Moving to Edublogs

Our blog is moving to http://lockermanlibrary.edublogs.org

See you there!

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to a brand new school year! What is new in the media center for 2011-2012? We have many, many new books available on our shelves and more are on the way. So many new things that we also have some additional shelves on order to help contain it all! Especially notable this year are the major additions to the graphic novel collection and the plethora of new material in non fiction. The 2011-12 Black-Eyed Susan Nominees are on display, ready to be checked out by those wanting to participate in the voting. We will also begin checking out eBooks through our Lockerman FollettShelf very soon. These books will be available to read anywhere you can access the internet.

Lots of things happening in the LMS Media Center. Stay tuned!!

Big Day Tomorrow!

Tomorrow morning, Monday, January 1oth, the American Library Association will announce its Youth Media Award winners. I will be posting the winners of the major book awards here on the blog and the books will be available shortly in the media center. Check the blog to see if one of your favorite authors is a winner!

Book Club Meetings

Huzzah! It's time to start-up book clubs again! If you are interested in joining either book club, please sign-up on the appropriate clipboard in the Media Center so I have an idea of how many folks to prepare for.

Guys Read Club will meet Wednesday, January 19th from 2:45 - 4:00 in the Media Center.

Readergirlz Club will meet Thursday, February 2nd from 2:45 - 4:00 in the Media Center.

I look forward to seeing everyone. Please be sure that your ride is here to pick you up at the end of our meeting time.

Welcome Back!

Lots of happy faces in the media center today! Hopefully we'll also have a bunch of new followers for the blog. I finished Heart of a Samurai late last night and will let you know about my next read tomorrow.

Hopefully everyone is doing a great job keeping up with their 25 Books goal for the school year. We are almost to the halfway point, so you should be in the middle of book 12 or have recorded 1200 pages at this point.

Also, please update your tracking sheet if you are reading Black-Eyed Susan nominees. Voting takes place in April, so there is still plenty of time to read the minimum of 3 books to be eligible to vote. Remember to complete a request slip if the book you are looking for is not on the shelf. If you do not have a tracking sheet, a list of nominees can be found at http://www.maslmd.org/awards_nominees.php

More New Titles

In a last burst of reading before we return to school I am trying to get through the titles I brought home to review. Last night's reading was Scumble by Ingrid Law. This is a companion book to Savvy, which was on the Black-Eyed Susan 4-6 list last year. Although I did not read Savvy, I did not feel as though I had to in order to understand this story. Scumble was a great read on its own merits. The characters were believable and were able to annoy, amuse and concern me. This book would appeal to anyone who has ever felt out of place or who has a wacky family.

This morning, I started Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus. This is historical fiction set in the mid-19th century and is based on a true story. So far, characters have been shipwrecked, rescued and robbed. At this point in the story, Manjiro (the main character) is faced with a life-altering decision. Could you turn your back on all that you know, the only people who connect you with your past and the opportunity to return home to take a chance on a better life? To find out what Manjiro decides, read Heart of a Samurai.

Happy New Year

Welcome to 2011! A fresh new year with endless possibilities and hopefully much time to read! :)

Today is also the start of my 365 Project. I will take a picture every day this year and post it to my project site. I know that there are several budding photographers at our school. I encourage you to try this project as well. The 365 Project site is http://365project.org/. Check it out!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all followers of the Lockerman Media Center blog! I was wondering if any of you have made resolutions for the coming year. My 2011 school-year's resolution is: to be more consistent with this blog. There are so many books, links, etc. that I'd like to share with you and this is the perfect place!

Over this break I have finished two books so far. The first, The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan is an action-adventure novel much like The Lightning Thief. This series features the gods and goddesses of Egyptian mythology. I give it 4 stars. The second book, Bright Young Things by Anna Godbersen is historical fiction with a large serving of drama. If you liked the Luxe series, this is definitely something you will want to try. Both books are available in the media center.

That said, what have you been reading? Please feel free to share what you are reading in the comments of the blog.

25 Books List Challenge

Have you been keeping your 25 Books List up-to-date? Currently, I have read 39 books and have a total of 10,279 pages read. I am issuing a challenge to all LMS students to update their lists and page counts.

THE CHALLENGE: Update your 25 Books list and have it initialed by your language arts teacher. Bring it to the media center and show it to Mrs. Porter between Monday, November 30th and Friday, Dec. 3rd. The first 20 people to do so will win a free book from the upcoming book fair. Ready, Set, GO!

Book Clubs

**NEWS FLASHES**
1. I have updated my Shelfari and accepted friendship requests. I will send out invitations for our closed LMS group in the next day or two.
2. Book clubs will be starting in January! Each club will have a brief meeting in December to distribute the book that we will discuss and to go over the basics of the book club. Listen to announcements and keep reading the blog for details as they become available!

BES 2010-11
The link above will allow you to view the slideshow of the current Black-Eyed Susan nominees. When you go to Scribd.com via the link, click on Full Screen and in the bottom tool bar click on Scroll and change it to Slideshow. Don't forget to fill out a request slip for these books if there are not copies in when you visit the media center!

Service Learning connection on Television!

Mr. Kenny Wood of Lifetime Wells for Ghana will be featured on the Today Show on NBC Tuesday, October 19th. Mr. Wood is a resident of Denton and our 7th grade has held several walk-a-thons to help furnish school uniforms for the children in the towns where Mr. Wood drills wells. Tune in to NBC between 8 and 9 AM to see Mr. Wood interviewed by NBC's Jane Pauley.

