The read-alongs are picture books that come with a CD that reads the book aloud. Tones indicate when the pages are to be turned, so the child can follow along with the text. These read alongs are terrific resources for developing early literacy skills. These “early literacy skills” are the things that kids understand about books and words long before they learn to read on their own. Read-along books help kids learn to match text to sounds, a vital skill for the future. They also promote independence and a love of reading – the perfect combination! Listen along with titles like I Stink by Kate McMullan, Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathmann, and the Knuffle Bunny series by Mo Willems.

Spanish speakers and Spanish learners will love our new Spanish Language picture books. Our old Spanish language books were getting dusty in a back corner, so we’ve added new titles and moved the whole collection to a much more prominent location. The new titles include concept books like Grande Y Pequeño and ¡Fiesta!, as well as many contemporary favorites like Olivia y Las Princesas and Ardilla Miedosa (Scaredy Squirrel). We also have a whole new selection of toddler books in Spanish, which are perfect for introducing a second language or reinforcing what is spoken at home. Young children’s brains are making new connections every day, and the more words they hear the better equipped they will be when it comes time to learn to read – both in English and Spanish.

The new read-along picture books are located in the Audio Visual section of the Children’s Room, on the shelf above the DVDs. Look for the Spanish Language picture books in the Link display area, on your left as you come into the Children’s Room. We will continue to expand both of these collections as time goes by. We hope you enjoy them!

-Lauren

This is a book about how one smile can affect a whole world. Amelia smiled and Mrs. Higgins saw her and smiled too. She was so happy that she baked some cookies for her son, who sang a song to his class, who inspired a dancer… The books takes a happy trip around the globe, following the beautiful chain that young Amelia unknowingly started. Caldecott Honoree Stein’s exuberant and child-like drawings nearly overflow the pages. (Grades 1 – 4)

Dream Friends by You Byun

Melody’s dream friend is an enormous kitty who helps her soar through the air, play hide and seek in the toy-filled woods, and watch fireworks that look like cakes and candies. But in her new neighborhood she is shy and lonely. She wishes her dream friend could come out and play, and when she dances their dance at the park, a new friend – a real friend – approaches her! Byun’s debut picture book is a beauty, and the dream-like drawings make it a lovely story to share at bedtime. (Preschool – grade 3)

The Black Rabbit by Philippa Leathers

The little white rabbit is being followed by a Big Scary Black rabbit. He runs fast and the black rabbit follows. He hides, but the black rabbit is there when he comes back out. It’s only in the dark forest that the black rabbit disappears, but something else lurks in the darkness. Children will immediately see that there is no danger – it’s the rabbit’s shadow, of course! This lightly scary tale is perfect for youngsters who want just a hint of danger. (Preschool – grade 1)

Owly & Wormy, Bright Lights and Starry Nights! by Andy Runton

Hooray! Owly and his friend Wormy are back for another adorable adventure! Owly has a telescope but it’s harder than he thought to look at the stars. Lanterns help he and Wormy to feel brave in the dark, but when the rain spoils their campout they have to run and hide in a spooky cave. Owly’s new bat friends help him and Wormy find their courage to see the beautiful night sky. This is  the second wordless picture book based on the popular graphic novel series, Owly. (Kindergarten – Grade 3)

-Lauren

Ramona the Brave by Beverly Cleary
The classic siblings: Beezus and Ramona. The series also does that delightful thing of switching protagonist so we get to see the full humanity of the irritating sibling and the author’s imagined world through another set of eyes.

A Summer to Die by Lois Lowry
Discussed extensively in one of Jessica’s early posts on this blog, but just to emphasize, really, this book shouldn’t be missed.

Saffy’s Angel by Hilary McKay
The catalog description: “‪After learning that she was adopted, thirteen-year-old Saffron’s relationship with her eccentric, artistic family changes, until they help her go back to Italy where she was born to find a special momento of her past‬.”
I’ll add that this is the first in the Casson family series and each book in the series takes a different sibling as the protagonist. McKay is a strong writer and the books bring to life the real truth of being in a family:  we may all be in the same family, but we’re all experiencing something different.

The Cabinet of Earths by Anne Nesbet
The catalog description: ‪”Thirteen-year-old Maya, in Paris with her family for a year, lands in the middle of the mysterious La Societé’s quest for immortality when the magical Cabinet of Earths chooses her as its next Keeper, promising to restore her mother’s health.‬”
From my perspective the key is that her brother is luminous, the kind of golden child who really does bring joy–and that quality, of course, makes Maya envious and makes him vulnerable to the evil. I’m thrilled that the sequel is on its way.

