After My "Virtual Visit" to Terebithia - Via the Monday Night Movies!

I enjoyed the treat of going to the movies on a Monday night (a school night ;) and seeing the movie adaptation of Bridge to Terebithia. Like several other people that I spoke to, I worried that the majority of the film would be computerized animation intermingling with the characters Jess and Leslie and veer far from the themes and simplicity behind the book's original story. I am pleasantly happy to say that it stayed much closer to the course and storyline of the book than I had anticipated. As with everything else in media these days, the bottom line is profitability. Marketing via trailers and other advertisement methods aims at a target audience to appeal to and therefore draw them into spending money to be entertained by the anticipation created by the movie preview. I saw the television commercial again this morning and it does indeed emphasize the animation aspect, leading young people with no prior interaction with the book to probably perceive it as yet another fantasy animation creation. I am sure that there are children, who have not read the book but do attend the movie, are surprised at the primarily realistic story line that runs with the escapism fantasy that is created for us to visualize beyond the imaginations of Leslie and Jess courtesy of the magic of film.


I loved the children who were cast for Jess and Leslie, and I think they each respectfully captured the spirit of these main characters. The actor who played Jess was believable to me as I had similarly imagined in my mind while reading the book. He had a bit of a flair for the original 1970s setting in his appearance, with slightly shaggy hair and his clothing. I liked how Leslie's resilient, hopeful, and creative nature was portrayed by the actress who played her. I especially liked the little girl who played May Belle, with her spunky facial expressions and the way she craved nothing more than to adore her brother Jess. Even though she was a secondary character, she was an important part to the story because of the way it evicted laughs and pulled on my heartstrings throughout the story, especially with her determination at the end. The movie adaptation took place in modern times, unlike the 1970s setting of the novel. However, I still felt that the film evoked somewhat of a flavor of that time, from the hippie music played by the music teacher, who along with Jess's appearance, both could have harked from that era. The home of Jess had a flair from decades past as well. Leslie was definitely from current times in her fashion selections. I have to say that it has been a long time since I cried at a movie, and even though I knew "what was coming up," I still felt for Jess and the sincerity of his painful loss of a soul mate. I also found myself more connected to the conjured up feelings of luscious escape and the endless possibilities of my imagination that I had in abundance with my best girlfriends as a child in the playhouse my father had built for me.


I enjoyed the movie and I am glad that it wasn't as fanciful with animation as I feared it might fall victim to in its attempt to appeal to slightly younger children then the book attracts. It was a treat!

The Book Hunter in Me Strikes Gold at a Book Sale!

For you book lovers and "hunters" like me out there, especially my classmates who have been in the same boat as me looking for the Cythina Rylant biographical book, you will appreciate this little story. The Cynthia Rylant book But I'll Be Back Again as you know isn't the easiest book to get your hands on. It has been selling used in the ballpark of $50 through used booksellers on Amazon, and when I tried to order from Books a Million, they sent my order back via email to cancel because they no longer sell it despite what their website said. However, I did check it out from the York County Public Library (Tabb branch.) So I knew what the cover looked like.

Anyways, last weekend I went to a used book sale at the Hampton Public Library. As you can imagine, I was scanning all the "departments" of books for good finds, from the children's books for the class to local history books for my personal collection to books to read for pleasure. I also had no shame in digging in the boxes under the tables. Well, in the next to last box I looked in under the children's table was a little yellow spine that with my "prior knowledge" I recognized instantly as Rylant's book! My mother was laughing at me because she said I was looking around making sure someone didn't see that I had found something equating to a bar of gold. The topper of it all, because it was the last day of the sale, the children's books were (drum roll please....) 10 cents! I got Rylant's discarded book for a dime! Inside, I felt like I had to run across the parking lot and floor it when I got to the car before I was caught with my "gold." :)

For you "book hunters and gatherers" out there, I am sure you identify with the joy of my find! I do the same thing at garage sales when I go book hunting every single weekend in the springtime, but that's the biggest bargain AND hard to get book I have ever stumbled upon. Very exciting stuff!

Bridge to Terebithia - After Reading the Book (and Before Seeing the Movie:)

Paterson, K. (1977). Bridge to Terabithia. Harper Trophy.

Newbery Medal Winner - 1978

I read Bridge to Terebithia when I was young, around 4th or 5th grade. I didn't remember too much about it as an adult, except for the boy and girl being friends, and that the young girl died. Reading this chapter book as an adult brought me a new perspective on the book, and I see deeper meanings than I would have as a child.

