Ms. Paradis in Library Land

I've been in New Orleans since Friday at the American Library Association meeting with librarians from all over the country. There are many cool things here. There is a HUGE room with book stores and publishers from all over the country. This is where you see authors. I've seen Lemony Snicket, Chris Raschka, Brian Selznick, Jeff Kinney, Rick Riordan and Alan Say (and my friend was talking to Tomie DePaola--so I'm looking for him). You can also get tons of new books here, and my suitcase is full of new things. We go to lots of workshops and meetings. Right now I'm at a workshop about how to do really cool research projects with kids. SO I hope we'll do some cool research projects next year! We have meetings about what librarians should all be doing and share lots of ideas. When we aren't meeting, we are running around New Orleans. This is a really great city and there are cool people in Voodoo outfits, steamboats on the Mississippi, palm trees, and great food. I love it here, but will be eager to get back to Plympton next week and see everyone. What are you doing with your first week of vacation?

Welcome to Summer 2011

Hello,
School will be over on Friday and I'm getting ready to read. On Friday morning, I am flying to New Orleans to attend the American Library Association's annual meeting. This is a big meeting of librarians of every kind from all over the United States. While I'm there I'm going to be meeting with other school librarians. We will plan how to make American school libraries the best they can be. I always go to workshops there and get some great ideas to bring back to Plympton and I get TONS OF FREE BOOKS and meet lots of authors. This year, Jeff Kinney, who writes the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books is going to be there and I'll be sure to go see him. I will post next week about the new books I've brought back to school.

Please click on the links on this page--there are lots of great ideas here for summer reading.
Have a great summer, and KEEP IN TOUCH!
Ms. Paradis

Loving the Red Pyramid

Hi Kids,
I've been reading a fair amount (and I'm going to Maine tomorrow with a pile of books), but must say that this week I've spent most of my free time reading the new Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid. If you liked the Percy Jackson series, you will like this book--which has many similarities. In this one, the main characters, Carter and Sadie, are siblings who discover that they are descended from the Egyptian pharoahs and that they have magical powers. After their mother dies and their father is abducted by Set, the Egyptian God of Chaos, they need to use every power they have and every god and magician they meet (and there are many) to liberate their father and keep Set from destroying North America. Good action and quite funny in places.

Looking for book ideas?

Hi Kids,
I've decided that I'm going to try to get as many kids as possible to help pick the best Children's book for Massachusetts this year. Salem State College runs a contest each year where they nominate a bunch of books and ask kids to read at least FIVE and then vote for their favorite in March. I'm going to start a book group for grades 4 and 5 when we get back to school to read these. In the meantime, there is no reason you cannot start reading some. (I've already read a few--and they are good so far--Home of the Brave is may favorite so far). If you want to get started, you can click on the link in the column on the right to get the book list! Let me know if you read any.

LOTS of reading this week

On Thursday and Friday, I finally got to read a whole bunch of the new books that came into the library this summer. I decided instead of just reading one novel, to try to read a lot of shorter books. I finally read a Babymouse book and a Who Was biography (some kids call these "big head" biographies because of the crazy pictures on the covers). I liked them both, but since I love biographies--I think I liked my big head Marco Polo better. I also read Yummy--a great fairy tale collection and Once Upon A Time--a nice collection of folk tales from Spanish-speaking countries, and these were both very good. I really like a funny book called What Really Happened to Humpty Dumpty, which was sort of like the True Story of the Three Little Pigs. I read it to a second grade class and we all loved it--including the teachers. I also found a book called Just the Right Size super interesting. It tells why animals are the sizes they are and how this helps them (it turns out that there is a good reason that people cannot walk on ceilings and whales cannot fly).

Lots of New Books

Hello,
This week I have been unpacking new books--some were books that were donated to us from great library friends. Others were ordered right before school ended and I also got a lot of books when I went to the American Library Association meeting in June. It is pretty exciting--I've unpacked about 225 books so far and there are more coming. We have lots of new animal books, all the new Baby Mouse books, some more Shredderman books, tons of new chapter books, and more. It is hard to know where to begin. I bought lots of books that kids asked for in the book request box this year (so we have a lot of Rainbow Magic books now). I am going to be pretty busy trying to read through all these!

Off the movies

Hello!
A few weeks ago all the school librarians in Massachusetts got an invitation to go to a sneak preview of the new Beezus and Ramona movie. I LOVE Beverly Cleary (and have been reading these books since I was in 3rd grade), so I was not sure if I wanted to see a movie version. Like many people, I always worry that they will wreck the book, but I trusted the people who made this one (Walden Media--they also made the Winn-Dixie movie, Charlotte's web, Narnia movies, etc) so I took my niece and her friend and we went. It was so cool! The movie company gave out free tickets, snacks, and all sorts of books, posters, etc. They raffled off prizes before the movie and told us we were the first people seeing this movie! The movie was good! It combined parts of 5 different books, but in a way that made sense. The movie is based mostly on the later books when Ramona is in 4th grade and Beezus is starting high school. There are lots of really funny parts and it made me want to go and re-read the books. It was nice to see a GOOD movie based on a book! So, what movies from books do you like?