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Friday, January 24, 2014

Newbery Thoughts

I'm sitting here after school waiting to go to dinner with my friend Joyce before the fun and frivolity of Bailey Bingo begins, thinking about the Newbery Award.  It sounds really nerdy, I suppose, but looking for Newbery has been something I've been doing for about 10 years now.  For the last 4 I've included some of my closest 5th grade friends as we search for and try to predict the winners.

This year my friend Maria and I started with about 30 kids.  Over the first month or so they began to weed themselves out due to other commitments or the lack of desire to keep up with our expectations.  As you can see from the poster in the picture, these kids were reading blogging machines.  The beauty of it was they didn't complain about anything except not being able to get the books and not meeting often enough.  These kids are readers!  Between Grand Discussion and Newbery Club, I can't decide which I like better.  The club picked:

Ghost Hawk by Susan Cooper
Far, Far Away by Tom McNeal
Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo
Rump: The True Story of Rumplestiltskin by Leisl Shurtliff
The Mouse With the ? Tail by Richard Peck

I can't disagree with their choices and our survey is pretty unscientific, we're book people, not math people.  So there you have it.  Hopefully Monday, barring a snow day, we will meet in the library for the video stream of the presentations and enjoy a doughnut.

2 comments:

  1. Haven't heard about Far, Far Away before, thank you! Can't wait for the announcements!! Been celebrating Newbery for 15 years, even now living in Asia I'm anxious!

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  2. I love the idea of making reading a game and a competition for kids. If you make it seem like work and cause them to get bogged down, then they will think of it as a job and not enjoy it. The fact that these kids were blogging and reading like crazy just goes to show how much of a positive impact it can have on how much the students enjoy what they are reading.

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