Tales from a Loud Librarian

SLJ BOB 2015 -- Book Covers Last year my school participated in the School Library Journal sponsored Battle of the Kids  Books. Any school or library or anyone can participate, but SLJ   highlighted my school online as we put on an all out battle to the death   among the 16  books.   It was a blast, and both the middle school students and high school students really got into it. This year we have started slow, and I am waiting for copies of all the books to arrive after ordering them last week. Today as I was reading the February 2015 issue of SLJ,  I found a mention of my school library and myself concerning our participation in the BOB for 2014.  That was a nice surprise.  If you want to get your students involved, you need to have the following books available in your library:  BROWN GIRL DREAMING by Jacqueline Woodson CHILDREN OF THE KING by Sonya Hartnett CROSSOVER by Kwame Alexander EGG & SPOON...

Motto for Mock BOB: May the Best Book Win! It did:  Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell We started the Mock BOB at PFTSTA on March 10th. It took a month to get through 15 battles in four rounds. In Round 1 , there were eight battles that were fought live during lunch in the commons area. Students stood up to speak as a champion for their book. For Round 2 and 3, the students picked their selections online. In Round 2 , the champions wrote a brief pitch for their book, but in Round 3 , the champions created a brief video. The events brought some excitement to the library and with multiple copies of the original sixteen books, students eager to read the books that their friends were defending could check them out and read throughout the month of battles. Championing Far Far Away Going to Bat for The Thing about Luck Middle School Students Listen Attentively More Words for Far Far Away Since this was the end of a long process, we decided tha...

The students and I created a video to share their take on the four books in Round 3 of our Mock BOB. The books left in the battle were: All the Truth that's in Me by Julie Berry, Far Far Away by Tom McNeal, Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgewick and The Thing about Luck by Cynthia Kadohata. The voting ends on Monday afternoon. Open here to find the video on the PFTSTA Library website . We know that SLJ finished the BOB last week , but it took us some time to get all the champions rounded up to record. The winning books will be announced on Tuesday. 

Find the PFTSTA Mock BOB featured in this week's Peanut Gallery from the Battle Commander in the SLJ Battle of the Kids Books. The students won't finish voting in our Round 3 until we put together the video later this week. For Round 4, the final round, we will go live at lunch in the commons area next week. 

School Library Journa l has kept up a prolific online presence with the Battle of the Kids Books through blog posts, online articles, twitter, etc. Read this online article to see one of my student's picture prominently displayed and find out more about PFTSTA's participation in the Mock BOB .  The students had about four days to ponder and decide how they would vote in Round 2 of our ongoing Mock BOB. The hardest battle was the choice between Eleanor and Park and Far Far Away . Open here to see what the SLJ author judge had to say about this battle.   I used Survey Monkey to collect the votes. The free version only allows one hundred respondents. I was hoping to have close to that. We only have 350 students in our school so that would have been a nice percentage of students. Unfortunately, I only had fifty-five voters, and that is only 16% of the school. Maybe I can figure out a way to drum up more votes in Round 3. We are going to do that one online too, but I am ...

Today, I sent the students a link to the Survey Monkey with the pictures that you see below to help them in their quest for the best of the books in Round 2. The students who defended the books in Round 1 gave me the blurbs to add to the pictures below. Just click on each picture to enlarge it to read what the students had to say. I think the students did a phenomenal job. They gave just the right kind of info to try and sway their classmates to select their book as a winner. The poll will stay open until Monday the 24th. I will let you know the school's selections next week. I will also add the a link to the SLJ author judge decisions after they are posted next week.  For Battle 1 of Round 2, our selections at PFTSTA did not match the selections of SLJ's author judges. Tonya Bolden was given the task by SLJ for picking the best of two non-fiction works: The Animal Book and Boxers and Saints . Though our student presenters of those books loved the...

The week began with our final battles in Round 1. Since Monday is the day for the weekly scheduled meeting of the high school book group (Bookmarked), everyone was there for these battles. Up first, was one of my favorites of 2013, Rose Under Fire . I know that historical fiction is a hard sell to my students, but Alexandra and Kayla who read this work seemed to love it as much as I did. The strong female characters and the different picture that the book paints of the Holocaust resonated with them. Unfortunately, it could not manage to defeat The Thing about Luck . Darla stepped up with a script in hand so she wouldn't forget anything and described the story about a girl of Japanese descent working as a migrant farm worker with her family  That the protagonist feels good luck just seems to evade their family time and time again spoke to the students. I guess they could feel her pain. Twice as many students selected Kadohata's work over Wein's. Author judge...

Every week during the SLJ BOB , the Battle Commander gathers talk across the web. Open here to read how the PFTSTA Library was featured in last week's post .

In the video above, you can hear a few seconds of the student defending, March Book One Our Mock BOB continued on March 13th when students defended the books in Round 1 battles 5 and 6. The first book up was Hokey Pokey by Jerry Spinelli. Tameka was slated for the defense and that was an issue as she couldn't attend the second lunch battle because she takes a college course off campus. A teacher had a great idea and suggested that I should make a video of Tameka on my iPad and play it back during the second lunch through my computer. Second lunch begins  immediately, so I didn't have time to do any editing, just play the video back. It was a great suggestion, but .... Isn't there always a but. We are in a brand new school. As you can see in the pictures below, we have a podium with permanent microphones. It worked great for the student when they got up to speak. We have two huge tv screens hanging in the common area, and some day I will be able to ...

On Tuesday, the students met in the commons area during lunch to participate in two more battles in our Mock BOB. The first book up was Doll Bones by Holly Black. I was concerned about this particular title because one student had started the book, but returned it with an explanation that she did not care for it so she could not finish it. Did the mean that Julian felt the same and would not be able to champion it? However, he wowed me when he arrived with his speech printed out and ready to go. He stepped up to the microphone and belted out his reasons for why his classmates should select his book as the best. One of the students who was to defend Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell pulled out, so I stepped up. The students have to present twice at high school lunch and middle school lunch, so that meant that I had to do the same. I was able to speak eloquently the first time around, but I sort of botched it the second time. Oh well, it isn't about me...

Today was our kick off for the Battle of the Books--what we are calling Mock BOB. Students were invited to bring their lunch to the commons area to hear their classmates talk about the books that they chose to defend. We are following the brackets set up by School Library Journal and want to see if our choices match their author judges. We kicked it off with Julie Berry's All the Truth That's in Me and Steve Jenkins The Animal Book . When the high school students voted, we ended in a tie between both books. The middle schoolers were able to break that tie. With the fiction book by Berry coming out on top. Though both Alexandra and George who read Jenkins' book loved it and explained how engaging it was, it was Hannah and Jasmine who fought hard as they were both big fans of the thriller. The author judge for SLJ's BOB was Vaunda Nelson. The students did not agree with her choice, but you can read what she said about both books here . ...