Hello Book Bums families!
If your family celebrates Easter, we wish you a very happy one this weekend! We may have April showers lately, but we are starting to think about summer. In the newsletter this week we share great resources for hosting book clubs and other book-themed gatherings with your kids.
Studies show that a great way to raise a reader is to be a reader. So let your kids see you reading. Take a trip together to the library and select your own book while your kids make their choices. Happy reading!
"The only thing that you absolutely have to know is the location of the library."
-Albert Einstein
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Word of the Week
personification (per-sah-nih-fih-kay-shun) noun/person, place, or thing - giving human qualities or actions to an animal or object.
Writing that the flowers danced in the breeze is an example of personification.
Literary Calendar
• April 16th is National Librarians Day.
• Librarians are the keepers of so much knowledge; they are an amazing resource for readers and learners of all ages.
• Celebrate by having your child draw a picture or write a note of thanks to your local librarian.
"When in doubt, go to the library."
-from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Tips for Raising Readers and Writers
If your kids hate reading, please feel free to lift the burden of having to read for a few weeks at the beginning of the summer, but please don’t take the summer off from reading. That’s not going to help.
If your child is a struggling reader, summer break is the perfect time to gain some ground. Don’t cross your fingers and hope that a few months of maturity is going to make the difference. It won’t. Don’t look for more of the same instruction that hasn’t been working. That’s a waste of time and money. What should you do? Hire a qualified, fun-focused tutor who presents a plan to help your child move forward and is equipped to do so as quickly as possible. Of course, we highly recommend explicit, systematic phonics instruction for beginning readers. It’s not too early to begin searching for the support your child needs.
TIP *Many parents are worried about their kids’ comprehension, but the real problem is almost always that their kids aren’t reading with accuracy. If your kids are reading words incorrectly, they will not be able to adequately understand what they’re reading. Really smart kids can fake teachers out for quite some time, but word guessing is often the culprit when it comes to “comprehension” issues.
On the other hand, if your child is an adequate reader (you even have nationally normed test scores that make you feel confident that this is so), but s/he doesn’t like to read . . . We’re absolutely dedicated to helping YOU to promote a love for reading this summer! You can do this. We can help.
This week, we’re encouraging you to host at least one summer book club for your kids! We’re highlighting a great book to use at your first book club, and we’re even providing some fun-focused downloadable tools you can use to ensure your book club is a great success!
From our Bookshelves
Alvin Bixby: Hulking, knuckles of steel, hideous breath, foul temper. Kids call him Bubba.
Nolan Byrd: Puny, power walker, math genius, can’t keep shoes tied. Kids call him Nerd.
Bubba has been the bane of Nolan’s existence for five long years. So when Mr. Green asks the class to become reporters, Nolan decides he’ll write an exposé—on Bubba. He doesn’t want to sign his name to it, so Nolan creates a secret identity for himself—on the Internet. He launches Shredderman.com as a place where truth and justice prevail—and bullies get what’s coming to them.
This hilariously triumphant story is for any kid who’s ever dreamed of unleashing their own inner superhero!
(This is a great book club book for students just finishing second grade and beyond.)
Tips for Families
Last week we shared that hosting or participating in a Book Share is good idea to successfully incentivize reading. We mentioned, too, that hosting book clubs for your kids and their friends is another way to promote reading at home this summer. This week we are sharing some tips about how to host a fun book club for kids, and we’re also providing plans for a book club using the book Shredderman, by Wendelin Van Draanen.
1. Share the book club idea with your kids. Tell them that you’re willing to host a fun-focused book club for them and their friends in a few weeks.
2. Choose a book. You can always ask your favorite librarian about books that are popular with kids your kids’ ages and even which books aren’t popular, but should be. At Book Bums, we try to find “off the beaten path” kinds of books so everyone—even the most well-read reader— enjoys a new book. Ensure that the book is readily available and reasonably priced so that everyone you invite has access to the book. Allot an appropriate amount of time for parents to get the books and for kids to read them. (Audio books “count” as reading.)
