Intro

Hi everyone and welcome to the Books Between podcast! If you are a middle grade teacher, a librarian, a parent of a child between 8 and 12 - or anyone who just loves to chat about kids’ books - then you are in the right spot!  Our focus is generally middle grade books but occasionally we veer into picture books or YA.  I’m your host, Corrina Allen - a mom of two, a 5th grade teacher and enjoying our Spring Break! It’s been low key but relaxing.

This is Episode #22 and Today I am welcoming author Adrienne Kress to the show and then chatting about three fantastic books featuring famous people or people who should be famous.

Main Topic - Interview with Adrienne Kress

Today I am honored to welcome Adrienne Kress. She is the author of the newly released action-adventure mystery called The Explorers: The Door in the Alley. And in our conversation we chat about traveling, the difference between writing Young Adult vs. Middle Grade, and high tea. Take a listen.

A few weeks ago as I was preparing to read The Explorers and I knew we would be chatting, I hopped on your website and whoa! You are a woman of many talents - not only an author but an actor, a playwright, producer/director…

How do those roles all work together? What is your day like?

I was reading your bio section in the back of the book and you mention that both of your parents are English teachers and yet I read an article where you described yourself as a reluctant reader as a child.

What was that like for you?

Let’s talk about The Explorers ! Your middle grade book is coming out Tuesday, April 25th.

Tell us what it’s about!

I am excited to get the final version and see the artwork - not only how the artist envisioned the characters and setting, but I was really intrigued by the placement on the pages…

Can you tell a bit about that process?

One of the things that fascinated me about The Explorers Society with the huge multi-floor library built around this giant tree and rooms dedicated to the interests of the explorers. One person explores deserts and one focuses on leaves and another one is interested in sewers.

If you were to join the Explorers Society, what would you dedicate your life to exploring?

You ended this novel with one heck of a cliffhanger!!!

When is Book 2 coming out? Do you know yet?

Not only do you write middle grade books, but you also have YA books out as well.

When you set out to write a book, do you already know ahead of time whether it will be Young Adult or Middle Grade? What is that process like for you?

Coffee or Tea?

What is your reading life like now?  What have you read lately that you’ve really liked?

If people wanted to follow you and find out more about your work , where should they go?

Book Talk - Three Books Featuring Famous People or People Who Should Be Famous

In this section of the show, I share with you three books centered around a theme and discuss three things to love about each book. This week we are focusing on stories about amazing people - both historical and modern. They are Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, Who Wins? 100 Historical Figures Go Head-to Head, and Spy on History: Mary Bowser and the Civil War Spy Ring.

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls

This week I’ll start with Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls. I’m almost embarrassed to admit where I saw this book first. Umm… it was a Facebook ad. I guess that tells you two things - 1) I spend too much time on Facebook and 2) Facebook knows me disturbingly well!  And - and I guess I’ll add a third - sometimes Facebook ads really do work. I saw Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls scroll across my feed and thought - “Yes! I want that book for my daughters. But - I also want it for me.”  So, let me tell you about it. It is 100 tales of extraordinary women illustrated by 60 female artists from all around the world. It’s written by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo - both women entrepreneurs whose idea for this book stemmed from the fact they wished they had grown up with more female role models. The book became the most funded book in crowdfunding history.

Here are three things to love about Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls:

1. How each one-page biography is written like a mini fairy tale. It’s such a different take on a biography compilation. Let me give you a few examples: “Once there was a little girl who didn’t speak for five years. She thought her words could hurt people and promised herself to never make a peep again. Her name was Maya.” That’s Maya Angelou.  Here’s another one. “Once there was a girl who wanted to drive a car. She lived in Saudi Arabia, a country where religious rules forbid women from driving. One day she decided to break the rules.” - That’s Manal Al-Sharif, the women’s rights activist. I just love them - and there’s something about telling these women’s stories like this that elevates them to a heroic level and makes you feel like you can slay your own dragons.
2. The variety of stories and the women you get to learn about. For instance, the book includes artists like Frida Kahlo and Coco Chanel but also tattoo artist Maud Stevens Wagner. There are well-known political figures like Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Evita Peron but we also get know about Somali politician Fadumo Dayib and Indian Queen and Warrior Lakshmi Bai. There are mathematicians, and surgeons, and drummers, and spies, and chefs, and mountaineers, and one elementary school student - Coy Mathis, born in 2007. And I’ll leave her story for you to discover.
3. And finally - at the very end there is a place to write your own story and draw your own portrait. How powerful is that?

Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls would be a great gift - especially for girls, but could absolutely be enlightening for boys as well. As I was reading some to my daughters, I had my teacher hat partially on and was thinking that this would be great for Women’s History Month next year. We could read one brief story every day and expand our knowledge of some women who should be known and celebrated for their accomplishments.

Who Wins? 100 Historical Figures Go Head-to Head

Next up this week is 100 Historical Figures Go Head-to Head created by Clay Swartz and illustrated by Tom Booth. This is an awesomely fun mix-and-match flip book set up as a game where we imagine important historical figures competing in a variety of interesting scenarios. It’s a really sturdy spiral bound book made up of three panels. On the left and on the right are the people. The bottom half features a drawing of that person facing inward toward their opponent and some quick descriptors. For example, we have Harry Houdini (Mr. Magic: Entertainer, Illusionist, Adrenaline Junkie) facing off with Cleopatra (Queen of the Nile: Pharaoh, Feminist, Diva). And  - the bottom lists how each person rates across 7 categories: Wealth, Fitness, Wisdom, Bravery, Artistry, Leadership, and Intelligence. For example, Houdini rates as a 7 for wealth and Cleopatra is a 9. Houdini is a 10 for fitness while Cleopatra is only a 6. So you have some basis for debate. Then the top of each side includes a short biography of each person and a couple “Little Known Facts”.  Then - the middle describes the battle scenario. There are things like: Summiting Everest, Slam Dunk Contest, Rap Battle, Brain Surgery, Wrestlemania, Selling the Most Girl Scout Cookies. On this page, Houdini and Cleopatra are going head to head about who could Sneak Into Area 51! Hmmmm….  I don’t know. Houdini’s really good at escaping from places, and didn’t Cleopatra sneak into see someone rolled up in a rug? Or am I just thinking of the Elizabeth Taylor movie and that is actually a myth.  That’s a tough one.

But that’s what’s fun about this book!  If you’re not already sold, here are three more awesome reasons to love 100 Historical Figures Go Head-to Head:

1. You - and your kids - are never going to get bored with this book! There are 100,000 possible combinations, and I can attest that with my own kids, the conversation starts with the match-up and then spirals into discussing other situations.
2. And did I mention? It’s full color!! It’s gorgeous and really designed well. The three panels are not just basic rectangles - they are done in a zig-zag pattern that somehow keeps the pages from sliding over each other too much. They nestle together.
3. The potential to springboard some cool projects and discussions off this book! Again, I’ve always got my teacher hat on and I kept thinking that it would be really cool to act some of these out. Thomas Edison vs. Mother Teresa in a Hot Dog Eating Contest! Or… if your school is like mine, we often have a biography unit. Perhaps your students could take their biography subject and give them a rating in a few categories and have them face off in different situations. And it doesn’t have to be a lengthy thing, maybe just a quick find a partner and “Okay, Who would do better living on a desert island? You’ve got two minutes to chat and back up your ideas.”  Or - for your own children, this would be the perfect book to stash in your car.

Spy on History: Mary Bowser and the Civil War Spy Ring

Our last book this week is Spy on History: Mary Bowser and the Civil War Spy Ring by Enigma Alberti with illustrations by Tony Cliff.  This is an interactive historical narrative about an African American spy, Mary Bowser, who infiltrated the Confederate administration. She posed as an illiterate slave in Jefferson Davis’ White House during the Civil War and sent information to Union Generals. Truly an unsung hero of American history. This is based on true events and the history is accurate, but it is dramatized into a suspenseful story.  Here are three things to love about Mary Bowser and the Civil War Spy Ring:

1. The interactive part. Readers actually get to solve a mystery in this book! It comes with spycraft materials like a cipher wheel, red acetate paper, and a white vellum sheet that when you line it up correctly can be used to help crack the code on certain pages.  It is SO cool! And comes with a sealed answer key if you get stuck.
2. How this book angles history from the perspective of a black enslaved woman. History is told by those in power and for far too long, we have been denied the point of view of most women and most people of color, and I am so glad children get a chance to meet and know Mary Bowser.
3. And finally, what I liked most about this book was that I couldn’t read it. Now, what I mean by that is that I attempted to read it, but it very quickly got snatched out of my hands. I started reading on the couch and as soon as the words, “OOOoooo...there’s codes in this…” came out of my mouth, my daughters were huddled behind me reading over both my shoulders. Then… they climbed over the back of the couch and into my lap to “help” me flip through the pages. And then they saw the grid of letters and snatched it away to go solve it without me! Argh!

