Hello Book Bums families!
Did you see the recent stories about the Scripps Spelling Bee champion? You can read about the spell-off here. This week in the newsletter, Dr. Christy shares her tips for spelling well. We also have 88 book recommendations to see you through summer. Do you have a favorite that's not on our list? Respond to this email and share it with us. We love to hear from you!
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Word of the Week
languid (lan-gwid) adjective/describing word - relaxed, listless, lacking energy
In the summer heat, we moved at a languid pace down the sidewalk.
Literacy Calendar
- June 5 is the birthday of American author Rick Riordan.
- Riordan is the creator of the Percy Jackson books along with several other mythologically-based series.
- You can learn more about him and all the worlds he's created as well as find activities and lessons to accompany his books at his website.
From our Bookshelves
I just listened to Buckeye, a historical fiction novel, by Patrick Ryan. The story takes place in Ohio, and it’s about two families whose lives intersect in quite an unexpected way. The setting is a small fictional town during World War II; the characters are complex and intriguing, and the story is beautifully told.
Buckeye is a Jenna Bush Hager’s book club book, and author Ann Patchett shared that it’s, “A glorious sweep of a novel.” But . . . it is a bit of a serious and even somber tale. The content warning shares that it includes discussion of death, illness, racism, antigay bias, mental illness and addiction. I’d add that it includes a clairvoyant character who hosts seances and can communicate with the dead. Even so, I thoroughly enjoyed the story.
Tips for Families
This is adorable, and I ain’t lion! If you’re like me, you want bees and fireflies and all the other critters that keep our planet thriving to visit at least part of your yard this summer, you may have eschewed spraying your lawn with chemicals. How about inviting your kids to use an old Amazon box or some other cardboard pieces you’re preparing to recycle and make these lions. Aren’t they darling?! Your kids enjoy spending some time outdoors and you’ll have fewer “weeds” in your yard. You can even gift them to neighborhood friends!
Tips for Raising Readers and Writers
If you’re heading to the library and you’d like to find some books that go beyond the simple entertainment of a great story, I’m sharing a list I found a long while back that you can refer to as you’re making your selections. Each book has a worthy focus—but one of my very favorites is Calvin Can’t Fly: The Story of a Bookworm Birdie. I simply can’t recommend it enough. I shared it during an afterschool program this past school year, and a friend said she just had to get the book for her grandkids. I could share so many more, and perhaps I will over the coming months.
Practical Grammar
I’ve been doing a lot of assembly work recently, and to help pass the time I’ve been listening to books on Audible. I have come to realize that I don’t enjoy these books quite as much as reading “real” books. I’m sure it’s because I’m listening with only one ear as I’m focusing on other tasks.
But as I listened to Buckeye, I realized a benefit of listening to books.
For my whole life, I’ve read this word, askance, incorrectly. I always said /ask-ence/ with the accent on ask. As I listened to the story of Cal and Becky and Margaret and Felix, I realized my mistake. It’s pronounced /uh-scants/.
Do yourself a favor and listen to more books. You might just find a couple of words you’re pronouncing incorrectly. Or . . . maybe it’s just me.
News from Book Bums
It is with great disappointment I share that I arrived at a local elementary school building, along with ten devoted educators and close to ten dedicated volunteers, to serve struggling readers in our community—and not one student was in attendance. No one in the building where we were serving had distributed our flyers or informed families with struggling readers that there was an opportunity for their children to receive, at no cost to them, outstanding literacy instruction that has moved hundreds and hundreds of children from struggling to soaring.
So, I’m recruiting children.
The aim of The Faith Alliance is to alleviate local poverty and demonstrate Christian love. They acknowledge that the link between financial stability and literacy is profound and that when adults have strong reading skills, they’re significantly less likely to experience poverty.
If you know someone who could not afford one-on-one tutoring, but they have an elementary-aged child who’s struggling AND they can arrange transportation to Woodland Elementary School (6923 Dutchland Parkway, Liberty Township, OH 45044) on Tuesday mornings from 10:45 until noon or Wednesday mornings from 10:45-noon (and there’s even a free lunch available from 12:00-12:30 as well as free, fun-focused activities from 12:30-1:30 most every day), please invite them to email me at christy@bookbums.com. We’re serving twenty kids going into grades 3-6 on Tuesdays and ten kids going into grades 1 & 2 on Wednesdays all summer long.
This is a first come, first served opportunity. We’d love to serve everyone; but to serve kids well, we need to limit enrollment.
There is a permission form that must be turned in (I’ll send it via email), and kids cannot arrive early and must be picked up on time. No one from the literacy instruction will be staying with the students for the other optional activities, but The Faith Alliance has staff and volunteers to host the children for lunch and activities.
Please invite anyone you can think of who might need reading support to contact me as soon as possible. We do not want to arrive at an empty building ever again.
Tips for Teachers
- Look at the letters.
- Make the sounds, aloud, as you slide your eyes from left to right across the word and acknowledge the letters that represent each sound.
- Note any unexpected or tricky parts.
- Stretch the sounds apart, in slow motion, as you write the word. You’ll write the sounds you say.
- Typically, it takes 1-5 times of deliberate practice to nail down the spelling.
Chanting letter names or mindlessly copying the letters or simply staring at the letters trying to imprint them into your mind likely won’t work for you or your kids.
To promote orthographic mapping—so you’ll know the word on sight and can spell it correctly—simply follow steps 1-5.
- canceled (Ranked the #1 most-searched spelling in Ohio)
- gray (We use a-y in America and they use e-y in England.)
- receipt (C-e makes the c say /s/, and e-i follows the rule that says, “When you have two vowels together, the first on says its name.”)
Which words give you trouble?
Wordology Workshop
- The Latin root nym means name.
- It appears in many words that we use to name groups of words, including contranyms.
- A contranym is a word that has two opposite meanings, depending on the context.
- For example, cleave can mean to split apart or stick together.
- Dust can mean to sprinkle with particles or to wipe away those particles.
- What other contranyms can you think of?
Just for Fun
- Roosevelt read an average of one book per day.
- Harvard University Library has four books bound in human skin.
- Iceland tops the world in per capita book reading.
- People who read books are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.
- In Brazilian prisons, reading a book can reduce a prisoner's sentence by four days.
- The most stolen book is the Bible.
- Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables contains a sentence with 823 words.
- Virginia Woolf wrote all her books while standing.
- Leo Tolstoy's wife hand-copied the manuscript of War and Peace seven times.
- There are over 20,000 books written about chess.
- Noah Webster took 36 years to write his first dictionary.
- The Mahabharata is the only book or epic in the world with over 1,200 characters.
- Words like hurry and addiction were invented by Shakespeare.
- If all the books in the New York Public Library were lined up, they would stretch 8 miles.
- The longest novel ever written is In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, with over 1.2 million words.
- The first book ever printed was the Gutenberg Bible in 1455.
- J.K. Rowling is the first billionaire author, thanks to the success of the Harry Potter series.
- Charles Dickens was paid by the word, which is why many of his books are so lengthy.
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