Overlake’s seventh-grade English teacher, Kacie Simpson, is passionate about reading. “Establishing a culture of reading, where students are excited to read, has been something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” she says. One issue she considers is how students can find good books to read. She knows parents also wonder about this, as they often request book recommendations for their children. While Kacie loves reading, of course, she knows that, “collectively, my students have read more books than I have.” Thinking how she could harness this resource, she decided to create a classroom “display where students could give book recommendations and share the types of books they are interested in with their peers.”
For her display, she created a large wall poster of a bookshelf. Next, she printed blank book spine templates in different sizes, to vary the height of the “books” and make the shelf arrangement look more natural. Students copied or recreated the spine of a book they would recommend to their classmates, choosing the template that made the most sense for the book. For in-class work, Kacie provided scissors and colored pencils, though several students also worked at home to have more time and add more detail.
While the students worked in class, Kacie noticed a lot of “great conversations about books.” She heard many positive comments, like, “Oh, I love that book!” That worked well for her goal of instilling in the students the knowledge that “the best source of what to read is their peers,” because seventh graders know what other seventh graders tend to enjoy reading. In the finished spines, Kacie found it interesting to see that fantasy was the most popular genre by a mile, and that Rick Riordan scored as the most popular author. The titles that surprised her the most were the non-fiction titles Blue Chip Kids, by David Bianchi, and Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari, books that she doesn’t “always associate with 12-13 year olds reading.”
When students finished the spines, Kacie organized them roughly by genre on the poster “shelves.” To add to the display’s welcoming appeal, Kacie added a picture of her cat sleeping on a shelf, as well as some “additional decorative touches.” As a librarian, I love it, and think it was an amazing project!
Partial Booklist
Note: I couldn’t read all of the titles, which is why this is partial
Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir
The Martian, Andy Weir
Scythe, Neal Shusterman
Space Case, Stuart Gibbs
The hunger games, Suzanne Collins
Catching fire, Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
The ballad of songbirds and snakes, Suzanne Collins
Atherton:the House of power, Patrick Carman
One piece, Eiichiro Oda
The ultimate hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, Douglas Adams
Legend, Marie Lu
Foundation, Isaac Asimov
The lion of Mars, Jennifer Holm
The giver, Lois Lowry
Ready player one, Ernest Cline
Iron widow, Xiran Jay Zhao
Animal farm, George Orwell
Home body, Rupi Kaur
What if?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, Randall Munroe
Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari
Little white lies, Gemma Townley
The naturals, Jennfer Barnes
The inheritance game, Jennifer Barnes
The final gambit, Jennifer Barnes
Spy school, Stuart Gibbs
One of us is lying, Karen McManus
Five survive, Karen McManus
A good girl’s guide to murder, Holly Jackson
The land of stories: the wishing spell, Chris Colfer
The Penrose Series, Tony Ballantyne
Wings of fire, Tui Sutherland
Throne of glass, Sarah J. Maas
The theft of sunlight, Intisar Khanani
The tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo
Keeper of the lost cities, Shannon Messenger
The school for good and evil, Soman Chainani
The hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
Harry Potter and the sorcerer‘s stone, J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the half-blood prince, J.K. Rowling
Summoner 3: The Battlemage, Taran Matharu
Red queen, Victoria Aveyard
Heartless, Marissa Meyer
The lost hero, Rick Riordan
The house of Hades, Rick Riordan
The lightning thief, Rick Riordan
The sea of monsters, Rick Riordan
The last Olympian, Rick Riordan
When you trap a tiger, Tae Keller
Two Degrees, Alan Gratz
The silent patient, Alex Michaelides
Ink and ashes, Valynne Maetani
Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown, Steve Sheinkin
Front desk, Kelly Yang
Seaglass summer, Anjali Banerjee
Out of my mind, Sharon Draper
Simon sort of says, Erin Bow
The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid
Far from the tree, Robin Benway
Escape from Mr. Lemoncello‘s library, Chris Grabenstein
Blended, Sharon Draper
If he had been with me, Laura Nowlin
The Explorers Academy: the nebula secret, Trudi Trueit
Restart, Gordon Korman
Darius the great is not OK, Adib Khorram
Imogen obviously, Becky Albertalli
Wonder, R.J. Palacio
Posted, John David Anderson
The summer I turned pretty, Jenny Han
Prisoner B, Alan Gratz
Projekt, Alan Gratz
Grenade, Alan Gratz
The book thief, Markus Zusak
Little women, Louisa May Alcott
Pride and prejudice, Jane Austen
World in between: based on a true refugee story, Kenan Trebincevic, Susan Shapiro
I’ve been running Battle of the Books for over thirty years, at my various schools. Though the books changed from year to year, the format remained the same: two hours, rounds of twenty questions, each question phrased, “In which book…” with the answer being the author and title.
Over the last few years, though, I have made some changes. First, I joined with two other local schools for the competition, which cycled between the schools for several years. Then, many of my students decided not to participate because they didn’t want to miss any class time, especially the half a day required for a field trip to another school. With the gracious acceptance of the two other schools, we moved to a virtual Battle, but my students declined to participate because a two hour Battle still meant missing a class. So I split the Battle into two parts on two different days, one a preliminary with just my students, and one the virtual final with the other schools. That way, participants only missed study halls. In addition, I shortened rounds to ten questions, and the winning two teams from the prelims went on to the final Battle with the other schools. Problem solved, right?
Yeah…no. I was still struggling for participation.