Mary Bowser and the Civil War Spy Ring is a little bit like a combination of a Mail order Mystery and Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales. If you know a kid who loves a mystery, who loves cracking a code, who loves a suspenseful story - then this one is a winner.

A couple quick announcements before we close today. I’ve skipped the Question & Answer segment the last couple of weeks mainly because I didn’t want to have the episodes run too long. I know several of you have sent questions. Thank you! And I’ll be back on track answering those next time.

Also - I discovered new website for you to check out! It’s teacherswhoread.blogspot.com It just launched a few weeks ago and it’s a great site if you’re looking for more middle book recommendations or engaging literacy ideas to try out in your school.

Closing

Alright - that’s it for our show this week. If you have a question about how to connect middle grade readers to books they will love or an idea about a guest we should have or a topic we should cover, I really love to hear from you. You can email me at booksbetween@gmail.com or message me on Twitter/Instagram at the handle @Books_Between.

Thank you so much for joining me this week. You can get find an outline of interviews and a full transcript of all the other parts of the show along all of our previous episodes at AlltheWonders.com.

And, if you are liking the show, please help others find us too by telling a friend, sharing on social media, or leaving a rating on iTunes or Stitcher.

Thanks again and see you in two weeks!  Bye!

http://teacherswhoread.blogspot.com

http://www.adriennekress.com

Intro

Hi everyone! Welcome to Episode 21 of Books Between - a podcast for teachers, parents, librarians, and anyone who loves middle grade books!  I am Corrina Allen - a teacher, a mom, and a big podcast fan.  And I’ll tell you - I have been absolutely sucked into the new STown podcast for the past week! And have probably spend too much time and stayed up far too late looking at pictures of hedge mazes, sundials, and antique clocks. So, I know you like podcasts - definitely go listen to STown.

Since April is National Poetry month, our show today is all about celebrating the power of poetry! I’ll share with you a couple poetry resources to help you enjoy poetry more with your students and kids, and then chat about some fabulous books - from picture books to poetry anthologies to novels in verse.  

Main Topic - Celebrating the Power of Poetry

I will straight up tell you that I was slow to appreciate poetry in the way it really deserves. I was always a voracious reader even as a kid, but I rarely ever picked up any poetry when left to my own devices.  I guess I always thought of it as a complicated puzzle or containing some secret message that I was just too obtuse to figure out.  I even had this ridiculous idea that all poetry was romantic.  Yeah - I know - WRONG!

So, I have been on a mission lately to shed my own misconceptions and make SURE that I am not passing those along to my own children or my own students. It is still very much a work in progress for me, but I thought today I’d share with you a few ideas about how to include more poetry in the lives of your kids - not only during National Poetry Month, but all year long.

Rethinking Poetry

First off, I think that rethinking reading poetry is the biggest step. Helping kids understand that poetry can be about ANYTHING (not just love) is a major step. The best way to to do this? Start by reading lots of varieties of poetry with them. I know we are all pressed for time, but reading a short poem every day (or even start with every week!) would take less than a minute and can often be done in those “gap times” like waiting in the hallway or waiting for the bus to arrive. (And later on, I’ll share with you some places to get those poems.)  Also, I used to think that as a teacher, I would have to hammer the heck out of a poem and make sure my students had yanked that thing apart and knew the theme, the rhyme pattern, the symbols, the point of view of the author and on and on and on until… well, it just wasn’t enjoyable anymore. For me or my students!

