I arrived this morning to Mrs. Mcallister and Mrs. Parry freaking out.  Mrs. Parry had messed up a student's username and password in Destiny and went back in to fix it but could not see the previos password.  She began to get angry and upset thinking she had wasted three days of inputing the passwords to have them all nonexistant.  This actually isn't true and I showed her how the password was there but it was hidden to ensure secrecy.  You can tell if a password has already been entered if a box appears next to "Password Assigned".  The box is to be checked only if you want to clear the password and then you must go back in to reenter it.  I showed this to Mrs. Parry and Mrs. Mcallister and they were very much relieved.  After we had cleared that snafu we went back to the Reading class that was in working on their "stations".  The stations are the students seperated into different groups and assigned to work on and some of the reference work and the databases that the school provides.  The stations included, Current Biography (with books), Guinness World Record, Popular Science Database, CultureGrams, Elibrary, Power Library, Ebscohost, and Destiny.  The search paper that they used for Destiny was the search that I had created earlier in the week.

The one thing that I really learned from this assignment was the lack of the ability for these students to follow directions.  There was a direction clearly put on the top of the Destiny search that not a single group noticed without me pointing it out to them when they were half way finished.   I also noticed that the other worksheets that Mrs. Mcallister made were unusually difficult.  She said that she intentional made them that way so that the students had to search beyond the first page.  For example, one of the questions on the Elibrary search asked about the rate of killing Key Deer.  Students would put in key deer as keywords but couldn't find the answer.  They would put in kill as another keyword and the answer was in another article on the second page about half way down.  When you are asking students who don't really know how to use the databases and this is supposed to be instructional and not difficult, I think that is ridiculous.  If you are instructing and introducing something you don't have to give them difficult directions.  There was another question on Elibrary that asked "How much does a game of "pass the pig" cost?"  The answer was free because they are just crunches done while passing a ball down a line, but the answer was at the end of an article as a caption, that didn't show up as real text because it was a part of the picture.  First off the question was very noninformative on how to go about searching for it, and if the student would have no idea as to what it was talking baout or if the article could help them or not, I feel that that was a waste of the students time.  Also the students who did the Destiny search were not allowed to use any of the sit-down computers.  They had to stand at the card catalog for the whole period.  That made no sense to me.  Why force them to do this project and stand for the half hour they were working.  She had done the same thing to a girl yesterday during the geography class that  couldn't get a seat at any of the sit down computers so I suggested we get her a chair.  Mrs. Mcallister just turned to me and said "No I like them to stand there."  I understand if it is to encourage quick users to hurry up and move along, but a girl that is working on a class period long project?  That is really ridiculous.  That countinued throughout the day with the Destiny users.  It was things like this, the uncomfortable seating occupation, and the unreasonably difficult questions that lead most of the students to not complete the stations.  Most of them got to about question 5 on their papers, a few made to question ten or higher, and I think maybe one group completely finished.

Now that the experience is over, I learned a lot of useful things, some of what to do, and some of what not to do.  I learned about managing a collection with some positive and some negative experiences.  Also dealing with the students was a nice change from dealing with elementary aged students too.

It was a rather quiet day today.  We did more password and username additions.  Another geography class came in and we did some more encouraging use of Culturegrams.  This was now old hat and it was easy to help the students with their countries.  We did use the photo tab more because they were making a brochure instead of a placemat so they needed to find some useful pictures.  Some of the smaller countries didn't have a photo account so the students went to google.  We tried to encourage them to find landmarks in the description of their country to help them in the search.  Some listened, and others did not.

Also just more of the basic routine of working on a few things with destiny and checking books in/out, then reshelving them.  A reading class also came in several times to pick out their SSR books so we would have an influx of students checking out books at the beginning of the periods.  Towards the end of the day the English class that was working on their speeches came back in for a few quick references and for photos because some did not get the ones that they needed the day before.  So the printer saw a lot of action today.

We talked a little more about blogs and their usage.  It just reinforced that the generation that didn't grow up with this technology will not be able to adapt to it as easily.  The generation that did, already can weave their way in and out of situations within the programs.

The history class was back in again today.  They were collecting the last of their facts to get a total of 25.  I found out that this project was also a cooperation between the English class and the Western Civilizations class.  I showed many of the students the Destiny catalog and the WebPath searches they could do.  Webpath gives them reliable websites through the catalog which is really helpful.   There were 4 periods of this class.  So between showing them the catalog, guiding them to useful websites that were not wikipedia, and showing them how to cite webpages, Mrs. Mcallister, their teacher, and I had a good deal to do.

