The Book Whisperer

Five bloggers, members of the kidlitosphere, an online community which promotes children's books and reading, had a crazy idea. Why not use their Internet connections (no pun intended) to create an online blog tour that celebrates reading? Their idea blossomed into an Internet-wide event with scores of bloggers lining up to participate (The Book Whisperer included!). Share a Story/ Shape a Future begins March 9th.

If you have not already seen it on the Web, check out the official press release:

Within the kidlitosphere, the children's literature bloggers comprise and reach a very broad audience. One of the group's greatest assets is its collective, community-minded approach to sharing information and ideas. Through events like blog tours, authors and illustrators have had wonderful opportunities to share their story and their craft. Given the success of tours for "producers," what about an event for and by the people who create and engage their readers: teachers, librarians, parents, and people passionate about literacy?

Voila! Share a Story - Shape a Future is just that event. This is an ensemble effort not only to celebrate reading among those of us who already love books, but to encourage each other to reach beyond ourselves and do it in a way that we are neither judging nor instructing others. This is a venue for communicating practical, useable, everyday ideas.

The event begins March 9, 2009 and lasts one week. Each day we will have a group of bloggers sharing ideas around a specific theme. There are a number of book giveaways and free downloads that will be announced by the various hosts as we get closer to the kickoff. Here is the tour schedule.

Day 1: Raising Readers
hosted by Terry Doherty at Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, the Reading Tub blog

Finding Time at Home - Tricia Stohr-Hunt @ The Miss Rumphius Effect

Making Time in the Classroom - Sarah Mulhern @ The Reading Zone

Helping a Reader in Need (remedial readers) - Sandra Stiles guest post on Scrub-a-Dub-Tub

It's Bigger than the Book: Building Strong Readers at any Age with a Daily Dose of Read Aloud - Cathy Miller interview on the Share a Story - Shape a Future blog

Keeping Gifted Readers Engaged - Donalyn Miller @ The Book Whisperer

Day 2: Selecting Reading Material
hosted by Sarah Mulhern at The Reading Zone

The ABCs of Reading: Infants, Toddlers & Preschoolers - Valerie Baartz on The Almost Librarian

How to Help Emerging Readers - Anastasia Suen @ Easy to Read blog

Helping Middle Grade Readers - Sarah Mulhern @ The Reading Zone

Booklists and Read Alikes - Sarah Mulhern @ The Reading Zone

Using Non-fiction - Mary Lee Hahn of A Year of Reading, hosted by the Stenhouse blog

Day 3: Reading Aloud - It's Fun, It's Easy
hosted by Susan Stephenson at the Book Chook blog

Ten Terrific Tips from Read-aloud Queen, Mem Fox - on the Book Chook blog

Conquering Stage Fright - Interview with Sarah Mulhern/The Reading Zone @ the Book Chook

Reading Aloud With Kids: A Dad's Perspective - hosted by Steven and Brian at Book Dads: Fathers that Read

Using Technology for Read Alouds - Sarah Mulhern @ The Reading Zone

What to Do When the Reading is Done - Aimee Buckner, hosted by the Stenhouse blog

Reading Aloud with Independent Readers - Donalyn Miller @ The Book Whisperer

Day 4: A Visit to the Library
hosted by Eva Mitnick at Eva's Book Addiction blog

From Cozy to Cool - Library Spaces for Everyone - Eva @ Eva's Book Addiction

Lions and Marble and Books, Oh My - Betsy Bird at A Fuse #8 Production

How to Make the Library Work for YOU - an interview with Adrienne of What Adrienne Thinks About That conducted by Jules at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

The World Beyond the Library's Walls - Melissa @ Librarian by Day

Day 5: Technology and Reading - What the Future Holds
hosted by Elizabeth O. Dulemba at Dulemba.com

Audiobooks with Bruce Coville of Full Cast Audio and Mary Burkey of Audiobooker

E-books with Harold Underdown of The Purple Crayon and Sheila Ruth of Hornbook

Podcasts with Andrea Ross of Just One More Book! and Cheryl Rainfield of cherylrainfield.com

A resource of links to audiobooks, e-books, podcasts and webcasts @ Dulemba.com.

Through Share a Story - Shape a Future we hope to build a community of readers, by sharing ideas and encouraging each other. When the event opens on Monday, March 9, 2009, there will be plenty of opportunities for you to join us and share your ideas.

In the meantime, we'd love for you to start spreading the word.

I look forward to participating in Share a Story/ Shape a Future, both as a blogger and as a reader. What a joyous opportunity to learn more about books, children and our ongoing quest to connect the two.

Posted by Donalyn Miller at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“If you want to be a writer,” Stephen King says, “you must do two things above all else: read a lot and write a lot.” Reciprocal processes, reading and writing naturally fit together. The most prolific readers are the best writers, and my students and I write every day, as well as read. We inhale rich, powerful language, gain sustenance from it, and create our own ideas. We must read so we can write, and we must write so we have more to read.

This week, we are analyzing excerpts from our favorite books, examining how authors breathe life into their writing by using prepositional phrases. Each day, students select examples from their own books, and I provide one, too. I chose today’s model sentences from our current read aloud, Rick Riordan’s modern-day Greek Mythology adventure, The Lightning Thief:

“We were on a stretch of country road—no place you’d notice if you didn’t break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand (p. 25)”

We discuss how these prepositional phrases help us visualize the setting, then mark out the phrases and read the sentences again. While the passage still basically makes sense, we agree that there is not much imagery left.

I tell students, “My husband claims that fat and sugar carry flavor and without them, food is pretty boring. I suppose prepositional phrases are a sentence’s fat and sugar. Without them, you have a sentence as flavorless as rice cakes!” Having just given up sugar for Lent, I imagine my instructional analogies will be food-focused for the next forty days…

Students identify prepositional phrases in the sentences they collected, and remove them—comparing the flavorful sentences to the rice cake ones. Afterward, we look through our personal writing and choose sentences that need prepositional phrases to clarify ideas or add detail. We read, study how writers use language, and use what we learn to improve our own writing. We breathe in, we breathe out.

How can you teach reading without teaching writing? It shocks me when I hear about secondary school classes where reading and writing are taught as different courses. Same goes for those elementary school classes where writing is sidelined altogether. Writing often takes a back seat to its more-tested brother—reading, which demands more focus due to standardized testing mandates. Even when students write, most don’t engage in process writing—drafting, revising, editing, and publishing original compositions. Studies find that answering worksheet questions is the most commonly practiced writing task in America’s classrooms. Can we claim that filling in blanks on a worksheet counts as authentic writing?

What we need it seems is a national call to arms, a large scale effort to improve writing instruction. In response to this need, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) released its latest report this week, Writing in the 21st Century . Written by Kathleen Blake Yancey, a prominent writing researcher and past president of NCTE, this report challenges educators to reshape how we teach writing, begs us to consider how writing authentically occurs beyond the classroom, and suggests targets for reform.

In addition to the report, NCTE has dedicated October 20, 2009 as a National Day on Writing . Inviting people to post their writing into its National Gallery of Writing, NCTE celebrates the diversity of American writing and its writers—from every life stage and sector. Submit your own writing, ask your family and friends to do the same, and spend some time this spring encouraging your students and their parents to contribute. Send the message loud and clear that writing is a valuable skill, and a vital form of human expression that deserves a prominent place in our lives and in our schools.

Posted by Donalyn Miller at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

It is flu season, and on the days when I look out to see seven empty desks, I am grateful to be a language arts teacher. Reluctant to start new material when up to a third of my students are out sick, I know that no day is wasted. We can always move forward by reading and writing.

Today, my students work diligently on their book reviews. Looking at published examples from Booklist and Publishers’ Weekly, we previously developed a list of criteria we noticed professionals use like information about the author, awards the book has won, and quotes from other readers and expert reviewers. As I circulate around the room, conferring with writers, finding websites, and digging out flash drives, I hear two boys whispering in the corner,

“I need a quote for my review, but no one else in class has read, Full Tilt.”

“Ask Mrs. Miller, I bet she has read it. She’s read everything.”

I smile. Yes, I have read Neal Shusterman’s bizarre carnival story. I happily give the young reviewer a quote when he asks, and recommend two newer books by Shusterman— Everlost and Unwind. I found both books just as weird and satisfying as Full Tilt.

There are many days when I don’t get it right—my lesson falls flat, my temper is short, or I am too distracted to focus on the child standing in front of me. My students forgive me on those days because I am one of them—a reader. I rarely fail when talking to children about books and why they should read this one. It pleases me when my students consider me an expert whose opinions about books they value; I convince a lot of kids that they are experts because they read, too.

Let’s not be disingenuous here, I don’t read children’s books solely because I need to stay current for my students. I read kid lit because I like it, and my students know it. They love to chat with me about how much the filmmakers cut when adapting Inkheart, or argue about the endings of Peak and The Hunger Games, which left us wanting more. My students are unaware of what it takes to become an expert reading teacher—knowledge of best practices, classroom management, and classroom experience—skills which take on an Oz-behind-the-curtain quality in their view. But my students already know what makes you a reading expert—you read!

This is what real readers do—debate what we love and hate, question authors’ and characters’ choices, and endlessly shape our understanding of the books we read through dialogue with other readers. Our need to find others like us draws us to books in the first place, and it connects us to each other as a reading community.

The best reading teachers are teachers who read. Research substantiates this even though we need look no further than our classrooms and our hearts to know it.

At day's end, my student book club members descend on the school armed with handheld cameras. Their goal: interview teachers about their favorite books for a movie project. Students return connected to these teachers—many whom they did not know—instantly bonded by the books they shared. We may wonder if what we teach our students lasts them longer than a school year, only to be retaught and relearned again, but modeling a love of books and reading is a lesson that lasts.

I know from your posts that you are readers, too. Why not join the conversation? Submit a quote about a book or two you would like to recommend. Celebrate your reading expertise and share it with us all!

Posted by Donalyn Miller at 9:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)