FernFolio

Last week, I held information meetings for three Book Clubs, the Boys’ Book Club, for boys in Grade 4, 5 and 6, the Girls’ Book Club, for girls in Grades 4, 5 and 6, and the Intermediate Book Club, for students in Grades 7 and 8.
The boys met at lunch on Monday. There was little advance notice and only 5 boys showed up, though I did speak later to a couple of boys who hadn’t been able to get to the meeting. I am hoping that more boys will show up, since we had between 20 and 25 members last year. We are going to start the year with Cornelia Funke’s The Thief Lord, a mysterious tale about two brothers, Prospero and Bo, on the run from a weathly and unpleasant aunt who wants to adopt the younger child and put his older brother in a boarding school.
On Tuesday, I held the first meeting of the Girls’ Book Club and 46 girls came, all eager to begin reading at once! Fortunately, given the large numbers, a couple of Grade 7 and 8 girls came out to help. On the recommendation of one of my most trusty library assistants, the Girls’ Book Club is going to read Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke, in anticipation of the movie’s release this January. I have read this book twice, and loved it. It is the story of a young girl, Meggie, and her bookbinder father, Mo, who share a remarkable and dangerous gift, one that makes them the focus of an evil villain’s nefarious plans.
The Intermediate Book Club came on Thursday, fourteen girls and boys who love reading and who, among them, have a wide and deep knowledge of Canadian and international fiction for adolescents. In turn, sort of, students talked about books they have read recently, presented titles for the Book Club’s consideration, and argued, argued, argued. I think perhaps a talking stick might lend some order to the proceedings, but I don’t want to stifle their discussions or their ideas! I have no idea what we are going to read, but went out and bought a copy of The Amulet of Samarkand after hearing one member talk about it! I have set up a wiki so that these students will have an online forum to share their thoughts about the books they are reading. I look forward to reading their reflections.
I look forward to another interesting year of reading and talking with readers!
FernFolio Editor

Addison Addley has to come up with a 3-minute speech for his Grade 5 public speaking contest.  He’s thought of a really great idea for his speech, Things That Aren’t Really There, and both his mom and his best friend Sam, who’s brilliant, have been busy coming up with lots of good example for him, like gravity,  atoms, worm holes, and microwaves, but Addison can’t seem to get the speech written.  He’s a procrastinator, always ready to put things off to the last minute.  While Sam’s busy memorizing his words, Addison is playing video games, going fishing, watching baseball on TV, and contemplating the pointlessness of fractions.
He’s also trying to think of ways to help his mother get elected as treasurer of the Astronomy Club.  Ever since his parents got divorced and his father took off to Australia to try his hand at sheep farming, Addison’s mother has been trying one activity after another to meet people.  For some reason, she’s now set her heart on the Astronomy Club, and has started spending her evenings outside on the back deck looking at the stars.  The trouble is that the president of the Astronomy Club is Mrs. Wilson, mother to the objectionable Tiffany Wilson, who is in Addison’s class.  If Mrs. Wilson is anything like her daughter, then charming Mrs. Wilson to help his mother’s cause is going to be tough.
The story culminates in a surprising afternoon of speech making, accusation and revelation, that leads Addison to conclude that maybe it’s time to adjust some of his long-held attitudes.
Part of the wonderful Orca Young Readers series, Addison Addley and the Things That Aren’t There will appeal to late primary and early junior readers, especially boys!
FernFolio Editor

Our annual Book Fair was held last week. Once again, parent volunteers, library assistants and the hundreds of students and parents who visited the fair and bought books made this annual event a terrific success!
Library assistants stapled letters to book fair flyers, and delivered them to classrooms. They put up signs asking for parent volunteers, and posted book fair signs in stairwells and hallways around the school. Two students offered to take around a sign-up sheet for classes to visit the book fair, and paid return visits to teachers who had been away from their classrooms on their first pass. They also gave up recesses and lunch hours to set up for the fair, straighten books, direct children and their parents, and carry out any other task that was asked of them.
Five parents and one high school student volunteered their time to help out during school hours. They sold books, directed traffic, and advised prospective buyers about good books.
One parent, in particular, organized a Library Wish List, and encouraged parents and students to buy books for the library collection. Seven individuals and families purchased a total of thirteen wonderful books, ranging from M is for Mounties, a Canadian alphabet book of the RCMP, to , to wonderful new picture storybooks such as David Shannon’s Too Many Toys.
Our Music Teacher moved out of her classroom for the week, and allowed us to take over her space. A truly generous gesture!
Once again, this year, a retired Teacher-Librarian volunteered his services to run the book fair from Monday to Thursday. He came in and set it up, carting tables from the auditorium for displays, arranged for the cash float, and faxed orders to the book distributor. He was there early on the Friday morning to organize leftover books for pick up.
Last week’s book fair made it possible to purchase $416 of information texts, easy readers, picture storybooks and novels, in both French and English. It will also help to underwrite the cost of running the Boys’ Book Club, the Girls’ Book Club, the Intermediate Book Club, and the Get Caught Reading Program.
Thank you to each and every one of you who made this event such as great success!
FernFolio Editor

