Three new students

So last Monday evening I went into the city for class. When Clyde picked me up at the train station, the car died. We called and waited for Triple A (AA for those in the UK), who came in good time considering it was over 90 degrees and rush hour. They gave us a jump and we went on our way.

We were a half hour late for class, but no one seemed to mind. The place was full with kids of all ages. Mostly they were doing some crafts for the end of Summer Camp picnic, but a bunch went upstairs with Clyde to do some mathematics. Three little boys were waiting for me.

I introduced myself. They looked like they were all related, and the same age. Turns out one of them was nine, the others seven and six. They are unrelated. The nine year old, Y, is disruptive. I don't really know how to deal with disruptive students - can anyone offer advice? Clyde says to let it get so far and then say something like "Enough!" with an authoritarian tone of voice, and I admit I didn't try it. I have no idea of Y's background, but he seemed like a talktalktalkative child.

The other two, R and L, were sweet boys. Both were interested in reading aloud for quite a long while. I was impressed, really, that they held out so long. First L picked up a Frances book and determinedly read the words on the page, sounding out where he had to. He wasn't a skilled enough reader to really get the story, only the words. And the songs were a little vexing, but he did notice that they rhymed! After a time, and a disruption, I pulled out Danny and the Dinosaur and asked him to read that with me. He read about half before giving in to the temptation of running about and shooting the shit with Y. As much shit as you shoot when you're seven.

Y kept whining about when he was "gonna" be allowed to go up and do math. By that point, I was getting ready to read to them instead of having them read to me. I had picked out George's Marvelous Medicine, by Dahl, and was sitting waiting. Sweet little R was by my side, eager to hear me start, but I had to wait on Y and L to settle. In the end, I asked them if they wanted to do math. They replied to the affirmative and so I went up with them and requested that Clyde give them some problems to do. Eventually he was able to calm them down to a little more work. Of course, they are young and undisciplined, and I do not grudge them these things. I am not very disciplined either. But I do try to show respect when someone else is talking, or giving of their time to help me. If they come again next week, I will see what I can do to better address the situation.

Small boy R sat and listened while we read nearly half of George's Marvelous Medicine. He was intelligent and interested and made remarks about the fabled medicine. We laughed over the concoction and wondered about what we might make. By the time eight thirty rolled around, his eyelids were drooping. I wouldn't have read as far as we did, but Ms T from the previous week tired of her math tuition and asked if she could read to us for a while. I readily accepted.

At the end of the evening, R said he'd come back every Monday night because he enjoyed the reading. Which is a great bonus for me.

I realise I have to let go of trying to control what happens with this thing. I can't control it. I'll never know who will show up one week or the next. Little Ms B of Harry Potter 1 didn't come this week and I missed her smiling face. I hope to see her again. In the meantime, I'll supply the books and be there to listen while they struggle through the words and listen when I read. If I only help two or three young people, that's more than I might have done had I been too selfish or shy to put in the effort.

A quick addendum: It's not that I want to "control" my reading time at Cliveden Park. It is what it is. It's just that I hope to have some regularity and structure eventually. It's a lot to wish for the first two times the children show up.

Bliss

I perused a copy of my friend Danyel's book, Bliss this week while I was at a certain local chain store. I haven't purchased a copy yet because I like to sit with a book for a while before buying it, especially as lately I have only found fiction for young people very appealing and easy to read, but just by handling this book I felt that I wanted to read it. I only had time to skim the first few paragraphs, but in doing so I knew that I had to make a date to go and sit and read some more of it sometime soon.

If nothing else, the cover is all shiny and smooth. I like shiny.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I hate to start all my posts with a big "wow", but I went to see the aforementioned in the cinema today, and I really need to say Wow! I was feeling a little trepidious about seeing it because frankly, it looked like it was going to be weird, but who can resist Tim Burton and Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter (with incredibly bad teeth!) and the gorgeous sweet little boy from Finding Neverland, Freddie Highmore? Danny Elfman's music. Danny Elfman is... grand.

I will admit to not having read the story for many years, so I can't say how much the film stuck to the book, but it felt like it did. I found myself wondering if there might be a Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator in the Burton-Depp future. And I loved the Oompa Loompa(s). Oh! and the opening sequence was fabulous.

Go. See it in the theatre. There's something for everyone.

