This week in 1st grade we read A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip and Erin Stead. The students had great insights and thoughts about the animals, art, and story. We we’re all very impressed by the wonderful art created by Erin Stead. In this short video, Erin talks about how she makes her art for books. You can visit her website as well!

http://erinstead.com/

With June fast approaching, it’s time to start getting the library books back for summer inventory. I have posted a schedule for the rest of the year that I hope will get all library books returned. Parents, if you can please send your children with their library books, it would be greatly appreciated!

Here is our check out and end of year book collection schedule:

May 21st to May 24th – Last week to check out hardcover books

May 30th to June 1st – Last week to check out paperbacks

June 1st – Any book checked out must stay in your classroom

June 1st to June 15th – All books must be returned

Students needing materials for reports and staff needing material for instruction may keep their books until the completion of their projects.

The winner has been announced! When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead is the 2012 MCBA Award winner. Congratulations to Rebecca. Thanks to all the kids at Fox Hill who read the MCBA books and voted at school!

Here is a really cool video of Rebecca talking about her book, her writing, and her life in New York City.

The 2012-2013 nominees have already been announced. Below is a PDF of the new list if you’d like to get a jumpstart on reading for the 2013 voting. These make great summer reads too!

2012- 2013 Master List

Thank you students, families, teachers, and staff for making the Spring Book Fair a great success! With the contributions from One For Books, we were able to add nearly twenty titles to our library. Thank you so much!

Our Book Fair is in full swing! Be sure to stop by this week. We’ve got tons of awesome titles and all the proceeds benefit Fox Hill!

Thank you so much students and families who have donated to One For Books. It will help get more awesome books from the Book Fair into our library! Hopefully by the end of this week the library windows will be filled with One For Books donation slips!

Next week is gearing up to be a very exciting week here at Fox Hill! We’ve got our Scholastic Spring Book Fair running all next week. In addition, next week we’ve also got our Fine Arts Evening and Spring Concert. The night of May 1, we’ll be open late during the Fine Arts Evening. Today I’m hard at work getting all the fliers and letters ready to be sent home. Expect to see these at home soon!

A new book that I’m really looking forward to is Ghost Buddy 1: Zero to Hero by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver. We have several other books by Henry and Lin in the library already and I can’t wait to add this one to the collection. Take a look at this preview for the book.

This week Mrs. Jaffe’s class picked MCBA and Newbery award winners for their book reports. To start students off and to help them choose a book that is right for them, I created a display and resource lists. The resource lists are posted here as PDFs if you need to take another look at them. Remember, these don’t include every Newbery and MCBA book we have. It’s just a resource to get you started and to encourage you to explore on your own.

MCBA list in PDF format

Newbery list in PDF format

Also, on the back door we have a poster that shows all the Newbery Award winners! It’s a great place to check to find a great book.

This week second grade is exploring non-fiction. Below is a photo of the chart that we looked at for exploring in the library. I’ve also uploaded this as a PDF that’s easy to use both here and at the public library.

There is now a search bar on the right hand side. I hope this will help if anyone is looking for a particular post. It can now be searched for instead of going through all the old posts.