November Book Post: The Dragon in the Sock Drawer

Our November book selection is "The Dragon in the Sock Drawer" by Kate Klimo. This is the first book in a series called "Dragon Keepers." This fun book is about ten-year-old cousins Jesse and Daisy. Jesse is living with Daisy while his doctor-parents are in Africa establishing a children's clinic. The cousins are good friends and have always wanted something magical to happen to them. One day, Daisy's father (Jesse's uncle), a geologist, take the kids hiking and rock collecting to High Peak. Jesse finds what he thinks is a geode or "thunder egg". He picks it up and he thinks he hears the rock talking to him! Back home, all attempts to cut open the geode result in broken saw blades. Jesse puts the geode in his sock drawer. The next day, with a huge bang, the thunder egg hatches open and a tiny talkative baby dragon pops out! The two cousins are thrilled but clueless as to how to care for a dragon. They search the public library and the Internet where they find a strange website with a talking professor who can hear everything the cousins say. The professor guides the children on everything they need to know about the dragon. He tells them that the dragon’s hatching has designated them “Dragon Keepers.” Their biggest challenge is keeping the dragon, whom they named Emmy, safe from Saint George. St. George is masquerading as a herpetologist at the local university but he is really a villainous character who has kept himself alive for centuries by drinking dragons’ blood! There are two more books in the series with a fourth book planned for May of 2011.

October Book Club: The Magic Half

The book selection for October was "The Magic Half" by Annie Barrows. This is a wonderful book--part mystery, part history, part fantasy, part realistic fiction. The main character is Miri, an 11-year-old girl with twin older brothers and twin younger sisters. Miri often feels left out, especially after they move to a new house on land that used to be a working farm. The best part of the old house is that Miri finally gets to have her own bedroom. One day as she is in her bedroom imagining how it will look with freshly painted walls, she spies a glass lens taped to the wall near the floor. Curious, Miri pulls the lens free and looks through it...and is immediately transported back in time to 1935! She is still in the same house but that's all that is the same. There's a different girl, Molly, living in her bedroom. Molly is badly in need of help to escape an abusive situation. Miri feels an intense connection with Molly and wants to help her. Molly, in turn, says she and her magical grandmother have "called" up Miri. Together, with many twists and turns and near-disasters, Molly and Miri construct a plan that eventually succeeds in bringing them both back to the present day where they find that history has been changed! It's as through Molly and Miri have always been twins. Only they have any memories of what really happened.

September Book Club: Alvin Ho...

Our Ashburn Kids Book Club is off to a good start! We met on September 13 to discuss our first book pick of the school year: "Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things" by Lenore Look. This book is one of the nominations for the 2010-2011 Virginia's Readers Choice Award. It is a fine example of a transitional or early chapter book.

Alvin is a young Chinese-American boy just starting second grade. He is fearful of many things--elevators, scary movies, his piano teacher, the dark, and most of all, school. In fact, he is so fearful of school that he is completely unable to talk while at school. He can talk at home and on the school bus but once inside the classroom, he is completely mute. He handles his fears in quirky ways. For example, he carries a PDK--a Personal Disaster Kit--filled with equipment to help him survive whatever random bad stuff might arise.

Fortunately for Alvin, he has a loving and sympathetic (usually) family. Alvin's father is a particularly warm and real character in the book. He is patient and non-judgemental with Alvin and truly wants to help him overcome his fears and anxieties. Another great character is Alvin's grandfather who likes to sew (he makes all their Halloween costumes) and teaches the kids how to pitch a baseball.

Alvin's adventures at home, school, and in the neighborhood are handled with matter-of-fact humor and much fun. I think this book would be especially effective as a read-aloud. There are two more books in the Alvin Ho series, both with cartoon-like illustrations by LeUyen Pham.

AKBC for 2010-11

Whether we like it or not, the new school year is quickly approaching. We are gearing up for another fun year for the Ashburn Kids Book Club (AKBC). Once again, we will be reading 10-12 award-winning books, many of which are nominated for this year's Virginia Readers Choice Award.

