This blog offers information, and connections to nurture recent graduates. We welcome your participation on this and on our Facebook Page. The NTC continues to be deeply grateful to MEDITECH for its long history of support for this program. Over the years, MEDITECH has made it possible for the New Teacher Community to serve a vital role in helping our graduates to persist in a challenging, yet deeply rewarding profession.
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
Wednesday, January 20, 2016 4:30 PM to 6:30 PM (EST) WGBH 1 Guest Street Boston, MA 02135 View map
Join 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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
The New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2015
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:
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
Join us for an early evening of interaction with new and innovative sources and activities to teach about the war.
