Treehouse Art

One of our third grade classes asked if I would display their collaborative treehouse art in the library. Here is their display of very fun looking treehouses surrounding a community soccer field.  It is nice to have student art in the library!

Fortnite read-alikes

I found this fun display idea online at the Skinner Middle School Library website and related MinervaReads blog.  Fortnite is a big hit with our MS/ES students so we decided to copy their display idea.

Here's our new display:

And here's a close up of the books we have.  Unfortunately, we don't have all of them from the book list Skinner Middle School provided, but still a good selection!

Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch

(Amazon.com)

A New York Times bestseller

A summer in Italy turns into a road trip across Tuscany in this sweeping debut novel filled with romance, mystery, and adventure.

Lina is spending the summer in Tuscany, but she isn’t in the mood for Italy’s famous sunshine and fairy-tale landscape. She’s only there because it was her mother’s dying wish that she get to know her father. But what kind of father isn’t around for sixteen years? All Lina wants to do is get back home.

But then Lina is given a journal that her mom had kept when she lived in Italy. Suddenly Lina’s uncovering a magical world of secret romances, art, and hidden bakeries. A world that inspires Lina, along with the ever-so-charming Ren, to follow in her mother’s footsteps and unearth a secret that has been kept for far too long. It’s a secret that will change everything Lina knew about her mother, her father—and even herself.

People come to Italy for love and gelato, someone tells her, but sometimes they discover much more.

Why you should read this book:

• The characters go to an International School; you will make connections between this story and your international life.
• It has been on the YALSA Teen Top Ten List.
• Italy and Ice Cream....need I say more?
• I am a sucker for a good romance book and this is a good YA romance.

Find Love & Gelato in our library at: ROMANCE F WEL

Happy Winter Break!

The library wishes you a wonderful Winter Break.

We are open during break! Check the newsletter for dates and times.

Thank you to our assistants for making our library so festive.  Our book tree has received many compliments.

Slime Time

The library makerspace has been busier than usual this week.  By student request, it was slime making week!  It's possible I may be banned from the supply room for excessive glue usage....

Thank you to the 6th graders who suggested this idea and also helped me adjust the slime recipe.  My first try at slime failed and the slime experts helped me fix the recipe.

HOW TO MAKE SLIME

Supplies:
Elmer’s Glue (a small handful)
2 pinches baking soda
1 squirt contact lens solution
glitter or food coloring

Instructions:

1. Pour out Elmer’s Glue into a bowl. 
2. Add color/glitter and mix.
3. Add 2 pinches of baking soda and mix quickly.
4. As your mixture starts to get sticky, add a squirt of contact lens solution.
5. Mix until slime forms.If it’s too sticky, add a bit more contact lens solution.
6. Wash the bowl and spoon. Take your slime home.

Buddy Reading- MS/ES

We celebrated Picture Book Month in the MS/HS Library by inviting our ES friends up to read with us.  Buddy reading is our most requested library activity (by both MS and ES students!)  Fun times were had by all.

Finding Bangladesh- Adnan M.S. Fakir

One of our Bangla teachers shared this TED Talk by Adnan Fakir with me titled Finding Bangladesh.  It's an interesting talk about how legends/lore from Bangladesh originated.  The first 2 minutes of the talk is the teaser from the movie that has been made: Finding Bangladesh 2: Tales of the South.
Learn something new about our host country!

Unbound: Celebrating Women's Voices

Our juniors, seniors, and teachers were graciously invited to an author event, Unbound: Celebrating Women's Voices, at the Indian High Commission, in collaboration with the Dhaka Lit Fest.  Some of our students kicked off the evening by reading poetry.  Of course, they were awesome! 
Thank you to the Indian High Commission for a lovely evening and to Ms. Jahan for organizing the trip.

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

A Newbery Honor Book
A Coretta Scott King Honor Book
A Printz Honor Book
A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award
An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction
Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner
An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017
A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017
A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017

An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestseller Jason Reynolds’s fiercely stunning novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother.

A cannon. A strap.
A piece. A biscuit.
A burner. A heater.
A chopper. A gat.
A hammer
A tool
for RULE

Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES.

And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if WILL gets off that elevator.

Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.

Why you should read this book:

• This book is out of my "comfort zone."  I normally am not drawn to books in verse. Push yourself out of your comfort zone
• It's on the YALSA Teen Top Ten List for this year.
• I wonder what this life would be like?
• A quote that stuck with me:

but if the blood

inside you is  on the inside

of someone else,

you never want to 

see it on the outside of 

them.

Find Long Way Down in our library at: REALISTIC F REY

Mitali Perkins Visit

Grades 4-8 attended a wonderful presentation with Mitali Perkins this morning.  We are thankful to the PTA for sponsoring a visit to the school.  Her presentation entitled Stories on the Fire Escape  was about growing up and writing "between cultures" and the power of stories to keep us balanced.  It was very relevant for our diverse student population.  Thank you Ms. Perkins for taking the time to visit us!
If you missed seeing Mitali Perkins today or want to learn more, see her again tomorrow at the Dhaka Lit Fest!

