WOMS celebrates our library award!

Today was our big celebration for our Outstanding Library in the State of Oregon award, and we had SO much fun. You can see lots of pictures of our day below. There were many special guests there, including district office staff, school board members, OASL members, librarians from the Oregon State Library, and of course our super special guest, President of the American Association of School Librarians, Dr. Nancy Everhart.

Our assembly began with a parade of hands. All the WOMS students had traced their hands onto pieces of paper and then decorated their hands with book titles and designs. The hands were then all glued onto poster paper, and paraded across the gym and hung up. They looked fantastic.

Next the 6th grade choir sang "Check it Out," a song written specifically for the Vision Tour. If you'd like to hear a version of that song, you can find it here, being sung by the Boys Choir of Tallahassee. They're pretty good, but I think our 6th graders were better.

Yet another musical act followed the choir, when J. Cost, local rap musician, performed his original rap all about crazy Mrs. F-B chasing him down with a book and convincing him to read. Mr. Massey thought simplifying fractions would be more fun, but I think it's clear from J. Cost's performance, that Mr. Massey does not know what he's talking about. You can become a fan of J. Cost on Facebook if you're interested in hearing more of his music.

Dr. Everhart spoke to us about the importance of school libraries for teaching students the skills they need to be successful in the 21st century. Skills like developing a love of reading, recognizing the value of critical thinking, being able to find information and using information ethically I'm so happy that I get to come to work and help you all learn those skills, because I agree with her that they are essential.

Afterward Dr. Everhart had a chance to speak with a few of our fabulous WOMS students and our adult guests were treated to coffee donated by the Oregon Trail Starbucks and cupcakes donated by Johnson Chiropractic. Thanks so much! A reporter from the Oregonian was also there, and he's planning to do a story about our award, so watch the East Metro section of the paper on Saturday.

As I said at the assembly, this award wasn't for me but for all of us who help make the WOMS library a community. I'm so proud of all we accomplish together! Congratulations everyone!

Book Bloggers Holiday Swap!

It's that time again. If you're a book blogger reading this post, then get right on over to the Book Blogger's Holiday Swap page and sign up to join the swap. It's really fun! I missed out last year, and I was so disappointed. Don't wait, though. The deadline is November 14th!

Sign up via the google form on the site; enter all of the information and hit submit.

Make sure you do it before the deadline: November 14, 2010. In order to make sure everyone gets matched up and gifts get sent in a timely manner, they will be closing sign-ups after November 14.

Book Fair is coming soon!

Our fall Book Fair begins a week from today, Monday, November 15th, so start looking under the couch cushions now for spare change :)

There's a webpage with all kinds of great information available here

the Vision Tour is coming to WOMS on Monday to give us our big award. Be sure to wear purple to show your school spirit at our assembly.

Birthday kiddos!

Two birthdays today. Enjoy these fabulous suggestions :-)

Birthday explosion!!!

Wow, apparently the end of October and the beginning of November are popular weeks for a birthday, because we have a whole posse of kids with birthday pics to post. Hope everyone had a great day. Enjoy their recommendations!

Poetry Friday - from Macbeth by Shakespeare

Happy haunting, everyone!

The Witches’ Spell

Act IV, Scene 1 from Macbeth (1606) by William Shakespeare


A dark Cave. In the middle, a Caldron boiling. Thunder.
Enter the three Witches.

1 WITCH. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
2 WITCH. Thrice and once, the hedge-pig whin’d.
3 WITCH. Harpier cries:—’tis time! ’tis time!
1 WITCH. Round about the caldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.—
Toad, that under cold stone,
Days and nights has thirty-one;
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot!
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
2 WITCH. Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
3 WITCH. Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;
Witches’ mummy; maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark;
Root of hemlock digg’d i the dark;
Liver of blaspheming Jew;
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse;
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips;
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,—
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingrediants of our caldron.
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
2 WITCH. Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

Teens Top Ten announced!

Click here to go to the video announcing this year's winners!

Happy birthday, Kami!

Kami chose Fablehaven as her birthday book recommendation, and I was particularly excited about that since I just found out today that Brandon Mull has a brand new series coming out in March of 2011. It's called the Beyonders trilogy, and according the the ad I saw, it's going to be the ONLY fantasy book you'll need to read in 2011. Woohoo! Happy birthday, Kami.

Hunger Games author to speak at Powell's!!

Upcoming Event
Sunday, November 07, 2010 12:00 PM
Powell's City of Books on Burnside, Portland, OR
Mockingjay (Scholastic) is the thrilling conclusion to Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games trilogy, the young-adult series that has captivated readers of all ages. Meet the author and get your book marked with the special commemorative stamp created especially for her 2010 Mockingjay tour.