A couple of years ago, after National Geographic ended GeoBee, our 7th grade social studies teacher devised his own GeoBee. He hosted it during an assembly block, and it was lots of fun! Changing up the formats of the rounds, he also made it team-based rather than individual, which worked well. I wondered if I could do something similar with Battle of the Books.
I started by running a Battle of the Books club in which students would help determine which formats would work best. I surveyed the kids about these possible options, suggestions coming from both me and them:
Jeopardy
Pictionary or charades round with book titles
Relay: Teams at opposite ends of a space, teacher in the middle. One person from each team runs to the teacher. Both get the same question on a slip of paper, then run back to their team to consult. When the team has an answer, someone runs to tell the teacher. Points for most correct answers and fastest time.
Traditional format
Kahoot
Quiz Bowl: Teams, each student has a buzzer, question asked to the group, first to buzz in gets to answer. Correct answer leads to an additional question.
Mini-Rounds: A person from each team starts out, a round of four questions is asked, whoever buzzes in first gets the question. After four questions, a new person from each team replaces former person.
Breakout Box: There’s a box with several locks on it. Each lock is worth a certain number of questions. [I hadn’t worked out any more than that.]
Snowballs: Questions are crumpled into balls and teams throw them at each other. Every question caught is one the team gets the chance to answer.
Academic Whiz Kid: Each student on a team gets a round of questions only they can answer. Individual scores add up to form the team score.
Scavenger hunt: [No clue how this would work!]
Escape-room type clues: [No clue how this would work!]
Blook-It: Online. I haven’t looked into this yet, so it would need some testing out.
Gimkit: Online. I haven’t looked into this yet, so it would need some testing out.
After testing a few of these, I settled on traditional format, Jeopardy, Kahoot, Relay, and possibly Pictionary, depending on time. To further entice participants, we dropped the list from thirteen to eleven books, and instead of requiring participants to read at least three books, we lowered the bar to one.
I usually run a “mock” Battle of the Books during announcements to raise interest, and the mock Battle with different formats went well; I did get more sign ups than in previous years. Time for me, the other librarians, and generous colleagues to start reading the books, writing up the questions, and planning the rounds.
It was when I set about reformatting traditional questions into questions for Jeopardy, Kahoot, and relays that I realized…wow, this was going to take a lot longer than I thought! Because I run a required 5th grade Battle plus the voluntary 6th-8th grade Battle, I had to create eight Jeopardy rounds, six Kahoot rounds, five relay rounds, title Pictionary, and eleven traditional rounds. It took hours and hours, and I would definitely ask for help if we do it again!
I got a test run of the format with my 5th grade, who all participate. Though it was a little chaotic, 5th grade generally is, and the only format that didn’t work very well was the relays. The students participating enjoyed it, but the non-participants didn’t get to hear the questions, as they would with the other rounds, so they were bored. Plus, even though we’d formatted the questions so that every slip of paper listed every possible title and author, with boxes to tick off, the judges checking the slips had to check the answer key for everything. That meant that working out the score took almost as long as the round, so all the kids were bored and the teacher was stressed out trying to finish. I decided that when I ran the relay rounds in my 6th-8th prelims, the non-participating teams would do the scoring.
So, my 6th-8th prelims ran smoothly, right? Yeah, no. Despite as many reminders as I could manage, a third of the students forgot or decided to ghost, which meant the teams were so unbalanced I had to reshuffle on the fly. No one was really happy about it, but we struggled on. Then a few of the missing students actually showed up because they remembered, so we had to shuffle the teams again, and again no one was really happy with it. At least the technology worked!
My plan for the relay rounds failed, because the kids weren’t any faster at scoring than the teachers, and most were completely confused. So, note to self, never do relays again. In the end, we couldn’t come up with any winning teams to go on to the finals, because the teams had been so shuffled. I told the kids to let me know if they wanted to participate in the final, and I put together two teams from that list.
On to the final! As this was virtual, there were all the usual headaches of trying to remember our Pandemic knowledge of Microsoft Teams meetings, Polycom cameras, and sharing screens. One of our new tech staff worked hard to get it sorted out for me, with all the various inputs and outputs, sound, screen sharing, microphones, etc. This time, all of my students showed up on time and the other two schools signed on at the right time as well.
Everything went great until we got to the Jeopardy rounds. No matter how much I tried, I could not get the screen to share without showing all the answers. I ended up reading the questions off my phone, which was far from ideal, but the kids gamely rolled with it. The template I used also had a glitch in that followed links didn’t change color, so I never knew (in any of the Battle sessions) which questions had already been chosen, and the system I came up with instead didn’t work well and students felt it wasn’t entirely fair. The Kahoot went off without a hitch on our end, but was apparently glitchy for the other schools. We multiplied the Kahoot scores by .009 (90 being the highest possible score in a traditional round) to bring them into line with the other scores. In Jeopardy, each question was worth the same number of points, for fairness’ sake.
So, would I attempt multiple format again? Probably not for the three-school Battle, due to the complicated technology issues. For Battles on campus, the kids seemed to enjoy the new formats, so I’d probably try them again if I can solve these problems: 1. The time and effort needed to convert the questions into different formats. 2. Getting students to show up at the right time and place.
And that’s all the wisdom I have, folks! (For certain values of “wisdom,” anyway…)
One of the skills I teach to incoming fifth graders is how to use our online catalog. The lesson is brief, so I start by going over how to access the catalog, how to search and filter/narrow by wild cards or phrase searching, and how to interpret the catalog record. Necessary, but boring!