Born in 1948, Normee Ekoomiak lived in a snow house in the winter and in a tent made of animal skins during the summer months. With his family, he followed the animals, moving to the sea ice in the winter to hunt seal, to the river in the spring to fish for Arctic char, and inland in pursuit of the caribou during the warmer months.
In Arctic Memories, he shares his childhood experiences of traditional Inuit life, and gives insight into the spiritual beliefs of his people through his art. Accompanied by his reflections in Inuktitut and English, are drawings, paintings and embroidered pieces that celebrate the daily lives of the Inuit, both children and adults. Ekoomiak’s work details life in the snow house, games to provide entertainment and build strong and healthy bodies, and the circle of nature among Arctic creatures.
It also explains the traditional Inuit spiritual beliefs through pictures of Sedna, goddess of the sea, and Okpik, who protects all living things in the North. Ekoomiak’s scenes of the nativity point to his Christian faith, one that exists side by side with his traditional Inuit beliefs.
Particularly interesting are Ekoomiak’s pictures, The Body Needs to Travel, in which he explains how the Inuit spread around the Arctic Circle, and Ancestral Hunters, where he depicts hunters killing a wooly mammoth in a painting completed a year before the remains of a wooly mammoth were discovered in the Arctic!
is a wonderful celebration of Inuit culture and history. Both the art and accompanying text provide a window into the lives and beliefs of the Inuit people.
FernFolio Editor

I recently learned about Wordle, which bills itself as a toy for generating “word clouds” from text. I created this from the words in FernFolio’s tag cloud. How lovely that the word students features so prominently!
FernFolio Editor

Mr. Gum lives in a great old disaster of a house in the village of Lamonic Bibber.  A nasty, lazy old man with filthy habits, he hates housework, animals (other than insects) and most of the village people, except Billy William the Third, a butcher whose shop is as smelly and unpleasant as Mr. Gum’s house.  But Mr. Gum’s garden is lovely - full of beautiful flowers, shrubs, trees and lawns.  It’s lovely because of the bad-tempered fairy who lives in Mr. Gum’s bathtub and who hits Mr. Gum with a frying pan if he doesn’t keep it looking nice.
When a big friendly dog named Jake shows up in Lamonic Bibber, the residents are thrilled.  They love Jake’s happy and exuberant nature, and look forward to his visits to their gardens, even though he tends to make rather a mess, because they believe those visits bring good luck.  However, when Jake discovers Mr. Gum’s garden and starts paying daily visits to roll around in the flower beds and tear up the grass, Mr. Gum is furious.  The daily messes have the bad-tempered fairy hitting Mr. Gum to get him out and working in the garden when all Mr. Gum wants to do is laze about and play Butcher Darts with Billy William the Third.
So Mr. Gum devises an evil plan to rid himself of Jake.  Only a little girl called Polly (by her friends) can stop Mr. Gum, if she can convince Friday O’Leary to help her when he seems more interested in playing tennis.
You’re a Bad Man, Mr. Gum! is a hilarious adventure, full of quirky characters and told by an author who clearly has a highly developed sense of the absurd!  A fun read for students from Grade 3 to 6, this book is reminiscent of the works of Roald Dahl!
FernFolio Editor