Please note: Due to a hand injury, Collins will be stamping books rather than signing. She will stamp one book per customer (Hunger Games trilogy books only), on a first-come, first-served basis, from 12:00 to 1:30 p.m.

Rockin' the House!!!

Had our Summer reading XBox party today, and the winners were rockin' it. Who says libraries have to be quiet all the time??

Happy birthdays this week :)

Lots of happy birthdays this week. Come on down and take a look at some of these great suggestions!

ROCK ON SUMMER READERS!!

I'm bringing my Xbox tomorrow (yes, librarians are allowed to have our own Xboxes), and the Summer Reading Rock Band party will be happening Tuesday at lunch recesses. Anyone can come watch but only those who got to the top in summer reading can play. C U there!

Pies and Prejudice - Heather Vogel Frederick

Wow! Twice in a month I've LOVED the fourth book in a series, and that just rarely happens to me. Perhaps it's a good sign for sequelage (not a word, but you know what I mean). This is the 4th in the Mother Daughter Book Club series, and the girls are getting older, so perhaps that's one of the reasons I liked it so much. Plus, it's all about Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice which is just about the world's most perfect book, and I've only read it about a million times, so that made it fantastical as well. the one thing I have a hard time with in this book, as I do with other books in a series, is that it's kind of hard to remember who's who. In this book it's especially important, too, because the chapters alternate between the girls in the club as narrators, and so if you've forgotten who's who, the whole chapter's a little hard to keep up with. But it comes back pretty quickly, and the author does a good job of adding little "memory joggers" for those of us, like me, who might be a little slow...This book is definitely more for girls than boys, but I'd highly recommend the whole series to girls from 5th to 10th grades. And heck, I like them, so maybe girls of any age :)

I'm not sure if this is the last in the series, but I seriously hope not!

Library movie

Made a little movie about the library this week. Take a look and see what you think!

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt - Beth Hoffman

This is sweet little book set in the South about a young girl, 12 years old, whose mother is mentally ill and whose father is primarily absent. Things come to a crisis point after a while, and CeeCee is taken to Savannah, Georgia, to live with her great Aunt Tootie who she never really even knew before. Here, CeeCee is saved by the wonderful companionship and love shown to her by a town seemingly full of only women. I enjoyed this story very much, but I would have liked to see more depth in the novel. When I compare this story to other books which share some things with this book, like The Secret Life of Bees and The Help, I find this book to be lacking in depth. There's so much potential here, for example, for CeeCee's aunt and Oletta and Mrs. O'Dell to help her really work through her issues, but they just sort of gloss over them, and I found that to be a little disappointing. The descriptions of the places were excellent, and I really loved all the main characters - there was nothing I didn't like about this book, I just thought it could have been so much more. the good news is, this is the author's first book, and I can see that she has a lot of potential, so I will look forward to reading more of her books in the future.

Although this book has a 12 year old main character, I think it's a book better suited to adult readers. Available at the Multnomah County Library.

PS My book group thought this would make an excellent movie!

Happy birthday, Blake!

Blake picked one of my very favorite books ever - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. If you have not read the Harry Potter books, you are missing out and you should get straight down to the library and check them out! Happy birthday, Blake!

Oregon Battle of the Books

Small group teams for the state OBOB competition are now forming. Mrs. FB and your LA teachers have flyers. WOMS competitions will be in February and the regional competition will be in early March. Get 4-5 people together and join the fun!

Here are this year's books:

After Tupac and D Foster
by Jacqueline Woodson
o Realistic Fiction
Airman by Eoin Colfer
o Mystery
Chasing Lincoln's Killer
by James L. Swanson
o Nonfiction
The Ear, the Eye and the Arm
by Nancy Farmer
o Science Fiction
Elephant Run by Roland Smith
o Historical Fiction
Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin
o Fantasy
The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp
by Rick Yancey
o Fantasy
Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson
o Historical Fiction
First Light by Rebecca Stead
o Science Fiction
The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
o Fantasy
Heart of a Shepherd
by Rosanne Parry
o Realistic Fiction
The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd
o Mystery
Savvy
by Ingrid Law
o Fantasy
Science Fair by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
o Science Fiction
Skeleton Creek by Patrick Carman
o Mystery
Waiting for Normal by Leslie Connor
o Realistic Fiction

Birthdays, birthdays, and more birthdays!

Hope everyone had a great celebration! There are some good recommendations here, so take a look and come on down and check one of them out.

Happy Teen Read Week!

Make a comment on any blog entry and get a prize in the library!

Poetry Friday - "Read to Me" by Jane Yolen

I love this poem by Jane Yolen. So simple, and so right.
Read to me
by Jane Yolen

Post removed due to poem author complaint :(

I got to meet President and Mrs. Carter!