New in Biography!

New in the biography section are multiple volumes from the Wicked History series. If you enjoy reading about people who will do anything (e.g. - betray, poison, guillotine) other people to gain power, this is the series for you. Folks featured in this series include Ivan the Terrible: tsar of death, Henry VIII: royal beheader, Cixi: evil empress of China, Robespierre: master of the guillotine. More evil than you can imagine - Check one out today!!

Readergirlz

What a great discussion today about The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks! We only got to questions from a few of the tables, but so many people had great observations that we ran out of time. Unfortunate to anyone who did not get to express their feelings, but what a wonderful problem to have. If you have any more opinions about the book, please feel free to post them as comments to this entry on the blog. We'd love to hear what you think!

It was fun to see what some of you wrote to your future selves. I will store the letters in a safe place and will give them to you your senior year. It will be fun to see if what is important to you now is still important then. And, after a rough start, the sealing wax was a great success. Anyone who had to leave early should come to the media center as soon as you finish your letter. I have envelopes and enough sealing wax to complete your project.

Next month's read: The Schwa was Here by Neal Shusterman. This book is a definite departure from all of our other Readergirl selections in that the protagonist is. . . A GUY!!! I wonder what kind of "opinionating" that will add to our next book discussion. :)

P.S. - Are any of you interested in meeting once or twice during the summer? Maybe at the public library?

Guys Read March Madness

The Lightning Thief was a huge hit. All the guys enjoyed the books and 80% of them had read the next book in the series, with 2 more guys already into the third. Way to go Guys! Interesting dialog about which god or goddess each guy would like as a parent and even more interesting discussion about parts of the plot they liked, would change or would enhance. Lockerman Guys do not lack imagination, for sure!
Of course, what is a Guys Read meeting without making a mess? We trooped outside to try to explode Ziploc bags using a combo of water, vinegar and baking soda. All but 1 bag blew up, but we're not quite sure if it was from the ingredients or the forceful landings some of them made. Next we tried poking pencils through Ziploc bags full of water to see how many we could get through without the bag leaking. Winner was D.S. with a record 12 pencils. Very cool.
Our next meeting will be in April when we will discuss the book Scat by Carl Hiaasen and try our luck at being Mythbusters with Mentos and soda.

Shelfari

At the last meetings of the Guys Read Club and the readergirlz club, I encouraged all members to create a Shelfari Shelf. It's fun to see what others are reading and to read their opinions.

The website is http://www.shelfari.com or you can just click on the Shelfari logo on the right side of the page. All you need is to check with the adult(s) in charge of you to make sure it's OK and an email address. Once you have made your Shelfari Shelf, you can find other readergirlz or Mrs. Porter and be Shelfari friends. My Shelfari name is (surprise) Mrs. Porter.

readergirlz March meeting

Finally! After waiting through snow, sleet and scheduling issues the readergirlz finally met to disuss The Hunger Games. It was unanimously liked, though to varying degrees. Katniss is a strong, independent person, and many felt that there should be more books featuring girl characters like Katniss instead of the "traditional damsel in distress". Wow! Great comment and I will be compiling a list of such books for the readergirlz next meeting.

After eating, discussing, eating more and discussing more, we proceeded to make Oobleck. Usually, the readergirlz do some sort of computer-related cool thing or a craft, but this month we leapt into the world of wacky science. So much fun. Very creative used of food-coloring to create the tie-dye effect was employed by many. The only bummer was that it was not in a very good container for transport so the r-girlz had to dispose of their Oobleck before going home. However, corn starch and water are easy to obtain and hopefully many readergirlz will be concoting Oobleck to their hearts content this weekend.

The next readergirlz meeting will be Thursday, April 8th. We will be discussing The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. See you then!

Lockerman Guys Read

The Lockerman Guys Read club met today. We discussed Skeleton Creek by Patrick Carman. It was a great book, there were lots of theories that guys had about the BIG secret and if there was a murder or an accident. We watched the last video together to see if we could figure some more things out. Creepy!!

We also made Oobleck. You need cornstarch, water and food coloring and a place where you can make a big mess. If you get food coloring on your hands, toothpaste will take most of it off. Mr. Oesterle came to the meeting this month and promises to return! Mr. Kotyk stopped in briefly to share his ideas. Sadly, Mr. Angeloni couldn't make it. :(

Our new book is The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. Come join us and talk about it at our next meeting on Thursday, March 25th.

We're Back!

Welcome Back to School! What a nice mid-winter vacation. Due to the snow days, the readergirlz Club meeting has been rescheduled for March 4th at 2:45 p.m. in the media center. We'll be discussing The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, so if you've read it ladies - come join us! Other big news will be the announcement of our March book.

What a month (so far)

Wow! Here it is, Valentine's Day, and we haven't been in school since February 5th. Hopefully everyone has done at least a little bit of reading. As of today, I've read 7 books (2,008 pages). Hoping to read at least one more before life returns to normal and we return to school on Tuesday.

Unfortunately, the Guys Read Club meeting last week was postponed due to snow. The new meeting date will be Thursday, Feb. 25th at 2:45.

Happy Presidents' Day tomorrow!