Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Teaching the Vietnam War: Register Now for this great opportunity!


Primary Source
 
Diverse Voices of the Vietnam War: Professional Development Workshop for High School Educators
Dear ,
We're collaborating with WGBH on a free professional development workshop about teaching the Vietnam War in high school social studies and ELA classrooms. Register now
Vietnam WarWednesday, January 20, 2016
4:30 PM to 6:30 PM (EST)
WGBH

1 Guest Street

Boston, MA 02135
View map
WGBH EducationJoin us for an early evening of interaction with new and innovative sources and activities to teach about the war.
A lite supper will be served and all attendees will take home curriculum materials and a gift bag, including a Last Days in Vietnam (American Experience) DVD.
This workshop is for curriculum specialists or high school teachers of US history, World history and English Language Arts, and features materials from our online curriculum resource "Teaching the "American War": Looking at the War in Vietnam Through Vietnamese Eyes".
Register Today


Registration is limited so please sign up soon.

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Thursday, December 10, 2015

Teaching English Abroad?





How great was our 12/5 workshop on "Funding for Teacher Travel, Study and Classroom Materials?"  

From time to time we're going to post links to different articles about teaching abroad or other funding opportunities.  Here's a great one:

PS: SEND US YOUR PHOTO'S! 
How Much Can You Earn Teaching English Abroad?

Monday, December 7, 2015

Notable Children's Books of 2015

More wonderful reading ahead! "The best in picture books, middle grade and young adult fiction and nonfiction, selected by the children’s books editor of The New York Times Book Review."

Notable Children’s Books of 2015







Picture Books

ASK ME. By Bernard Waber. Illustrated by Suzy Lee. 40 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $16.99. This posthumous book by the great Waber (“Lyle, Lyle Crocodile”) features a long, leisurely, lovely conversation between a father and daughter out taking an autumn walk.
FINDING WINNIE: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear. By Lindsay ­Mattick. Illustrated by Sophie Blackall. 32 pp. Little, Brown. $18. Written by a great-­granddaughter of the Canadian soldier who bought a bear cub from a trapper and took her to Europe in World War I, this delightful account of the story behind A.A. Milne’s “Winnie-the-Pooh” is also a family history.
LAST STOP ON MARKET STREET. By Matt de la Peña. Illustrated by Christian Robinson. 32 pp. Putnam. $16.99. In this wise, moving story, C.J. is full of complaints as he and his peppery grandmother take a bus ride, but Nana helps him see the other side of things, especially after they arrive to help at a soup kitchen.
THE MENINO: A Story Based on Real Events. Written and illustrated by Isol. Translated by Elisa Amado. 53 pp. Groundwood/House of Anansi. $19.95. Our reviewer, Samantha Hunt, praised “the humor and the poetry” of this original take on the strangeness of babies — the alien sounds they make, the odd way they move — from the point of view of an older sibling.
IS MOMMY? By Victoria Chang. ­Illustrated by Marla Frazee. 30 pp. Beach Lane. $15.99. Children mischievously answer a question about their mommies on each page in this buoyant, refreshing look at ­parent-child love.
POOL. Written and illustrated by JiHyeon Lee. 56 pp. Chronicle. $16.99. A wondrous, wordless tale of a girl and boy and the magical world they discover once they brave the depths of a pool.
THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT. Written and illustrated by Patrick McDonnell. 32 pp. ­Little, Brown. $15.99. This playful, extraordinarily charming bedtime book features a girl whose stuffed rabbit hosts a surprise sleepover party.
TOYS MEET SNOW. By Emily Jenkins. Illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky. 40 pp. Schwartz & Wade. $17.99. The three toys from the “Toys Go Out” chapter book series get their own picture book, a transporting look at the wonders of snow.
WAITING. Written and illustrated by Kevin Henkes. 32 pp. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $17.99. Five toys wait on a window ledge, each for something different, in this profound and beautiful take on patience and perspective from the matchless Henkes.