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be able to go to Plains, Georgia and meet former US President and Nobel Prize winner Jimmy Carter. It was an amazing weekend. I was so thrilled to get to meet him. To prepare for our visit, I read three books - two by him and one about the Carters in the White House. They actually SIGNED that book for our library. It was super exciting! Here are some short reviews of those books.



The Carters - Cass Sandak. I thought this book was quite interesting. It was short but had a lot of background on Mr. Carter and his family before the presidency and then during and a little bit after. Since I was fairly young when he was President, I learned a lot in an easy to read format.


Christmas in Plains - Jimmy Carter. This was a great little book that focused on Christmas traditions of the Carter family. What I really liked about this book was that there was so much information about growing up on his family farm in the story and other places around Plains, that when I got there I sort of felt like I knew what I was looking at. It was really cool.

Our Endangered Values - Jimmy Carter. this is a recent book written by Jimmy Carter which talks about his politics and also his personal beliefs and his religion. It was definitely a book for grown-ups. I thought it was fascinating, and I especially liked how he talked about living a life that supported his personal beliefs but still worked within the confines of a separation of church and state. He is a man of great integrity and moral values. I admire him incredibly and still can hardly believe I got to hear him speak and meet him personally. Amazing!

Final Four - Catch up COMPLETE! Pjew :)

Whew - I have had a busy day of blogging, but I'm finally caught up, and that feel good. Hope you find some books in all the reviews posted today that catch your fancy, as there are books from a wide variety of genres reviewed here.






Only the Good Spy Young is the latest in the Cammie Morgan Gallagher Girls series by Ally Carter. Love her! Love Ally Carter and love Cammie. Would also love to BE Cammie, also called the Chameleon because she's so good at blending in. It's not often that I love the fourth book in the series more than the others, I mean REALLY never happens, but in this case it did. Cammie just keeps getting smarter, ally Carter's writing just keeps getting better, and the tension just keeps mounting. Boys and girls will love this series because of the spy school angle. Highly recommended. Ally Carter's blog is also quite fun.

Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks is one of the best books I've read this year. It's seriously about a group of reformed vampires who've taken an oath not to fang people any more and live on guinea pig blood. Now one of their own has been killed, and the group that never has anything interesting happen to them - and forever can last a REALLY long time when things are that boring - has all kinds of action and suspense on their hands. A rollicking great mystery. Set in Australia.

Purple Heart by Patricia McCormick. An intense story of an 18 year old soldier who sustained a traumatic brain injury in Iraq. He's trying to figure out what happened to him, and it's a difficult journey. What he remembers doesn't jive with the story his friend in his unit that he was with just before the incident happened. Searingly powerful. Pair with Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers.

In a Heartbeat by Loretta Elsworth This is a book about a young woman who gets a heart transplant and then has a bit of a personality transplant as well. For example, she now loves purple lollipops when she never did before an she's drawn to ice skating. Her heart, it turns out, was that of a young figure skater who died in a skating accident. The story is told in alternating voices of the young skater (now dead and not happy about it) and the young recipient. It's well crafted and brings home the point of why organ donation is so important without being preachy. The story culminates in a meeting between the donor's family and the young woman who gets a new heart - and she's taken to the family's home by a new boyfriend. Lovers of Lurlene McDaniel especially will love this story.

Ancient, Strange and Lovely - Susan Fletcher

I must be one of the luckiest librarian in town, because I'm actually friends with the lovely Susan Fletcher, author of the Dragon Chronicles series. Her most recent in the series, Ancient, Strange and Lovely is just that - ancient, strange and lovely. But it's also the opposite of ancient, although I'm unsure what that word actually is, because it takes place in the future. So I guess maybe futuristic.

14 year old Bryn's mother is missing, and her father has gone off in search of her, leaving Bryn and her sister behind. Bryn and her sister have the ability to ken with birds, basically they can communicate with them through thoughts, so you know they're pretty special. I think that's a cool ability! Anyway, while Bryn's parents are both gone and cannot be contacted, Bryn finds a large egg in the basement, and when the egg hatches it turns out to be a dragon! This leads to a lot of wild results, including traveling by herself to Alaska to try and find her father ad mother herself. Whether Bryn will be able to keep the dragon safe is a big question.

The book has a serious ecological theme to it as well, as Bryn's mother has possibly found a way to fight at least some of the pollution that is destroying the planet in this near-future setting.

This book has quite a lot of high-level vocabulary and requires some inference about futuristic situations, descriptions of people, etc., so it is best for stronger readers. Dragon-story lovers will definitely want to read this book,either as part of the series or as a stand-alone.