Meanwhile, between helping the history class, Mrs. Mcallister and I played with ideas about creating logins on Destiny for the students.  After playing with one or two.  It was decided that the seventh grade would get passwords as an experiment.  Mrs. Parry and I sat and edited all of the students' information so that their password and username was accurate and useable.  We used their barcode for both.  This way students can log-in and save their favorite books, create a citation list, and put books on hold.  On Friday a Reading class is coming and we will experiment on them.  But putting the barcode in for each seventh grader is a long process and that took most of the afternoon.  In the morning Mrs. Parry had gone through the system and got rid of most of the fines from a few weeks ago because they had had trouble with check-out scanner and kids had returned their books but it wasn't recorded.  So to save some headaches for herself Mrs. Parry just checked those books back in and waived the fine.

Also, Mrs. Parry got a phone call today from a stranger who wished to come to the library to look at old yearbooks.  She had wanted to just come in and look around, but had no children in the system and was only interested in the yearbooks.  She also only gave her first name when asked.  Mrs. Parry refused her mostly due to the fact that this is an unknown person who wants to enter a middle school where even I, a student teacher, had to have clearances.

Yesterday, Mrs Mcallister had sent some books about dinosaurs to the elementary schools because they were more age appropriate for them.  While shelving books, I came across the same books already on the shelves.  I think that even with Titlewave Mrs. Mcallister has a problem of checking her catalog for duplicates.

At the end of the day, the principal came with a custodian to measure the counter space.  There is a teacher who has really bad knees and needs to ice them often.  To do this she needs easy access to a freezer but the conference room that the fridge was in often has people having a meeting in it so they decided to move the fridge to the library back room, where there is very litte space as it is and now has lost one of its drawers because the fridge is too high to sit on the counter under the cabinents.  Mrs. Mcallister and Mrs. Parry are slightly miffed because they can have a fridge meant only for medical supplies but they can no longer have a microwave in their little kitchenette.
All in all it was another light day.....or maybe I'm just getting the hang of this.

 Today was another nonspectacular day.  The career class was in again for the first few periods and their teacher took care of them.  Mrs. Mcallister and I kept trying to get the access level to change for Destiny and add passwords for patrons.  We finally called Follett and they told us to check all of the screens that we had repeatedly checked.  After sending some screenshots we finally figured out which option to click and found that the Destiny administrator was the one with the access to do that and with one more phone call it was solved.  An English class came in then to do research for a speech.  The teacher participated but was allowing them to use Wikipedia, which they all immedately did.  Some of the had things like the Jonas Brothers and skateboarding and some popular bands so it was understandable (sort of) as to why they would use that.  But some people who had animals and countries went there to and even after I pointed out the databases most went back to it.   Some listened and stayed at the databases and found some good information and had a quick citation done for them.  Three periods of this class came in.

During the interum of these periods I shelved and straightened the books.  It is just one of my peeves to see books on a shelf all leaning over.  So I fixed some more up.   While doing it I reflected on the collection.  She has few graphic novels and mangas, but books about becoming a graphic artist for the career curriculum.  I looked at a collection statistic and the average age for her whole collection is somewhere around 1990, the oldest section being averaged at (I think) 1958.  She has many career books, books on different countries and lots of biographies but a lot of these books seem more for a younger audience with larger print and simplified glossaries.  The students don't even really know how to look up books because she always pulls what she thinks they will need.  In the biography project I have found several books that would have been useful some students who were having trouble finding good information.

I added four new titles to the catalog today.  With Destiny it is not difficult.  It gives access to multiple sources to get the MARC record and you just need to hit a few buttons to add a copy to the system.  The books I put in the system were either donations or were bought with the fine money.

Activity period a lot of students came in to work on projects that are getting close to the due date.  Some I helped redirect to some of the databases, like Student Resource Center and Culturegrams.  I also asked Mrs. Mcallister about voluneers in the library.  They used to have them during activity period but Mrs. Parry would get irritated with them and feel like they were just making more work for her.  So they dropped the program.  I think that is ridiculous.  I really started my love of libraries in junior high when I worked there.  I have seen several students that take an interest in the library and may even be interested in working there but also because Activity period has become a homework/makeup test time clubs are really no longer used.

 The career class was in again today for most of the day.  Their teacher took charge of them and we only really helped them a bit, with printing and finding paper.  Mrs. Mcallister arranged for me to view two classes today, a 7th grade English and an 8th grade Science class.  I went to the third period class of Mrs. Wakeman, an English teacher.  They were going over verbs today and reviewing what was linking verb and what was an action verb.  They had a song that they needed to remember that included all of their verbs.  They did some in class discussion and some partner work.  Pretty much just working on and preparing for their test on Friday.

I finished the Destiny Catalog Search for the students.  We are going to use it on Friday with a Reading class that is coming in.  I came up with about 17 questions that range from subject searches, title searches, Webpath excercises, and looking up information on their SSR book.

I also worked on the homepage for Destiny and added some websites based on the Top Ten books checked out of the library.  So I added the author pages of Ben Mikaelson author of  "Touching Spirit Bear" and Dave Pelzer, author of "A child called "it"".  I also added the Guiness Book of Records website and some Teen health websites.  Mrs. Mcallister is going to talk to the tech people to see if they can add an html coded background.

We also attempted to add a few patron accounts to see if it would work with the students but after about forty five minutes of it not working we decided to call Follett tomorrow morning.

Next I went and watched a science class presenting their powerpoints on an environmental topic.  They had worked in the library for three days and then finished the products in their computer class and presented them in the science class.  You could really tell which students actually learne something and which ones just copy pasted their information and cared more about the graphics of their powerpoint.  But for the most part the presentations that I saw seemed that they learned at least one thing from the project which is essential what you wish with middle school kids.  I know that I would want more but for them to retain information and pay attention can be a task in itself.

At the end of the day I just shelved some books and organized some of the shelves.  This day went surprisingly fast and I felt that it wasn't a full day.

 Something I wanted to mention in my journal yesterday that I forgot about was the discussion Mrs. Mcallister and I had about facebook.  She was against creating one even to have things about the library  but she said that some teachers had created wikis for their classes and that they were useful.  She also didn't use blogs mostly because she didn't know how to use them.

Today was a bit quieter because there was no class projects to be done today, but the career classes came in but their teacher took care of them.  The staff has been trying to get a computer lab specifically for the career class so that they don't clog up the library when there are classes that come in.  As I had mentioned in some of my previous journals, the career class students would come in while the other classes were working.  Sometimes there were a disturbance but other times they were very good.

Third period I was going to go observe a science class who was presenting some projects that they had worked on in the library but powerpoint wasn't working properly so I am going to go hopefully next week.  Mrs. Mcallister and I talked about her budget instead.  Her total budget is $36,000, $13000 budgeted for books but only $8000 spent.  For ILL the cost is spread through out all the libraries in the district.  But because the libraries do not really use it, the business manager refigures the cost and gives money back to the elementaries and takes a little more from the middle school and high school.  The total comes out to about $900 and the middle school pays $444.    Four years ago she said the cost used to be a lot less.  Next year though, the district is picking up the cost and it is going into the curriculum budget.  The secruity system costs around $800 (in 2002 it cost $680).  Elibrary costs $11,335 but the district picks up the cost for this as well and the whole district has access to it.  They do get access to some e-books through this, mostly science and health because it was meant frfom curriculum based, but the health program was downsized so no one really uses them anymore  Student Resource Center online database costs about $1700.  Infocentre, the old OPAC, used to cost $500 for the service help a year and Destiny costs $700, but the district covers that too.  Switching to Follett cost the district $10,000 and all the schools got it, which is about 6 or 7 schools.  The use of Acess PA costs $180.  For magazines, she budgets about $2000 but spends about half that.  For other software, she budgets $10,000 but uses about $2000.  The reason she does this is in case the district wiwnds up not covering things like e-library, she has money to fall back on.  On the annual report from last year she reported 16128 books and 888 classes were attended.  The one thing she wished she could change the most is that the eighth grade reading interest drops off greatly and she wants to do something that will change that.  I asked her about how people put in suggestions and it turns out it is very informal because it is only when students come up and asks for books.  I suggested to her on maybe having a suggestion box to spark some interest.  Supplies she generally spends about $200 and she doesn't have to worry about paper supplies cause they are supplied by the school.