For twelve year-old Tobin McCaully, seventh grade begins pretty much as every other grade, even though he’s now attending a middle school. He’s still saddled with the reputations of his hell-raising older brothers and sister, he’s still the butt of Cody Peters’ jokes, and he’s still trying to lay low enough to fly under the radar of his teachers, his school mates, and his family.
Since his mother’s death from cancer, Tobin’s family has lost its centre; his older brothers and sister are rarely home, stopping in only long enough to catch a quick night’s sleep or change their clothes, and his father, a construction worker, puts in long hours on the job, followed by longer hours in the local bar. Dishes don’t get done, laundry isn’t washed, the trash piles up for weeks on end and, for a young boy the worst thing of all, the house is frequently devoid of anything edible. Every chance he gets, Tobin heads to his grandmother’s house. His granny loves her truck, though it’s debatable whether she ought to be allowed to drive it, her endless string of “boyfriends”, fishing and Tobin.
When Tobin tackles Cody Peters after he makes lewd remarks about their English teacher, another boy, Henry Otis, jumps into the fight to help, and Tobin reluctantly discovers that he has landed himself a friend, one who ignores rebuffs and eagerly shares his passion for chickens. Tobin finds himself drawn into Henry’s extra-credit science project on chickens, listening with growing interest to his new friend’s daily lectures on the art of raising chickens, and his musings about the chicken soul. He meets Harrison, Henry’s younger brother, and a tycoon in the making, who is determined to make the boys’ fortune selling the eggs produced by their flock of five, and then ten, birds.
With Henry as his friend, it isn’t so easy, anymore, to ignore homework assignments and daydream in class. Tobin finds himself taking an interest in school, and making friends among his classmates for the first time in his school career. He approaches his grandmother about coming to live with her, but she tells him she’s too old to look after a young boy.
But, when his grandmother reports his father to children’s aid and social workers arrive to inspect the state of the house and interview Tobin, the tension between her and his father explodes into anger, and Tobin finds himself torn between his unconventional grandmother and his negligent father. In the end, it’s Henry and the chickens who offer Tobin solace and hope.
Chicken Boy is a wonderful tale about a family who loses its way following the death of a loved one, and about a boy who simply needs the love and companionship of a friend and five chickens to turn himself, and his family, around. A moving story, beautifully told by Frances O’Roark Dowell. Not to be missed.
FernFolio Editor

Twelve year-old Emily Windsnap lives with her mother aboard The King of the Sea, an old sailboat tied up in a marina in the seaside town of Brightport.  Because of her mother’s fear of water, Emily has never so much as had a bath, and she has never learned to swim. But swimming lessons are mandatory at her new high school and so her mother reluctantly agrees that Emily will get into the pool.  Dressed in her new bathing suit, Emily makes her way to the pool deck and climbs into the shallow end.  

She finds, to her surprise and delight, that she feels completely at home in the water and that, without a single lesson, she knows how to swim.  However Emily’s pleasure is short-lived.  Within minutes she gets terrible cramps in her legs and has to be rescued by the swim instructor.  Though he urges her to get back into the pool when the cramps subside, Emily refuses because she has the overwhelming sensation that something strange will happen if she does.  

That night, after her mother is asleep, Emily creeps from her bed and along to pier.  She climbs down the ladder into the sea and discovers that, when immersed in water, she turns into a mermaid!  She swims out into the sea to some rocks and surprises another young mermaid named Shona, who has climbed onto the rocks to practice her siren singing.  Shona is intrigued to see that, when Emily joins her on the rocks, her tail transforms into legs.  It seems that Shona is entirely mermaid and lives in a merfolk community deep in the sea near Emily’s home town of Brightport.  The two girls agree to meet at the rocks whenever they can both slip away, and soon become best friends.

Something about Emily reminds Shona of a story she heard in her history class, about a merman and a human woman who fell in love, were secretly married, and had a daughter together before they were discovered by the merfolk, and cruelly torn apart by King Neptune.  Determined to learn the truth of her past, Emily sets out to find out why her mother seems to have forgotten everything about her life with her father, and where the condemned merman of Shona’s history lesson is being held prisoner.

The Tail of Emily Windsnap is a fun story about an ordinary girl who turns out to be quite extraordinary and who braves the laws of merfolk to reunite her parents.  This book is appropriate for readers from Grade 4 to 6.

