Critical Thinking Sunday: Mind Games

(via PodBlack Cat)

Unfortunate Covers: The Cay

This was the unfortunate cover I wanted to discuss.  Travis, over at 100 Scope Notes does this "unfortunate cover" bit every once in a while.  He says for the cover to truly be unfortunate, the book itself has to be good.  I haven't read The Cay but know all about it and assume it must be mostly good to be around for so long.  A classic is a book that's still in print, as they say.

So to the left here we see what I consider to be a giggle-worthy unfortunate cover.  Phallic and all that.  But in my search for this cover, I found that this book has had a million different covers and not many of them are good!  How can this be?

The Cay stuck in my mind recently because I was discussing with one of the teachers at my school that I was trying to go back and read many of the kid's classic books now that I'm a school librarian.  She mentioned her weird connection to The Cay.  She distinctly remembered seeing the cover in middle school multiple times and picking up the book, thinking about checking it out and always getting something else.  She never read it.  Always meant to, but just never had.  Then, after telling me this story, she had to sit through a boring professional development meeting in the media center and turned to find herself face to face with The Cay.  So she felt this was destiny or something, checked it out and is finally reading it.  This is the cover on the book she checked out, but not the cover she remembers from her youth.

I think she most likely meant this one, based on the James Earl Jones TV Movie.  That's not too bad and was the standard Cay cover for years.

But then there was this goofy border thing going on.  I'm glad we're over the border on every children's book thing.  That was annoying.

And here's a border with a creepy variation. Timothy as psychic friend.  I would not want to read this.

Now the kid is drowning and has an island on his head. Why is Timothy happy about this?  Not appealing!

This isn't too bad.  Looks all serious and man-against-nature-y.  The thunderclouds are a nice touch. I'd read this one.

Again, not too bad.  A little too much pastel for my taste, but not an embarrassment.

But this in in no way appealing to me.  Not terrible, just...meh.

Not like this freaky one!  AHHHHH!  This would have given more kids nightmares than Shel Silverstein on the back of The Giving Tree had it been more widely distributed.

Library Hoarding

I stole this post idea from Doug Johnson.

I went off on this in a comment on his blog, but I have a couple more minutes of lunchtime to rant.

So I just found a box (yes and entire box) of USB connected DISK DRIVES in one of the library's back rooms.  That's bad enough, but the clerk tells me some were in use as recently as LAST YEAR.

Not anymore they're not.

Some other things I've tossed, surplussed, or otherwise made disappear:

An entire box of cables!  Some of them were still in their original packaging, that don't go to any equipment we have.

Extra overhead projectors.  We have a bunch of document cameras, so some teachers didn't want them anymore.  Can't blame them.

Broken CD players that cost more to fix than replace.

Old promotional bookmarks that have coupons that expired a long time ago.

Magazines going back to before my daughter was born.

And speaking of magazines, a whole set of brittle National Geographics.  No one has even asked about them.  If they do, you can get all of them ever made on CDs for like fifty bucks.

I still have to deal with some digital cameras that are so old, they probably take worse pictures than your phone's camera.  I think I may have even seen some Polaroids back there.  Sheesh!

And I have a little box full of shiny brass keys!  Unlabeled.  Anyone want to take bets on what they're for?

100 Cupboards

I gotta admit, I was skeptical about this one.  It's a fantasy novel about a kid finding 100 secret cupboards in an attic which open to other magical worlds.  It just sounded a bit trite to me.

But then I read it.  Wilson is never as creepy as Gaiman, but that can work in his favor.  He still has plenty of creepiness, but this will go over with way more of my students than The Graveyard Book ever would have.  Although, I hope some of my students do go on to discover Gaiman's dark chest of wonders at some point down the road.

This tale is about a boy named Henry, moving to a town named Henry where he finds the aforementioned cupboards with one of his cousins, Henrietta (yes, another "Henry").  His reason for moving in with his cousins is highly improbable as well.  So you're not exactly surprised when he discovers magic cupboards hidden beneath the plaster of the attic room he's staying in.