Other than that, the geography books that had been borrowed were reshelved and as were the students returned books.  While I was doing that we were searching for a few more specific country books and found that the collection was lacking on some of the countries that students were to report on.  So Mrs. Mcallister had me purchase books on Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania on Titlewave that will come in once the budget is unfrozen for next year.  We took a break and ran some bookmarks to the office to be laminated.  When I returened and kept working on the reshelving, I came across several copies of books that were wrongfully cataloged.  There were exact copies of the same book with different spine labels.  I pulled those and Mrs. Parry fixed that and said that happens occasionally when Mrs. Mcallister chooses call numbers and most call numbers do not extend past 2 decimal digits and generally only one or three letters to signify it, the letters corresponding to the title of the book.  I also straightened a lot of the shelves because nearly every shelf the books are leaning.  So I'm not sure if it is just when the students mess up the books or if the book ends need to be replaced.  Also this morning I changed the alert sound on Destiny for fines and overdues.  I had downloaded the sound last night and brought it in.

Taking another break after lunch Mrs. Mcallister and I went downstairs to see some of the students while they worked on their science project power point.    Then we went over to the geography classroom and saw some of the finished geography placemat projects.  They turned out pretty neat and just need to be laminated.   Finishing up the day we cataloged a few more books and changed some of the barcodes.

 This morning I arrived just as the first history class arrived.  We switched up who was working on the computers and who was working on the books.  Some of the kids were being stubborn and didn't really want to use the books and said they had enough facts from their internet searches although they only had less than the reccommended 10.  Today was a litte harder controling the students was a bit tougher.  But by today we had more books out about their people so it was easier to find the information.

The spine labels finally came in so that was something checked off the to-do list in the library.  Mrs. Parry practiced with those for a bit.  I worked on the Destiny catalog search for a few periods.  I wanted to make sure that the questions I was asking could be answered.  I have roughly twelve questions finished by the end of the day and wanted to make at least four or five more to cover the most important aspects of  the OPAC.  When I finish I will supply a copy of that on here and possibly on Blackboard.

Dr. Gardner arrived today and I gave her a tour of the library.  Also again thanks Dr. Gardner for teaching us how to use Destiny.  That has become so useful.  I feel like that the library is in pretty decent shape but while the collection is rather large it also feels lacking.  Nothing is really completely up-to-date, the paperbacks are looking pretty ratty, and she caters really only to the curriculum when she really thinks of buying new items, especially in the reference collection.  The encyclopedias are the same ones I used when I was in middle school.  While I was touring Dr. Gardner is when I realized really how ineffectual the mirrors that are placed near the back of the room are.  They show an aisle that you can see pretty well from the desk and when the projector screen is up, like it has been the past two days, it is even harder to see down the aisles.  

Taking a break from the OPAC discovery, I helped Mrs. Mcallister answer another librian's question about hiding the visual search.  So again going into access levels wwe figured out where that control was.  After that we had a fire drill and everyone was evacuated outside.  Whwen we were back inside my next task was to find a new sound for the fine alarm on the circulation desk.  I was playing with some sounds for awhile and then found that the site was blocked from downloads.  So tonight I am downloading some sounds that might be appropriate and bringing them in tomorrow.

 Today when I arrived there was a history class, becuase the geography class had finished up.  This class of eighth graders was working on biographies of a famous historical figure.  They are to look up at least ten facts about their person and then convert that into several different options, like an obituary, letter, interview, etc.  In the project ,Mrs. Mcallister and I showed them Galenet, another database that the middle school uses, so that they could go and find direct information about their person.  And since they need at least three sources (at least one book), we had another group at the tables working in the books.  The books were again already pulled, thereby making it easier for the students but not teaching them the skills to find them themselves.

While helping the students with the project, it was easy to see who had learned some of the basic skills and who had ignored them.  Some of them needed help checking the index because they would look under the first name of their person, not by last name.   It was similar to yesterday in that we had to make sure that students were staying on task, but today we also had to help them citing the books they used.  The websites had an automatic citiation device that they copy pasted for themselves.  This teacher and his classes were there for five of the periods.