FernFolio Editor

The daughter of a Yorkshire weaver, Meg Lumb has learned to wash and dye and spin wool, and help her mother with her younger brother, but from her father she has also learned to carve wood. She creeps away to the churchyard during quiet moments to play with Dilly-Lal and Drum-a-Drum, two peg dolls she has fashioned, undisturbed by the presence of the ghosts that haunt the graves there. In her pocket she also carries Bolly-Bolly, a strange little face that she has carved out of a knot of wood that she found sawn from an ancient hawthorne tree. Bolly-Bolly has the ability to speak to Meg, and to show her visions of the places and people around her.
From Bolly-Bolly, Meg learns that Patience Sutcliffe, the daughter of the village cloth merchant, lies in her bed chamber seemingly possessed by evil spirits. When confronted by Reverend Eastwood, the puritanical minister, Patience names Meg as her tormentor, and the young girl realizes that she is accused of witchcraft.
Afraid for her life, Meg flees her village for Halifax, a nearby town, and the centre of Yorkshire’s woollen trade, hoping to find her father who has travelled there to sell his cloth. Instead, she finds that her father has been falsely accused of theft and thrown in the local jail to await trail. She meets Ned, a travelling puppeteer, and Simon, apprentice to a charlatan apothecary, both of whom are working at the Halifax fair.
Desperate to find a way to help her father, Meg confides her problems to Ned and Simon, and discovers in them two kindred souls, eager to help her save her father and escape the clutches of Mr. Sutcliffe, father to Patience, and of Reverend Eastwood. But matters become increasingly complicated when if becomes clear that Meg’s father is the victim of a conspiracy, and that Meg’s talent for carving wood border dangerously upon magical.
Set during the Interregnum, when Oliver Cromwell’s Puritans ruled England, Woodenface is a wonderful adventure that draws upon the English tradition on the Greenman and celebrates the magic that exists in all living things.
FernFolio Editor

The arrival late one night of a mysterious stranger sets off alarm bells in twelve-year old Meggie’s head. But Mo, her gentle bookbinder father, lets the odd little man into their farmhouse and sends his daughter back to bed. Instead, she listens at the door while Dustfinger, for that is the stranger’s name, warns her father that Capricorn is closing in and urges him to give himself up rather than be captured.
Early the next morning Mo awakens Meggie and tells her to get dressed while he finishes packing. As they are leaving the farmhouse, Dustfinger appears, pack in hand, and asks for a ride, reminding Mo, when he hesitates, that he wants to avoid meeting Capricorn every bit as much as Meggie’s father. Soon the three are settled into Mo’s old camper van heading south toward the home of Elinor, Meggie’s mother’s aunt. Meggie asks her father about this Capricorn, who seems determined to find Mo. Dustfinger is surprised she doesn’t know, and, over her father’s objections, tells her that Capricorn is the kind of man who spreads fear like the plague and who enjoys taking what he wants from those own it. And Mo has something that Capricorn wants, a book.
Elinor lives with her books in a large house surrounded by park land. Obsessed by the pursuit, acquisition and protection of rare, beautiful and valuable books, Elinor welcomes Mo’s arrival, eager to set him to work on rebinding worn volumes, putting them in “new dresses”. Mo gives the book that Capricorn is hunting into Elinor’s safe keeping, and asks her to hide it. He warns the older woman that he has read numerous reports of copies of this book being stolen from book dealers and collectors.
Meggie is filled with curiosity about Elinor, this aunt whom she has never before met nor heard of, relative to her mother who left on a long adventure when she was three and who has never been heard from since. Mo has told his daughter many stories about her mother, stories she thinks he might have invented just like the fairy tales he created for her when she was small. When asked, he says that, to his knowledge, his wife is alive but simply not able to come home.
Instead of taking off when they reach Elinor’s, Dustfinger lingers, creeping around the house and gardens, and whispering questions to Meggie about Mo’s plans for the book. A gifted juggler and fire-eater, Dustfinger invites Meggie to an evening performance on the lawn outside the house.
During that performance, Capricorn’s men break into Elinor’s house, capture Mo and threaten to find and harm Meggie, forcing him to reveal the hiding place of the book. As Elinor restrains Meggie from running to her father and keeps them from being detected, Capricorn’s men put Mo into the back of their car and drive away.
Meggie is devastated by her father’s capture and determined to go looking for him. Overwhelmed by her grief, Dustfinger and Elinor try to comfort her by telling the girl that Mo will soon be released. Then Meggie discovers Elinor reading the book, the one that Capricorn’s men had come in search of, and realizes that her great-aunt had switched the book for another of about the same size and shape, and that neither Mo nor his kidnappers noticed the substitution. When Dustfinger learns of the switch, he admits that he might know where Mo has been taken, and offers to lead Meggie there. Elinor insists on accompanying the girl and the little fire-eater, and soon the three unlikely accomplices find themselves driving up a narrow winding road toward the abandoned village that Capricorn has made his base.
The search for Mo and the book turns out to be far more dangerous and complicated than Meggie could ever have imagined, for it seems that Mo possesses a talent for reading that is both wonderful and frightening, a talent that Capricorn intends to use for his own evil ends.
Beautifully written by acclaimed German children’s author Cornelia Funke, Inkheart is an adventure fantasy about the magic and power of books. Published in 2003, it is already a classic of children’s literature, one is bound to capture the imagination of students from grade 5.
FernFolio Editor