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
The catalog description: “In the summer of 1968, after traveling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp”
I’ll just add: sequel arriving soon!

-Erin

“I wish I had a heart like yours, Walt Whitman” -Jude Nutter

“That’s why Monday, when it sees me coming/ with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline/ and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel/ and leaves tracks of full, warm blood leading toward the night.” -Pablo Neruda

“You’ve got to hide your love away /not because showing it is useless /but because it isn’t.” -Sarah Manguso

“If she had wanted /as much from me /as I from her, /my earth, /there would have been no /limit to our love.” -Eugene Guillevic

“I am the Running Man. /The shadow in the corner /of your eye. /The reason a grove of trees /turns sinister in the dark. /Why not /Is my blood /My story /My middle name.” -Cornelius Eady

“We look at the world, once, in childhood. /The rest is memory.” -Louise Gluck

“You make desire seem easy.” -Thomas Gunn

“A man might be forgiven for loving dust, /dead weeds and a cracked, receding shore, /a sky so empty that is has no end.” -Christian Wiman

“The sea has many voices /many gods, and many voices” -T.S. Eliot

“Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee.” -Gerard Manley Hopkins

“Pray that what we’re running toward is what we want.” -Lucille Clifton

Which lines of poetry do you love?

~Ali B.

I love going into the classrooms to ask the kids what they’re reading and what they want to read during the summer. My question is always greeted with multiple raised hands and a raft of titles – some familiar and some I’ve never heard of. What kids don’t realize is that while they’re telling me about their favorite books I’m getting educated about what’s hot and what’s not for their age group. In fact, I always tell kids that they’re the real experts on children’s books, not librarians – they like that.

Our goal as children’s librarians is to connect readers with books they will like. If kids read for pleasure, we want to keep them reading by supplying more books they will like. Unfortunately, young readers are often faced with an overwhelming array of choices, and since reading ability, emotional development, and tastes are constantly in flux during the middle grades, finding those “just right” books can be challenging. That’s where the PeRL program comes in, and here’s how it works:

• Any Mill Valley resident in grades 4 through 8 can decide they want to have a PeRL. Their parents or caregivers call the library and set up a 30-minute appointment with a librarian.

• At the appointment kids meet with one of the children’s librarians and talk about books – what they like to read, what they’ve read, whether they like short books, long books, series, realistic fiction, adventure, mythology, graphic novels…. You get the picture.

• The notes from that interview are shared with all the librarians in the Children’s Room and we each recommend books we think are a good match. All of our children’s librarians love reading, love reading kids’ books, and talking to kids about books, so we have a lot of ideas about what to read next.

• One librarian reviews all the recommendations and selects the 10 books she thinks will be the best picks for the interviewee. Then we print up a cute card listing the authors and titles of the selected books and present it to the reader.

• The whole process takes about two weeks. Set up an appointment now by emailing children@cityofmillvalley.org or calling (415) 389-4292 x4741

In the Children’s Room we want kids to enjoy reading and to help them become life-long readers. This is not about being told to read the “classics” because they’re good for you. This is not homework, it’s not to please parents, and it’s not an obligation. The PeRL program is about supporting young readers by giving them books they will love.

-Yolanda

“Getting humans on Mars is super easy… getting them here alive and not all dead and gross and squished – that’s harder.” – the Mars Sarcastic Rover

Thus, we come to the end of our delightfully entertaining and occasionally too-scatological trip through space via Ms. Roach’s Packing for Mars. Final thoughts, anyone?

Roach brings up a  good point in her last chapter–is Mars worth all the resources, money, time, and effort? Her answer  (and mine), is a resounding yes. Aside from our innate curiosity to find out what’s out there, to learn about the bigger world that we’re connected to, space programs and experiments contribute to the well-being and improvement of everyday life. Mrs. Roach mentions the long list of contributions that NASA has played a part in: Kevlar vests,  artificial limbs, high-speed wireless data transfer, and firefighter’s masks,  to mention a few. (315) Think of all the creative talent that was harvested in the vast experiments that led to these inventions. Think of the creativity that goes into attempting to design edible space food, or comping up with a way to protect space capsules from burning up as they reenter the atmosphere.

I was read a wonderful interview in the Atlantic of my favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, where he mentions how small the entire budget of NASA really is:  “six-tenths of a percent of the federal budget.” He argues, there, and in this fantastic interview with Stephen Colbert (it’s long, but oh so worth it…I revisit it from time to time), that we need scientific literacy; we need the general public to embrace learning and curiosity and to hold science up as a top priority, as a profession worth entering into, because it teaches us about our world. It stimulates our economy. It engages us in something greater than ourselves.

