novel: kimmie66

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I just finished reading my first graphic novel (book 2 of 20 in my challenge)! I read kimmie66 by Aaron Alexovich. I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to commit to reading a graphic novel. I’ve flipped through them many times, but they just haven’t grabbed me before. I knew that a graphic novel would have to be one of my first YA books in my challenge because they’ve become so popular. I browsed through the library’s collection and selected this one because it was a stand-alone novel and it wasn’t too terribly long. It took me a while to get into the groove of reading, with the boxes and bubbles and pictures all over the place. It’s quite the transition from reading straight words across a page. Once I got the hang of it, though, I really did enjoy it.

kimmie66 tells the story of a 23rd century girl named Telly who is searching for the truth about her virtual world friend that sent her a suicide note. It was an interesting story line and definitely grabbed me. I can also say that I now see the appeal of graphic novels: they give our ADD generation of kids an opportunity to read a novel quickly, while keeping them entertained with the pictures and ever-changing format. I’m quite proud of myself for getting over my aversion to graphic novels. While I don’t think I’ll devour them in droves, I’ll definitely be reading more in the future.

Going Bovine

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I just finished reading Going Bovine by Libba Bray. This was my first tween/teen book for my self-issued 20 book reading challenge. It’s been quite a while since I’ve read YA, I’ve been absorbed in children’s books and my adult book club selections for the past few years. I found myself a little shocked by the graphic language and content. I have been reading for the past several years with young elementary students in mind, after all!

I did enjoy this book, as crazy at it was. I read right before bed the other night and I know this book was the source of some wicked crazy dreams that I had. This book tells the story of 16 year old Cameron, a boy who becomes terminally ill with mad cow disease. His illness causes him to have hallucinations and he finds himself on a strange adventure while trying to save the world. This is a pretty long book that gets confusing on several occasions. I think this was a good choice to bring me back into the realm of YA as it has so much going on: profanity, sex, drugs/drinking, science-fictionish characters, and death. I thought this was a very cleverly written book. I really appreciated the humor and the crazy connections between Cameron’s reality and hallucinations.

Story Snoops

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You must check out this AMAZING resource. Story Snoops is a website created by a group of mothers who read, review, and categorize books for tweens and teens. This site will be so helpful when trying to get the right book in the right hands. There are several different ways to search for books, ranging from a specific author or title search to browsing based on genres, categories, or content. Finding a book by looking at their “suggested reading” lists is my favorite. These incredible search tools are enough to make me passionately love this site. Information provided for each book includes the book details, a brief summary, “the scoop” (which describes the book’s content from an adult’s prospective), and content keywords.

If all those resources aren’t enough to knock your socks off, then check out the section that has their blog. I’m so in love!

I hope this site is around for years and years to come, because this is not only a great tool for me as a librarian but it’s also something that I plan to recommend for use by parents and teachers. I would so totally hug these moms if I could! So go check it out and love it as much as I do.

Taking Baby Steps

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My principal and assistant principal have been amazing in supporting me in trying to gain access for our students to some of the great web 2.0 tools that we are currently not allowed to use. I met with them yesterday to talk about our strategy. I’ve made my opinions known and shared some ideas, but they advised me to get more specific and start small. So here is the plan that I sent out this morning:

Technology Integration Proposal:

Goal: Allow students the opportunity to share, collaborate, and build relationships with a class in another area of the country

Tools: Edublogs and Skype

  • Edublogs is a free, safe, well-known blogging service created specifically for educators. The teacher will create a private account that students will post from so that no student accounts are created.
  • Skype is a free service that allows video conferencing.

Safety: Teacher will create and closely monitor the private blog used by the students. This blog will be password protected and not available for anyone to view without a password. Parents will be required to sign a release to allow their child to participate in the blog and Skype activities.

Concept: One 2nd grade and one 3rd grade class will be selected to pilot this program. I will work closely with these teachers to train them on these tools, set them up with a partner class in another area of the country, and lay out activity plans. Each class will blog at least once a week to share what they are learning in class, personal interests, and regional information on news and weather. Once a month, a Skype session will take place between the classes where they will have a discussion on a predetermined topic. This will allow students to interact with other students/cultures and share their accomplishments with peers. This will also provide teachers with the chance to collaborate with colleagues from another area of the country.

