Two fun things you should know about: Book Extravaganza with Reading Heart at Fresno Playland, and a Reading Bingo card to enter to win 25 new books!
Okay, the Reading Heart Extravaganza free book giveaway happens June 8, the Saturday after school is out, so you need to know about this first. The link has all the information and a short video. Andrews McMeel Publishing is holding a Summer Reading Bingo Giveaway. I am not connected with this company in any way, but I'm impressed that they have a way to reward reading and bookish goodness with more reading and bookish goodness! If you have Kepler books at home (audio books, paper and ink, whatever kind), please bring them back.
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Dear Kepler Families,
There are two important library things to know: 1) We still have over 300 books checked out or missing. Please look around home (under couch cushions, between the bed and the wall, in back packs, in the bathroom...). We need books back so we know what actually is missing and what was just on an extended visit to someone's home or classroom. Thank you for helping us with this, and for supporting your scholar as they were using our school's library and READING! 2) If you want to keep the reading up (of course you do! You know the research shows that kids reading what they want to builds their abilities and confidence), but you don't want to pay for books, use your friendly, air-conditioned local branch of the library. This year they have lots of fun programs planned for elementary and teens. Here's a link to their summer programs - kids can read books to win books, which is awesome! Please encourage your scholars make the most of these last four days together - we are so lucky to share your scholars with you. Sincerely, Mrs. Addison It's almost the end of the year, and time to bring library books back to be checked in, ready for next year's scholars and teachers. I hope you've enjoyed reading what we have, and I hope you'll keep reading over the summer. Watch this space for more information about Fresno County Public Library's free summer reading program and ideas for great books to try out.
Literary News and Events for the end of the week and weekend
The Central Valley’s own Margarita Engle won the 2019 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature! This prestigious award is given by the World Literature Today magazine. An esteemed panel of authors selects both the finalists and the winner based solely on literary merit as well as the perceived importance of an artist’s overall contribution to children’s literature. NSK winners are awarded $35,000, a silver medallion and a certificate of recognition. Tomorrow evening Thursday, October 11) at Arte Americas hear Rafael Lopez speak about his many children’s books and community murals. This free event begins at 6 pm, and allows guests to also tour the museum’s Dia de los Muertos altar exhibition. The address is 1630 Van Ness Ave., Fresno CA 93721. On Saturday at 11, swing by Petunia’s Place to see Fresno’s own Joan Schoettler at the launch for her latest book, Ruth Aswa: A Sculpting Life. Children ages 5-12 are invited to participate in an art adventure. This week is Teen Read Week (theme: "It's Written In the Stars: Read!"), and the public library is holding an art contest for ages 13 and up. See the link for details! Finally, if you ordered Scholastic books through the library, they are here! Watch for them to come home in your child’s book bag. Thank you for supporting the library! This is the last week to check out books, believe it or not. Next week is the time for all books to come "home" to their shelves. This will let me check to make sure we have what we think we have, and make sure they're ready for next year. When I told some students that yesterday, I had a few react with surprise: "I thought Kepler was closing!" I was happy to reassure them that Kepler is not closing, no matter what they might have seen or heard. Fresno Unified School District has been our authorizer for five years, (the term will end at the end of June), but they decided not to be our authorizers for the next five years. This frees us to ask Fresno County to be our authorizer (our public hearing with them is this Thursday, May 17th in the afternoon - will I see you there?). In the meantime, we are finishing this year strong - keep an eye open for a post about maker projects in the library! - and thinking about what we can do now to be ready for a great next year. As you may know, our graphic novels are the most circulated books in our collection. I use them as a measure of how things are going. You can see in the images below what a difference between when things are checked in and when they are still out. On the left, when we came back from winter break, the shelves were beautiful and full. On the right, you can see now, near the end of the year, we have about 15 books on each of the three shelves. These few remaining miss their teammates! Let's finish well and be ready for next year. Bringing books back to their library home is a good start! May is full of interest and surprises, and it starts off with a bang! So you don't miss any of the excitement, here's a run-down of the goodness.
