Yet again, a minor sore throat/cold caused me to lose my voice, and it still wasn’t at full strength today – but I explained to the kids and they were SO QUIET. It was astonishing.
Our magical puppet/stuffed animal closet once again delivered, so we had Mr. Panda and the patient penguin from I’ll Wait, Mr. Panda. I also borrowed an idea from a parent/child yoga class I went to at another library recently, and we made stars with our bodies (feet apart, arms out to the sides) and rocked back and forth (balancing on one foot at a time, or just swaying) while singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
- Welcome, announcements
- “Hello Friends” song with ASL, from Jbrary
- Edward Gets Messy by Rita Meade: This story has a lot of words per page for this age group, but whether because of my quiet voice or the easily graspable subject matter, the kids sat and seemed to be listening!
- Yoga
- Worm Loves Worm by J.J. Austrian: A sweet story of two worms who just want to be married – and eventually they are, because Worm loves Worm.
- Who in this room has thumbs? Okay, now hide your thumbs behind your back. “Where is Thumbkin?”
- I’ll Wait, Mr Panda by Steve Antony, with panda stuffed animal and penguin puppet.
- Yoga/song: Stand in “star” pose, balance/sway, and sing “Twinkle, Twinkle”
- Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes
- Carrot and Pea by Morag Hood
- “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes”
- Perfect Square by Michael Hall (tie-in activity at the end)
- “Goodbye Friends” song with ASL, from Jbrary
- Clean up mats, put out project: Paper squares to tear, crumple, and glue
We still did six books as usual, but a little less singing (still, five songs/rhymes including our hello and goodbye), and wrapped up a little bit earlier than usual. The project was popular, though next time I’d cut the squares a little smaller; I had cut sheets of colored construction paper into six pieces each (not exactly squares, but close). With older kids, they could have worked on their own projects and used scissors and a hole punch to recreate some of the pictures in Perfect Square, if they’d wanted. Michael Hall’s books really lend themselves to craft tie-ins!
Whitney Scharer was up first, showing slides and then reading from her debut novel about Lee Miller, known as a model for Vogue and surrealist Man Ray’s muse, though she was a photographer in her own right, and co-inventor of the technique of solarization. (Aside: Every student should have a project like the one mentioned in Meg Wolitzer and Holly Goldberg Sloan’s new middle grade novel, To Night Owl From Dogfish, “Give the right person the credit.”) Scharer discovered Miller at an exhibit featuring Man Ray at the Peabody Essex Museum in 2011, and was interested in the two of them “being in love and making art together.” (Miller went on to be a war reporter; she reminded me of Robert Capa’s partner, Gerda Taro, who was killed while documenting the Spanish Civil War.) Scharer read a scene from her novel in which Miller describes what she calls “wild mind”: her ability to set any expression on her face while modeling, yet thinking of anything she wants, setting her mind free. The scene (possibly the whole novel?) was in present tense.
Next, Jenna Blum (The Stormchasers, Those Who Save Us) talked about and read from her new novel, The Lost Family, set in New York and centered around a Holocaust survivor, Peter, who lost his wife and daughters. He now owns and runs a restaurant called Masha’s, after his late wife, and has sworn not to get involved with anyone again – but, of course, he does. The novel is about Peter and his second wife and their daughter, “a whole family trying to put its arms around a loved one’s PTSD.” Blum didn’t have slides, but she did share a cocktail of her own invention, and cream puffs called “Masha’s Little Clouds”; she said that she invented and kitchen-tested all the menu items in the book.
Finally, Christopher Castellani (A Kiss From Maddalena, The Saint of Lost Things, All This Talk of Love) talked about his newest novel, Leading Men, which imagines a party thrown by Truman Capote in Portofino in 1975, the guests, and the aftermath. Castellani said that people always want to know “how much is true and how much is not true,” so he explained that the party did happen, and that Tennessee Williams and his lover Frank Merlot really were invited, but that Williams’ journal does not mention the party in the days or weeks following it. Using both “real and invented people,” Castellani imagined and invented “between the cracks of what was known about these people.” Merlot is his main character; Williams isn’t a “point of view character” largely because he is too well-known, has written and been written about too much; Merlot, though not obscure, is less of a known quantity. Castellani admitted that it was daunting to write dialogue for characters like Capote and Williams; he would often use an “anchor quote” from their writings in order to get the tone of the dialogue and scene, and would sometimes remove the “scaffolding” once the scene was finished.
The past few months have also brought us graphic novel adaptations of Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak and Lois Lowry’s The Giver. The former is YA rather than middle grade, and the art is quite different from the books above; Emily Carroll did an absolutely haunting job translating Speak into a new format. Melissa’s silence, the claustrophobic atmosphere of menace, and the slow healing and emerging that takes place are rendered in a way that honors and enhances the original.
The Giver is often read in late grade school, though it’s one of those books that is thought-provoking no matter when in life you encounter it. Unlike the rest of the books here, it is set in a different reality than our own, a futuristic place of Sameness. P. Craig Russell produced the graphic novel version; cool blues and grays prevail, until Jonas’ moments of “seeing beyond” introduce flashes of color, and The Giver’s memories do the same. The Giver himself looks less Kindly and more ominous than I had pictured him, and the whole community has a 1950s vibe (on purpose). It’s very hard to improve on the original, and as one of the first utopia/dystopia novels that young readers encounter, it’s not in danger of falling by the wayside, but if this version of The Giver finds a new audience, all the better.
Jenny Arch 