Previewing books: Judge a book by its cover and its spine!

Last year, whenever a student would tell me that he or she couldn't find a book they liked, my stock answer was, "We have 25000 books. Surely we can find something you like!" I'd then go off and pull books off the shelves for students to try.

I realized that perhaps for some of those reluctant readers, knowing that there's 25000 books might be overwhelming. How does one choose when there are so many choices?

I also noticed last year that most of our students will look only as far as the books on a front facing display and will ignore lots and lots of great titles that are displayed spine out. We can't display all of our books with their covers facing out. There isn't enough space - remember I said we have 25000 books? So, this year, I'm doing the next best thing: training students to locate those great titles when they can only see the spine. This also supports the work they are doing in their literacy classes on growing as readers.

There's lots of information on the spine of a book. Some of it comes from the publisher: the title of the book, the author. Sometimes, if the book is part of a series, the publisher may add the number of the book in the sequence. At our library, fiction is arranged alphabetically by author's last name, which means that all the books by an author are together. This last has been a novel idea for many of our fourth graders who hadn't realized that looking for books by a favorite author is a good book selection skill in the library. 

Some of the information on the spine of the book is placed there by the library. The call number sticker, for example, lets you know where the book can be found and who wrote it. This year, all new books have a neon green sticker at the top. For books in a particular genre, we have color and picture coded stickers. All that information, and you haven't even pulled the book out! 

Pick a fiction shelf and let your fingers do the walking, as you read book spines one after the other. Once you find a title that grabs you, pull that book out. 

Look at the cover. Read the title and the author. There may be a one-line recommendation like "By the best selling author of That Book That I Really Liked." Look at the cover art and start making predictions about what the book is like. 

Turn the book over. Many times the back cover has a summary of the book or recommendations from famous authors or popular newspapers. Read the back. Notice how the art work on the back matches the front. Adapt your prediction if you need to.

Open the book to the front jacket flap. This is usually where the book has a longer summary. Read the summary. 

Open the book to the back jacket flap. Here you usually find a very short author biography. Sometimes they can be really funny. Read to learn a little bit about the author - and possibly laugh a little too. 

You're almost finished with your preview! Turn to the first page and read it. Use the five finger rule to decide if it is a good fit for you and to see if you are interested in seeing what happens.

Your preview is finished. You can now decide if you're going to keep reading or if you're going to return the book. If not, please return to its place on the shelf. Use the call number to put it back where it belongs so that others can also find it. 

Grade 4 has been practicing this with fiction books, but you would also preview non-fiction books in the same way.

Go ahead, exercise your previewing muscles. Soon you'll be getting a just right reading workout!

Cool and Sweet as Summer Reading

CAC ES students were full of stories about all the books they read this summer. We were so happy to hear all about them!

Here's a little prize for those who read during the summer. Popsicles are cool and sweet like summer reading, so students who fill out a paper popsicle template will be treated by the ES library to a cool and sweet real popsicle on Thursday at dismissal.

Lots of new books for the new school year!

I spent a great hour today browsing through our many new books. Here are a few covers. Can't wait to read some more tomorrow and display them for our students to see on Wednesday!

Clicking on each cover should take you to the book's page on Goodreads.com. If you don't have a Goodreads account yet, you should! It's like Facebook but for readers. It has covers, summaries and reviews for every book published in English, and lots published in other languages as well. You invite your friends and they get to see what you are reading, as well as recommend books for you. One of my favorite features is the Goodreads challenge. Every year for the last 3 I have challenged myself to read 365 books. As I count picture books and children's literature in addition to the adult books I read, it's not that hard to reach that number, but right now I'm 28 books behind!! Good thing we have so many great new books.

2016 Reading Challenge

Mrs. Fitzgerald has read 198 books toward her goal of 365 books.