Each month we will meet at the Ashburn Library at 7 pm, according to the following schedule:

Monday, Sept. 13: Book: "Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things" by Lenore Look
Monday, Oct. 4: Book: "The Magic Half" by Annie Barrows
Monday, Nov. 1: Book: "The Dragon in the Sock Drawer" by Kate Klimo
Monday, Dec. 6: Book: "Charlotte's Web" by E. B. White
Monday, Jan. 10: Book: "Chicken Feathers" by Joy Crowley
Monday, Feb. 7: Book: "Lady Liberty: A Biography" by Doreen Rappaport AND
Book: "You Wouldn't Want to be a Worker on the Statue of Liberty" by John Malam
Monday, Mar. 7: Book: "Lady Liberty" by Doreen Rappaport AND "You Wouldn't Want to be a Worker on the Statue of Liberty" by John Malam
Monday, Apr. 4: Book: "Blown Away" by Joan Hiatt Harlow
Monday, May 2: Book: "Gully's Travels" by Tor Seidler

And the winner is...

The Virginia State Reading Association has announced the winners of this year's 2009-10 Virginia Readers Choice Award. They are:

Primary: Library Mouse by Daniel Kirk

Elementary: The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies

Middle: Savvy by Ingrid Law

High: Unwind by Neal Shusterman

The winners are determined by tallying votes from children all over the state of Virginia. Only children's votes are counted. Our Ashburn Kids Book Club also voted and the winning book for us was No Talking by Andrew Clements.

May Book Club: Igraine the Brave

The month of May brings the final meeting of the Ashburn Kids Book Club for this school year. Our book this month is "Igraine the Brave" by Cornelia Funke. It is one of the books nominated for this year's Virginia Readers Choice Award. We don't often get a fantasy selection on the nomination list for VRC so it's been a fun change to read this book. Cornelia Funke is a gifted writer (often compared to JK Rowling of Harry Potter fame) and this book is delightful! It tells the story of twelve-year-old Igraine, the daughter of two magicians, who wants to become a brave knight rather than enter the family's magic business. Igraine has an older brother, Arthur, who is mid-way through his magic studies and still struggles with certain spells, i.e. the only food he is able to conjur up are dry biscuits and blue eggs. When their castle is attacked by an scheming neighbor bent on stealing their magic books, Igraine and Arthur each demonstrate their bravery in their own ways, which is especially crucial since their parents have been accidentally turned into pigs by a miss-spoken spell and have lost all their magical abilities. This book has come-to-life gargoyles, three-headed dragons, a sorrowful knight, a talking cat, an enchanted moat, a creepy dungeon, and much more! It is just the right mix of suspense, humor, and triumph over evil without ever being too dark or frightening. I really enjoyed it and I'm usually not a fan of fantasy.

April Book Club: Lunch Money

Our book selection for the month of April was "Lunch Money" by Andrew Clements. It's a very fun, fast-paced book about money! Well, more specifically about a twelve-year-old boy named Greg who has always been good at coming up with schemes and projects to make money. This time Greg thinks he can make money by designing, producing, and selling his own line of mini comic books at school. But it's an uphill battle. His plan brings disapproval from the principal and he soon has a rival comic artist in the form of his neighborhood nemesis and lifelong rival, Maura. In the end Greg and Maura make an unlike team to bring many changes to their school. Their mini-comic book business succeeds beyond anyone's expectations and they learn how to solve their differences in constructive ways. It's a good read and the book club kids seemed to really enjoy the book.

March Book Club: A Crooked Kind of Perfect

Our March meeting of the Ashburn Kids Book Club will feature the book, "A Crooked Kind of Perfect" by Linda Urban. This book is one of the nominees for this year's Virginia Readers Choice award. This book features 11-year-old Zoe as the main character. Zoe dreams of playing the piano and one day performing in Carnegie Hall. But her eccentric father gets talked into buying an organ instead of a piano and Zoe must adjust her dream to fit reality. Her organ teacher, Maybelline Person, recognizes that Zoe has natural talent and nudges her to enter an organ competition. Zoe accepts the challenge but must also cope with her loving but agoraphobic father, a lonely classmate who starts to hang out at Zoe's house, and her workaholic mother. Zoe and the other characters are full of quirky wisdom and irrepressible good humor. The family's life is a bit unconventional but works well and Zoe knows she is loved and supported. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found myself laughing out loud at times. This is an impressive debut novel for author Linda Urban. Hopefully there will be more books by her soon. See you all on March 7, 7 pm, for our next Ashburn Kids Book Club meeting.