Space is the stuff of dreams. It’s real, of course. But for centuries, humans have continued to be puzzled and awed by it. I think of reading Ray Bradbury’s short stories as a kid, and marveling, as most of us do (and it’s worth noting that this is at a young age, when we haven’t yet been told not to explore something, or to feel embarrassed for asking questions and using our imagination), at a world that seemed so full of possibility and uncertainty. Part of why we read Bradbury’s stories, part of why we read stories at all, is that it speaks to both our hopes and fears. It lets us imagine.

My coworker, Derek, writes, “I celebrate Roach (and Lenny Bruce and…) as a logical extender of the age of reason. The rest of us should re-double our efforts to keep earth habitable.” We don’t need to choose one or the other–space or our home planet. We need to explore both, but to take care and remember that neither is an empire that exists for our conquering (or ruin).

And as I leave you, my intrepid travelers, with your dreams intact and imagination (hopefully) renewed, I’ll turn it over to the Mars Sarcastic Rover (an acerbically-witted take off on the Mars Curiosity Rover), because in the spirit of Roach’s playful book, everything’s better with some humor:

“There are only two things I love about SCIENCE: Everything. And explosions.”

“The sun is blocking communication with Earth… which is fine because Earth doesn’t listen anyway, it just waits to talk.”

“Whenever I flip a rock over on Mars I always yell “SURPRISE!” – just in case.”

Mary Roach will be speaking with Michael Krasny tonight, Thursday, April 18th, at Dominican Unviersity in San Rafael. The talk is open to the public and free! It starts at 7pm.

To keep up with the latest on the Mars Curiosity Rover, go here.

~Ali

Rachel Carson and Her Book that Changed the World

Heat by Joseph Midthun and Samuel Hiti
Building Blocks of Science is a fun new series for elementary school kids that uses comic-book storytelling to teach about various science topics. In Heat, a glowing red droplet character embodies the topic, and narrates the various ways that heat is experienced. The basics of thermal energy, conduction, and convection are presented in a lighthearted way that appeals to the target audience immensely. Other books in the series include Gravity, Matter, Magnetism, Light, and several others. (Grades 3-6)

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
In Goredd, young Seraphina is an apprentice music instructor at the castle. As she is preparing for the anniversary festivities that will celebrate 40 years of peace with the dragons, she learns that she is, in fact, half-dragon herself – having lost her dragon-in-human-form mother in childbirth. Tensions mount when Prince Rufus is found dead and the public assumes dragons are to blame. Seraphina must conceal her new secret, get ready for the celebration, and protect the city from battle with the dragons. And entirely unique “dragon book” that is immensely fun. (Grades 6 and up)

Pandemonium by Chris Wooding and Cassandra Diaz
Seifer Tombchewer is your average, everyday, winged captain of his local Skullball team living an average, boring life in Crowscale Village. But it turns out that he’s also a dead ringer for the missing Prince Talon. In this dark and funny graphic novel, the classic Prince and the Pauper storyline gets a new twist with a pet cat the size of a house, night flights with a mysterious and magical new friend, and the ever-present threat of demons, kidnappings, and other creatures out to get our reluctant hero. Full of jokes to match the comic style, Pandemonium marks a strong first story in this new series. (Grades 6 and up)

The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano by Sonia Manzano
In 1969 New York, a young girl argues with her mother, loses her bedroom to her activist grandmother, and struggles with her own Puerto Rican identity. Evelyn has recently chosen to go by her middle name so she can stand apart from all the neighborhood Rosas and Marias. She won’t speak Spanish to her parents, and takes a job away from their bodega. But when the activist group The Young Lords comes to the Spanish Harlem, Evelyn takes notice. Author Sonia Manzano, who is better known as Maria on Sesame Street, interweaves this coming of age story with historical facts to paint a picture of Puerto Rican pride. (Grades 6 and up)

-Lauren

Chapter 11 covered a variety of experiments which attempt to address the issue of bone and muscle loss while in space (or zero gravity situations):  from working out on a vibrating plate (which didn’t work) to studying bear hibernation (they emerge from 4-7 months of rest with as much bone density as they had prior to their snooze) to intentionally lifting one’s body up and then dropping it on the ground in an attempt to strengthen weaker bone structures such as the hips. Besides addressing the muscle atrophy and bone loss that astronauts experience, the studies have important implications for the  possible prevention of osteoporosis.