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198 of 365 (54%)

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Note: As I read more and more books, this widget may change. Right now there are 18 wonderful picture books but since CAC has a great book collection, it could change to include different. Moral of the story: Read the blog posts when they arrive!! :-)

Josianne Fitzgerald's favorite books »

Welcome to the 2016-2017 School Year

We are very excited to be starting school again and seeing all the smiling faces of our ES students! I hope you all had a great summer holiday and are ready for a super new year of learning and reading.

Here are some reminders for our students:

We share the library with everyone at CAC

This is our golden rule, and every behavior expectation follows from it:

• We use quiet voices in the library because other people are working, reading or playing here
• We return our library books promptly because other people want to read them too
• We walk in the library so we don't disturb other people
• We clean up after ourselves so that the library is neat and clean for others

You get the idea. We share the library with everyone, so we have to act like we would like others to act. 

Share what you read!

We hope you did a lot of reading this summer. Stop by the library and fill out a summer reading form. You'll be entered into a lucky drawing and could win a prize to reward your efforts. Of course, the best reward of reading was the enjoyment you got out of it so don't worry if you don't get a prize. 

Library bags

Remember to bring your library bag to library every week. Your library bag helps you:

• by helping you carry your books from the library and back
• by protecting your books from dust and damage
• by giving you a place to keep your books when you are not reading them at home

Library bags can be purchased from the school store. The school store bags are the perfect size for our library books. 

If a student has forgotten his/her library bag, we have a small number of bags that can be checked out. Once those run out, students without bags may only take one library book home. 

Summer checkouts

All library materials checked out for the summer need to be returned by Wednesday, August 17, or on the first day students return to CAC. Students with overdue summer checkout books will not be allowed to take books home. 

Tips for parents

Parents, visit this link for tips on how to help your students grow as super readers. 

Ways a Parent Can Help a Child with Reading

Top 10 in Non-Fiction for 2105-2016

Yesterday we saw the top 10 fiction books for this school year. Here are the top 10 in non-fiction. These are the non-fiction books that were checked out the most.

#10, #9, #8, #7 - Garfield books. With about a dozen new Garfield comics this year, the fat cat of comics continues to be popular among students.

#6 - We added quite a few Minecraft manuals this year, and they have been continuously checked out. Will be adding more copies next year to keep up with demand!

#5 - Also new this year were many crafts books to refresh our crafts collection and to compliment the crafts we offered at recess times. 

#4 - So glad to see that the crafts books we purchased this year were in such demand. More crafts books for next year?

#3 - We had lots of interest in these "girls only" books this year. Girls rule!

#2 - The Guinness World Records books are always popular. We keep one copy of the newest book as a reference and circulate another copy. 

#1 - Girl power! Our fourth graders, boys and girls, were fascinated with this title. Will have to get at least one more title as it disappears from the circulation cart as soon as it is checked in!

Which non fiction books were your favorites this year? Let us know in the comments. 

Top 10 Books for the Year

As check outs for summer reading pick up, here's a list of the 10 ten titles checked out this year. 

#10 - The Diary of  Wimpy Kid books are always in demand. This one is number 4. 

#9 - Another Diary of a Wimpy Kid, this one is number 2 in the series.

#8 - This is the ninth title in the Captain Underpants series, and features a trip back in time to deal with a bully. 

#7 - All the titles of Pinkalicious big favorite with girls young and old!

#6 - In this title, Pinkalicious learns about the power that comes from staying true to herself. 

#5 - We have a large selection of Star Wars beginning readers and they're most often always checked out. This one is written like a non-fiction book. Interesting that it is about the bad guys. 

#4 - Another Captain Underpants title, this is the fourth in the series. 

#3 - In this title, Pinkalicious deals with the Tooth Fairy. 

#2 - The next to last book in the series. We received book 10 in December, so it did not make it on the list, but it's sure to feature in next year's list. 

#1 - Pinkalicious, by Victoria Kann, is the most checked out book of the year!