The event that recently cemented for me the fact that teaching poetry doesn’t have to be like that was Laura Shovan’s live Facebook Event hosted by The Nerdy Book Club. It was called “It’s National Poetry Month: Let’s Teach Poetry!” and you can find an archive of that event through their facebook page and I’ll also include a direct link to it in our show transcript. So anyway - Laura Shovan is a poet-in-the-schools for the Maryland State Arts Council’s Artist-in-Education program and the author of the novel in verse The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary. In this video, she walks through how to teach the poem “Weather” by Eve Merriam. The whole thing is worth checking out, but I just wanted to share with you a few highlights:

• Read the poem aloud and ask students what THEY notice, what stands out to them, what got them thinking or feeling. And every time I have done this over the past week, my students will catch aspects of the poem I would never have considered.  I love the advice of having students take the conversational lead.
• Reinforce the vocabulary of poetry naturally through the conversation around the poems, rather than a separate stand alone lesson. Incorporating terms like “couplet” and “stanza” into the discussion can save time and solidify their meaning for kids.
• The idea of poetry as layers - layers of sound, of story, of point of view. And how reading a poem several times allows you (and your kids!) to discover more within those multiple readings.

And Laura Shovan makes this wonderful analogy of a poem as a waterfall - some students are going to want to jump into the water and experience it with all their senses, some are science minded and might want to take samples to examine and pick apart under a microscope, and some students want to stand back admire the beauty of that waterfall with awe and wonder.  And all of those responses are are just fine. And we don’t have to do every single one of them every time we read a poem together. If you want to learn more, check out Laura’s website at www.LauraShovan.com -

Another fantastic resource that links reading and writing poetry is Kwame Alexander’s Page-to-Stage Writing Workshop. And I highly recommend this if you want to harness the power of poetry to boost the level of writing excitement with your kids. This is a teacher’s guide that will get your kids writing, publishing, and presenting their poetry - and the best part is that it’s not JUST another book on teaching poetry. It includes videos of Kwame Alexander - both for teachers and for your students to watch. And if you’ve ever had the chance to hear  him speak, you know the energy he brings.  It’s like having a Newbery-Award winning author right in your classroom giving you a mini-lesson on poetry. Actually it’s not LIKE that, it actually IS that!  Absolutely check that out!

I’ll close by quoting a bit from Kylene Beers’ forward of Page-to-Stage, “Poetry - what I’ll call the neglected genre - draws us into ourselves as it simultaneously lets us give back to the world a fresh understanding , a new vision, a re-vision of one moment. Kwame puts it better when he explains that poetry lets us ‘write our own journeys, find our own voices.’”  

So I’m excited and inspired to include more poetry in my classroom and get kids writing more.  As always, I would love to hear what you are doing to foster a love of poetry  with your students and kids.  You can tag me on Twitter, Instagram, and now Facebook - our handle is @books_between or email me at booksbetween@gmail.com and I’d love to hear and share your ideas.

Book Talk - Fabulous Poetry Books & Novels in Verse

In this part of the show, I chat about books centered around a theme and of course this week is all about fantastic poetry books, anthologies, and novels in verse for middle grade readers. And - since National Poem in Your Pocket Day is Thursday, April 27th - this will give you some awesome options for you and your students to tuck in those pockets.

Poetry Books

Bravo! Poems About Amazing Hispanics by author Margarita Engle with illustrations by Rafael Lopez. I really love this book - the drawings are fantastic and bold and each poem is from the point of view of the person being featured so it really feels personal.

One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance the latest by Nikki Grimes which is a collection of her original poetry interspersed with classic poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. Grimes is amazing - just go ahead and get all the Nikki Grimes - you can’t go wrong with her work!

Speaking of can’t go wrong poets, Kwame Alexander has two new poetry picture book collections out.  The first is called Animal Ark: Celebrating our Wild World in Poetry and Pictures and features photographs of endangered species. This one good for young readers as well as older kids. Then he’s also collaborated with some other poets  (Chris Colderley and Marjory Wentworth along with artist Ekua Holmes to put together a beautiful collection of poems celebrating poets called Out of Wonder.

Another poet to look for is  Lee Bennett Hopkins - his work is simply outstanding. I love his general collections but his themed books are really cool. Check out My America: A Poetry Atlas of the United States - a collection of fifty poems celebrating various regions in the country. Or Marvelous Math - a collection of math themed poems, or Spectacular Science - a book full of poems on all sorts of science topics. What is cool about these books is that if you have them on hand, you can easily flip and find a poem that relates to a subject you are studying in class. A poetry break during Math or Science?  Yes, please!