A former librarian had spiced up the practice part of the lesson by using a story full of blanks to be filled with words from catalog searches based on clues. I liked the idea, but thought the story—‘Mr. Dewey’s Naughty Boy’—wasn’t exactly riveting. So I wrote my own story, tailored to our catalog, though I’ll admit I had to add a couple of no-copy records to the catalog to make it work (#Sorry-Not-Sorry).
When I introduce the story, the class and I do the first blank together, so I can show them the process. I emphasize how to interpret the clue so they know what to look up, and emphasize that they should find the most unusual word in the clue to use as a keyword rather than laboriously type in the entire clue (which they still do, because, of course. #FacePalm). Then I pass out slips with one clue on each, and the students work in teams to solve them. At the end, I read the story aloud, calling on them to fill in the missing words.
Below is the story, and here’s our catalog: see how you do! (And if you just want to see the completed story, click here.)
The Scene: The police received an emergency call from the Overlake Library. When they arrived, they found the library abandoned. Windows and doors were smashed, computers tipped over, and books lay all over the floor. The books had been ripped apart and mangled. What happened?
Clues from Eyewitness Accounts
1. It was a normal day in the library until all the students heard a strange sound, like a:
__________________________________
Title of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book by Laban Hill
2. The students in the library heard hundreds of voices shouting for:
________________________________
Title of a book by Sherre Phillips
3. When the horde descended on the library, it sounded as if someone had taken too literally:
___________________________________
The first six words in the title of a book by Rain Newcomb
4. The police received an emergency phone call from someone who said the library was being attacked by:
__________________________________
Creatures from a baseball book by Paolo Bacigalupi
5. All of the students thought they’d get famous if they became:
_________________________________
Title of Emmanuel Guibert’s only nonfiction book(call number 070.4)
6. Each student in the library whipped out a:
____________________________
Technology in the title of a Myth-O-Mania series book about Persephone
7. Ms. McCandlish shouted over the chaos. “Don’t worry! I have a book called…”
____________________________
Title of a book by Max Brooks (look him up as an author)
8. After Ms. McCandlish told the students what to do, each threw a:
________________________________
Title of a book by Karen Brookfield
9. One student threw:
_________________________________
Title of a book by Clive Upton
10. The creature ate the book and started spouting:
_______________________________
Title of a book written or edited by “Peter Washington”(be sure to use the quotation marks!)
11. One student threw:
________________
Title of a book by Alessandro Taverna
12. The creature ate the book and became a:
_____________________________
Last name of the author of Under Shifting Glass
13. One student threw:
_________________________________
First three words in the title of a book by Terry Lee Stone
At the start of the year, wanting to build our reading culture, a few teachers and I formed a reading culture committee. For our first action, we decided to survey the students about their reading. We would use their responses to determine our next steps. With the bribe of being entered into a raffle for homeroom cookies, over 70 of our 200+ middle schoolers responded, and here are their responses. For questions about “other” responses, if the responses were minimal or uninformative, I omitted the results here.
Anything else you’d like to say about your reading?
• I love reading, and I read mostly young adult fiction, fantasy, or romance. I don’t read as much as I used to because of the amounts of homework. • I love to read and it is fun to see all the different ways the author wrote the book. • I love finding out the answers to the mysteries performed by the book and author!!! • I love reading ([My friend] made me write this, but it is true) • I like reading adventure books and mystery books. • I read a lot and like reading! but sometimes other things get in the way. • I love reading especially when I need a break so I might join the focus club. • No but I want to know why we are doing this survey. • I get thirty minutes of reading time, because I listen to audiobooks in the car. I get no actual reading time at home, because [of other obligations]. • I really like to read on my own, but when someone tells me to read, I feel like I don’t want to read anymore. • I like reading, but do less if I have too much other work or activities. • I like writing books. • Nothing about reading, but I love cookies! • I especially love historical-fiction/fiction.
Conclusions We can see that for students who read, while regular print books are still the most popular reading material, they are also reading multiple other formats. I find that encouraging, and hope by listing all of those options as reading, students who might not have considered themselves readers will re-think that.
Many students do not read a whole lot each week. We found their reasons telling, as the top two were too much homework and too many other obligations. Based on this, we decided we needed to find them more time to read at school. We are planning a “drop everything and read” wellness event, in which they will all read in their homerooms for a block. In addition, students who choose not to join an affinity group will instead join a “drop everything and read” group during fortnightly affinity group meetings. We are also working on setting up an evening for student writers to read from their works, since so many are writers.
Building reading culture is certainly a marathon! It’s especially so when all of us are so busy that our reading culture group finds it hard to meet. However, we are moving forward bit by bit, and plan to keep at it. If you have some great ideas that have worked at your school, please add them in the comments!
When I first heard about escape rooms several years ago, I thought they sounded like an amazing activity the kids would love, but I doubted my ability to put one together. Then a teacher approached me with the hope of running a Harry Potter escape room, so I started doing some research. After finding a librarian who had created such a room, Beth Bouwman of the Somerset County Library System in NJ, I got her permission to duplicate her escape room. She sent me all of the details, the teacher purchased props and locks, and everything went well. During the pandemic, I adapted that escape room into an online version. Instead of the usual Google Forms style, I used a Google Slide with added, clickable images, so it wasn’t a linear experience.
Later, I borrowed several escape room plans from Erica Testani, a Virginia librarian: Babysitters’ Club, Wings of Fire, Percy Jackson, and Taylor Swift. At that point, I had facilitated enough escape rooms to attempt creating one of my own. I started with another Percy Jackson one, and just finished a Keeper of the Lost Cities one. While the rooms take a lot of prep, set up and break down time, the kids love them and I enjoy the creativity of putting them together.
