Blogs

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a funny, tender, yet somber story of two teens meeting at a cancer support group and Augustus Waters falling for Hazel. Augustus is a good looking, very friendly guy who has lost below his knee to cancer. He wears a Prosthetic leg and when he meets Hazel he falls hard for her. But Hazel is a tough cookie and she doesn't fall for Augustus but slowly begins to respond to his constant optimism. Hazel has a very supportive mother and father as does Augustus, but his family is even larger. I just loved the way John Green described these characters; their worlds which includes their homes, especially their bedrooms and then the dreaded hospital. Green uses sarcasm, laughter and empathy in describing how cancer has totally defined their lives; but through their meeting, their relationship, their support group, friends and family, Green brings together friendship, romance and sorrow in a MUST READ for young adults and also adults.

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FOyMG by Amy Fellner Dominy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book! I keep thinking about Ellie, Zeydeh (her grandfather), Devon and Dynamite Doris. Eleanor Taylor is 14 years old, loves to argue, and is excited to be a part of a summer camp for debate and hopes to win a scholarship to the Benedicts School. Ellie has determination, quick wit, humor, and tenacity all going for her, but where she has a conflict is with her religion or should I say, she now has a conflict, but she was previously a very happy Jewish girl with an awesome grandfather who doesn't hesitate (like Ellie) to tell you what is on his mind and to be true to yourself. It is when Ellie receives the scholarship application and it asks about religion that a little nagging starts eating away at Ellie. Also, she wears her grandmother's Star of David for luck and when cute Devon tells her she might want to hide it when she is interviewed by his grandmother that Ellie gets the nagging feeling again. In order to win the scholarship Ellie decides to keep the truth from everyone; but her family finds out and they are very unhappy with her decision. Also things start "sizzling" with Devon and Ellie is all caught up with him, getting ready for her competition, and dealing with her stubborn grandfather. You will totally enjoy this book, these characters and the resolution, YOU HAVE TO GET THIS BOOK!

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The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy by Leah Wilson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Since I read the Hunger Games so long ago, this collection of young adult author essays on many of the Hunger Games trilogy’s different themes was a welcome read. Of interest to many will be the Peeta/ Gale question and Katniss’ balance of brain and heart. The dystopian craze is explored; reality vs. unreality in the games, Katniss as a media symbol in “Reality Hunger,” and Cinna’s designs in “Crime of Fashion.” I especially liked the discussion of the characters suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. For the Hunger Games enthusiast, this collection is a perfect extension.

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Karma by Cathy Ostlere
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book, very very long but so worth the saga and drama during the tumultuous time in India when Indira Gandhi was assasinated. I loved Maya, Sandeep, and understood the failings of her family because of their cultural beliefs.It is 1984 just after Indira Gandhi has been massacred; Maya and her father are caught in the middle of this crisis in India as they have returned from Canada to bring her mother’s ashes to her home in India. Two love stories are explored in this stunning novel in verse; will Maya be able “to speak” to Sandeep and her father?


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These days teh world belongs to cell phone and smartphone users . According to a study by the end of this year, additional than 40 percent of the people will switch over to wireless devices for their basic office use. In fact there are many users who have already started relying on the substitute of smartphone devices and other portable devices like iPad and tablets for their business communications. A wide range of business applications are seen in proving to be an ideal resolution for them to carry out their work with smart ways and ideas. But in the current modern world the quantity of devices and gadgets you use usually face an subject of security which make the people conscious . There was always a risk of losing imperative data and information to people like hackers and crackers. However, the subject was lastly resolved with the plan of VPN or virtual private network. You can find a wide range of VPN software which makes the data safe and sound and secured and make the users carefree while accessing internet.

The ideas like mobile VPN or iPad VPN or VPN Android which acts smart for smartphone and tablet users. With this idea, you can just encrypt the data found over the devices which makes impossible for any user to action smart and have fine time while enjoying a carefree internet usage apart from reaping other benefits including affordability, getting a full-fledged kind of privacy and even gaining access to a couple of censored sites at countries like Middle East and China. Initially, the plan of virtual private network was localized to conventional computer networks at offices and business places. However, gradually when devices like smartphones and tablets came into picture they too faced the similar issues, which was averted to a intense extent by using accurate VPN software.

The earlier versions of android based phones and iPhones didn't had the feature of whole security and safety measures which really hampered the sales of their products, however, when the VPN iPhone came into picture, the subject of security just got away. This is the beauty of mobile virtual private network or VPN mobile a perfect key for rendering mobile workers with safe, reputable, remove access to network resources and information from virtually anywhere. Only a well implemented mobile deployment helps to empower workers with competent resources they require to be helpful while resulting in faster business transactions, superior customer service and eventually making the customers happier and with increased level of revenue at their wallet.

Hence what you come across at the end of the day with mobile VPN are the factors like productivity, security, performance and management. The subject of productivity is seen increasing due to the automatically maintaining connections and application sessions; the security factor protects all your data traffic and wireless cell phone devices with the industry's highest level of encryption. The performance increase as you can see an superior degree of QoS connections giving accurate preference to severe apps and lastly a accurate management of resources are seen with centralized view of wireless deployments with exhaustive kind of reporting. This is all the bliss you can enjoy with the help of virtual private network. So what more any mobile or smartphone user would aspire now, they can carry out any business operation safe and sound.

So Much Closer by Susane Colasanti
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another great Colasanti read about friendship and relationships! Brooke is a genius student (which she hides with bad grades and a bad attitude about school) who has been in SECRET love with Scott Abrams for the last two years. Just when she is about to tell him, Scott’s family is moving to New York. Brooke follows him to NY since they are soul mates and moves in with her dad who left Brooke and her mom when she was a young child. She makes friends with Sadie, Scott and tutors John. As Brooke discovers New York, she begins to find out some good things about herself. A great romance with angst and warm fuzzies (in the book!) girls will pass this around to all their friends.Romance


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Stay by Deb Caletti
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Caletti, Deb. Stay. New York: Simon Pulse, 2011. 978-1-4424-0373-4. 313p. $16.99. Gr. 10-12.
Clara’s story about an obsessive boyfriend is scary, suspenseful and heartbreakingly real. Clara falls hard for a guy and he falls hard for her too, but what Clara tells you now as she relates her love story with Christian is that the tell-tale signs were there from the beginning about Christian’s insecurities. Clara alternates the chapters with her life now; she and her father have had to flee their home and go to a secret beach location because Christian has become obsessive and a stalker since she broke up with him. Caletti does a great job of showing how this relationship has made Clara so insecure about who she is. Fleeing to Washington State with her father provides a much needed time and place where they both confront secrets about themselves and their lives. A must read for teen girls about the dangers of obsessive relationships.




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Rotters by Daniel Kraus
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Joey Crouch is a straight-A student who lives with his mom in Chicago when she is suddenly and horribly killed by a bus. Child Services locates his father; Joey‘s mom has never told Joey anything about him. Imagine arriving in Bloughton, Iowa; your father is nowhere for 3 days; there is no food in the hovel he lives in and it is filthy and filled with old newspapers. Joey gets himself to school and finds students hate him because his father is a garbage man. Joey’s horror story begins and we follow, unable to turn away when we learn his father is a grave robber, that there is a long line of insurrectionists; and one particularly crazy one, Boggs will stop at nothing to destroy Joey and his dad. Along the way you will learn the history of grave robbers, the methods of burials and lots about rats, maggots, death, and decomposition. Joey is so miserable in school with bullying he begins to join his father and learn his trade. You can’t turn away as you follow along with Joey Crouch and meet many unforgettable characters !


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The Princesses of Iowa My book review of The Princesses of Iowa by M. Molly Backes due out 5/8/12.

· Posted at http://pollyanna.pollyanna.blogspot.com; forwarded through Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/pseudandry and http://teacherlibrarian.ning.com

· The review will first be posted the week of March 4, 2012.

· Short summary from http://www.netgalley.com:

What happens when the only escape from crushing despair is betrayal?

It's the hottest summer on record in New Jersey and soon Scilla Davis must stand trial for her involvement in a deadly speedboat accident. With the possibility of conviction looming, life seems empty, unreal, and utterly hopeless. Watching her best friend Willow destroy herself with drugs and booze is especially painful. Yet Scilla can't manage to wrest Willow-or herself-from a path of self-destruction.

With a new drug called Ferocity sweeping the nation, an FBI agent is eager to make a bust. He offers Scilla a way out of this nightmare. But is she willing to betray her own drugdealing boyfriend?

I initially chose this book to review because it is set in New Jersey and so are my students and my school library. I'm glad I chose this book because most teenagers I know, regardless of their relationship -- or lack thereof -- to illegal, recreational drugs, deal with the issues of rebellion or at least of gaining independence from their "parental units." The main character, Priscilla (Scilla) is fraught with peer pressure and questionable self-esteem. The author, Alissa Grosso, does a great job of creating tension based on loyalty vs responsibility.