February Book Club: Jackie Robinson

February is traditionally the month when school children study about Black History. I thought it would work well to do two books about Jackie Robinson this month. The first book is titled, "Dad, Jackie, and Me" and was written by author Myron Uhlberg. This is a picture book and is one of the nominees for this year's Virginia Readers Choice book award. The book details the story of a young boy and his deaf father and their shared enthusiasm for the Brooklyn Dodgers during the 1947 season when Jackie Robinson became the first African-American baseball player in the major leagues. It is also about discrimination and tolerance--both from the standpoint of Jackie Robinson and the deaf father. The beautiful illustrations by artist Colin Bootman are a perfect match for Uhlberg's poignant text.

The second book we are reading for Febrary has an almost identical title: "Jackie and Me." It is written by Dan Gutman and is one of the books in his well-known Baseball Card Adventure series. The premise of these books is that the main character, 13-year-old Joe Stoshack, has the ability to travel back in time by using baseball cards. In this book, Joe travels back to the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers season in order to experience first-hand what it was like for Jackie Robinson. Not only does he travel back in time, he actually stays with the Robinson's at their apartment and becomes a bat boy for the team. He is also transformed into an African-American and gets to experience for himself what discrimination was like back in the 1940s. The author has done an excellent job of researching the details of Jackie Robinson's life and career and using those details to create an exciting and suspenseful book.

For our activity this month we will be watching several film clips about Jackie Robinson from Ken Burns' documentary, Baseball. See you on Thursday, February 4, at 7 pm.

January Book Club: "Don't Know Much About the Presidents" AND "Vinnie and Abraham"

Our January book club meeting will be on Thursday, January 7, 7-8 pm. We are reading TWO books for January: "Don't Know Much About the Presidents" by Kenneth Davis and "Vinnie and Abraham" by Dawn FitzGerald. The later is a picture book written for juvenile readers and we will read this together at our meeting. Both books are about Presidents of the United States. The Davis book is a highly readable collection of amazing facts and little known trivia about each of the U.S. Presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama. The FitzGerald book tells the story of Vinnie Ream, a sixteen-year-old young women with an awesome talent for sculpture. She became the youngest artist to be commissioned to sculpt a statue of a U.S. president. Her sculpture of Abraham Lincoln is still displayed in the Capitol rotunda today.

December Book Club: Because of Winn Dixie

Each year in December our book club reads a book that has also been made into a movie. It's fun for the kids to compare the book to the movie, note how the script was changed and adapted, and decide which they like best. This year we read "Because of Winn Dixie" by Kate DiCamillo. This book was a 2001 Newbery Honor winner. It is a lovely story about 10-year-old Opal, her preacher father, and the small Florida town of Naomi. Winn-Dixie is a mottley stray dog that Opal rescues from a wild escapade through the Winn-Dixie grocery story (hence the dog's name!) and talks her father into letting her keep him. Winn-Dixie quickly becomes Opal's best friend and confidante. He is better at making friends than any human and soon Opal has cast of unlikely new friends--Miss Franny Block, the town librarian, Gloria Dump, an elderly and nearly blind woman, and Otis, an ex-con who runs a pet shop and has a magically ability to calm the animals with his guitar playing. Opal's new friends help her cope with lonliness, feelings of abandonment (her mother has left) and her father's tendency to close up his emotions. In turn, Opal and Winn-Dixie bless the lives of everyone they come in contact with because of their irrepressible joy and acceptance. The movie is a delightful adaptaton of the book and really brings the characters of the book to life. We all enjoyed this year's book/movie connection.

November Book Club: The Lemonade War

Our November meeting of the Ashburn Kids Book Club will be Thursday, November 5, 7-8 p.m. We will be discussing the book, "The Lemonade War" by Jacqueline Davies. This is a very lively book about two siblings, Evan and Jessie. Evan is ten years old and going into fourth grade. Jessie is eight years old and will be in the second grade. The two usually get along well with each other and their natural talents are very complementary---Jessie is more academically inclined while Evan is better at people skills. Everything changes when a letter arrives from their school. It says that Jessie is going to skip third grade entirely and will be together with Evan in the same fourth grade class. Evan views this turn of events as a total disaster! He is sure everyone will think he is really dumb when compared to his younger grade-skipping sister. Evan rejects Jessie who is left feeling bewildered, hurt, and angry. Soon the two are locked in a battle---a battle to see who can sell the most lemonade from their competing lemonade stands by the end of the summer! The author's portrayal of family dynamics rings true and keeps the reader pulled into the action and drama. I'm sure our book club readers are going to enjoy this book! There is also a great website for this book: http://www.lemonadewar.com/