During lunch, I took a look at the curriculum for the middle school.  They do a lot of collaboration with the reading classes and then for the other projects, like the geoprahy and history, they integrate the information skills.  Mrs. Mcallsister did mention that the newer, younger teachers do not use the libraries as much becuase they just have their students go to google and find their answers.  Mrs. Mcallister didn't eat with me, like previous days, because she was making a phone call to Follett to check on somethings that they have been havng problems with.  I also took a look at the schools library policies.  Theirs are recent, from last year.  They were very well organized and I believe that the wording was very functional.

Mrs. Mcallister gave me a OPAC worksheet to use to teach the students.  This one was from InforCentre and she was wondering if I could make an updated one for Destiny.  I didn't get to it today between everything that we did so I will get to it tomorrow.

They had also been getting emails from the other disctricts librarians with some problems they were having with the system.  I helped to figure out some of the access level problems and some of the configuration of the site.  Mrs. Mcallister had said that their old Infocentre used to have websites attatched at the end of the book searches, but they were not appearing now.  It took us some working through and a phone call to Follett till we figured it out.  Again today I did some reshelving and checking in/out of books.

As a side note one of the students who had come in with the geography class came in with a career class and realized she recognized from the camp I work at over the summer.

My driving problem has been solved and I arrived 20 minutes early this morning!  This morning we used some of the AV equipment because Mrs. Mcallister wanted to show the students the new book circulation system, Destiny.  Unfortunately the laptops that we used was not yet equipped with Destiny so we had to figure out how to get it onto the laptop to show on the projector screen.  After several emails of the link, we finally got it working just as the first group of students came in.  So we showed them Destiny and how to search on it.  There is also the neat feature of showing the top ten books checked out in the library that the students liked.  We continued the lesson from yesterday with the geography class with those on the books now working on the computers and vice versa.  Today was their last day working in the library so we had to keep reminding them to work.  Many of them finished and worked on the extra credit that their teacher gave out.  For the earlier classes that are of an average level class, the extra credit was required because the teacher knew that their scores were low and the marking period is ending soon.  The later classes are the more motivated students and the extra credit was optional but most of them took and some had it finished by the end of the period along with their project.

There was a slight snag today while working on the computers, though.  We are not sure what happened but the school's webpage went down cutting off access to the database so the students automatically went to wikipedia and google.  We figured out a roundabout way of getting to the database by just going to google and searching for "Culturegrams"  the database they used.  Logging in from there got the students in. 

Before lunch I started pulling books for a teacher that was going to be doing a topic on the Holocaust and novels about it.  Yesterday Mrs. Mcallister and I created an informal list of those types of books and that was the list I used.  I was not paying attention and I was still pulling books into the lunch break.  Mrs. Mcallister told me about some of the redone libraries and how she and the other librarians in the area wish that the architects would consult them before giving them a library.  Like the one at the elementary school next door has been redone 4 times now.  The last one was a wonderful library but the newest one is horribly lacking but she needed to move to accommodate the expanding school.  The high school now has a new library but because it is brand new, some of the books are still in boxes, leaving the shelves empty.  At lunch I asked Mrs. Mcallister about her policies and she showed them to me later.  She said that had updated them recently (within the last few years).  I hope to get a better look at them this week.

While I was reshelving some books and going through the collection, I found a few copies of books from the Opposing Viewpoints Series, which I felt were very good to have in the library.  Checking books in, I and Mrs. Parry, the paraprofessional, found some glitches still carried over from the week when they had no circulation system.  It would say that the student has something called "Temporary Title created"  and it would say that it was overdue.  Mrs. Parry figured out that if that item was checked back in, it would automatically delete itself.  So now we just have to watch for that title to appear on more students accounts to remove it.

Caitlin Varga came up today because the high school librarian is sick so she came over to view what we were doing.  She and I compared notes for a bit and we helped the last geography class.  She helped me to check out the books for the Holocaust project.  While she was there we had a lock-down drill, where they had to lock all the doors and a guard came and checked all the doors.  There was a different class, reading I believe, that was in using the computers because the laptops they borrowed were not working.  Their teacher took total control of them. 

The whole day Mrs. Parry was attempting to get spine labels to print correctly on the stickers but was having trouble formatting it so she called Follett.  Now they are sending over the stickers that they suggest to use to make it easier.  She had needed to fix some of the paperbacks by Lurlene McDaniel. 