Want to create a room of your own? Here are some hopefully useful tips.
Plot
Start with your theme, perhaps a popular book series to connect with the library, or some other aspect of popular culture. Then you need a starting point. What are the kids trying to find, or do? Did Percy lose Annabeth’s baseball cap? Do you need to complete a Taylor Swift Lover House with icons from all of her eras? Did Kristy’s little sister go missing and you have to find her? It doesn’t have to be a weighty goal! The premise should include the first clue. I generally do a linear escape room, in that the boxes must be opened in a certain order, so the starting clue is key.
Boxes
My escape rooms are more like solving a series of boxes with different types of lock. I generally go with five or six boxes. If you have a kit from Breakout.edu, you probably have some boxes already, but I’ve also repurposed sturdy gift boxes and plastic containers, using a drill to make holes for the locks.
Locks
You’ll want a variety of locks. If you have a Breakout.edu kit, you’ll likely have a multilock, which is really useful because you can change out the wheels and use it as a word lock, color lock, or directonal lock. I also have additional word locks, number locks (three and four digit), and key locks. VERY IMPORTANT: Because you can change the combinations of your locks, be SURE to label each lock with its current combination before putting it away after your escape room event is over!
Puzzles
Here’s where you can go crazy! Codes, ciphers, runes, jigsaws, maps, clues in blacklight (you need the pen and the blacklight), auditory clues that must be replicated, riddle-poems, baking soda snowballs to be melted with vinegar, Jeffersonian wheel ciphers, red-film clues, edible clues, liquid clues, color clues, pretty much anything you can think of. Tactile clues are great; our kids spend so much time on screens that things they can touch and manipulate are welcome.
Décor
This will obviously vary with your theme, but doesn’t need to be elaborate. Posters, books, props, some red herrings. Consult with students if you’re less familiar with the material, and source items with the help of other teachers. Our theater’s costume closet has supplied a lot of décor for me, as has one of the Latin teachers (a Roman helmet for Percy Jackson). A science teacher helped me by three-D printing a lightning-bolt cookie cutter. Other teachers have responded to my queries for things like a kid’s xylophone and a “thinking cap.” All of the teachers were happy to be asked and enjoyed the opportunity to participate.
Scheduling
One of the drawbacks of doing an escape room is that it doesn’t work well for more than a few kids at a time. My ideal group size is five, maybe six, so everyone gets a chance to participate. When we had a scheduling glitch and I ended up with too many kids, I divided them into two groups and they alternated solving the clues. Because I have small groups, I need to run several sessions of each escape room, and multiple setting up/breaking down times does add more time overall. Plus, to ensure that the kids solve the room in the space of the lunch block, I usually have to give them a lot of hints.
Sharing
I am happy to share any of my escape room setups, and Erica gave me permission to share hers as well (with credit). If you’d like to run any of these, or you have additional questions about setting up this type of escape room, feel free to contact me. If you have one you’d like to share, please also contact me—I’m always looking for new ideas!
One of my orientation sessions with our 5th graders covers citations. To start, we talk about what citations are, why it’s important to cite your sources, and what sort of information citations include. While I mention that formatting is important, I tell them we won’t worry about that today since our NoodleTools software formats for us. Instead, we focus on finding the elements of citations for different types of sources, because different sources need different types of information. I want them to come away from the lesson knowing that: 1. You cite your sources to give credit to the creator, and so other people can find your sources; 2. Different types of sources require different types of information in citations.
I love to gamify my lessons, so I start by dividing the class into two teams. They then compete to assemble a twelve-piece puzzle featuring a blank country map, and correctly identify the country. I created the puzzles by printing out country maps blank except for capital cities. Then, I colored in the selected country to distinguish them from the surrounding countries, laminated them, and cut them into twelve symmetrical pieces. I’m sure there’s a more impressive, less craft-y way to do it, but my handmade puzzles work pretty well!
To earn puzzle pieces, each team must fill in twelve forms, guiding them to twelve different sources. They may work together, or individually. The source is listed at the top of the form (which, to exactly no-one’s surprise, they rarely read), and I provide blanks for the specific information needed for that source. After years of struggling with computers that wanted to update right in the middle of a lesson, wouldn’t log on, lost database access, etc., I threw my hands up and now use only printouts and print books.
I post or set the materials around the classroom, grouped by type: print books, website pages, eBook pages, database article pages, and online encyclopedia pages. On the printouts, I highlight the labels for information the students need, though they still struggle with it. Especially in the last couple of years, I found that students can’t identify a magazine or newspaper title on the database article printouts, even highlighted—I need to clarify that “source” = magazine/newspaper title for my chosen articles.
Once the students have completed a form, they bring it to me to check. If they have completed it well, I give them a puzzle piece for their team. If they have missing or incorrect information, I send them back to find it. They are welcome to help others on their team. Once they have completed the forms, they work on completing the puzzle, and looking up the capital city to identify the country. I always hand out the piece with the capital on it last!
This lesson has held up pretty well, though I do find myself making it easier/more obvious each year, mostly to streamline the game to ensure we finish on time. I did notice that this year, the students struggled more with the puzzle than in years past, and I noticed that they also struggled in a session that involved filling out a blank library map. I wonder, is students’ overall spatial awareness is declining? In any case, I don’t expect them to remember details from this lesson. If they come away knowing what a citation is, that they need to cite their sources, and that different sources require different information in citations, then they have completed their first step on the citation road. How has your teaching of citations changed in the last few years? Please write it in the comments!