Bridge to Terabithia

Wow. I finished it in one gulp yesterday, all teary eyed. The library has two copies now, so assuming the kids come back, I hope to try one on a boy and one on a girl. I imagine it would appeal to both of them. I know it's a book that's been a great influence on some people - there's one young woman I know who uses Terabithia as her login name online. It might be a great assumption, but I think this is one of her favourite books.

I'm reading ahead in Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, so we can make some headway with it during the read-aloud portion of tomorrow night. I think if I stay two chapters ahead, I should be fine. Bearing in mind that two chapters is a good thirty pages each time.

I'm off to the local chain shop - my only selection for new books (or any books) - near by, later on. I want to browse the Encyclopedia Brown section and see what I might find that looks appealing (and short) for the boys in the club. (Thank you, L.)

Other things on the agenda today: Washing the cars, watching the japanese beetles fly into the beetle trap I installed yesterday, weeding around the base of the yellow rose, vacuuming the downstairs, making lasagna a la KB's recipe. Mostly I feel like it's a lazy day. The last few weekend's have been busy with family gatherings and so forth.

Next sunday I am hosting a potluck for my fellow students at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition. It will be the first time any of us have met face to face, and I'm hoping it will be a good opportunity to make some connections before the class starts in November. From what I understand, each class has around one thousand students, so it will be happy-making to know a few faces in the crowd.

Encyclopedia Brown

I'm almost finished with The Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson, which is a winner. I can see why so many people have recommended it. I'm keeping it in mind to offer to B on Monday evening. I think she'd like it, but I am still concerned it might be a little old for her. I plan on having the kids choose a book using the technique outlined in Esme Codell's How to Get Your Child to Love Reading - you have the child pick out a book, and then read/skim the first page, while holding one hand as a fist. As they find words that are difficult, or which they don't understand, they raise one finger. If, by the end of the page, they have 0-3 fingers raised, the book is probably a good level for them. If they have more than 3 fingers raised, it is probably too difficult.

I'd like each of the girls to do this on Monday, and as it's possible I'll have a couple of boys coming along too, it will be a good start to getting some structure to my Monday evening class.

I'm keeping The Skin I'm In by Sharon G Flake in mind for R this week. It's another one I have to finish before the end of the weekend, but I don't think it will pose a problem. It's a good book, so far.

One of the boys I met on Thursday evening (at a community meeting at the house) said he likes Encyclopedia Brown stories. As far as I know, we don't have any, and I am not familiar with them as far as reading. I have shelved them for years in my role as bookseller. So if you have a couple of old Encyclopedia Brown books kicking around that you'd like to send, I'd be grateful. And while we're on the subject, what else might I recommend to this young man?

Pink Zinnia

I grew this Zinnia from seed. It is one of a variety called "Peggy's Delight", from Seeds of Change. The colours are mixed and bright. This pink is surrounded by orange and gold, and I love the shade of green for the leaves.

Intermediate Fiction & Non Fiction Requests

I'll accept any titles aimed at ages 7-13, but these titles are specifically requested.

Fiction

Any titles by the following authors: Louis Sachar, Carolyn Keene, Franklin W Dixon, Phyllis Naylor, Barbara Park, Lemony Snicket.

Dear Mr Henshaw – Beverly Cleary
Bud, Not Buddy - Christopher Paul Curtis
Catherine, Called Birdy – Karen Cushman
The BFG - Roald Dahl
Danny, the Champion of the World - Roald Dahl
Knight’s Castle – Edward Eager
Harriet the Spy – Louise Fitzhugh
I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly, (Dear America) - Joyce Hansen
Dave at Night - Gail Carson Levine
Ella Enchanted - Gail Carson Levine
Number the Stars – Lois Lowry
The Giver - Lois Lowry
Gathering Blue – Lois Lowry
Five Children and It – E. Nesbit
The Would-Be-Goods – E. Nesbit
The Enchanted Castle – E. Nesbit
The Borrowers – Mary Norton
A Picture of Freedom (Dear America) - Patricia C. Mckissack
Silverwing - Kenneth Oppel
Jacob Have I Loved – Katherine Paterson
Hatchet - Gary Paulsen
Addy: An American Girl/Boxed Set (American Girls Collection) - Connie Rose Porter
The Shadow in the North – Philip Pullman
The Tiger in the Well – Philip Pullman
His Dark Materials box set (Golden Compass, Subtle Knife, Amber Spyglass) – Philip Pullman
The Westing Game – Ellen Raskin
Missing May - Cynthia Rylant
The Wayside School box set – Louis Sachar
There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom! – Louis Sachar
A Bad Beginning – Lemony Snicket
Mary Poppins – P.L. Travers
Homecoming – Cynthia Voigt

Non-Fiction

The Care and Keeping of You, (American Girl Library)
The Feelings Book (Amer. Girl Lib.)
Oops! A Manners Guide (Amer. Girl. Lib)
The Care and Keeping of Friends (Amer. Girl Lib.)