In this Newbery Award Winner written by Katherine Paterson, the ten year old Jess lives in a rural area of Virginia. He loves the freedom and power of being able to run, and to symbolically run from feeling like the man of the home and from feeling like he needs to escape being stuck between four sisters. Jess befriends Leslie, who moved to the rural Virginia area from D.C. with her mom and dad who want to explore living a simpler life. Leslie and Jess end up striking up a friendship, something both of them are craving as escape and belonging in their own ways. Together they create their own imaginary “place” of escape, which they name Terebithia. The setting of Terebithia is important to the tone of the story. Jess and Leslie deem themselves rulers of this land and build a “castle” and travel there via a swinging rope. Taking that leap across the creek symbolizes taking risks, and how they can be worth it if it takes you somewhere to escape.

Later on in the story, Jess goes with his music teacher Ms. Edmunds to Washington D.C. for the day. It is during Jess’s absence that Leslie goes exploring on her own and travels on the rope solo when flooding rains and mud are reigning. Leslie tragically dies from slipping off of the rope and falling down. This leaves Jess devastated and he goes through the stages of grieving, being withdrawn, angry, and upset. It is symbolic when Jess crowns his adoring seven year old sister May Belle after she follows him to Terebithia one day, because he is showing that he know life must go on. In a sense, he looked up to Leslie’s leadership and now he must be that role model for his sister.

There are several themes and main ideas sewn through the text, friendship, family, and death. The entire book is written in a realistic tone, aside from the imaginary world that is conjured up by Leslie and Jess to escape and understand the drudgery of real life. The language, the interactions amongst family, friends, and other characters, and the setting are all believable and identifiable in some regard to many readers. Although the sobering subject of death can never be light or breezy in a children's novel, Patterson deals with it in a realistic, respectful and tender tone to allow the young reader to read through it and learn from the characters and their challenges with it.

It was very interesting to read this book again, because I don't remember feeling moved by it like I do as an adult. My maturity and prior experiences come to the table with me as a grown up, and I appreciate the story much more. I have a feeling after viewing the movie trailer on TV that the emphasis will be on the imiginary land itself, with the creation of fantasy creatures dominating the movie preview. I predict that although it may be entertaining, the same themes will certainly be portrayed in a different manner. Hopefully, I will enjoy the movie just the same. I will keep you posted by writing after I see the movie Monday evening. I am looking forward to it!

Sidewalk Circus Created By: Paul Fleischman and illustrated By: Kevin Hawkes

Fleischman, P. (2004). Sidewalk Circus. Candlewick Press.

Paul Fleischman's book Sidewalk Circus is a picturebook that I have seen before at the school media center, but I have never used it before with my classes. I admit that although I thought the illustrations by Kevin Hawkes are engaging, I tend to shy away from using wordless (or nearly wordless) picturebooks for lessons. I do a couple during the school year, notably Time Flies By: Eric Rohmann and Good Dog, Carl By: Alexandra Day. I have used wordless picturebooks to do mini-lessons at read aloud on the power and connectivity that illustrations possess in partnership with a given story line. As much as I illicit ideas from the kids during read aloud and have them orally discuss text with one another in a think-pair-share format, sharing a wordless picture book almost pains some students to not immediately verbalize their predictions and observations with both their peers and myself. For other students, it brings out the necessity to savor drawings that would otherwise be flipped through in a mere minute or two.

I decided to share this selection with my students to give it a test run and to garner an authentic reaction from a second grade class. I went really slow and showed the illustrations and no talking was allowed from them or myself during the first viewing. After slowly sharing the book, I told the students that this time they are going to whisper to their pair partner what they noticed, big and small, any inside jokes, and what the story was really about. They took it very seriously, and I loved watching them excitedly softly talk amongst each other, trying to "get" the real story. The kids bubbled with observations that they seem to feel that they were so keen to observe. When we went through the book a third time, that's when I showed each page and asked for three different pairings to share their ideas.

They discussed how the little girl is depicted in bold color while the grown ups around her were depicted in drab colors, all self-absorbed and unobservant of the busy "day to day" life activities on the busy city street. Students commented on how she didn't need to go to the "real" circus being advertised, because her creative imagination and keen connective observations saw the circus all around her. Comparisons to the feats of a circus on the town street range from the "juggling" of pancakes at the cafe window, to the painters on hanging scaffolding on the side of the building slipping as if trapeze artists, to the comparison of the marquee's ad of daring sword swallowers to the dentist down a patient's throat with a tool in a nearby window. The little girl's reaction is depicted in her body language, and the students knew what she was feeling with no words at all. When the little girl's bus leaves, a young boy comes along to sit on the same bench and begins to see the same comparisons, showing the observational nature of young people who are hungry to understand the world around them.