And then, we come to sex. Sex in space can be done, albeit, with some finagling.  Duct tape, if couples had trouble staying together, was suggested. The rest of the chapter is fun to read, though ridiculous. Since I’m addressing the general public, it seems imprudent to discuss sex in space any further. Sorry to disappoint.

What is interesting, however, are all of the questions raised by reproduction in space. What would happen to the fetus? Would delivery be problematic? The study of pregnant rats who went into space and then came back to Earth for delivery showed weaker contractions, which scientists say could lead to health problems for a newborn. Apparently, contractions stimulate a number of chemical and stress hormones in the child, which help the baby’s system to acclimate to its entirely new environment. Take that away, and the baby may struggle more. Roach notes that studies done on c-section babies (babies born without contractions) have found that those babies have a higher risk for high blood pressure, respiratory issues, and “delayed neurodevelopment.” (245-246)

These questions are never asked or addressed in movies with heavily peopled spaceships, though how often do you actually witness a birth in space? Other, of course, than the famous Aliens scene where baby aliens rupture forth from unsuspecting human stomachs…

Until next week, where we discuss the final chapters of the book, I remain your friendly and morbidly curious co-pilot,

Ali

Penny and Her Marble by Kevin Henkes
As Penny wheels her doll, Rose, down the sidewalk, she spots a marble glinting from a neighbor’s lawn. It’s sky blue. It’s shiny. It’s perfectly round. Penny can’t help herself. She pockets the glass toy and furtively returns home. From that moment on, the marble is never far from her thoughts — or worries. How she handles the dilemma of having the marble, and what she eventually does about her secret possession, make for a compelling story that every child will relate to. With this third installment of the Penny series, Kevin Henkes proves again his mastery as a writer for any form and every child. (Preschool – Grade 2)

Otis and the Puppy by Loren Long
Putt puff puttedy chuff! The endearing tractor Otis is back with another adventure on the farm. After a long day of work and play, Otis and his animal friends have retired to the barn when the farmer appears with a bag. What’s inside? It wiggles. It waggles. It barks! A small puppy bursts out of the burlap and everyone is delighted, especially Otis. Soon, the small red tractor and the smaller white pup are fast friends. But when the baby dog doesn’t come home one night, Otis has to face his fear of the dark to go look for him. Yet again, Loren Long gives us a satisfying and charming story of friendship. (Preschool – Grade 2)

Harlem’s Little Blackbird by Renée Watson, pictures by Christian Robinson
At the turn of the century, a young woman with an astonishing voice and marvelously quick feet became an international star of the stage. Her name was Florence Mills and she grew up in a “teeny-tiny, itsy bitsy house” with parents who had once been slaves. With clear, simple text and bold, collage-like graphics, this picture book biography tells the story of a remarkable girl who grew into a remarkable woman. Florence faced the sting of racism many times, but always, her voice and her spirit prevailed. Thanks to Renne Watson and Christian Robinson, even the youngest reader can now meet “Harlem’s little blackbird” and be inspired. (Kindergarten – Grade 3)

Kel Gilligan’s Daredevil Stunt Show by Michael Buckley, illustrated by Dan Santat
Kel Gilligan is a risk-taker. Kel Gilligan is a stunt master. Kel Gilligan is a daredevil of the highest order. Never heard of him? Well, pull up a chair and learn of his audacious escapades. See the glint in his eye as he dares to… eat broccoli! Watch the set of his jaw as he faces down… the potty of doom! And now, follow him on a day of unparalleled danger as he dresses himself, leaves Mommy uninterrupted as she talks on the phone, and takes a bath with only Daddy to help. The bold graphics and hysterical set-ups will have every member of the family rooting for Kel — and laughing hysterically, too. Move over Evel Knievel. Kel Gilligan has landed. (Kindergarten – Grade 2)

- Molly

Poetry is more entwined in the lives of children than it is in most of our lives but there are always ways to infuse our family lives with more poetry–and this year I’m hoping that everyone will get out and WRITE some poems.

In case you need some inspiration, the library has three great books to get you started:

Local poet, teacher and parent Karen Benke‘s books are packed with inspiration: Rip the Page! Adventures in Creative Writing and Leap write in! Adventures in Creative Writing to s-t-r-e-t-c-h & surprise your one-of-a-kind mind.

I’m also a huge fan of Don’t Forget to Write: 54 enthralling and effective writing lessons for students 6-18 developed by the local literacy powerhouse 826 Valencia.

For inspiration I’ve been turning to this poem a lot lately. It was sent to me by a poet friend who was sent it by a poet friend who got it from a friend . . . . you get the picture. We don’t know the original author, simply that is is ‘A poem by Juliet on the eve of her 5th birthday.’