I’m hoping to get moving with this idea pretty soon. If you know of a 2nd or 3rd grade teacher who would be interested in connecting with these classes, please let me know! I think this will be a wonderful opportunity for all involved.

On a completely different note, I went to the library yesterday 🙂

I have SO been out of the middle school literature loop for a few years now, and I need to get my edge back. My goal is to read 20 YA books before the end of 2010. It’s a pretty ambitious goal considering grad school is sucking the life out of me (in a totally good way), but I’m going to try my best. If you have any books that you know 6th, 7th, and 8th graders are LOVING right now, please share those titles with me!

Mighty Little Librarian!

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My first post on my new site! How exciting is this?! So I figure it’s going to take some time for me to get settled in over here. I’m trying to figure out things on my own with as little help from my web designing professional of a husband as possible. It’s going to be a work in progress for a while!

In case you’re wondering where the name “Mighty Little Librarian” came from, here’s the scoop. I’ve been wanting to “brand” myself like the cool librarians are doing. My plan was to be The Lively Librarian, but that domain in all possible forms is taken. So I went back to the drawing board. I posted on Facebook for some assistance from the people who know me best. My best friend from college, who I talk to several times a week as we share about our separate school happenings, has been calling me Mighty Mouse for quite some time. She knows how I am — when I get something in my head, I’m fighting for it and I can be fierce! I don’t look intimidating (when asked for a word to describe me for my blog, my friend’s husband said “skinny”), but I can hold my own.  There was a general Facebook consensus that “Mighty Little Librarian” was a fitting name, so I went with it!

I’m off to play around with making this little spot on the web my cozy new home. I love WordPress, by the way. It’s not nearly as intimidating as I thought. Plus I found some great videos on YouTube to help me get started. How did people figure out how to do anything before the Internet and YouTube?

I’ve imported my old posts from my old Library Ramblings site. I’m going to go through and re-organize my old posts soon, but I think things are looking pretty good so far!

Sarah's Key and The Glass Castle

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Sunday was meeting day for a monthly book club that I participate in with some amazing ladies. Since it’s summer, we decided to read two books. They were both a little heavy, to say the least, and I think we’ll be sticking with just one at a time for a while. So here’s what we thought…

First, we discussed Sarah’s Key by Tatiana De Rosnay. This fiction book tells the story of what took place in France at the Vélodrome d’Hiver during WWII. I had never heard of this tragic event in which French police and military rounded up their own people — Jews living in Paris — held them in unimaginable conditions, then sent them away to be killed. This story was told from two view-points: Sarah, a young Jewish girl who lived through this nightmare, and Julia, a modern day reporter writing a piece for the 60th anniversary of the tragedy. I thought this story was very well written, although somewhat predictable. This is such a powerful piece for historical fiction, and my group was amazed at how well developed the character of Sarah was. We were all so attached to her and devastated by the events of her life. Many in the group found Julia to be a less likable character. However, I saw much of myself in her character, particularly her tendency to become obsessive and completely absorbed in a project. It would have been nice to get one more snippet from Sarah’s point of view at the end of the story, but the overall consensus was that the ending was a good fit.

Our other book was The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. This book was tragic and incredible. It’s so shocking, I think I read the entire thing with my jaw on the floor. This memoir tells the story of the author’s unstable, neglected childhood. In our discussion, we marveled at the constant stream of events that took place and the number of times we said, “Oh my God. You just can’t make this stuff up.” We found it really interesting that the tone of the book, despite the horror of its contents, was not at all resentful or depressing. It lead into a discussion on how we all have a soft spot for our families, even when crazy things happen, so we could all sort of relate Wells’ view on the situation. The family dynamics made for some interesting discussion, and we tried to look at all of the characters from multiple points of view.

It was such a great meeting! I so love my book club.

On a blogging note — I’ve really been thinking about my blogging and the fact that this blog is not extremely focused. I love blogging about my adult book club, but it feels a little out of place with the rest of my content. What do you think? I could start a separate blog for the book club, I guess, but I’m not sure how I feel about that. Thoughts?