Several students commented on how they loved how the picture filled the whole picture space (as I have often told them about their personal work ;) and one student brought up a text to text connection (and a "mini-lesson to mini-lesson" connection) to Cynthia Rylant's book Scarecrow. In the Fall, we read Rylant's selection and I brought to their attention how the illustrator in her book zoomed up perspectives very close and from afar to make you see things differently. Fleishman and Hawkes have the same perspective represented in different ways, such as looking down the street with the marquee on the right, or the window above zoomed in with just a corner of it showing, all giving the feeling of the little girl looking around the same scene.

The kids wanted their own opportunity to do a "wordless" story, and so next week, we are going to work together with partners. One student will do the pictures, and the other will have to explain or write their own interpretations and share together with the class at author's chair time. The "wordless picture book" will be shown to the students by the illustrator, and then after a complete viewing, the partner student who wrote about the story will share their interpretation. Although simplistic, the children still have to be extra observant with illustrations that some would easily breeze through. This selection by Fleishman and Hawkes served as a great role model for that. I'm glad this made me give a book I was overlooking a second chance.

Exploring the Genre of Tall Tales with Steven Kellogg

Kellogg, S. (1986). Pecos Bill. William Morrow.

As you can see from my listing of recent read alouds that I have shared with my second graders, I have been exploring tall tales during our daily sessions over the past week. The staple of this unit has been incorporating a focus on one of our classroom "featured authors" for the year, Steven Kellogg. As some of you may know, he is an amazing illustrator as well as an entertaining author, and the pictures he creates are truly best enjoyed interacting with the book one on one. Once my students are familiar with his style, I make a big deal out of beginning of visualize what Steven Kellogg may have drawn on certain pages before I show them while reading the page aloud. Like so many illustrators and storytellers, he uses the drawings to convey additional information, and in this case, exaggeration, to the already stretched tale.

We enjoyed discussing his works, read in this listed order: Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind Crockett, and Mike Fink. With the reading of the second book Pecos Bill, students already began to make text to text connections and began to define Kellogg's indelible stylings as a writer and artist. Sharing his tall tales lends itself to our ongoing reading studies of how to create story maps, define main ideas of a story, and identify a story's elements such as setting, problem, or solution. In the case of these Kellogg's escapades, the main characters keep a positive attitude and tackle problems and solve each one with wit and cunning (or what I humorously refer to with my class as "old west McGyvering skills.") Not only do these heroes tackle each problem with gusto, they encounter one problem after another in each story, each one more outlandish than the last, leaving the readers almost exhausted themselves at the end of the journeys.

With these observations about Kellogg's crafting as an author, as with other "Featured Authors" throughout the school year, the children extract stylings, inspiration, and observations to take into their own experiences as a young author. We are currently experimenting with creating our own tall tales. The students want me to share their newest creations, which are currently being incorporated into a class treasury, with my college class that I am "so lucky to take." I share appropriate things with my students all the time, and I told them that I am taking the "best college class EVER right now. I get to read children's books!" They know I am in heaven! They love to see the giant stack of books ever changing on my desk, and have taken on the attitude that what they read is really important because I am reading it in college. It's so funny how yet another layer to the love of reading has been added to my students and classroom library.

The children relish in being able to "think-pair-share" about what will occur in the story lines, discussing, revising, and expanding their own conceived guesses, and then interactively discussing the possibilities with their peers seated on the floor around me as well as with myself. Discussions are never just about "telling the teacher the right answer" when it comes to literature discussions. I nurture a "grown up" style where they look at each other and share reflections, questions, predictions, and connections interactively.

It's always during this time of year that I think to myself, "Gosh, look! I have been able to pass along to another group of students this way of thinking about books. Every one of these kids has grown, to some degree with my guidance, some part from the modeling of their peers, and the rest from an inner drive and curiosity that they have found in themselves. Do they really have to leave me in June?" I will relish the rest of the year with them all, and since today was 100th day, I only have 80 days worth of read alouds to share! Time is of the essence! :)

My Ambition: To Become a "Readologist!"

My ambition is to someday be what literature specialist and children's author Esme Raji Codell calls herself: a "certified readologist." Of course this is a fun way to express my passion for reading. I will never be able to finish my quest of reading all of the quality children's literature I can in my lifetime, because luckily new trade books come out continuously to feed my ravenous appetite. I have the chance to perpetually share my craving for the "sweetness of knowledge" and experiences of life through the pages of a book, as author Patricia Polacco puts in her books Thank You, Mr. Falker and The Bee Tree. My never ending quest to channel my self-motivation and passion for reading into my students is truly one of my greatest rewards as an educator. When my students "get" a book beyond its surface, I am reminded why I teach. What an amazing profession!