CANNED AND CRUSHED- Bibi Belford

Sandro Zapote is a kid I know well. He's a Mexican immigrant, bilingual, a fourth grader who lives with his dad, mom, and younger sister, Girasol. Sandro's father was an engineer in Mexico and was hired for a similar job in the United States. The job fell through at the last minute, so now he works two jobs, picking up roadkill, and also scrap metal. His mom is a cleaning lady. Sandro loves drawing and soccer, but school, not so much.

Sandro is in trouble. A lot. For starters, he is in an ongoing war with a Pakistani classmate-- Abiola Kahn. He really is pretty mean to her, and actually spends several days in the office in in school suspension for bullying. He also is a little impulsive; when the book opens, for example, he's just been to the principal's office for spitting off a third floor balcony. Unfortunately, when he tried this, the principal was directly below him.

Sandro, however, also has a really good side. His best friend, Miguel, has only been in the United States for about a year, and Sandro serves as his unofficial English tutor. Early in the book, the Zapote family learns that Sandro's little sister needs heart surgery.  Girasol and her mother travel back to Mexico for the surgery, and Sandro is left with his father.  Determined to help his parents raise money for the surgery, Sandro launches a one-man recycling operation at his school. At the same time, he's trying to keep up with school work, play soccer, and take care of the cooking and cleaning at the family's apartment.

This is a book my students are going to love. Short, funny, and lots of real life issues.

POETRY FRIDAY

This week, Juan Felipe Herrera was named Poet Laureate.  Herrera, a native Californian, and the son of migrant farm workers, is the nation's first Hispanic Poet Laureate. I was excited about this appointment, because Herrera's background, the son of laborers, is similar to the background of my students.  

Describing his poetry for the Wall Street Journal, Herrera says, "I would say my poetry is at times a sculpted investigation…and at times it's a clown's tap dance. Other times I leave those two behind and I just want to tell a story that my mother would love, a poem that my mother would love, and that is good enough." Herrera said he wants people to use poetry to capture experiences from their daily lives. “I invite people to not be afraid and to say who they are and what their experience is and what’s going on in their lives through poetry,” he said. He wants poetry to stretch across worlds and unite people. I didn't know much about Juan Felipe Herrera. When I went looking for his poems, I discovered I actually did know him as a children's author, or at least I recognized a few children's books he has written. 

You can find a few of his poems on the Poetry Foundation website.  I loved this one because I think it captures my students' experiences. I'm always amazed as they move fluidly between two languages. They talk to their friends and family and some teachers in Spanish. Then they turn their heads and talk to me in English. As someone who wants to be fluent in both languages, and works at it every single day, I can tell you it's not that easy. And yet they make it seem effortless, seamless.  

[Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way]

BY JUAN FELIPE HERRERA

Let us gather in a flourishing way

with sunluz grains abriendo los cantos

que cargamos cada día   

en el young pasto nuestro cuerpo

para regalar y dar feliz perlas pearls

of corn flowing árboles de vida en las cuatro esquinas

let us gather in a flourishing way

contentos llenos de fuerza to vida

giving nacimientos to fragrant ríos   

dulces frescos verdes turquoise strong

carne de nuestros hijos rainbows

let us gather in a flourishing way

Read the rest of the poem here.

Head over to Julie Larios' Drift Record to read another post, with lots of fabulous links, about our new Poet Laureate!

Visit a delicious Poetry Friday Roundup at Jama Rattigan's blog. Warning: Eat before you go there! 

RAIN REIGN- Ann M. Martin

RAIN REIGN has been out almost a year and has received lots of awards (Schneider Family, Charlotte Huck, ALA Notable), and I know lots of people have already read it, but I hadn't, at least until last night. I devoured it in one sitting! I loved it!

Rose is a fifth grade girl being raised by a single, sometimes sober father, in a small town in New York. Rose has Asperger's Syndrome and is obsessed with homonyms and also with prime numbers. She attends school in a mainstream fifth grade classroom, but has her own paraprofessional, Mrs. Leibler, who sits right beside her and takes her to the hall when she is having a hard time. Rose's two other favorite companions are her Uncle Weldon and her beloved dog, Rain Reign (note the homonyms).

The problem in this story begins when a hurricane of "epic proportions" strikes Hatford. As the storm diminishes, Rose's father lets Rain out, and she somehow disappears. Rose is heartbroken, and undertakes a careful and methodical search for her dog, with the help of her Uncle Weldon.

A beautiful middle grade novel about differences and bravery and integrity and love. If you haven't already read it, find it, and then block out a couple of hours to read it, because you won't be able to put it down.

SLICE OF LIFE

As of yesterday, I'm officially out of school. I know lots of people really look forward to summer. I really don't. I love my job. I love teaching. Talking about teaching. Thinking about teaching. I work with some of my favorite people. I love being surrounded by kids.

I'm reading everyone's plans for summer. And I really don't have very many. OK, unless you count having a lump removed from the dog's leg ($1400) and a tree that's moving the foundation of the garage cut down ($1000). And applying for student loans because one of my sons thinks he is going back to school this fall (a million dollars).

I decided, then, that I would make a bucket list of things I'd like to do this summer.

1) Buy a camera. Or a phone with a camera. Nothing fancy, just something simple and cheap. Take some pictures.

2) Use the camera to try some of the new apps that I keep reading about.

3) Learn a few new apps.

4) Buy a bike. Again, nothing fancy. Just something I can use to get some exercise.

5) Work on my Spanish.  Every day. Thirty minutes. Maybe even get brave enough to try a Spanish conversation table.

6) Write an article about Mo Willems. And the "rigorous" thinking the first graders did around this author.

7) Go to Mount Rushmore. Some place I've always wanted to see. Six hours away. I could do it in one day, I think.