3. Schedule the event and ask your kids to help create invitations. You may wish to provide small stack of sticky notes with the invitations to encourage kids to mark confusing, interesting, and important pages in their books as they read. TIP *Be sure to inquire about medical conditions and food allergies with the invitation so you have appropriate snacks for everyone. You can also invite the kids to bring with them some good books that they no longer wish to keep for a book swap!
4. Create a space for the book club to take place. Make sure everyone is comfortable and that everyone can see one another. Circles make for great book clubs, but even picnic tables work! If you’re doing a book swap, designate a table where kids can place their books.
5. Prepare the snacks that have a direct connection to the book you’ve chosen. (Think: edible aquarium-blue Jello with shark snacks, unicorn cupcakes, or any other fun foods that complement the reading of the book.)
6. To encourage the active participation of all the kids, have kids take turns drawing book-focused questions from a bowl. The one who draws the question can answer it and then ask for input from the others, or s/he can simply ask the group. This means that no one person is in charge.
7. You may wish to complete a book-associated craft to complement the story, but this is not necessary.
8. Each participant takes home the number of books that matches the number of books they brought. TIP *It’s a good idea for the hosting family to have some extra books on hand to ensure that all kids get at least one book they’re excited about reading.
Poem of the Week
I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud
By William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Wordology Workshop
• The Greek root nym means name.
• You can find it in words like anonymous, which means unnamed. In Shredderman, Nolan wants to be anonymous.
• Nym also appears in a lot of English class words such as synonym, antonym, and homonym.
• What other words can you think of that use this root?
Practical Grammar
Have you ever heard the term Eggcorns? Yes. You read that correctly. Eggcorns. It’s the perfect name for this thing that happens when we mishear a word and wrongly assume that one thing was said, when it was actually something else, entirely.
When someone heard the word acorn, they wrongly assumed that those little things were called eggcorns. It sounds very similar, and one could justify that an acorn is similar to an egg. It’s plausible.
This happens all the time, doesn’t it?
When I was a little girl, I had a calendar on my wall where I’d written the word “extrasizes.” My dad asked about it. He shared with me that the actual term was exercises to which I replied, “Oh. I thought it was extrasizes, because that’s what people do when they want to remove “extra sizes.” That was one of my first eggcorns.
The thing is, we probably have eggcorns that we don’t even know are eggcorns!
Here are fifteen examples:
1. For all intensive purposes . . . is actually . . . For all intents and purposes.
2. Nip it in the butt . . . is actually . . . Nip it in the bud.
3. Oldtimers disease . . . is actually . . . Alzheimer’s disease.
4. Mute point . . . is actually . . . Moot point.
5. All for not . . . is actually. . . All for naught.
6. An old wise tale . . . is actually . . . and old wives’ tale.
7. A safety deposit box . . . is actually . . . a safe deposit box.
8. A rot iron fence . . . is actually . . . a wrought iron fence.
9. Chomping at the bit . . . is actually . . . champing at the bit. (What?!)
10. Deep seated . . . is actually . . . deep seeded.
11. Towing the line . . . is actually . . . toeing the line.
12. Peak your interest . . . is actually . . . pique your interest.
13. Wet your appetite . . . is actually . . . whet your appetite.
14. Throws of passion . . . is actually . . . throes of passion.
15. Lip-singing . . . is actually . . . lip synching.
If you didn’t mix many of these up, you are probably a reader! It’s hard to know what folks are saying when you cannot see the words in print. I often marvel when I notice, for the first time, the spellings of words. I can recall the time—just a couple of years ago—when I realized that there are two words that say /eek/.
She saw the mouse and screamed, “Eek!”
This one sounds the same but is spelled differently: eke
To eke is to squeeze every bit out of something (such as a vacation) or to make something last. For example, I eke out every last bit of toothpaste from my toothpaste tube.
The point is not to feel dumb when we make errors or to make others feel small when they make errors. Rather, it’s fun to notice just how magnificent (and complex) our language is. And, certainly, we all deserve grace when navigating this language of ours.
Scholars agree that the invention of the process for recording words began only about 5,500 years ago. Now that’s incredible!
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