The Star Spangled Banner – Amy Winstead
The Story of Ruby Bridges – Robert Coles
Rachel, The Story of Rachel Carson – Amy Ehrlich
A Is For Abigail – Lynne Cheney
The Sky’s The Limit: Stories of Discoveries by Women and Girls – Catherine Thimmesh
Constitution Translated for Kids – Cathy Travis
Remember the Ladies: 100 Great American Women – Cheryl Harness
Rabble Rousers: 20 Women Who Made a Difference – Cheryl Harness
The Ghosts of the White House – Cheryl Harness
Vote! - Eileen Christelow
So You Want to Be President? – Judith St George

Pyramid – David Macaulay
Underground – David Macaulay
The New Way Things Work – David Macaulay
Nat’l Geo World Atlas for Young Explorers, Rev. & Expanded Edition - National Geographic
Ocean - DK Eyewitness Books
Jungle – DK Eyewitness Books
Any other DK Eyewitness Books, except “Mummy”
DK First Dictionary
First Human Body Encyclopedia (DK) – Penny Smith

Please contact me for a mailing address.

Young Adult Fiction & Non-Fiction Requests

Young Adult Fiction

Any books by the following authors: Joan Lowery Nixon, Caroline B Cooney, Gary Paulsen, Laurie Halse Anderson, Chris Crutcher, Judy Blume.

Speak – Laurie Halse Anderson
The Number Devil, A Mathematical Adventure - Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Who Am I Without Him? : Short Stories About Girls and the Boys in Their Lives by Sharon G. Flake
Breathing Underwater by Alex Flinn
Where We Are, What We See by David Levithan
Slam! by Walter Dean Myers

Non-Fiction

King of the Mild Frontier : An Ill-Advised Autobiography by Chris Crutcher
Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl
Bad Boy: A Memoir by Walter Dean Myers
Left for Dead by Peter Nelson
The Pact, by Sampson Davis and others
Hole in My Life, by Jack Gantos
In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer, by Irene Gutowna Opdyke

Please contact me for a mailing address.

Adult Fiction & Non-Fiction Requests

I will accept any fiction or non-fiction for adults, but these titles are specifically requested:

Fiction

Kindred – Octavia E. Butler
Family – J. California Cooper
Good Omens – Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Mrs Pollifax – Dorothy Gilman
The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Such a Girl - Karen Siplin
His Insignificant Other - Karen Siplin
Bliss - Danyel Smith
The Coldest Winter Ever – Sister Souljah
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Thurston
The Color Purple – Alice Walker

Non-Fiction

Black Ice – Lorene Cary
Nickel & Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, by Barbara Ehrenreich
We Were There – edited Yvonne Latty
Life is So Good – George Dawson
Having Our Say – Sarah Delany
I Have a Dream – Martin Luther King Jr.
Life Lessons for My Sisters – Natasha Munson
True Notebooks – Mark Salzman
No Disrespect – Sister Souljah

Please contact me for a mailing address.

En zo, the Wishlist

Here's what I posted at Readerville:

***

I have taken on a volunteer role developing a library for a community house in north east Philadelphia (a not-entirely-good part of town). I am seeking donations of either gently used or new books for these kids (2nd grade upwards). If you are interested in divesting yourself of a few items, please take a gander at the next few posts here and check out the selection I have put together. Please email me for the mailing address.

No one is obliged to participate, but I will gratefully accept any undamaged books offered. Thank you.

***

I have had a good response from some exceedingly generous people. Listed in the next few entries are the books I am still looking for, although I should note that I am constantly updating the list over at Amazon:
Cliveden Park House wishlist.

I use Amazon's wishlist feature because it is an easy tool to update and manipulate. I do not expect people to buy directly from Amazon unless they choose to. There are plenty of other places to buy books cheaper online. If you don't want to buy at all, but have a used item or two in the house, we'd accept that. I only ask that the book is not damaged, torn or defaced in any way.

I will break the list up over two or three entries.