What is surprising is how gently and masterfully N. D. Wilson slowly immerses us into this reality and then there is a man that is there, but not there.  Or maybe Henry dreamed him?  But then his dreams seem connected to the cupboards.  That in itself is nothing new, but the way they're connected isn't as obvious as you'd expect.

So yes, there are familiar tropes.  Witches, hooded figures with staffs and scary hounds.  Letters with wax seals that can be only opened for a specific reader.  Dusty tomes with secrets that must be deciphered.  Black dogs and cats that seem to portend mysterious things.

But in the midst of this is plain old Henry who seems like a real, ordinary, thoughtful, slightly naive, and somewhat depressed twelve-year-old boy that is afraid but realistically drawn to these cupboards for a variety of reasons.

There is more than a whiff of Bradbury here.  Especially in Henry's engaging but stand-offish Uncle Frank.  He allows Henry and his cousins more freedom than Henry has ever experienced in his life (due to his always hovering and worried parents).  Uncle Frank is a direct descendent of Charles Halloway, Will's father in the Bradbury classic, Something Wicked This Way Comes.  He sees young Will and his friend Jim sneak out of the house at night..and he smiles to himself as he lets them go.  He knows they have things to figure out on their own, but is ready to step in help them only when it's needed.

There's another book I hope my students will go on to discover...

For once, I'm looking forward to the sequels.

100 Cupboards (100 Cupboards, Bk 1)

The Graveyard Book

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Neil Gaiman on PBS's "Arthur"!

Whee!  Here's the goods, over at GeekDad.

My Little Mythbuster

Home with a streppy seven-year-old and enjoying our jammies day.  We were just having a Head Rush (an incarnation of Mythbusters for kids) marathon and I remembered something that happened last week.

A friend of ours was telling a hilarious story of her getting stuck in a new building's elevator (don't worry, it was only two stories and the story ends well).  She contemplated various scenarios of how this could play out and wondered what would happen if the elevator car plummeted to the bottom of the shaft.  Should she jump at the last minute?  She'd heard that would save her from injury but doubted she was co-ordinated enough to pull this off, so figured she was doomed.

"That myth was busted!" piped up my daughter.  It was awesome!

She went on to relate how Adam and Jamie of Mythbusters had tested this by dropping an elevator car in an abandoned building.  Jumping or not jumping wouldn't help you, it turned out.  You're still just falling really fast and would probably get squashed.

Although, this outcome would have been doubtful for our friend since she was stuck only one or two stories up and modern elevators have way more safety features.  They don't just dangle on a cable anymore, so you're unlikely to ever have to deal with this eventuality.

My little mythbuster!

Okay, back to making home-made popsicles and lounging in our jammies...


Head Rush

Night and Day, Day and Night

From Booking Through Thursday:

“I couldn’t sleep a wink, so I just read and read, day and night … it was there I began to divide books into day books and night books,” she went on. “Really, there are books meant for daytime reading and books that can be read only at night.”
- ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera, p. 103.

Do you divide your books into day and night reads? How do you decide?

It's funny you should ask.  I have just recently become an elementary school librarian and so am obviously interested in reading more children's books.  But the job is a busy one and there's no real downtime, so reading on the job is not an option.  So I've made kid book reading my "homework."  I sit down when my daughter is doing her school work or practicing her piano and read.

So that's my "daytime reading."

But I still have a backlog of grown up stuff I want to get around to.  So that's all on my nightstand.  I can only read for a short time in bed before I conk out, so it might take me months to read one book.  But I don't mind.  It's not like these are the only two things I'm reading.  I read online and listen to audiobooks and blah blah blah.

But right now, it's pretty much kid's books by day, grown up stuff by night.

Image Linkage

Literary mash-ups gone bad

Great haiku!

Both of the above images were blatantly re-posted from Baby Got Books.

Labyrinth jokes crack me up.

No comment.

Both of these images blatantly re-posted from lookatthisfrakkinggeekster.

I obviously have no shame.

Red Mars

It's long, sure, but more than that Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars is just plain vast.  It covers a large cast of characters over a long span of time.  Which is good, because it took me a long span of time to read it.  It's been one of those bedside books I get to before bed while I read a million other things instead.  I think that'll be a trend for my "grown-up" books now that I'm an elementary school librarian.  I'll have to balance my great interests in reading with my desire to read more kid's books.

