Library Day Schedule

Mums - Tuesday
Enigma - Thursday
Alchemy - Tuesday
Mosaic - Tuesday

As a reminder, students may check out books only during their classroom library visits. To help us with book circulation and to ensure proper checkout procedures, we ask that books not be taken from the library during before/aftercare, meetings, volunteer time, pick-up/drop-off, or other such times. Please feel free to contact me with any questions. Happy reading!

In the coming weeks, your child will be getting to know the library and its routines, and will be making regular classroom visits to check out books. I will go over our library guidelines at Curriculum Night so that parents can become familiar with these routines as well. You can also find weekly library updates right here in this blog, so check back often.

Oh! And for any Skippyjon Jones fans out there! Judy Schachner will be in town this Wednesday for an author event. Here are the details:

 Judy Schachner, Skippyjon Jones Class Action
Wednesday, August 31st at 7pm
St. Louis County Library Headquarters
1640 S. Lindbergh Blvd. Frontenac, MO 63131

This week is Children's Book Week, an annual celebration of children's literature meant to bring kids and books together. Each year, kids get to cast their votes for their favortie books, authors, and illustrators for the Children's Choice Book Awards. This year, kids voted Rick Riordan Author of the Year and Daivd Wiesner Illustator of the Year!

When your children bring home their library books this week, take a moment to read with them, or talk with them about what they are reading. For ideas about bookish activites for your family, check out 7 Ways to Celebrate Children's Book Week in St. Louis over at SmartParenting. Happy reading!

It's Tuesday, the perfect day to meet award-winning author David Wiesner. Best known for his illustrious wordless books (Flotsam, Sector 7), Wiesner's newest book, Art & Max, comes with text to compliment the story that his artwork tells. It is the story of two friends, both artists, who have a lot to learn from each other about the creative process. Beginning with a painting lesson, the story moves along through the querulous predicaments in which they find themselves as they try to "fix" Max's initial artistic "mistake." Both hilarious and thoughtful, Art & Max is a delightful book for art lovers of all ages.  

Of course, the students aren't the only ones reading around here. Roundtable book discussions are a unique component to The Soulard School. Here, parents and staff participate in the school community through inquiry and dialog about a shared reading. This year's fall reading season includes a nice swatch of titles pertaining to education and parenting, including a documentary film. All of these titles are available for our book group at Left Bank Books, and can, of course, be found at the public library as well.

The book discussions kick off next Tuesday, September 28th at 7pm. Join us up at school for what is sure to be a spirited talk about the benefits and, perhaps more importantly, the ill-effects of homework.  

September - The Case Against Homework by Sara Bennet & Nancy Kalish

October - Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf

November - Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy

December - documentary Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood

Well, the school year is in full swing. You know what that means. Books. And lots of 'em. The books in the library are circulating nicely, with some titles already sparking a waiting list. Each elementary classroom visits the library weekly. The books that students check out will be coming home, as you may have already noticed. Please be sure your child brings his/her books back to school on his/her library day each week (see below). Of course, if a library book gets lost or damaged beyond repair, we ask that you please replace it. Be sure to check back here throughout the year for library news, donation requests, reading suggestions, and other bookish delights. Happy reading!

Library Day Schedule:

Dream Deferred
by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--
And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

 
"(T)he pressure to give our children the best of everything and make them the best at everything is backfiring on kids, parents, and society as a whole. We feel we have to push, polish, and protect our offspring with superhuman zeal - or else we're somehow falling down on the job. I hope that readers will come to the end of the book and breathe a huge sigh of relief. Especially parents. I want to inspire readers to ease off and find the natural balance between doing too much and too little for children." - Carl Honoré

Don't forget to join us for our second roundtable book discussion. This month, we will be exploring Carl Honoré's book Under Pressure. Honoré is the bestselling author of In Praise of Slowness, which took a look at our high-speed lifestyles and the toll taken on us by such rush. Under Pressure, Honoré's second book, picks up this topic once again, this time focusing on a realm near and dear to us at The Soulard School - childhood. Looking across cultures and throughout history, he shows us how hyper-parenting  and "academic hothousing is subject to the law of diminishing returns." In an age of baby Mandarin classes, cell phones, dual-income households, cram schools, video surveillance, and violent-laden nightly news reports, it can be difficult to slow down, lighten up, and (in the words of the Reggio-minded folks) "do nothing without joy." But Honoré encourages us to do just that.

Eskimo (anonymous)
Translated from the Inuit by Edward Field