Caitlin leaves at 2:00 and the middle school library also had some of the books that the high school owned but didn't have room to store in the moving process so I helped her take them over to the high school and Caitlin showed me around.  The library seems very nice but still kind of sterile in a way.  I also got to hear first hand how the wall wasn't sound proofed between the music room and the library.  I could hear someone practicing the piano on the other side.  From there I left early because Mrs. Mcallister allowed me too.

Oh and I also believe I figured out the middle school's library sensor.  When Caitlin and I left the alarm went off because there were no cards in the back.  Maybe it is the card that separates the sensors and stops the alarm from going off.

Well today was the first day at my prosem site.  I suppose I'll start off with the unplanned:  I left an hour and fifteen minutes before I was to be there and, getting lost, somehow wound up in Bethlehem and arrived ten minutes late.  The thing is it should only be a 45 minute drive.  I think I missed my exit.  But anyway I got to the school and started by helping with a geography class that was in.  They were working on a country project that was a cooperation between the English, Geography, and Library where they would collect information to make a placemat full of interesting information on their assigned country.  The class was divided in half by the teacher so that half was on the computer using the database Culturegrams and the other half was using books from the 900s.  The ones on the computer had to be monitored to be sure they didn't wander to google and the ones in the books had to watched to make sure they were doing work and not just waiting for the computers tomorrow.  The geography teacher was there all day except two periods so by the middle of the day I was aware of information the students needed and could help them better.

As I was talking to my co-op she mentioned how she uses most of her budget on very few books.  She will add new books to her paperback collection because the kids seem to like those better than hardbacks, they just have to wait longer for the book.  As for her nonfiction section, she really focuses on certain areas due to the curriculum and projects that she helps with, like the country specific books, early history books for the Western Civ. classes (from prehistory to the explorers) because that is as high as is taught in the middle school.  There also used to be a big holocaust project so she has a large number of books, fiction and non-fiction) on that.  Also I talked to her about her periodical section.  She said that no one really uses the magazines and the teachers occasionally read the paper.  She is irritated by the section because she has a five year subscritption and all the magazines would feel like a waste once she stops getting new ones.  The budget, she also said was somewhere in the range of $36,000; a nice big budget.  She uses a good portion of that on her databases, but even one of those the district covers for all the schools.  If there is any excess of money it is used to purchase things for the school that sometimes get housed in the library.  For instance some of that money goes toward a remedial program meant to help with PSSA scores.  They have few audiobooks because no one really asks for them.  I think there are three that they mentioned.

Also when I say 'they" I mean my co-op and her paraprofessional.  My co-op loves her paraprofessional because she is very tech savy and good with the students.  They get along really well although I believe the paraprofessional resents my co-op for instituting a brand new circulation system this late in the school year, because they are having a lot of problems with it.  They switched from InfoCentre to Destiny.  Destiny doesn't use the students' IDs anymore so they had to assign brand new barcodes to the students' names.  Also the week when they were switching the system over  seemed to cause problems with their circulation saying things were lost when they were at check out and adding completely new titles.  Their fines also were not transferred over from InfoCentre correctly so some have fines and others have vanished.  And the students' return books say they haven't been returned so they have fines for those books.

We talked about how she felt about fines too.  She goes back and forth over the idea of collecting it and the district wants to collect it after a different librarian used the money to buy alcohol and other non library uses.  The district asks her to turn in her library fines to be contributed to the general fund but since there has been a restructuring no one has really asked for the money.  She and her paraprofessional use it to buy books that people are interested in right away instead of waiting till the next wave of books.

The collection itself is housed in a circular room (the whole building is a series of circles and pods).  The shelving had to all be done custom and if anything breaks it is, again, to be fixed with a custom job.  My co-op still has her old card catalog but uses it as a computer table.  Because it is high enough to stand at but too high to sit at, it encourages students to use it quickly and sit back down.  There are also 24 computers throughout the lab  all of which have the teacher monitoring station hooked up, to remotely view what the student is doing.  She said she mostly uses this just to turn the computers on/off at opening and closing.

I also went around with my co-op and was introduced to the administration and other teachers in the building.  Between that, checking in/out books, reshelving books, and helping the geography class, I feel my day was well spent.

