Nick's Picks
Selected Resources from TeachingBooks.net
Nick Glass, TeachingBooks.net for Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 3/13/2008
If you’ve ever seen an author speak, or had one visit your school, you know this experience changes the way you will read and relate to that writer’s books forever. It can leave a magical impression. My goal at TeachingBooks.net is to provide you and all your students with an opportunity to create similar personal connections with a book and its author through dynamic online materials.
This month’s column highlights a few new online resources that provide that chance. I hope the videos, audio clips, and book guide included here will spark ways for you to integrate multimedia literature connections whenever they can engage and excite readers.
Are there any authors you would like to hear read from their books or pronounce their names in future Nick’s Picks columns? I welcome your suggestions at nick@TeachingBooks.net.
Sharon Draper
Sharon M. Draper is the author of the award-wining Copper Sun (2006) as well as the “Hazelwood High” trilogy and the “Ziggy” series (all S&S). Filmed in her Cincinnati home, this original TeachingBooks.net Author Program features the recipient of multiple Coretta Scott King Awards reading from four of her books and discussing her inspirations, including her trip to Africa that was the genesis of Copper Sun.
Poet and novelist Pat Mora greets students in English and Spanish, and translates the delicious meaning of her last name. Mora’s 20-plus books for children and teens (many bilingual), have received many accolades. Among them are the Pura Belpré Award, the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, the Américas Award, and inclusion in American Library Association Notable lists.
Hear Scott Westerfeld introduce and read from Extras—the latest title in the “Uglies” series
According to the author, the “Uglies” series [Uglies (2005), Pretties (2005), Specials (2006), and now Extras (2007), all S&S] is “about a world in which everyone has an operation when they turn sixteen, making them supermodel beautiful. Big eyes, full lips, no one fat or skinny. This seems like a good thing, but it's not. Especially if you're one of the uglies, a bunch of radical teens who've decided they want to keep their own faces. (How anti-social of them.)”
Explore The Arrival using this companion guide to a puppet show based on the book
Questions and activities offer ideas for digging into the social issues explored in Shaun Tan's wordless picture book (Scholastic, 2007). Whether you're discussing the immigrant experience, storytelling without words, connecting with the rest of the world, or being new to any situation, you'll want to dip into this book guide filled with production notes created by the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre in Australia.