Being in Grade 7 was hard!

The first books...11 years apart!

Rickshaw Girl is becoming a movie and was published in Bangla today!

Thank you PTA for sponsoring the visit!

Dhaka Lit Fest

Don't forget to attend the Dhaka Lit Fest this weekend.  It is always a fun event and there is much to do for all ages.
You can see another presentation with our visiting author, Mitali Perkins, who will be speaking there after visiting us.  Also, our own Ms. Jahan will be interviewing some of the authors attending the Lit Fest.
It's free to attend but you must register ahead of time. Register and find the program at the link below.

https://www.dhakalitfest.com/index.html

Happy Halloween!

The MS/HS Library wishes you a Happy Halloween!

Come find a book to scare you silly.

YALSA Teens' Top Ten List

Find the titles in our library!

Turtles All the Way Down by John Green                                    Call Number: REALISTIC F GRE
One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus                                   Call Number: MYSTERY F MCM
Warcross by Marie Lu. G. P.                                                          Call Number: SCI-FI F GRE
Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo                           ON ORDER
Caraval by Stephanie Garber                                                         Call Number: FANTASY F GAR
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds                                             Call Number: REALISTIC F REY
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez  Call Number: REALISTIC F SAN

Paper Hearts by Ali Novak                                                             ON ORDER
Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor                                             Call Number: FANTASY F TAY
Once and For All by Sarah Dessen                                               Call Number: ROMANCE F DES

Library Lunch Hour

We made a big change this school year that I have been thinking about doing for awhile...

Food is now allowed in the library!

A few reasons we did this:

• Students were sneaking food anyway.  The constant monitoring to see if someone was eating a bag of popcorn or an apple was a time-sucker. In thinking about it, I really don't care if they are eating a bag of popcorn while they study.
• The cafeteria is very full at lunch.  Some students prefer to hang out here to relax and/or play games. Some were skipping lunch to be here.

We added extra trash-cans around the library and students have been doing well at picking up after themselves.  They were told at the start of the year that I have a fear of roaches and if I start seeing them crawl across the library the food privilege would go away.

Here's a few pictures of the library lunch hour:

Talking and eating with friends

These two have lunches from home on the seats beside them.

The video gaming crew

Collaborating on homework over lunch

OverDrive Sora

Try the new Sora reading app from OverDrive on your October break travels! 

The library offers thousands of eBooks and audiobooks through OverDrive.  Download the Sora app on your device or access Sora online at: https://soraapp.com to see what books are available.

Our other link to OverDrive still works, but I think Sora provides a better student reading experience and syncs well across multiple devices.  Stop by the library if you need help using Sora.

Digital Norms

The middle school has been focusing on creating Digital Norms for the first month of school.  The library is working in collaboration with our tech department with an "end-goal" to become a Common Sense School.

We kicked off this process during middle school orientation by asking all grade levels to complete a Padlet with ideas for how to be respectful online.  The three topic areas were:

• Respect Self
• Respect Others
• Respect Digital Property

Once we had their ideas, we combined them into short statements and asked each grade to use a Google Form to vote on what they felt their grade should focus on.

Next- we went "old-school" as the students commented and created actual posters (using no digital media whatsoever!) of digital norms that are important to them.  Our old-school posters will be displayed around the middle school.

Below is the idea we came up with for a collaborative poster that could be worked on by several classes with different library times and in only a few minutes as library lessons are short.

Grade 6's completed Digital Norms poster

Grade 8's work-in-progress poster

Banned Books Week 2018

We are busy getting ready for Banned Books Week September 23-29.  Stop into the library to learn about, and check out, challenged books.

A huge THANK YOU to Mr. Shoyab and Ms. Shuborna for taking the lead on the awesome Banned Books Week displays.

Genre Feature Table- an easy addition to library lessons

I am lucky enough to see Middle School Humanities and English classes once per 8-day cycle for a 30 minute library lesson and book checkout.  This year, we added a genre feature table to our classroom area with the the hope of increasing checkout and introducing students to new books.
At the start of each library lesson, I book talk 4-5 books from the table and we discuss the featured genre.  For me, it's a great way to focus students and kick off our lesson.
This small addition to library time has been so successful that I have to re-stock the table after almost every lesson.
The featured genre for this week is: Sci Fi.

Welcome Back!

(CC0 geralt- pixabay)

I hope you had a great summer!  

Come visit the MS/HS library to see all the new books that have arrived.  While you're here:

• Don't forget to return your summer reading BINGO form if you participated.
• Leave an emoji book review of titles you read over the summer.