Scilla and her best friend Willow are financial opposites. Willow is an "upper, middle class" teen whose Mother spoils her in spite of her father's protests, while Scilla must work at the local Quik Mart in spite of a spate of recent robberies. Scilla has an on-again, off-again relationship with Willow's older brother, who is also a rich kid, but he supplements his income by dealing drugs. Scilla describes Willow and Randy's parents as "nutjobs." Scilla lives with her mother, who "always has some reason to be unhappy with me," as well as with Scilla's friendship with Willow.

The story really began the prior summer when the three teens and Randy's friend, Tigue, borrow Tigue's parents' speed boat for a drunken joy ride. They ended up killing a passenger on another small boat. Their trial is at the end of this summer. Though many adults -- a court appointed attorney, her Social Studies teacher, an FBI agent, and her mom -- try to help Scilla maintain a record of good character until the trial begins, Scilla's loyalties are tested as she struggles between what her high, drunk and promiscuous peers expect of her and what the adults expect.

Whether as a matter of fairness, a reflection of humanity, or as a backdrop to highlight Scilla's attributes, the adults in the story are portrayed as flawed as the teens are. Scilla's mom holds a grudge against the upper, middle class; Willow's parents are disciplinary polar extremes; the FBI agent makes a pass at Scilla; and Pablo the Perpetually Stoned is, well, perpetually stoned.

As a bildungsroman, the reader begins to see the beginning of a more mature, more responsible Scilla as the story progresses. However, just as actual teenagers may take more than one summer to grow up, Scilla does not neatly reach her full maturation by the end of the story. This is painfully clear when Scilla doesn't accept Tigue's explanation of his primary culpability for the accident as he describes it in court.

Grosso draws recurring analogies of Scilla as Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman. Making both military and personal comparisons between Scilla and Sherman distracted me from the story rather than enhanced my experience. Since I am not familiar with Sherman's story, I felt as though I was reading a (wholly unnecessary) frame story. It was as if I had to employ two different reading styles, seesawing back and forth between concentrating on understanding the connections between Scilla and Sherman or simply enjoying the teenagers' tales as they unfolded.

Throughout the novel, I really enjoyed Grosso's snarky, sarcastic, but witty sense of humor. You'll forgive me if I don't list any of them here. I don't want to be like a movie trailer that gives away the punchline before you even get to see the movie.

Remember that this book's premise is peer pressure, complete with sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll, and while they certainly are teen issues, I recommend Grosso's treatment of them for older teens. Unfortunately, though the repercussions are periodically displayed, there are LOTS of drunk driving and under-the-influence driving incidents in the book. At no time do any of the underage teens hesitate to get into a car with any other teen - sober or not. Additionally, Scilla is quite open about her lesbian daydreams. That being said, the teen characters will appeal to real teens, and I will be purchasing this book for my high school's library.

Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a wonderful, intense novel in verse concerning Lupita’s close Mexican American family who must deal with her mother’s cancer and the heartache it brings. Lupita puts her life on hold to care for her siblings as they fervently wish their mother good health. With the loss of her mother, Lupita must learn to live with life’s limitations, star in the school play, and write her deepest thoughts and fears under the shade of the mesquite in her yard. A novel of affirmation and hope, the best choice for the 2012 Pura Belpré Award Winner!



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Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fifteen year old Lina’s life in Lithuania changes drastically when the Stalin regime brands her family, “thieves and prostitutes.” They are rounded up and forced from their homes and their land to the deprivation of Russian Siberia. Separated from her imprisoned father; Lina, her mother, and little brother, each try in their own way to survive the brutality of the Russian soldiers and the harshness of their environment. In the twelve years that they are brutalized, fall ill, and starve; thousands die, but it is through a determination to live to see their homeland, that drives these deportees to triumph through the hell of their imprisonment. If you loved The Book Thief, this book will speak to how the world must never let this kind of genocide ever occur again.

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Hi Everyone!

The National Forum on Information Literacy, under the auspices of Dr. Sharon A. Weiner, NFIL V.P. and W. Wayne Booker Chair in Information Literacy at Purdue University, is spearheading a national campaign to secure gubernatorial information literacy proclamations from all 50 states and territories. 

As most of you know, President Obama issued a presidential proclamation in 2009 establishing October as National Information Literacy Awareness Month, the first national recognition of this critical teaching and learning concept. 

In October 2011, Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts issued an proclamation describing the importance of information literacy to the citizens of the Commonwealth. 