October Book Club: Mallory vs. Max

Our October meeting of the Ashburn Kids Book Club will be on Thursday, October 1, 7-8 p.m. The book we will be featuring is "Mallory vs. Max" by Laurie Friedman. This book is part of the very popular series of books (12 so far) featuring almost-nine-years-old, Mallory McDonald, her older brother, Max, her cat, Cheeseburger, and her best friend, Mary Ann. In this book, Mallory is facing a dilemma--her parents have decided that her brother Max is old enough and responsible enough to get a dog of his own. This worries Mallory who fears the new puppy will take away all the attention from herself and her cat, Cheeseburger. Mallory presents very logical reasons why getting a dog is NOT a good idea--Dogs eat a lot. Dogs drink a lot. Dogs dig a lot. Dogs bark a lot. Dogs poop a lot, etc. But no one is persuaded by her arguments and soon there is a new young puppy joining the family. Everyone has some adjusting to do, especially Mallory who finally realizes that Champ the dog isn't so bad after all. The cartoon-like illustrations by Tamara Schmitz add to the fun. This is a fast-paced easy chapter book that kids are sure to enjoy and, more importantly, relate to.

National Book Festival 2009

Living near the nation's capital does have its perks! One of the best is the annual National Book Festival. It is organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress and will be held on Saturday, September 26, 2009, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., between 7th and 14th streets from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The festival is free and open to the public. It is a day-long celebration of reading that features dozens of highly acclaimed and award-winning authors and poets. There will be author presentations, book signings, customed storybook characters, and much much more. The list of authors and poets coming this year is truly impressive. Here are some useful weblinks to the event:

Home page for the 2009 Festival: http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/

This year's participating authors: http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/2009/authors/index.html

Schedule of author presentations: http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/2009/schedulePavilion.html

Schedule of book signings: http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/2009/scheduleSigning.html

It's a great event for kids who get an upclose look at such favorite authors as Jeff Kinney (Diary of a Wimpy Kid books), Kate DiCamillo (Tale of Despereaux, Because of Winn Dixie--which we will read in December), Craig Hatkoff (Owen & Mzee--which we read last year), Lois Lowry (The Giver and much more), Megan McDonald (Judy Moody and others), Jacqueline Woodson (Locomotion and many others), etc. Well, there are just too many great authors to mention them all.

If you get the chance to visit the National Book Festival, please post a comment here and tell us who you say and what you thought of the whole experience. I'm hoping to attend, so maybe I'll see some of you down there!

September Book Club -- "Eleven" by Patricia Reilly Giff

It's hard to believe that mid-August is here and the first meeting of the 2009-10 Ashburn Kids Book Club is close at hand! Once again we will meet on the first Thursday night of each month at 7 p.m. The first meeting will be on September 3. Please notice that this is actually BEFORE the first day of school. Registration is now open and can be found at this link: http://engagedpatrons.org/EventsRegister.cfm?SiteID=6457&BranchID=454&Branch=Ashburn%20Library&EventID=38561

The book for September is "Eleven" by Patricia Reilly Giff. It is an exciting book about a boy, Sam, who lives happily with his grandfather. On the eve of his eleventh birthday, Sam goes up into the attic in search of birthday gifts he thinks his grandfather has hidden there. But instead of birthday presents, Sam he finds an old newspaper clipping about himself. The newspaper article stirs old distant memories for Sam and he begins to question many things about his life. Eventually, with the help of a new friend at school, Sam is able to solve the mystery and get his questions are answered.

June Book Club: "Kensuke's Kingdom" by Michael Morpurgo

I am late getting my blog updated with our June book club selection. But I thought I should still add it so you can all see how we finished up our book club year. Our last book for this school year was "Kensuke's Kingdom" by the award-winning British author, Michael Morpurgo. This adventure book is one of my favorites...in fact, it is the first time in five years of running the AKBC that I have repeated a book. The very first line of the book is, "I disappeared on the night before my twelfth birthday." Thus begins an intriguing and poignant story that starts in England and ends up halfway around the world where the 12-year-old protagonist, Michael, and his dog, Stella, are thrown overboard off his family's yacht in the middle of the night and end up on a wild and hostile island teaming with screeching gibbons, ravenous mosquitoes, and one very strange human--an old Japanese sailor named Kensuke who has been living alone on the island for years. At first, Kensuke is angry and agitated by Michael's intrusion but slowly they forge a deep friendship. Michael never gives up hope of being rescued, however, and that day finally comes after nearly a year on the island. I don't want to give away the amazing ending so I'll leave it at that. "Kensuke's Kingdom" is a beautifully written tale of family life, survival, and true friendship.

