Slice of My New Life in the Library

Since Karen needed a well deserved break from this Slice of Life Challenge, I decided to give the old Literate Lives try this week. My first step was to ask Karen if it's ok to do a "professional" slice of life and she said absolutely, so here goes.

Back in November and December in the library we discussed the Caldecott Awards. The typical stuff, qualifications, past winners, and I included a lot of time to study the winners and discuss what made them good. After all of this, I shared my list of Caldecott Possibles as we came to call them. I asked the kids to share their Possibles with me and told them to look for the "circle C 2007" to make sure it was a new book. As it turned out, most of the nearly 50 books were the ones I chose, but there were 10 or so nominated by kids.

I compiled the list on a ballot, put all of the books on display and gave the kids plenty of time to look them over and vote. As it turned out, we had First the Egg, Kufflebunny, Too and Hugo Cabret in our top 10. Not bad!

Fast forward to two weeks ago, one of my second grade friends, I'll call him Vince, comes running up to me in the hallway all excited.

"Mr. P. I've found one of those Caldecott thingies! You know the books we voted on this year. Are we going to do that again next year?"

"Probably so, did you like that Vince?"

"You have to include this book, The Sea Serpent and Me! I found it at the BIG library and it's awesome!"

"Is it a circle C 2008?"

"YES!"

"Can you bring it in for me to look at?"

"I HAVE IT IN MY CLASS RIGHT NOW!"

And so Vince brought me the book and do you know what? HE'S RIGHT! I read it to the class I had next, also second graders, and they loved it as much as Vince. I purchased it at my favorite book store, Cover to Cover, and now they love it and are going to stock more of them too.

Can I just say, I LOVE MY JOB!

Even more slices at Two Writing Teachers.