It was published in the early 90s but only a few of the political issues seem dated.  In fact, it's scarily prescient.  In takes place in my favorite time period, The Not-Too-Distant Future, and involves, at first, a contingent of one hundred specially selected and trained scientists, engineers, biologists, physicists and the like who land and create the first viable long-term human presence on Mars.  It quickly fast forwards through time until Mars is a hopping destination for more and more people that, of course, strain the infrastructure being set up and cause all kinds of political and social upheaval.

Things I didn't buy:

 It was supposedly and "international" mission but it's mainly Americans and Russians at first.  I think we'd really have more countries involved up front.  Heck, nowadays we'd have to.  But Robinson does an amazing job showing how many more political and ethnic groups would influence a human Mars and some realistic niches they would fall into.  Arab groups, familiar with desert life, are some of the main reconnaissance teams.  Things like that.

The big one for me was the terraforming.  The "First Hundred" as they're called, become divided over whether to begin terraforming projects or leave Mars as is and adapt to and study it's rich geological history.  I have to believe that would be decided far in advance of an actual jillion-dollar international mission.  Obviously, they begin terraforming.

Things I bought:

Pretty much everything else.  This isn't a plot-driven novel.  It's hard science fiction with some serious political, cultural, and social commentary.  You'll learn things about the geology of Mars, the engineering feats needed to make a mission like this happen, and the possible diplomatic pitfalls possible than you cold ever imagine.

In some ways, it's pretty bleak.  There is in-fighting.  There are realistic breaks from the rules set down by Earth's governments.  (It's hard to enforce rules and treaties from 36 to 250 million miles away).  There are issues with mining and immigration and corporate/political maneuvering.  There is ethnic and religious strife.  There is rebellion.  We hear from news reports that the climate and over-population problems on Earth are becoming untenable.

But.  We go to Mars!  We do it and it's awesome and we build beautiful cities and technological wonders and create new myths and traditions and adapt languages to suit.  And this is only the first of three books!  I have no idea when I'll get to the sequels, but I will someday.  Meanwhile, I'll dream of Mars.  Really detailed ones too.

Red Mars (Mars Trilogy)

Some Random Dragon*Con Pix

Bud, Not Buddy

This was funnier than I remembered.  I read it when it came out and recall a lonely orphan during the Great Depression dealing with hunger, bullies, police, long scary walks in the dark, and a grumpy old man.

That's all in here, but there's also a ton of sly and ironic Twain-like first-person narration, another hilarious old man (along with the grumpy one), and a warm and wonderful wise-cracking band.

You'd think I'd remember the fun with this delightful cover.  It's the newer paperback that makes it seem more serious.  Oh, well.  That's getting old for ya.

This is a classic and it'll be interesting to hear what the Reader's Rally team thinks of it at school.  We just had our first meeting last Friday.  Tomorrow will be the second one.  That'll be when we see who drops out because of the early hour and after they've seen the pile of books to be read.

Mockingjay

It's hard to write about a book everyone is reading but not everyone has read.  Give too much away and people get chapped.  Be too vague and people get chapped.

Plus, everyone has something to say.  So there's probably not much to say you haven't heard or thought already.  I'll just say if you liked the first one and haven't read the other two, you probably should.  The themes, not always the characters, but the themes become deeper and more rich and wonderfully entwined.

I never had much invested in the whole, slight "romance" thing and it was pretty clear by the time you get to the third book that Katniss has more things on her mind and might settle for one of these two, but only one of them is empathetic enough for her to create any long term meaning with somehow.  We're talking some seriously damaged people here, people, so "romance" is hardly in the equation.

No, it's about empathy and war and how easily we can lose our humanity and how sometimes it's hard to hang onto it.  It's about the horrors of war and how we put our youngest and most promising generations on the front lines of our often muddled conflicts.

It kept bringing to mind Bruce Sprinsteen's Live 75-85 version of "War" in which he says to the audience before the song, "Blind faith in your government, or in anything, can get you killed."