At the start of the year, I have eight thirty-minute sessions with the fifth grade, to introduce them to the library and its resources. This year, I decided to swap out one of our sessions for an intro to AI. I started with a fifteen-minute lesson from Commonsense Media, but for the other half, I wanted to try something I read about in a Knowledge Quest article. The article’s author showed students a human-written poem and an AI-written poem, and discussed differences. As I could not locate the article, I decided it would be appropriate to have ChatGPT write the lesson plan as well as the poems, and I would adapt as necessary. Here is the lesson plan I ended up with:
Objective: Students will compare and contrast a human-written poem and an AI-written poem that explore similar themes, examining the style, tone, and emotional depth of each. Materials:
Two short poems expressing similar themes (dreams) o One human-written (“The Dream Keeper” by Langston Hughes) o One AI-generated poem
Printed copies of both poems for each student or displayed on the board/screen.
Chart or Venn diagram for comparison.
Lesson Breakdown:
Introduction (2 minutes) • Teacher: “Today, we’re going to look at two poems: one written by a person and one created by a computer program, called AI (Artificial Intelligence). We’ll compare them to see how similar and different they are.” • Briefly explain what AI is and how it can be used to write poetry. o This is generative AI o I gave it the prompt to write a poem in the style of the author of the human-written poem, of about the same length, and with the same theme
Read the Poems (3 minutes) • Do not reveal which is the human-written poem • Read the first poem aloud, encouraging students to listen for emotions, imagery, and tone. • Read the second poem aloud. Ask students to listen carefully for similarities and differences compared to the first poem.
Group Discussion (4 minutes) • Ask students to share their initial thoughts on both poems: o “Which poem do you like better? Why?” o “What feelings or pictures come to mind when you hear each poem?” o “Do they sound similar or different? How?”
Comparison Activity (4 minutes) • Teacher: Lead students in filling out a comparison chart or Venn diagram. o Similarities: Themes, structure, words, or phrases used. o Differences: Tone, emotional depth, word choice, or if one feels more “natural” than the other. • Prompt questions like: o “Do both poems talk about the same idea in the same way?” o “Does one poem feel more personal or emotional?” o “Which one uses more descriptive or creative words?”
Vote (1 minute) Teacher: Have students close eyes and vote on which is the human-written poem Reveal how they did
Closing (2 minutes) • Summarize the discussion by highlighting that AI can write poetry, but it may sound different from human writing because AI doesn’t experience emotions the way people do. • Encourage students to think about how both human creativity and technology can create interesting things.
Assessment: • Participation in the discussion and completion of the comparison chart or Venn diagram.
For the poems, I chose a Langston Hughes poem, since the 5th grade teacher loves Langston Hughes and shares his poetry with the students. I directed ChatGPT to write a poem in the style of Langston Hughes with the theme of dreams, and no longer than ten lines. Here are the two poems:
A Dream on the Wind
By ChatGPT
I heard a dream whisper, soft and low, Telling me where I ought to go. “Climb,” it said, “the mountain high, Touch the stars in the endless sky.”
But when the day brings shadows near, Dreams fade, held back by fear. Still, the dream calls, steady and strong— A hope, a wish, a waiting song. I rise, I run, I will not stay— For dreams will lead me all the way.
The Dream Keeper
By Langston Hughes
Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamers,
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.
When asked which poem they preferred, the students almost universally chose the AI poem, citing its flow and rhyme. We didn’t get to the Venn diagram as there wasn’t board space for it, and the teacher stepped in to help the kids see the differences between the two. The kids were quite perspicacious, once they really focused. However, about half did not identify the human-written poem when we voted.
For the next class, I decided to change out the poems so that the teacher wouldn’t be familiar with the human-written poem, either. I found a short poem called “Grandfather,” by Syrian-born poet Mohja Kahf, and directed ChatGPT to write a poem of similar length, with similar themes, in the style of a modern Middle-eastern poet. While I cannot reprint her poem, as it is still copyrighted, you can find it in The space between our footsteps : poems and paintings from the Middle East, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, c1998). Here is the AI-written poem:
Whispers of Time
By ChatGPT
I hold time in my hands like sand, slipping through each creased finger— you see it in my eyes, the years, the suns that rose and fell.
I was once like you, running toward a horizon too far to catch, but now, I sit with the dusk, listening to the world slow.
I wish I could gift you the patience to wait for the wind to tell its story— but youth is fire, burning for tomorrow, while I learn to love yesterday.
Again, most of the class preferred the AI-written poem to the human-written poem, and actually, the teacher did too—and said he felt very conflicted about that. After we discussed the poems, though, almost everyone identified the human-written poem. Specificity is one of the commonalities I noted with both of the human-written poems as opposed to the AI poems.
While it was a successful and interesting lesson, I find that I, too, am conflicted about the results! If any of you have tried a similar experiment, I would love to hear about it in the comments.
Last month, I covered (no pun intended) books about female-identifying kids’ struggles with excess body hair. This month, I thought I should cover some male-identifying kids’ puberty struggles. Many books address the emotional struggles, with a side of the physical struggles, but I couldn’t find too many with a strong focus on the physical struggles. I suspect there are many more than I found, but the issues are embedded in the story as a whole and don’t merit their own subject heading. If you know of other titles that address these issues as part of the story, write them in the comments! Summaries from Worldcat or GoodReads.com.