May Book Club: "Love, Ruby Lavender" by Deborah Wiles

Our May meeting of the Ashburn Kids Book Club will be held on Thursday, May 7, 7-8 p.m. We will be discussing the book, Love Ruby Lavender by Deborah Wiles. Ruby is a nine-year-old girl growing up in the small town of Halleluia, Mississippi, a town of "400 good friendly folks and a few old soreheads." Ruby’s best friend is her grandmother, Miss Eula. The book opens with a wonderful scene where Ruby and Miss Eula pull off a daring rescue of "three of the most pitiful-looking, nervous" chickens, chickens bound for slaughter. This starts a summer of adventures, ups and downs, and some growing-up for Ruby. She has to cope with her beloved grandmother going to Hawaii to visit her son whose wife has just had a baby. She has to contend with her "tormenter" Melba Jane. She has to take care of the chickens by herself. And she has to come to terms with her grandfather's death. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and found it to be a refreshing and realistic look at small town life and how seemingly insignificant daily events can take on huge proportions in the minds of children. It also illustrates how important love, support, and kindness are in helping children find their way in life. Join us for the discussion of this wonderful book!

April Book Club: Phineas L. MacGuire...Erupts!

Our April meeting of the Ashburn Kids Book Club will meet on Thursday, April 2, at 7 pm. We will be discussing the book, Phineas L. MacGuire...Erupts, by Frances O'Roark Dowell. This book is one of the titles nominated for this year's Virginia Readers Choice (VRC) Award. It tells the story of a 4th grade boy, Phineas, who loves science and experiments more than anything. Phineas says, "If you're a scientist like me, you're always interested when a problem comes around. Because what you learn when you study science is that if you think hard enough and are willing to take risks, almost every problem has a solution. It's just a matter of discovering what that solution is." This philosophy is put to the test, however, when Phineas is forced to team up with a new boy in the class--a boy who has clashed with Phineas from day one--for the 4th grade science project fair. Phineas puts his scientific problem-solving to good use and, in the process, learns quite a lot about himself and others.

Besides our book discussion, we will also be voting for our favorite VRC books. The votes are due by the first week of April to the Virginia State Reading Association who will compile the votes of children all over the state and then announce the winners of this year's award.

Special Thanks to Our Guest Speaker

For our March meeting of the book club, we were excited to have a guest speaker come and talk about assistive technology. Judie Schoonover, an occupational therapist and assistive technology specialist with the Loudoun County Public Schools, spoke to the book club kids about her job and the many different types of technology she uses to help children overcome their learning disabilities so they can participate fully in a school setting. She brought along many examples of technology--from the very simple to the highly technical--which she passed around and allowed the children to try. She was a wonderful guest speaker and we all enjoyed her presentation. It was a perfect tie-in for the book, Rules by Cynthia Lord.

March Book Club: "Rules" by Cynthia Lord

Our book club for March will meet on Thursday, March 5, and we will be discussing the book, Rules by Cynthia Lord. This Newbery Honor Medal book is one of the books nominated for the Virginia Readers Choice award for 2008-2009. It has also received many other awards--too many to list them all here. The story is about a 12-year-old girl named Catherine who has a younger autistic brother, David. The title of the book comes from all the rules Catherine establishes to help David understand and interact with his world. For example, one rule is: No toys in the fish tank. I'll bet you can guess why she has this rule! Catherine loves her brother and is sensitive to his needs but she is also growing impatient with the responsibilities and embarrassment he brings. Catherine often accompanies her brother to his therapy sessions at a clinic. One day at the clinic Catherine befriends a wheel-chair bound boy, Jason, who can only communicate by pointing to small word cards. Catherine uses her drawing skills to make additional word cards for him and their friendship gradually grows. Catherine experiences some of the same discomfort with Jason that others do in the presence of her brother David. This gives Catherine the opportunity to explore her own thoughts and feelings and begin to look at her world differently. This is a tender and heart-warming book which the author says is loosely based on her own experience raising a son with autism.