May 4th is School Lunch Hero Day, launched ("lunched"?) by the School Nutrition Association in partnership with Jarrett J. Krosoczka. You can see his TED talk about why this is important to him here. You should know he's the author of the popular Lunch Lady graphic novel series. May the fourth is also Star Wars Day (May the Fourth Be With You, Always). Keep an eye out for posters of favorite characters with a special message around campus. May 4th is ALSO Kepler's game day at the Grizzlies, as part of a reading celebration. Be sure to bring your bookmark to the game for an extra prize (yes, beyond the two tickets that your voucher is good for --in past years, the Grizzlies have given away books!). Bring your cameras - Star Wars characters will be dressed up and ready to say hello at the game! Saturday is Cinco de Mayo, celebrating the Mexican army's victory against overwhelming odds at the Battle of Puebla. Find a great book about Mexico in our library! Saturday is also FREE COMIC BOOK DAY! There are three stores listed in Fresno and Clovis as participating, but there may be more. Make sure to call ahead. There's nothing like finding out the information on the website was wrong...after you get to the "We've Moved!" sign. All of May is Maker Month at Kepler. Don't know what the Maker Movement is? Check out Maker Faire information or Wikipedia's longer explanation. For inspiration, check out DIY and how-to books or biographies of makers under the "Creativi-Tree" side of our special display. Our other month-long celebration is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. For books about and by people of Asian and Pacific Island heritage, look under the "Family Tree" side of our special display. So much to do in May, and then there's only one week left of school! Let's enjoy these last few weeks! The library has been a busy place this April, with lots of creativity and word play happening! Here, students are arranging magnetic word tiles on the whiteboard. Below are some examples from various grades. The "Poet Tree" shelters our special display of poetry books - we have short stories, long stories, funny books, collections, books by California Writers, poetry books about food and biomes, and biographies of poets. Classes have tried out haiku, a Japanese short form that focuses on nature and the five senses, and often has a surprise; a form called found poetry (ours were based on recipe books or rocks and mineral books); and blackout poetry made from the pages of damaged books. None of these forms are rhyming; all of them need thoughtful word choices.
We'll finish the poetry celebration off with a display of poetry from Kepler students and employees. Look for it inside and outside the library. You may already know that April is National Poetry Month. You may even know that you can enter a poetry contest organized by Fresno County Public Library, open to 3rd grade and up. But you probably don't know yet that one of our own Kepler students has already won a prize for poetry this year! Join us in congratulating Adrian L. for his prize-winning poem "Poison of People," submitted to Appelley. To read his and other winning poems, please visit www.appelley.org/winners. Congratulations, Adrian!
Use the search box above to look in our collection. If you search "Dogs," for example, you'll find fiction and nonfiction all about dogs! What's exciting about this is that you can immediately see if a book is available or not - just look at the upper left corner to see if it's green and says "IN" or red and says "OUT." Below is an example - please NOTE that this book might not still be available when you come look.
February was a busy month in the library! We celebrated Black History Month all month, the Olympics, Valentine's Day, and Chinese New Year's Day. With nonfiction to satisfy curiosity and fiction to help us imagine what it's like to solve problems or overcome obstacles or enjoy celebrations, we had something for everyone. I discovered a new favorite illustrator, Laura Freeman, who worked on two of the picture book biographies in our collection. I'm not a high-fashion person, so I had never heard of Anne Cole Lowe, but Deborah Blumenthal's text and Laura Freeman's carefully researched illustrations made me want to know more after reading Fancy Party Gowns. (As of 2/27/18, this book had been returned and is waiting to be checked out again!) For our second title, you may already know third grade is deep into a unit on the space race and the first moon walk. Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race was a perfect fit for them, written by Margot Lee Shetterly and again illustrated by Laura Freeman. Besides being powerful books, both had vibrant color and beautiful background details. (As of 2/27/18, this book was checked out, but will return to the library so you can have a turn.) This month's main display for Black History Month focused on people (all of the right), places (top left), poetry (mid-left), and historical fiction (bottom left). Next month I'll get a picture of March's display posted earlier so you'll know what treasures await you! |
AuthorAlways up for book chats, reading, library memes - proud to be Kepler's first librarian Archives
June 2019
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