That's one of the best parts about this final section of the trilogy.  Katniss hates the current government, but doesn't automatically embrace the rebels either.  She's playing out these final games on her own terms.  Which is as it should be.  Powerful stuff.  I'm glad it's popular and I hope it gets kids thinking in the same war other anti-war novels have throughout the years.

League of Extraordinary Librarians

Got this T-shirt at Dragon*Con:

Kinda awesome, no?

Dragon*Con 2010

I shook hands with James Randi!  That was probably my highlight for the whole weekend.  He is also known as James "The Amazing" Randi, the magician.  He is probably the most influential skeptical activist ever and is the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF).  It was truly an honor.

I also shook hands and chatted with Joe Nickell, a leading paranormal investigator for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.  He likes to joke that he's been in "more haunted houses than Casper" but of course has yet to find any compelling evidence for ghosts.  He's the nicest guy ever.

I met  Daniel Loxton and got him to sign my Evolution book. He's the editor of Junior Skeptic Magazine and does most of the writing and illustrating.  Ok, maybe he's the nicest guy ever.

I also interacted with George Hrab, got a hug from the amazing Kylie Sturgess of PodBlack Cat blog, Skeptic Zone and Token Skeptic fame and Rebecca Watson, among other awesome Skepchicks.

And I can't say enough good things about the Atlanta Skeptics who run this thing.  All volunteer and all amazing.

I sat in on another fun episode of the Australian Mystery Investigators.  This is great for getting ideas on just how exactly to teach critical thinking to younger kids.  Show them cool stuff and ask thoughtful questions.  Richard Saunders kept asking, "How could I test this?"  "Can we all be tricked?"  "So does that prove anything?"  A great show and great interactions for the kids.  The covered optical illusions, dowsing, psychic abilities, and even a bit of consumer protection with their Fabulous Amazing Kinetic Electricity device.  Adults need to see this too!

The highlight talk for me was "I Very Much Doubt That!" a talk from James Randi.  The ballroom was packed.  I don't think anyone knew what a huge draw Randi would be.  He got a standing ovation just walking into the room.  He just sat and talked and answered questions but he tells them so well and is so inspiring.  He reported doing well after his chemotherapy due, he winked, to "a little thing called modern medical science."  He discussed the particulars of his famous $1 million dollar challenge if evidence can be found for paranormal abilities.  At another talk he was involved in, the moderator asked the audience of skeptics to raise their hand if they would be happy if he had to give the money away--if compelling scientific evidence could be found for some paranormal ability.  All hands went up.

I also attended the talk "Spotlight on Adam Savage" which was one hour with the Mythbuster in a wide-raging, funny, insightful, and intelligent talk.  He said they had no idea that the show would be embraced by kids and teachers and that he's glad they didn't because if they were shooting for that audience they probably would have messed up.  Now there's a commercial free version on cable due to the STEM initiatives to get kids interested in science.  It's called Head Rush and is hosted by Kari Byron.

Another fun one was "How to Raise a Mad Scientist" put on by the National Science Center's Fort Discovery folks.  They did a number of explosive and fun science experiments you can do with kids using around-the-house or very cheap stuff.  Awesome.

I went to the Astronomy Cast Live! podcast and heard all about the funding issues at NASA.  I wish there was a way that the federal government could only be in charge of funding, but not how the money is spent.  Then we wouldn't have the change in administration whiplash we have to suffer every four to eight years.  Of course, I wish the same thing about education!  Just give us the money and let us figure out how to spend it.  Leave the politicians out of it.

A surprisingly moving discussion was the "Raising Skeptical Geeks" panel.  The panel included Jamie Ian Swiss, Daniel Loxton, Adam Savage, Barabra Dresher and more.  It also included Will Philips' mother.  He's the 10-year-old who decided to quit standing for the pledge in his classroom in Arkansas because until gay people can marry, he decided, then "we don't have liberty and justice for all."  There were some great comments on bullying and then she told her story.  He's now being home schooled because not only the kids but the teacher's and administrators were awful to him and his family for "all the gay stuff."  Nice.