And if you are looking for something clever and funny, take a look at Keep a Pocket in Your Poem by J. Patrick Lewis. They take classic poems and pair them with a parody poem. So for example, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is paired with “Stopping by Fridge on a Hungry Evening” . It’s cute, funny, and may even inspire some of your kids to give a parody poem a try!

And if you want to enjoy some excellent poetry with a jazzy, hip hop flair - please, please go snag a copy of Hip Hop Speaks to Children: a celebration of poetry with a beat. It’s edited by Nikki Giovanni and includes a CD with many of the authors reading their poems - including Eloise Greenfield, Gary Soto, Langston Hughes, James Berry - and so, so many more. A couple things I really loved - one, they make the explicit connection between music, lyrics, and poetry and include lots of poems that we might originally view simply as songs.  Like “Rapper’s Delight”! And Queen Latifah’s “Ladies First”! It’s so, so good! And secondly, some of the tracks include the authors introducing their poem and giving you a little background. For instance, before Pedro Pietri reads “Love Poem for My People”, I was really stuck by how he mentioned that he wrote it many years ago and is STILL working on it.  Powerful, powerful messages for kids - you definitely want this one on hand!

Novels in Verse:

Well, you can’t talk about novels in verse without mentioning the amazing Sharon Creech. There are of course Love That Dog  and Hate That Cat - perennial classics in any classroom or library. But, I want to give a plug for her latest novel, called Moo. It’s the story of twelve -year-old Reena and her seven-year-old brother, Luke who are suddenly uprooted from their life in New York City and wind up moving to very rural Maine, and reluctantly trying to bond with a super ornery cow. There were certain aspects that reminded me a bit of Home of the Brave. I think those two would make a great novel-in-verse pairing.

And of course, I would be remiss If I didn’t mention Kwame Alexander’s two novels in verse - The Crossover and Booked. I feel like I have gushed so much about those two books on this podcast and how much students love them that I am almost risking overdoing it. So, you already know they are amazing, right?

Also previously mentioned on the podcast, but definitely need to be included on this list are Ellie Terry’s Forget Me Not, which is a novel that is half verse / half prose from two points of view.  If you want to know more about that novel, I went into more depth in the last show which was Episode 20.  And in Episode #8, I featuring Laura Shovan’s The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary, which is fantastic not only for the story but because it has dozens of poetry prompts right in the back. LOVE it!

Another author that writes poetry for kids across a wide range of ages is Nikki Grimes. I already mentioned her picture book work, but her novels Words With Wings and Garvey’s Choice are phenomenal. And accessible to kids who might find the brief poems and open space of each page really appealing. They are quick but powerful reads. A short poem, a short story, can pack a lot of punch.

And of course, Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming and her earlier book Locomotion and so many others are written with such passion and love that they stay with you, long, long after you’ve set aside those books.

A couple novels in verse that I haven’t read yet but have been bubbling up are The Red Pencil by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai. I keep bumping into rave reviews and reflections on these two books - argh - I think I just need to take a reading sabbatical and work through my To Be Read pile. Wouldn’t that be nice?  

Well - I could go on and on - and I know I’ve missed a lot on this list, but I do need to cut myself off at some point. But, that leaves the door open for YOU!  What poetry books or novels in verse are your favorites and why do you love them? I’ll open some threads on our various social media sites and let’s continue the conversation there!

Closing

Okay  - that wraps up our show this week.  If you have topic or a book you think we should cover, please let us know. You can email me at booksbetween@gmail.com or message me on Twitter/Instagram at the handle @Books_Between.

Thanks again for joining me this week. You can get a full transcript of this show and all of our previous episodes at AlltheWonders.com including links to every book and every resource I talked about today. And, if you’re enjoying the show and finding some value in what you hear, please help others find us too by telling a friend, sharing on social media, or leaving a rating on iTunes or Stitcher.

Thanks again and see you in two weeks!  Bye!

https://www.facebook.com/nerdybookclub/videos/1501455839895985/?pnref=story

http://laurashovan.com/2017/04/its-national-poetry-month-lets-teach-poetry/

https://shop.scholastic.com/teachers-ecommerce/books/kwame-alexanders-page-to-stage-writing-workshop-9781338026818.html