Title: Holocaust: the events and their impact on real people
Author: Wood, Angela Gluck
Publisher: Dorling Kinserly Limited
Genre: Non-fiction
Intended Audience: 11+

Summary: The  description and stories about the history of the persecution of Jews and ultimately the Holocaust where millions of Jews lost their lives.  It also goes briefly into the other races and people of different beliefs that were destroyed during this time period.  This includes first hand accounts of survivors, written in the book and more in depth on a CD included with the book.  The book provides many photographs of the harshness and brutality.  It also provides many primary documents: letters to family, paintings, propaganda papers, photographs, etc.  It also includes several time lines from late Roman period up to the Renaissance an then other time lines leading up to World War 2 and afterward.  It also went in to information about the aftereffects that were still occurring up to the publishing of the book

Reflection:  This book would be a good resource when working on this subject matter.  With first hand accounts of survivors, and other primary documents this proves to be very resourceful.  The text though is meant more for a late elementary/middle school age student, it still can be read by anyone older than that.  One drawback of the book was it's many resources.  The pages felt cluttered and crowded.  Attention can be easily drawn away from one caption to the next, missing some information that may have more insight into a piece of information provided.  Honestly this book was hard to get through, and several tears were shed.  With images of mothers cradling children in front of firing squads, piles of dead, and people who were slowly dying in the ghettos, there were some pages I could only scan before having to turn the page.

Title: From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun
Author: Jacqueline Woodson
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Intended Age: 13+

Summary:  Melanin Sun is a quiet boy who thinks before he talks, and is slow to speak.  He prefers writing, sharing his thoughts only with himself and the pages.  It's not that he has anything to be super secretive to be about, just the usual, like how to talk to his single mom about the girl he likes.  His life seems content under his mom, EC has the same thought as Mel, how to talk about the girl she likes.  When she confesses that she is gay Mel has no idea how to handle it.  He questions his own sexuality, his whole life, and his normally safe relationship with his mom.  But to top things off his mom is dating a white woman and bringing her to their predominately mixed heritage neighborhood.  Mel finally, slowly, comes to accept his mom's difference and still sees he is still as he always was.

Reflection:  A very pertinent subject reflecting some modern relationship problems, like interracial dating, gay and lesbian relationships, and adolescent relationships.  Mel has to learn to accept some very new and "unacceptable" choices that his mom has placed in front of him.  He feels like he is losing his mom to her new relationship and the new rift that has formed between them.  Mel also talks a lot about feeling different and feeling outside and alone, because he tends to be the quiet kid.  Woodson, I believe, wrote this very well and realistically, capturing all the different emotions from loss, confusion, to happiness, and conveying them so well to the reader.

Title: Dragon Slippers
Author: George, Jessica Day
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children's Books
Genre: Fantasy/Fiction
Intended Age: 10+

Summary:  Orphaned Creel now lives with her well-meaning aunt and uncle, but in order to support the family, they think it best if she is kidnapped by a dragon and rescued by a prince (or someone else with lots of money).  Upon meeting the dragon though, Creel finds that it defies all her expectations.  Expecting to see hoards of gold and jewels, instead this dragon collects shoes.  In a bargain she makes with the dragon, she gets any pair of shoes, she just has to divert the noble's son who is coming to her rescue.  Creel, with her brand new, beautiful, blue shoes, heads off towards the capitol, where she plans to find a job as a seamstress, because she does beautiful embroidery work.  Along the way she is saved from bandits by another dragon and winds up living with him for several weeks.  When she finally reaches the capitol, she befriends some members of the royal family and makes enemies with others.  She also gets a job as a lowly seamstress but soon has customers clamoring for her embroidery.  When she reaches the peak of her popularity, the dragons attack, but not of their own free will.  The enemies to the north had stolen Creel's shoes from the dragon and used their ability to control dragons to start a new war.  After many hardships, the dragons are saved, the shoes returned, and peace is restored, at the cost of some lives.

Review:  Dragon Slippers takes place in a fantasy/medieval setting where dragons roam occasionally, but the social life is still partially related to today's mindset.  Women have more power and can be opinionated and headstrong, like Creel.  And with her stubbornness and will to do what is right wins out in the end and is what saves her friends and the kingdom.  This story shows that even if you come from humble beginnings you can still do something great, if you put your mind to it.  I would recommend   Dragon Slippers for girls ages from 9 and older, and especially if they liked Anne McCaffrey's dragon books.

Title-The Gospel According to Larry
Author-  Janet Tashjian
Genre- Contemporary Realistic Fiction
Audience- 13+

Summary-  Seventeen-year-old Josh Swensen is a loner-philosopher-genius who just wants to make a difference in the world.  But he has to try and maintain his secret online identity as an author of a blog that is getting national attention.  He also has to deal with the fact that the girl he loves sees him as nothing more than a brother.