“The voice actor for a hit animated series, thirteen-year-old Nikhil must find the courage to speak out about what’s right when a group of conservative parents protest his openly gay status.” –Publisher. Note: Nikhil’s voice is changing, which means he can no longer play the character he loves so much, and he’s struggling to face that reality.
“Still struggling with a home life edging on the poverty line, Rex can’t afford to buy the acne medication or deodorant he needs, and bullies are noticing Rex’s awkward transformation.” –GoodReads.com.
“As twelve-year-old Duane endures the confusing and humiliating aspects of puberty, he watches a newborn bird in a nest on his windowsill begin to grow and become more independent, all of which he records in his journal.” –Publisher.
“Thirteen-year-old Bobby Connor is a normal adolescent boy–at least he hopes he is–just trying to survive middle school. But it seems he’s being foiled at every turn, and even his own body is conspiring against him. And when his math teacher is seriously injured from the shock and fright of witnessing just how out of control Bobby’s changing adolescent body is getting, he starts to worry he’s anything but normal.” –Publisher.
“Jack Sprigley isn’t just a late-bloomer. He’s a no-bloomer. It’s nearly the end of Year 8, and with puberty still a total no-show, Jack’s in serious danger of being left behind by his friends. But then he comes up with a plan to solve all his problems. It’s simple: all he has to do is fake puberty…” –GoodReads.com.
“Inspired by the angelic sound of Yutaka’s voice, [his middle school] choir eagerly accepts him into their ranks. But when Yutaka’s voice begins to change as he enters puberty, the journey ahead will be one of self-discovery and reflection for not only himself, but also for those around him.” –GoodReads.com.
“Unable to accept or explain his family’s newly acquired wealth, his growing interest in sex, and a friend’s shoplifting habit, a thirteen-year-old finds the pains in his stomach getting worse and worse.” –Publisher.
“When Jay starts eighth grade with a few pimples he doesn’t think much of it at first…except to wonder if the embarrassing acne will disappear as quickly as it arrived. But when his acne goes from bad to worse, Jay’s prescribed a powerful medication that comes with some serious side effects.” –GoodReads.com.
Short story collection. Specific story: “How a Boy Can Become a Grease Fire.” A boy likes a girl, and his friends decide to help him with his BO, dry skin, and chapped lips, as well as accompanying him to her house so he can ask for her number. This one was just funny, and sweet/obnoxious of the friends. Those middle school crushes are aptly named.
As someone who grew up at a time when Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret was one of the only middle school books even mentioning menstruation, it’s refreshing to see somewhat of a proliferation of titles to help menstruators through this coming-of-age milestone. You can see some lists here and here. I’m hoping the next puberty-concern authors will bring into the light is body hair. Society levies such immense pressure, especially on those identifying as female, to eradicate any hint of body hair beyond eyebrows, eyelashes, and head hair. As someone whose genetics “blessed” her with an excess of body hair, which I’ve spent years and untold dollars painfully removing, young-me would have found such comfort in a “Margaret” book for body hair. I think there is hope, as I did find a few books when I went searching, but only a few. If you have more to add to this list, please do! Summaries from publishers/Worldcat. Links to GoodReads.com.
“High school debater TJ Powar, after she and her cousin become the subject of an ugly meme, makes a resolution to stop shaving, plucking, and waxing, and prove that she can be her hairy self and still be beautiful… but soon finds this may be her most difficult debate yet.” –Worldcat.
“A biracial Indian/Caucasian girl is nervous to begin middle school, especially since her mother is now the breadwinner of the family, her best friend may no longer be a bestie, and the appearance of the seventeen hairs over her lip that form a very unwanted mustache.” – Publisher
“Follows the endless humiliations, unrequited obsessions, and all-consuming friendships of fifteen-year-old Evia Birtwhistle as she leads a body-hair positive revolution at her school.” –Worldcat
Laxmi’s Mooch. Shelly Anand, author. Nabi H. Ali, illustrator (Picture Book)
“After Laxmi’s friend Zoe points out the hairs on her lip, Laxmi is very self-conscious until her East Indian parents help her to accept and celebrate her appearance.” –Worldcat
“Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in Panem’s Hunger Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weight survival against humanity and life against love.” –Publisher
I was sitting at my desk as the year wound up, students and faculty scattered to the winds, wondering what to write about for my July blog post. It was then that I heard my colleague, who was busy in the stacks, chortling away. Like me, she’s an inveterate audiobook reader, so I knew she was listening to something (rather than plotting nefarious pranks involving fake books and glitter bombs, not that I’ve ever thought about doing that, nope, never—do you know what glitter abatement costs? Me neither, but I can imagine my admins’ response to receiving that check request…). While I enjoy many books with humor, it takes a lot to get me laughing out loud, so a book with that capability becomes a precious favorite. Thus for the lazy days of July, what could be better than a book that makes you laugh so hard you re-separate a rib cartilage injury from your teens (for example)? Here are my favorites, starting with MS books and moving to YA and Adult books. I’ve included either my own GoodReads summary or a publisher/WorldCat summary, and a link to my full TL;DR GoodReads reviews. Please share your own favorite laugh-out-loud books in the comments!
The war started over Poptarts. Maybe. Whatever; the start doesn’t matter so much as what followed. Claudia and Reece were out to get each other, and things just keep escalating. There was the fish episode, and the ill-conceived video episode, and the Megaworld episode…where will it end? Told by Claudia as an audiobook, with frequent interruptions to add in text threads between the parents, chapters by Reece or just commentary by Reece, and other characters as well.