Middle Grade

CIRCUS MIRANDUS. By Cassie Beasley. ­Illustrated by Diana Sudyka. 292 pp. Dial. $17.99. An orphaned fifth grader, falling under the spell of his dying grandfather’s tales of a magic circus, attempts to cash in a deferred wish in this shimmering debut novel.
ECHO. By Pam Muñoz Ryan. 592 pp. Scholastic. $19.99. Muñoz Ryan’s enchanting novel sends a harmonica traveling across years and over continents and seas to touch, and possibly save, the lives of three music-obsessed children, each facing serious struggles.
FIRSTBORN. By Tor Seidler. 227 pp. Atheneum. $16.99. In this artful and affecting novel, a solitary magpie travels with and becomes attached to a family of wolves who are repopulating the remote Lamar Valley in Yellowstone National Park.
GOODBYE STRANGER. By Rebecca Stead. 289 pp. Wendy Lamb. $16.99. A seventh grader recovering from a near-fatal accident navigates changes in herself and her tight group of friends in this moving novel, which our reviewer, Meg Wolitzer, called “masterly.”
LISTEN, SLOWLY. By Thanhha Lai. 260 pp. Harper/HarperCollins. $16.99. The funny, gently heartbreaking story of a 12-year-old Vietnamese-American girl who travels reluctantly to Vietnam with her grandmother and learns to love the fractured country and culture her family came from.
THE MARVELS. Written and illustrated by Brian Selznick. 665 pp. Scholastic. $32.99. Half wordless illustrated tale, half prose narrative, this captivating hybrid novel set over several centuries follows a family of theater legends who may or may not have really existed.
MOST DANGEROUS: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War. By Steve Sheinkin. Illustrated. 370 pp. Roaring Brook. $19. A riveting and remarkably effective account of Ellsberg’s life, his release of the Pentagon Papers and America’s tragic history in Vietnam.
NIMONA. Written and illustrated by ­Noelle Stevenson. 266 pp. HarperTeen/­HarperCollins. $17.99. A shapeshifting girl becomes a sidekick to a would-be villain in this winning, genre-convention-busting graphic novel that charts the terrain between magic and science.
ROLLER GIRL. By Victoria Jamieson. 240 pp. Dial. $20.99. In this spiky, winning graphic novel, a summer at roller-derby day camp helps a 12-year-old girl learn to rechannel her anger and let go of her former, more uncertain self.
STELLA BY STARLIGHT. By Sharon M. Draper. 320 pp. Atheneum. $16.99. An ­African-American girl in the Jim Crow South, a budding writer, witnesses a frightening Ku Klux Klan event and decides to fight with her family for change in this stirring, heartfelt novel.
THE THING ABOUT JELLYFISH. By Ali Benjamin. 343 pp. Little, Brown. $17. A shattering debut novel about a grieving, lonely girl, stung by the treachery of middle-school social alliances, who tries to use the scientific method to explain her former best friend’s death by drowning.

Young Adult

THE HIRED GIRL. By Laura Amy Schlitz. ­Illustrated. 387 pp. Candlewick. $17.99.Set in 1911, this transcendent novel features a literature-loving teenage narrator, raised poor and Catholic, who flees an abusive home and gains acceptance and worldly knowledge working as a servant for a Jewish family.
SHADOWSHAPER. By Daniel José Older. 297 pp. Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic. $17.99. “Magnificent,” our reviewer, Holly Black, called this sharp urban fantasy set in Brooklyn, about a young muralist — a shadowshaper, able to channel friendly spirits into art — facing an assortment of dangers.
SYMPHONY FOR THE CITY OF THE DEAD: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad. By M. T. Anderson. Illustrated. 456 pp. Candlewick. $25.99. A gripping, thoroughly researched biography of the Russian composer that illuminates the horrors of World War II along with the eternal hope music can provide.
SIX OF CROWS. By Leigh Bardugo. 465 pp. Holt. $18.99. This crackling first book in a new series by the author of the Grisha Trilogy assembles a team of outcasts who must band together to pull off a heist in order to save the Grisha, a tribe with magical powers.
BECOMING MARIA. Love and Chaos in the South Bronx. By Sonia Manzano. Illustrated. 262 pp. Scholastic. $17.99. In prose that shines brightly, the “Sesame Street” star recounts her path from a poor Nuyorican family ravaged by her father’s alcoholism to a scholarship at a prestigious college theater program.