Reflection-  This book is a huge influence in anti-consumerism and convincing kids it is okay to not buy into the stereotype that society hand feeds us.  Josh starts his website as a thing to keep him from being bored, and it soon grows way larger than he anticipated and he has to deal with threats of being discovered, but at least for a while he is effective in getting people to go out and do things to change our world.  I got so excited when reading this story, thinking he was a real person.  I even went online and searched for references of him.  While there is no real Josh Swensen or Larry (at least as far as I can tell) his words are still getting people to react.  There is a website www.thegospelaccordingtolarry.com and a Facebook persona and Myspace friend that fall under Larry or Josh Swensen.  It is permeating even into our real lives to help convince the young and the old to actually DO something about the state of our world.

Title- When I was older
Author- Garret Freyman-Weyr
Genre- Realistic Fiction/Romance
Intended Age- 14+

Summary- A new friendship with a boy who is attractive and intelligent helps fifteen-year-old Sophie sort out her feelings about her younger brother Erhart, who died three years prior, her seemingly self-centered sister, distant father, and boys (to date or just be friends, now that is the question)

Reflection-  This book was so superb.  I finished it in one sitting.  It deals with the awkwardness of boys who are friends but then soon want to become more than that at an age where dating and who your friends are seem so critical.  It deals with the loss of sibling and how the memories slowly fade over time.  Can that be considered a betrayal to their memory?  Or is that just the way time works, things changing.  Sophie is just so focused on her life, on scheduling it and leaving no time for her to think about the pain of losing her brother, only her "on-purpose memories".  Francis awakens things and ideas in her that she was too afraid to approach before.  This is her story of her realization that, yes time moves forward "in a line or a circle"  but either way the only thing she can be is herself.

Title- After the Goat Man
Author- Byars, Betsy
Illustrator- Hilmer, Ronald
Genre- Realistic Fiction
Suggested Age-8-14 years

Summary- An overweight sensitive boy gains strength and insight to some of his problems through the search of a friend's grandfather, the Goat Man.

Reflection- It is just a normal summer afternoon for three kids, playing Monopoly on the front porch.  Two of them have been playing as a tradition, one of them has never played before (though he said he knew how) and is new to the neighborhood.  Figgy is that boy and he had lived with his grandfather till they told them that their house is now the site of a new highway.  Harold, the overweight kid, wonders why Figgy's grandfather, the Goat Man is so stubborn and thinks that he should just move on.  But then Harold slowly comes to realize that there are some things in life worth being stubborn for.

Title- The Moon and I
Author- Byars, Betsy
Genre- Biography
Suggested Age- 8+

Summary- Betsy discusses her process of writing, ways of inspiration, her work ethic (or lack thereof), and how her life built up to be what it is now, in this fun autobiography.

Reflection-  This was a very fast paced read and it was written in a very simple diction.  She loves using flashbacks and going off on random tangents.  I think with her writing style it makes it feel like you are actually talking to a person because of how often her writng jumps from one subject that was lead to it by something else she was talking about.  Like in chapter when she talks about the first time she owned a snake was when she was seven.  "Back then I didn't want to be a writer.  I didn't know any writers- I had never seen one- but their photographs looked funny, as if they'd been taken to a taxedermist and stuffed." (pg 7).  Her work also has very good imagery and lets your imagination help to take over.    Just reading her biography makes me want to read more of her writings.

  

So I was wondering what in the world I was going to do with this site.  I don't like blogging so much.  But now that I am back in school I may be able to do this thing more often.  And my Cataloging and Young Adult Fiction Professor gave me such an awesome idea.  This is going to become a site for me to put up my different book reviews that I complete this semester, and trust me there's gonna be alot.......so I will try to update this as often as I can!

So now that I'm home I have a craptastic internet connection at best.  It takes me 20 minutes to get done what I would normally have done in 2.  So needless to say that this account will be checked rarely...... i will attempt to check it...you may see more of me  in mid-August but maybe not....You will see more of me come september but thats a long ways a way. 



So I just thought I should have and update and make my page less empty than it already was

Now add this to the list of things i must log into!!  I will be updating randomly here and there just like my DA site.