The National Forum's mission is simple - mainstream information literacy practice.  Seeking gubernatorial proclamations underscores that mission.  And we cannot do it without your support. 

A number of information literacy advocates have already volunteered to pursue proclamations in their states. The process, in most states, is quite simple and not complicated.  

We welcome your involvement...please contact Dr. Weiner directly at sw@infolit.org for a template and details on how you can become involved.  Thanks!

Co-founders of Flat Classroom®, Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis, are excited to be able to offer this global collaborative project to classrooms around the world. This project will run as a pilot for the coming semester, February-April 2012 and be open to Prep/Kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2 classrooms (4-7
year old students).
Can very young students effectively connect, communicate, and collaborate in a global project?
What does this look like? What products can students in mixed classroom teams co-create?
What activities and structure can we design and implement to scaffold this collaboration? There
are many wonderful opportunities out there already for students to connect using technology
tools. However the aim in this project is also to encourage students in different places to
collaborate, not just communicate, and to enhance understanding of cultures and life styles
beyond the immediate environment.
We invite teachers who believe global collaboration has a place in their classroom. We invite
those who want to improve digital citizenship and cultural understanding, leading to global
competency amongst students and teachers. We invite teachers who have some digital fluency
and access to digital tools who want to use them in meaningful ways to connect with others and
learn together.
The ‘Building Bridges to Tomorrow’ call for applications is open now! Classrooms will be
selected for the pilot and announced before the end of February. Following a teacher kick-off
meeting, classrooms will work collaboratively through March and April with final products and
celebrations taking place late April and into May.
We are looking for teachers who are creative and able to work collaboratively to help us build a
meaningful experience for the classrooms and the wider school communities. Apply now!
‘Building Bridges to Tomorrow’ is part of the series of Flat Classroom® Projects created by
Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis. Find out more from the Flat Classroom® website, and from our
recently released book, “Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds: Move to Global Collaboration
One Step at a Time”.
Application Form for Building Bridges to Tomorrow: http://tinyurl.com/flatclassK-2
Flat Classroom® Projects: http://flatclassroomproject.net
Flat Classrooms® Teacher Network: http://flatclassrooms.ning.com
Contact us: fcp@flatclassroom.org
Directors, Vick Davis and Julie Lindsay
For more about the pedagogy and benefits of adding global collaboration to your curriculum,
buy Julie and Vicki's book Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds from Pearson Publishing.
www.flatclassroombook.com

I would love to find a job as a School Librarian used to be one but got laid off last year.

Stay with Me by Paul Griffin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Loved, loved, loved this book! I loved Paul Griffin's Mack Morse and the slow way he is drawn to CeCe (even though her older brother Anthony sees them together)but this is a very tough book to read; at one point I was so unsettled, I was unsure if I wanted to continue to read. I am so glad I did! Mack has a record, he doesn't look you in the eye, and he has a father who is mostly drunk (that is why mom left)but Anthony sees the good in Mack and it is this good that the reader must constantly go back to because Mack is his own worst enemy in some ways. But the things I loved the most about Mack is his LOVE for pit bulls and the uncanny way he has of calming them and his deep, abiding love for CeCe. Their relationship was so beautiful; they tell each other their secrets and give of themselves totally for each other. I needed to remember this throughout this story because when bad things happened (and they happened alot)I was plunged to the depths of despair for this 15 year old boy, who is not a student due to dyslexia, and can't seem control his rage on his own. It is the wonderful pit bulls that Griffin uses to heal Mack and CeCe and later her family. The other characters like CeCe's mom and Vince are so real. Vince sees Mack as a dog trainer and works to make Mack believe he can truly succeed in this profession. CeCe's mom is a mess; she loves her family but handles stress by drinking, coloring her hair and baking most bad cornbread. What I liked about Griffin's characters is that they all see the goodness in Mack even if he doesn't see it in himself and it is this abiding belief in him as a person they love and believe in that must sustain them all. I think this urban fiction will appeal to girls, guys and the reluctant reader. Also the dog lover, especially those who love the pit bulls, despite their bad rap. This book is a romance, realistic, and a stunning YA novel I will be recommending to my students.

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Curated Articles about Information Fluency

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-information-fluency

My first day back in a library was great.  Met a lot of great kids.  We have some really prolific readers with some pretty eclectic tastes.  I love that! 

Other than that, got my online calendar set up so that teachers can schedule library time via the website.  I also created an online collaboration form.  That should really simplify things for planning.  I hope it does anyway.

I'm going to announce my plans for the library advisory committee today.  I'll post how well it went later.