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2015

It's a pleasure to share this list with you:

Every year since 1952, the Book Review has convened an independent panel of judges to select the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books. Judged purely on artistic merit, it’s the only annual award of its kind.

This year’s judges were Frank Viva, Monica Edinger and Marjorie Ingall. Viva has written and illustrated several acclaimed books for children, including “Along a Long Road” — a previous Times Best Illustrated winner — “Outstanding in the Rain” and “Young Frank, Architect.” He is a frequent cover artist for The New Yorker and the managing director of the design firm Viva & Co. Edinger has been an elementary- and middle-school educator for more than 25 years and currently teaches fourth grade at the Dalton School in New York City. She is also the author of the picture book “Africa Is My Home” and blogs about children’s books at Educating Alice. Ingall is a columnist for Tablet and a frequent contributor of children’s book reviews to The Times and other publications. Her book “Mamaleh Knows Best: What Jewish Mothers Do to Raise Successful, Creative, Empathetic, Independent Children” will be published next year.
The 2015 New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books are, in alphabetical order:
  1. Photo
    Credit From "Big Bear Little Chair"
    Big Bear Little Chair
    Written and illustrated by Lizi Boyd
    This ingenious take on the “opposites” book shows the youngest children that big, little and tiny are all in how you look at things. Using just black, white and a velvety gray, with a bit of red, Boyd’s delightful cut paper compositions juxtapose the large and the small in unexpected ways: a “big meadow” is big because it’s full of small flowers; a “big seal” towers over a “tiny castle” that’s made of sand.
    32 pp. Chronicle Books. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 3 to 5)
  2. Photo
    Credit From "A Fine Dessert"
    A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat
    By Emily Jenkins. Illustrated by Sophie Blackall.
    Four vignettes, set in England, South Carolina, Boston and San Diego, show how the creamy dessert called blackberry fool has been made and enjoyed over the centuries. Our reviewer, John Lithgow, called out the book’s “abundant charms.” Blackall’s warm, finely detailed illustrations — done in ink, watercolor and blackberry juice — capture the sweep of history and the constancy of family love.
    32 pp. Schwartz & Wade Books. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8)
  3. Photo
    Credit From "Funny Bones"
    Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras
    By Duncan Tonatiuh
    This biography of the Mexican artist, who popularized calaveras both as a form of political protest and a popular entertainment, integrates Posada’s own prints with Tonatiuh’s winsome, cleverly layered compositions. “Befitting its subject, the book communicates through its visual aesthetic,” Maria Russo wrote. “Tonatiuh’s eye-catching earth-toned digital collages, with occasional blasts of dusky purple or blue, feature people who look like the swoopy, postmodern descendants of Mexican folk figures.”
    40 pp. Abrams. $18.95. (Picture book; ages 6 to 10)
  4. Photo
    Credit From "Leo: A Ghost Story"
    Leo: A Ghost Story
    By Mac Barnett. Illustrated by Christian Robinson.
    Leo, a little ghost drawn touchingly by Robinson as an improbably sweet and hopeful-looking crayoned outline, feels unwanted in the house he is haunting. So he moves to the city, where he befriends a girl who thinks he’s strictly imaginary. After Leo thwarts a robbery, his real — that is, ghostly — status is affirmed. Our reviewer, Marjorie Ingall, praised Robinson’s “exciting” art. “I love the palette of ‘Leo,’” she wrote. “Black, white, gray and various shades of moody blue, in a mix of acrylic paint and chunky ­construction-paper collage.”
    52 pp. Chronicle Books. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 3 to 5)
  5. Photo
    Credit From "Madame Eiffel"
    Madame Eiffel: The Love Story of the Eiffel Tower
    By Alice Brière-Haquet. Illustrated by Csil.