It’s 7th grade, and Rahul, an Indian-American boy from Indiana, has a pretty good life. He’s got great parents, an extended “family” of other Indians and Indian Americans who’ve known him forever and love to feed him, a wonderful grandfather who lives with them, a younger brother who can be annoying but is basically ok, good grades, and a super-best friend in Chelsea. But there are down sides, primarily Brent, the local bully, and his football cronies, one of whom used to be a friend of Rahul’s, but they drifted apart. Lately, though, Rahul finds his eyes keep drifting back to Justin, and he doesn’t know why. He does know that he’s feeling the need to be “best” at something, though, and his attempts are both hilarious and painful to watch. He’s gamely supported by his parents and Chelsea, but more and more Rahul finds himself pushing everyone away, and has developed some worrisome OCD habits. 7th grade is not turning out to be his best year…but is there a way to save it?
Ninth graders T.C., Augie, and Alejandra tell the story of their most excellent year. During this year, they all fell in love (Augie first had to realize he was gay, and T.C. had to stop taking dating advice from his dad), fought for social causes (T.C. taught Alejandra how to spam the Senate to get a baseball diamond built at Manzanar), performed brilliantly onstage (Augie’s interpretation of “Too Darn Hot” brought down the house), adopted a deaf six-year-old foster kid obsessed with Mary Poppins (he kept expecting her to come rescue him), and generally grew into their potential.
My Lady Jane. Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows. (YA)
Let’s face it: Tudor history has needed a reboot for a long time. Everyone knows all the scandals and battles and wives and what have you. Time for something new. Imagine that the world includes two kinds of people; those who can turn into animals, and those who can’t. The Tudors include many of the former, including Henry VIII (a lion who eats messengers). Because humans are human whatever their shape, there’s tension between the two types of people, which is about to come to a head. Henry VIII is gone, and his sickly teenage son Edward is on the throne, but dying slowly of ‘The Affliction.’ In a moment of weakness, he is persuaded to do two things: order the marriage of his book-loving cousin Jane Grey to the son of his most influential counselor, Lord Dudley. Gifford (or G, as he prefers), is a fine young man–when he is a man. From sunup to sundown, he’s a horse. So, Edward orders Jane to marry G, then appoints Jane his successor. What do you think the odds are for Edward at this point? Well, better than in the history we know, is all I can tell you.
“Stop. I won’t let you take your trousers off in the middle of the street. That is a terrible idea.”
“Right. Well. Shall we keep kissing until we think of a better one?” In the 1700s, 18-year-old Henry Montague, Viscount of Disley, is a terrible rake. Expelled from Eton, he spends his time drinking, gambling, and tumbling in and out of bed with boys and girls rather indiscriminately, all while nursing a painfully unrequited crush on his best friend Percy. Their last hurrah–and Monty’s last chance at his inheritance—Is a year-long Grand Tour, at the end of which Monty and Percy will likely be parted forever and Monty will be stuck at home with his monster of a father. Despite being saddled with a “bear-leader” determined to make the boys—and Monty’s younger sister Felicity, who will be dropped off (most unwillingly) at finishing school)—behave, it doesn’t take Monty long to make some spectacularly bad decisions (nudity and theft are involved) that have them fleeing Paris. Beset by highwaymen, the three young adults lose their guardians and their possessions, and then find themselves being pursued across Europe by armed guards (thanks for that, Monty). Will they survive? Will Monty and Percy ever get together? Will Felicity sell them both to pirates for being SO annoying and useless? Stay tuned…
YOLO Juliet. Brett Wright, William Shakespeare (YA)
“Imagine: What if those star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet had smartphones? A classic is reborn in this adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays! Two families at war. A boy and a girl in love. A secret marriage gone oh-so-wrong… and h8. A Shakespeare play told through its characters texting with emojis, checking in at certain locations, and updating their relationship statuses.” –WorldCat.org
Linus Baker is different than all of the other drones—uh, case workers—at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. For one, he’s been there 17 years. For two, he actually cares about the children in the orphanages he investigates. His job is pretty much his life. He’s 40 something and lives alone with a cranky cat and nosy neighbor, and only vaguely dreams of more. So when he’s assigned to spend a month on an island, investigating the highly classified Marsyas Orphanage, he’s puzzled, dubious, nervous, and very slightly excited. The children on Marsyas are like nothing he’s ever encountered—a female gnome who wants to bury him in her garden, a tentacled green blob who wants to do his laundry, a sprite who wants to turn him into a tree, a wyvern who wants all his buttons, a were-pomeranian who hides from him, and, of course, the antichrist who loves doo-wop. Then there’s the master, the enigmatic, kind, slightly rumpled Arthur Parnassus, who sees something in Linus that he’s never seen in himself.
Elliott’s mother left when he was young and his father basically stopped living—and stopped being a father—at the same time, leaving their snarky, too-smart, redheaded son to bring himself up, and he’s not doing the greatest job. He knows he has an abrasive personality and has no friends. Then a strange woman takes his class on a field trip to a, well, a field, and Elliott can see an immense wall the others can’t. He’s offered the chance to attend school in the Borderlands beyond the wall, and, having nothing to lose, he takes it; maybe he’ll get the chance to see mermaids? The camp that serves as a school for the Borderlands guards is nothing like what Elliott thought it would be, and he flat out refuses to be in the Guard side of the training because violence never solved anything—he’ll do the Council training course instead. His loathing of violence doesn’t stop him falling madly in love with a gorgeous elf called Serene Heart in the Chaos of Battle (“That’s so badass!”), and he pledges himself to her immediately, which doesn’t turn her off because in elf culture, women are the strong ones and men stay at home and embroider. Elliott’s not thrilled with most of the other recruits, including the impossibly charismatic Luke Sunborn, who reminds Elliott of all the boys who have everything and like to bully the kids who don’t—including Elliott. Unfortunately, Luke and Serene have already bonded over their love of sports and battle and everything else, and Elliott will have to put up with Luke if he wants to stay close to Serene. And so begin their years of training.