GoogleReader Cleaning

- librariantiff 4 Comments

I’ve been neglecting my GoogleReader in favor of Twitter lately. But I really love so many of the blogs that I follow, so I know it’s time for me to get back in the swing of using that resource. Also, I have some big changes that are going to take place next year (that I’m not ready to post about yet), so I need to be preparing myself. I finally created a gmail account and will move my reader over to that instead of using my yahoo account. So here is the newly organized and refined list of blogs I’m following:

Book Blogs

http://hillbookblog.blogspot.com/

http://shelfelf.wordpress.com/

http://tweendom.blogspot.com/

School Librarians

http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/

http://blog.cathyjonelson.com/

http://beccablog.bvswlmc.com/

http://librarygrits.blogspot.com/

http://www.thedaringlibrarian.com/

http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/

http://libraryroom401.wordpress.com/

http://monarchlibrarian.blogspot.com/

http://futura.edublogs.org/

http://thecazzyfiles.typepad.com/the-cazzy-files/

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/SLJNeverEndingSearch

School Libraries

http://barrowmediacenter.wordpress.com/

http://goldenviewlibrary.blogspot.com/

http://mhms-media.blogspot.com/

http://shmsmediacenter.wordpress.com/

Other Library Stuff

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/SchoolLibraryJournal-ProfessionalDevelopmentNews

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/SchoolLibraryJournal-EducationTechnologyNews

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/SchoolLibraryJournal-ProfessionalReadingNews

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/SchoolLibraryJournal-Web20News

Ed Tech

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/

http://blog.kathyschrock.net/

http://hadleyjf.wordpress.com/

http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/

http://weblogg-ed.com/

http://edtechsandyk.blogspot.com/

http://bethstill.edublogs.org/

http://philly-teacher.blogspot.com/

http://plnaugle.blogspot.com/

Blogs of Friends

http://www.theniftyfoodie.com/life/

http://shoefanatic614.blogspot.com/

http://sweetteaandtheredsox.blogspot.com/

Food Blogs

http://www.theniftyfoodie.com/food/

http://cookingwithchristen.wordpress.com/

What I want to know is…What am I missing??

Hmm…homeschool?

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This blog post by Will Richardson really got my brain going.

I’m going to go ahead and admit it — I have frequently judged people who homeschool their children. I’ve judged lots who put their kids in private school, for that matter. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that I live in the deep south and those choices are usually made based on religious reasons that (I feel) negatively effect the actual content that those children are allowed to come in contact with. I’ve always figured that I’m a product of public school, and I turned out pretty darn good (note: low self-esteem has never been a struggle of mine). But reading this post and watching Seth Godin’s video, in conjunction with my recent filter fighting battle, really caused me to take a step back.

For a moment, I had a vision. I imagined homeschooling a small group of (5-10) children and having the freedom to teach them to explore, create, share, and learn. I imagined the incredible learning experiences they could have, the discussions that would take place, the creativity that could be developed working with a small group and teaching through project-based learning. I imagined loading them up and taking them places, giving them opportunities to explore and experience things and places. I imagined having no technology restrictions, where I could teach them to be safe but creative, brave citizens in the digital world. It would be so fun, so thrilling, so exhausting, so much work. But I would get to see excitement from these kids and help them create their own powerful learning experiences and then share it with others. Ahhhh…what a utopian world!

It’s a very interesting thought. For now, I’m going to stick with my battles and accomplishments in public schools. But if I ever decide to have children, this though may very well be revisited.

CC by alamosbasement

It all brings me to this question, though:

Is it more powerful to impact a small group of children in an incredible way or work with and fight for the masses?

Fight the Filter Game Plan

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Since my return from ISTE, I’ve been working on my plan to fight the filter. It’s going to be a tough battle, because the newly passed Louisiana “safety” law is garbage. If you’re interested, you can find it here.

So to introduce my case and hopefully open up some meaningful discussion, I have created a video and a glog:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqdgYUKSe10&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Web Tools Glog

Feel free to use these resources if you find them useful or if you’re in a similar situation. Wish me luck!