The last big panel I just had to see was "Skepticism in Education."  It was moderated by JREF president D. J. Grothe and included Matt Lowry (The Skeptical Teacher), Daniel Loxton (Jr. Skeptic), Dr. Pamela Gay (Astronomy Cast), Barbara Drescher (ICBS Everywhere), Kylie Sturgess, (PodBlack Cat) and Michael Blanford (Director of Educational Programs at the JREF).  Matt and Kylie get extra points for mentioning the great work of school librarians!  Some of the main points they discussed will not be a surprise to anyone interested in teaching real critical thinking.  They talked of teaching students to use multiple lines of evidence.  They talked of there being more than one way to an answer.  They talked of letting students follow their enthusiasm and mess with things to see what they can come up with, that, as Drescher put it, "The natural world is discoverable."  My two favorite quotes:  "Kids dig monsters!" from Loxton and "I like to ask my students what is a unit of chi?" from Lowry.

A great, thoughtful and inspiring round of discussions.  Check out their sites for more.

Astronomy Cast

James Randi Educational Foundation

Joe Nickell

Junior Skeptic Magazine

Mystery Investigators

National Science Center

PodBlack Cat

Skepchicks

The Skeptic Zone

Skeptrack 2010

Token Skeptic

Librarian: Week Four.

Set up an Aliki display because she's awesome and it's her birthday this week.

Made a Civil War website for 5th grade to use.  Made a page of booklists based on requests I've gotten.  So whenever someone asks me to gather a list of something like "books with strong imagery" I won't have to reinvent that wheel if someone else asks again down the road.

Doug Johnson put me on his list of "Thought Leaders in School Libraryland!"  I was honored and humbled.  I added Mary Ann Fitzgerald to the list.  Someone posted that "it's nice to see two UGA folks on the list" on the state library listserv.  They meant Mary Ann and Buffy Hamilton.  So Doug Johnson and some other big national folks know me, but people from my own state don't despite a monthly posting on the Georgia Library Media Association web site.  Sigh.  It's okay.  It gives me inspiration and something to shoot for.

Had a crazy week with much of it devoted to filming twenty-minute segments of the final three nominees for Teacher of the Year at our school.  I edited them together with titles between each one to play continuously next week so the staff can watch them and vote on the final winner.  There was so much more that went into this project than I expected and now I"m behind on a bunch of stuff, but that's one of the things I love about this job--it's different every day with new and different problems to solve.

Had to leave for half a day to go to our mothership of a head office for a media specialist "mentor/mentee" meeting where I was given an intimidating Evaluation binder.  So I have that to go through to make sure I'm doing what I need to be doing.

This morning I shuttled between our first Reader's Rally team meeting and a gathering of parent volunteer Guest Readers who will be coming the first Friday of every month to grab some books and read out loud to one of the classes in the building.  They mostly grabbed stuff off my Aliki and Summer displays.  I had sold a few recommended titles and will have a better selection next month.  I went ahead afterwards and changed out the Summer display to an Autumn one.

More book reviews soon.  Almost finished with Mokingjay.  And I'm reading Bud, Not Buddy for the second time (to help come up with Reader's Rally questions).  It's funnier than I remembered (which is good, because Mockingjay is so not).

Have a great Labor Day weekend.  I'll be spending mine with a whole bunch of awesome geeks.

Books vs. E-Readers

Of Two Minds About Books from the NYT.

See, I don't have a problem with e-readers. I don't understand people who have a problem with them.  Maybe it's because I've seen Star Trek and know that captains of the Enterprise will still be reading Shakespeare in bound books. (Though I have heard reports from one of my favorite independent booksellers that people with e-readers can be pretty obnoxious about looking through the stacks and checking to see if the book is available on their e-reader).  I'm even quite tempted by the new Kindle at that fabulous new low price.  But the two things that have convinced me that I personally don't need one is the line "Walking to the library is still the most ecofriendly way to read" in the above poster and this article from the WSJ that makes me realize they're not really economical.  At least for me.  I mean I really can walk to my local library.  And it's nice.  And I just became a librarian for crying out loud, so I have plenty of books to read from my own school.  I have no excuse!

Although I have taken to reading Treasure Island on My Lovely Bride's iPad.  That's kinda fun...