In the 1940s, Brooklyn Jewish kid Joey is plagued by nasty bullies and the lack of a father. He decides that Charlie Banks, third baseman of the NY Giants, will become his best friend and fill that gap. Through cunning, deceit, and smarts, he finds Charlie’s address and starts writing him. Charlie is less than thrilled, but just can’t seem to shake Joey. There’s just something about this persistent, annoying, resourceful, fearless kid that Charlie (like many, many others) can’t resist, much as he might want to. The book consists of their letters and notes, Joey’s notes to his local best friend Craig Nakamura, Joey’s report card (Obedience: F), letters to Joey from the White House Press Secretary in response to Joey’s letters, letters from Hazel, the Ethel-Merman-hating singer who is Charlie’s “Toots,” and so much more. Life is exciting and profane and sad, and a world war is just on the horizon.
“This is the story of Arthur Dent, who, seconds before Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, is plucked off the planet by his friend, Ford Prefect, who has been posing as an out-of-work actor for the last fifteen years but is really a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Together they begin a journey through the galaxy aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, with the words don’t panic written on the front. (“A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.”).” –Publisher
Gus sometimes wonders how this got to be his life. He runs a video rental emporium (who even rents videos anymore? Very few people, which is still more than Gus wants to interact with) in a tiny town in Oregon, he has an accidental albino ferret named Harry S. Truman who goes everywhere with him (you really don’t want to deal with a pissed-off ferret if you don’t), he reads encyclopedias for fun, has a flip phone and no internet, can quote all the Oscar winners in any category for any year, and his “best” friends are three elderly, possibly-sisters-possibly-polyamorous-lesbians who drive Vespas and wear pink leather jackets (I think). It’s an okay life, it is, really, but he can’t even quantify how much he misses Pastor Tommy, his sweet, loving, outgoing, usually-totally-stoned father. Gus doesn’t interact with many people, and he’s beyond awkward when he does, so when he encounters Casey, an asexual stoner hipster who seems to think Gus is beyond awesome, Gus is completely flummoxed. Maybe the Internet could teach him how to be a normal person?
Hapless time-travel historian Ned Henry is in search of a horrendous Victorian artifact called ‘The Bishop’s Bird Stump,’ as part of a project to recreate Coventry Cathedral exactly as it was before it was bombed in World War II. Unfortunately, Ned has been doing so much time travelling that he’s suffering from time-lag, which disorients its sufferers and starts them quoting melodramatic poetry. Ned needs a rest, but the project’s financer, Lady Shrapnel, is ruthless in her pursuit of perfection–and the historians who will get it for her. Ned needs a safe place to recuperate, so travels to the Victorian era for a peaceful holiday drifting down the Thames River. Of course, nothing goes as planned, and Ned is soon embarked on a hilarious series of misadventures closely related to those encountered by the hapless heroes of Jerome K. Jerome’s hilarious ‘Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog.’
“Set to have a vacation away from her home life and the tax man, young barrister Julia Larwood takes a trip to Italy with her art-loving boyfriend. But when her personal copy of the current Finance Act is found a few meters away from a dead body, Julia finds herself caught up in a complex fight against the Inland Revenue. Fortunately, she’s able to call on her fellow colleagues who enlist the help of their friend Oxford professor Hilary Tamar. However, all is not what it seems. Could Julia’s boyfriend in fact be an employee of the establishment she has been trying to escape from? And how did her romantic luxurious holiday end in murder?” –Publisher.
The town of Caerphilly, VA, finds itself in a unique position this July; their rat of an ex-mayor mortgaged the town buildings then fled, at which point the ‘Evil Lender’ evicted all town employees from the buildings–except for Mr. Throckmorton, who barricaded himself in the courthouse basement with his beloved Archives. Unbeknownst to the Evil Lender, there is a secret tunnel into the Courthouse, through which those town residents in the know have been ferrying supplies and information to Mr. Throckmorton for the past year. Now, though, the Evil Lender seems to be stepping up its efforts to get Mr. Throckmorton out–including getting him accused of murder. It’s up to blacksmith Meg Langslow and her town friends to find out the truth and save not only Mr. Throckmorton, but the whole town.
Travis and Craig met at boarding school and fell in love their senior year, 1978. After a passionate summer together in NYC, they went to the opposite sides of the country for college, and fell out of touch. Travis became an unorthodox professor of American literature, who asks his students about Alexander Hamilton and baseball, as well as what to do about his 27th boyfriend. Craig becomes a lawyer, falls in love with Clayton, and they’ve been together 12 years. Then Travis finally has a revelation in 1998 that Craig is The One for him, and starts off on a picaresque journey to find him and get him back. What does Craig think about that? Well, that would be telling…
“‘We agree that we are overworked, and need a rest—A week on the rolling deep? —George suggests the river—’ And with the co-operation of several hampers of food and a covered boat, the three men (not forgetting the dog) set out on a hilarious voyage of mishaps up the Thames. When not falling in the river and getting lost in Hampton Court Maze, Jerome K. Jerome finds time to express his ideas on the world around—many of which have acquired a deeper fascination since the day at the end of the 19th century when this excursion was so lightly undertaken.” –Publisher.