    In this imaginative telling of the story behind the Eiffel Tower, the engineer Gustave Eiffel is inspired by his love for his ailing wife, Cathy. With a strict palette of black and white with dabs of light rosy red, Csil’s intricate, lacy pen-and-ink illustrations convey Eiffel’s keen attention to detail, along with the allure of Paris and the high-flying ambition of his tower. The effect is romantic and utterly charming, inviting you to look and look at the pages.
    24 pp. Little Gestalten. $19.95. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8)
  6. Photo
    Credit From "The Only Child"
    The Only Child
    Written and illustrated by Guojing
    A small child is left alone all day to fend for herself. She dozes off on a city bus and wakes in an unknown forest, a silvery fantasyland up in the clouds where she bonds with a flying deer, enormous whales and a seal pup. Our reviewer, Samantha Hunt, was enchanted by this “dreamy, wordless debut,” lovingly illustrated with smoky, mystical-looking pencil drawings. “The dark current flowing underneath such lush imagery,” Hunt wrote, “is the loneliness of childhood under China’s one-child policy.”
    98 pp. Schwartz & Wade. $19.99. (Picture book; ages 5 to 9)
  7. Photo
    Credit From "The Skunk"
    The Skunk
    By Mac Barnett. Illustrated by Patrick McDonnell.
    A nameless narrator, wearing a tuxedo, is trailed by a mysterious skunk, even while taking a cab, attending the opera, going to a carnival and visiting a graveyard. We never learn why, though like the narrator, we come to see the skunk as more adorable than menacing. The book’s witty retro look is done in a limited palette of black and white with pale peach, gray and a little red. “The great Patrick McDonnell’s drawings are, as always, perfect down to the last scratchy line,” our reviewer, Bruce Handy, said.
    32 pp. Roaring Brook Press. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8)
  8. Photo
    Credit From "Sidewalk Flowers"
    Sidewalk Flowers
    By JonArno Lawson. Illustrated by Sydney Smith.
    “Something to treasure,” our reviewer, Carmela Ciuraru, called this dazzling wordless book. As a girl and her father walk home through city streets, she notices flowers sprouting in unexpected places. She picks them, accumulating a bouquet that she distributes to a dog, a dead bird, a homeless man and finally, back home, her sleeping toddler sibling. In Smith’s elegant and moving drawings, as Ciuraru wrote, “the only pop of color on the first page is the girl’s bright red hoodie, redolent of Peter’s snowsuit in Ezra Jack Keats’s ‘The Snowy Day.’ More color suffuses these pages as the pair gets closer to home.”
    26 pp. Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press. $16.95. (Picture book; ages 3 to 8)
  9. Photo
    Credit From "The Tiger Who Would Be King"
    The Tiger Who Would Be King
    By James Thurber. Illustrated by JooHee Yoon.
    Thurber’s 1956 comic fable about a power-mad tiger who starts a deadly war is vibrantly illustrated by Yoon in a dense, blocky print style, all in an electric red, a cool blue-green, black and white. Each page teems with evocative images of animal life. The effect is ferocious and ravishing, capturing the beastliness of war along with emotions that include pride, boredom, shock and sorrow.
    40 pp. Enchanted Lion Books. $18.95. (All ages)
  10. Photo
    Credit From "Tricky Vic"
    Tricky Vic: The Impossibly True Story of the Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower
    By Greg Pizzoli
    This biography of the legendary con man who once managed to sell the Eiffel Tower bursts with cheeky wit and verve. We follow Tricky Vic, as he was known, from his birth as Robert Miller in what is now the Czech Republic to his death in a federal prison in Missouri. In one of many comic touches, a thumbprint stands in for Tricky Vic’s head. “Pizzoli’s jocular, simple but graphically sophisticated collage illustrations draw readers even further into a story it would be hard to be bored by,” Maria Russo wrote.
    39 pp. Viking. $17.99. (Picture book; ages 7 to 10)




http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/28/books/review/28-new-york-times-best-illustrated-childrens-books-of-2015.html?_r=0Best Illustrated Children's Books 2015