Tutoring for the first time

Yesterday evening, four girls who had an interest in reading appeared at the Cliveden Park House at about 6pm. The two going into fifth grade immediately dove for copies of Harry Potter 1 and Harry Potter 2. They seemed to think they could read fine on their own, and went upstairs to find seats and settle in. After a few moments, I followed suit with the copy of Half Magic I'd been reading. I sat by the stairs and made it plain to them that if they had questions I'd do my best to answer.

One girl, we'll call her R, fidgeted and fussed about while she was reading. She couldn't sit still. She lay on the floor, she spun around in circles in a chair, she clicked her nails to the book, she tapped a toe. I found it very distracting and eventually found that I spent more time observing than reading my own book. But after all, that was basically the point.

Originally I had imagined hosting a read-aloud session to several kids with a book we picked together. I had several contenders on hand, depending on who the children that came to the session were. I would read-aloud for a half hour and then spend time helping each child choose a book to read alone for a longer spell. I would then be on hand to help each child with difficult words, et cetera. A fond hope for a first day.

After a while of R bothering B with questions about how much she had read (13 pages vs. 9), I asked B if she would like me to read her selection, Harry Potter and the Sorceror's (Philosopher's) Stone, aloud to her for a while. It had taken her probably forty minutes to read 9 pages. Which seems like a long while, although I don't usually count pages and time when I'm reading, so have nothing to judge it by. B said yes please, so I took over. For a while R sat and listened, but when we reached the end of chapter one she took leave of us and went downstairs to do math instruction with my husband.

There was a brief interruption when M arrived with her Mom. M is older, in high school. She is interested in music and dancing, but not reading. Unfortunately, she has been issued a long and arduous assignment for school. The book is Dan Brown's Digital Fortress. Totally the wrong book to give a teenager uninterested in computers and technology. The assignment deals with crytpography, essay after essay, followed by research and yet more essays. I found the whole thing a little distasteful, myself. I'm not sure what M's Mom hoped to achieve by asking me to help her daughter. I can't do it all for her, aside from the ethics of doing someone's homework, the book really doesn't appeal to me, either. Oh well. I promised M cookies and lemonade when she finishes the work. She's a bright girl and can obviously do it, but not without much complaining and melodrama.

So I read to the end of Chapter two in HP1, at which point I called it a night on reading. B hugged me and thanked me, and I assured her we'd read some more next week. The fourth girl, T, is interested in reading, but is obviously already A Reader. She professes to enjoy a good mystery, indicating a current favourite as Joan Lowery Nixon. I hope to lay hands on a few other selections with her in mind, although from what she told me I understand that she is a frequent Free Library of Philadelphia visitor.

Next week I will put my original plan in motion. Read aloud time followed with quiet time reading. A note made about who is reading what, etc. I expect to spend the summer reading the Harry Potter books in sequence, as these are kids who have not seen the movies and don't really know the stories. Instead of letting the kids pick Big Books to read next week, I want to encourage them to choose smaller, shorter, easier books to focus on. It's not that I want to tell them what and when to read, but the more reading they get under their belts, the easier it will become. And it's a confidence builder to remember that you read (2, 3, 4, 5!) books this summer!

Hello, hello!

Well, I realised I finally have a good reason to keep a blog, as things have been picking up speed in my world this year. Let's see....

I have become a Big Sister with the mentoring organisation, Big Brothers Big Sisters. I have been matched to a young woman, E, but unfortunately I don't think the match is going to pan out. She comes from a confused family background, and it has been very difficult for myself and our caseworker to reach E. I will attempt one last call to E and her family this week, but if things don't get moving after that I'm throwing in the towel. I realise that sounds like I'm quitting, but it's not that simple. I'm sure there are people or children out there who actually want help of some kind. I don't get that impression with this family.

Secondly, I am creating a library while simultaneously starting a reading club for a group of needy children & young adults. It's all happening at a sort of community centre house in Philadelphia. I have asked friends if they would be kind enough to donate a gently used children's book or two. As it turns out, I have been able to fill an entire bookcase with donations, and there are more to come. Several people have asked that I give them a better idea of the sorts of books I'm looking for, so I will be publishing the wishlist I have developed in the next few days.

In the meanwhile I also plan to share stories about the reading club, which starts tomorrow evening. A number of the people who have already donated books are eager to hear how the project goes, so I decided this was probably the easiest way to keep y'all informed!

What else? Well, you can expect to hear about how our gardens grow (see above), and other miscellany from life in Pennsylvania, my home away from home.