Deb's Musings | Books and Beyond

Who will write the next Great American Novel? PBS recently sponsored the Great American Read , featuring 100 of our favorite novels. What makes a novel great? Is it characters, plot, setting or resolution? Is it what we learn about ourselves as a result of reading it? Is it the feeling we have when we think about it? Is it the impact a novel makes on the world or the reader? Every author has a different explanation on the process of writing. In a TeachingBooks.net movie, Lois Lowry talks about how she doesn't use an outline , but allows the story to move and shape with each new event. Kate DiCamillo shares how she reads her draft aloud --which may contribute to why her books are great read alouds. And then there is the question of where do stories come from? Jack Gantos keeps journals --boxes and boxes of journals as idea sparkers . David Weisner's newest book, I Got It , came from an idea he had as a child--what happens in your mind can seem much longer than what happen

Without any intention to do so, the last three books I've selected to read all have the word "boy" in the title. The Boy who Went Magic by A. P. Winter The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock The Boy, the Bird, & the Coffin Maker by Matilda Woods This morning I thought to myself, "Hmm. What are the odds? Is that a thing this year?" So I checked my reading "To Do/Done" lists to see if there were more books. I found  Ghost Boys by Jewel Parker Rhodes Blue Grass Boy : The Story of Bill Monroe, Father of Bluegrass Music   by Barb  Rosenstock   I suppose 5 titles out of hundreds is probably not a "thing," it's just a curious coincidence. And perhaps a blog post. Happy Wednesday, everyone. 

A special book lingers long after you close the cover. I can't help thinking about Kate Messner's Breakout, and I finished it days ago . The main plot of the story involves two inmates who escape from a maximum-security prison. Everyone's life is impacted by the two week manhunt. The underlying theme, however, is racism and racial profiling. When Elidee's brother is incarcerated, she and her mother move to the small upper NY state community near the prison. They pride themselves on being a friendly town--yet we see many evidences that they are not as welcoming to a black family. Elidee's classmate, Nora, is a middle school journalist who uncovers more than a story in Messner's novel. In fact, at the conclusion, she may have more questions than answers. Told in letters, poems, text messages, news stories, and comic—a series of documents Nora collects for the Wolf Creek Community Time Capsule Project— Breakout is a thrilling story that will leave readers th

Since I'm not doing webcasts every month, I've developed a new way to track what I'm reading and what I think about it. I started an old fashioned notebook. A lovely handwritten collection of my thoughts as I read books for my What's New in Children's Books workshop. I try to record where the book takes place, where the author lives, debut?, related books or books it reminds me of. I jot down quotes that speak to me. I scribble questions I think about while I'm reading. I note potentially sensitive areas for cautious communities. I think about how it might be used in a classroom or library setting. Sometimes my entries are quite long, filling pages of words from the author. (I'm using mostly library books, so writing in the books is a no-no.) Then I get to Secret Sisters of the Salty Sea. It has three starred reviews, plus it is Lynne Rae Perkins. It's a must-read for me already. And I have a sister that I love and am close to. She lives by the Salt

I suppose I've read too many YA novels. Teen angst. Murder. Betrayal. Lies. Or maybe I've been watching too much TV. Yesterday I finished Secret Sisters of the Salty Sea by Lynne Rae Perkins. Not that Perkins is known for stories with tragic events, but in her latest, there's the ocean and a warning to not go out too far. (The girls are safely recovered.) There's an opportunity for two sisters to become enemies, each one jealous of the other. Yet by the end of the book, they are closer than ever. The parents are present--and smart, and funny, and love each other. So why then, was I so worried? THE COVER IS BLUE!  For those of you who've been following me for a while, you know my theory: books with blue covers make you cry. Often they make you sob. I remember when I first connected the dots in 2016 that by the time I got to When Friendship Followed Me Home by Paul Griffin, I was terrified to read it. The cover is blue, the title is blue and there is a DOG on

Sunset in Madison, WI After a brief interim, I've landed in a new job. I'm now one of the Implementation and Training Specialists at TeachingBooks.net . What's interesting is that my "territory" is California. So, long story short, I'll be traveling back to where I came from before I moved to Ohio. The California State Library did a wonderful thing--they acquired three databases for the entire state of California. Every public school. Every County Office of Education and every charter school will have access to TeachingBooks.net, ProQuest, and Encyclopedia Britannica. “It’s a simple idea: Help more California school kids succeed by being able to find more reliable information more easily where they look for it the most – online,” said Greg Lucas, California’s State Librarian. Here's where I fit in. My job will be to reach out to administrators, teachers, and librarians to set up training. From workshops to webinars, I'll be working with ever