Online Summer Reading

The end of the year at a school is usually super busy. The ES library has been a hive of activity as well, and it's just kicking up into high gear as we race to collect all the library materials in time for the last day of school. Our school policy is to withhold report cards for students with overdue materials, and I always try my hardest to make sure that no child gets blocked. So far, in my eight years as a librarian, I haven't been able to accomplish that, but...there's still this year!

One of the things we do during the last weeks of school is promote our online reading materials. While students are allowed, and encouraged, to check out books for summer reading, we also know that in this day of ubiquitous Internet, online options are welcome, especially for our expat community. Summer means long travel times and ebooks pack light.

Here are a few options for online children's reading.

Online reading on the Visual Tab

The Visual Tab houses a treasure house of learning resources during the school year, and is available year round to students wherever there is an Internet connection. We have a page of online reading for children with links to our Overdrive collection (more on that later) and reading websites. 

The Current Events for Kids page has a collection of online news sites for children, from different countries and in different languages. As of the time of typing, I don't have a website for children in Arabic. If you know of one, please do let me know in the comments.

The Children's Online Books page has links to several websites offering online children's books, including our Overdrive collection.

The International Children's Digital Library has books in many different languages. Many of the books can be read for free. A free account allows users to upload books of their own.

Starfall is a literacy website for younger students. Many of our second and third graders welcomed it as a long lost friend, and spent a lot of the time in the lesson playing its educational games.

Storyline Online is sponsored by the Screen Actors Guild and the Entertainment Industry Foundation. It features famous US TV actors reading favorite picture books. This is a great mentor site for reading with expression.

Myths and Legends is a site that offers myths, legends and folktales from different countries. Most of the countries are Anglo-Saxon, with a sprinkling of stories from other cultures. The site also allows users to submit their own stories.

Lit2Go is a collection of stories, novels and poetry in mp3 format. It is sponsored by the University of South Florida. Download the mp3 and play through iTunes or an mp3 player app.

StoryNory offers stories in podcast episodes. Each episode can be downloaded individually or subscribed to through a podcast app.

YASync is a site that offers 2 free downloadable audiobooks per week of the summer. These are suitable for older students.

Overdrive eBook Collection

CAC has a large collection of ebooks available through Overdrive. Books can be read online or downloaded to a mobile device app. Instructions for using Overdrive can be found here. 

Although CAC has two separate collections for the elementary school and the middle-high schools, we cannot separate our ebooks separately, so parents are urged to supervise their elementary school students' ebook choices. 

To access the CAC Overdrive collection, patrons must log in with their single sign on username and password. 

A link to Overdrive is available via the Visual Tab's Children's Online Books, or by logging in to the library catalog. 

TumbleBooks

TumbleBooks is another collection of ebooks, featuring animated picture books, ebooks with a read aloud function, graphic novels, audiobooks, non-fiction videos and more. We actually have 2 different collections: the original TumbleBooks, for students up to grade 3 and TumbleBookCloud Junior, for students in grades 3 and above. However, after trying both out this week with grades 3 to 5, we all think that the original TumbleBooks has the better selection of ebooks. 

To access TumbleBooks, you will need to log in to the library catalog using the Quick Login or your single sign on. Scroll all the way down on the homepage and note the username and password for TumbleBooks.

Scholastic BookFlix and TrueFlix

BookFlix and TrueFlix are 2 other ebook collections. 

BookFlix was the original database. It pairs an animated video of a popular and/or award winning book with an ebook. It offers comprehension games, short author bios, and links to related websites. 

TrueFlix is for older students and links to social studies curriculum. It pairs a short documentary with an ebook. 

To access these, log in with the Quick Login or your single sign on to the library catalog, and scroll down to their links. Note the username and password listed for each. 

And there's more!

If you or your child is more interested in non-fiction material, explore the databases we provide. Find links and login credentials on the library catalog's homepage. (Access the homepage by logging in with the Quick Login or your CAC single sign on.)

Questions? Stop by the ES library for a demonstration. 

Do you have any favorite online reading sites for children that are not featured here? Please share them with us in the comments.