8) Go to water. I'm really longing for a beach, but that's probably not happening. Maybe Grand Lake, couple of hours away from Denver.  On a weekday, so the crowds and traffic won't be so crazy.

9) Visit the Denver Zoo. It was remodeled several years ago and I have been wanting to see it.

10) Go to a Rockies game. I used to share season tickets with a couple of neighbors. After I adopted the boys, I stopped going, because they hate baseball.

11) Use my Botanic Gardens membership.

12) Write some poetry. Post it on Poetry Fridays.

13) Read. Concentrate on middle grade and YA novels.

14) See Wicked.  Hopefully on a discount, same-day ticket.

15) Take an art class. Maybe through the Botanic Gardens.

16) Work on my garden (or the area that I keep pretending is a garden).

17) Connect with a few friends I haven't seen in a while.

18) Do the online book club. And read at least four more professional books.

19) Go to an author talk at Tattered Cover.

20) Go to City Park Jazz.

21) Learn to use Netflix and see some movies I really wanted to see. Selma  is the first one on my list.

There's lots of other stuff I need to do.  Finish my taxes (I took an extension). Work on projects for school, including the book room, which I am planning on doing one day a week. Clean my closet. Deep clean my house. Declutter. Get estimates on some projects around my house.

But this is the stuff I want to do. Maybe, by making it public, I will accomplish at least a few of these items.

THE BOY IN THE BLACK SUIT- JASON REYNOLDS

My first #bookaday (ok, actually #booka2days) for summer- THE BOY IN THE BLACK SUIT by Jason Reynolds. I'm wondering how I could have not known about this author, who won the CORETTA SCOTT KING/JOHN STEPTOE award for his first novel, WHEN I WAS THE GREATEST, which I am definitely going to read this summer.

A quick snippet about this YA novel, more appropriate for older middle school and high school kids. Matt is a senior in high school. His mom has just died, and he and his dad are both trying to come to grips with their loss. Matt gets a job at a funeral home, and discovers that somehow, attending other people's funerals helps him to come to grips with his own loss.

I loved this book. I wish it had been around when my boys were in high school. It will definitely be one of the first books I talk about with the eighth graders this August.

The kids I teach look like this author. 
Jason Reynolds is an African American man. With long dreds. He looks a little like my youngest son. Before he cut his dreds.

The kids I teach will know this neighborhood.
We started up that block, our cement world of trash cans blown into the street, stray cats begging, stoop sitters dressed in fresh sneakers smoking blunts in broad daylight, old ladies sweeping the sidewalk, tired nine-to-fivers walking slowly on the final stretch before home. The buses, and cabs, and bicycles, and skateboards. The shop owners hollering out their two for one deals. The little girls singing, the older boys laughing, the babies crying, and all of us moving through it all.  (p 75).

The kids I teach know grief. Whether it's the grief of someone dying, or just someone, like a father, not being part of their lives, they know grief. 
I liked watching other people deal with the loss of someone, not because I enjoyed seeing them in pain, but because, somehow, it made me feel better knowing that my pain isn't only mine. That my life isn't the only one that's missing something it will never have back.  79

The kids I teach know loneliness.
I still felt like I went from a not so fancy version of the Cosbys  to a one-man family. LIke that movie with Tom Hanks stuck on an island- I felt like him, far away from everything, calling out in the dark, the waves splashing up on me, the dark, deep water waiting to swallow me up.

The kids I teach need to know other people have walked through, and then out the other side of the issues they are dealing with. 
Even though I know that I couldn't help them and they couldn't help me, just knowing that we were all struggling with this thing…that helped

The kids I know (and me too!) need the big life lessons in this book.
And sometimes, I can lose and lose and lose and I don't know why. But there's nothing I can do but just keep flipping the cards. Eventually, I'll win again. As long as you got cards to keep turning, you're fine. 109

For people who use the strategies in NOTICE AND NOTE, Mr. Ray, the funeral home owner, is perfect for the "Words of Wisdom" strategy.

I WILL TAKE A NAP- Mo Willems

This morning, I'll be doing my last read aloud (for this year) in first grade.
I'm reading Mo Willems' newest book, I WILL TAKE A NAP, which came out on Tuesday.
It features a tired and cranky Gerald.
Who wants to take a nap.
And Piggie, who decides she will nap with him.
It's very clever. Like always.
And I know the first grade groupies will love it.

Here is a funny groupie story.
The first graders have been waiting for this book for about ten days.
Every day they asked if has come.
And every day I tell them, "No, not until June 2nd."
I've showed them the confirmation email.
They loved the "track packages" feature where they could see that the book had actually been mailed. They loved watching the green bar extend across the page as the book made its way across the country.

On Tuesday, I went into their class to pick something up.
And of course I had to remind them that it was June 2nd.
And Mo would be waiting on my front porch when I got home.
"What time is it coming?" one of them asked.
I reminded them that the email said it would be there by 8:00.
"Oh no," said one sweet little thing, looking absolutely crestfallen.
"I won't be able to hear it!
Eight o'clock is when I have to go to bed!"

Gotta love those six year old groupies!

VEGETABLES IN UNDERWEAR- Jared Chapman

A couple of weeks ago, I was at the library. And came across the book VEGETABLES IN UNDERWEAR. And knew it was one I needed to own. To share with kindergarten. Because the kindergarteners and I share our own brand of humor.  Yeah, I know learning to read is serious business, but you gotta love people who giggle at words like toes, belly button and underwear.

I know my kindergarten friends are going to love VEGETABLES IN UNDERWEAR.
Vegetables in big underwear and little underwear.
Days of the week underwear?
Dirty underwear and clean underwear?

I can't wait to share this one!