Books: Goliath by Scott Westerfeld

World War I history with a twist.  The third and final installment in Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series does not disappoint, including the new art work by Keith Thompson.  Goliath is non-stop action, multiple battles between the Darwinist (British Allied) and Clanker (German Allied) forces, and a love story, of course.  Wow!

Midshipman Dylan Sharp (actually a girl named Deryn) and Austrian Crown Prince Aleksander are again aboard the Darwinist Air Ship, Leviathan.  This time they travel to New York to help Nikola Tesla stop World War I with his new weapon Goliath.  The journey includes stops in Russia, Japan, California, and Mexico.

Do you call it Historical Fantasy Fiction?  Steam Punk?  I'm not sure.  I guess, like Deryn, I might exclaim "Barking Spiders!" this is great story telling with cliff-hanger chapters and characters who live on in the reader's imagination after the cover is closed.  "Barking Spiders!" indeed!

I like to call it history with a twist because real historical figures enter the narrative and interact with the main fictional characters Alek and Deryn.  In the pages of this third installment, you'll meet the likes of the aforementioned Nikola Tesla, William Randolph Hearst, and Francisco "Pancho" Villa. This is great reading for young adults and adults alike.

Below is a link to the Book Trailer the publisher (Simon and Schuster) made for the book.

Books: Matched by Ally Condie

Imagine a perfect world where nothing is left to chance and all the choosing is done for you.  This is the world Cassia Reyes inhabits--a perfect world of the future founded on the rubble of past generations.  A world where everyone lives to be 80, exactly.  A world where everyone is "matched" with their perfect mate.  A world where everyone is happy.  A world where there are 100 best loved poems--only 100.  And 100 best loved songs--again, only 100.  A world where a copy, even a mental copy, of a poem that was left out is dangerous, possibly seditious.

This is the first book in what will be the Matched Trilogy.  The next book Crossed is set to be released in November of 2011.

This is reminiscent of the The Giver and the "perfect" society that Jonas unravels as he is given his future vocation and begins to see his society with new eyes.  In Matched, Cassia's view of her Utopian society begins to unravel during an emotionally charged period between her matching ceremony and her grandfather's 80th birthday (funeral).  Her grandfather tips the scales by giving her a copy of a poem that was not selected for the 100 Best and Only Poems: Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night."  Read the poem and you will understand why it was left out.  Listen to the way Cassia describes her father's work and consider Jonas' reaction to his father's work.

I look forward to the next book in this series, wondering how the things "left-out" will be woven into the future Cassia creates.

Books: I Am an Emotional Creature

We know Eve Ensler.  We know what she is famous for; however, our students often are not familiar with her.  I Am an Emotional Creature is a vivid picture in poetic monologues of what it is like to become a woman in today's world.

To create the book, Eve interviewed girls all over the world.  She then wrote interior monologues to convey the variety of their experiences and emotions.

This would be great "next read" for a student who is reading Patricia McCormick's Sold, Laurie Halse Andersen's Speak, or any of Ellen Hopkins books.

Books: Junie B. Jones and the Mushy Gushy Valentine

My five-year-old twins have begun showing interest in my older daughter's collection of Junie B. Jones books.  They wanted to start with book one, but we seem to have misplaced it.  The next best place to start was, of course a book with a Valentine's Day theme.

Nora and Adele assured me that Junie B.'s behavior would get her in trouble in their kindergarten classrooms.

Junie B. is fun to read out loud.  Park has a great ear for how kids talk and a great eye for the details we sometimes miss as teachers and parents.

Junie B. kept us laughing with her search for her secret admirer.

Junie B. Jones and the Mushy Gushy Valentime shows the difficulties and joys of friendship around the sometimes awkward holiday of Valentine's Day.

Library Video--Dark Humor Helps Us Consider Library Stereotypes

The dark humor of this video helps us consider our stereotypes of librarians and makes us feel cool at the same time.

My First Screencast

Students often ask for help when they are confronted with the task of setting up a document in MLA format. Most of our computers are currently running Microsoft Office Word 2010, so I used Jing to create a narrated screencast of how to start a document in MLA format.

Cyber Safety

For the past two weeks, I have been presenting Cyber Safety lessons to the Freshmen at McLane High School. Other names for these lessons are Digital Citizenship and Cyberbullying. The web includes many resources for interactive, free lessons to help students make good choices when they are on the web. I have bookmarked some of the sites on my Diigo Cybersafety Page. Here are two very compelling videos that come from the Safe Florida Cyber Safety Project. The first is Justin's Story. He shares how cyber predators began to take advantage of him when, at 13 years old, he installed a webcam on his home computer:


The second video is Alicia's Story of how she met a man online who lured her from home then abducted and enslaved her: