February 2015

Guess who’s coming to Benchmark?

Debbie Levy

Through the generosity of the Benchmark Parents’ Association and the spadework of a long line of chairpersons, we’ve been privileged to host a visiting author every year that I’ve been serving as Benchmark librarian and for many, many years before that.  The 2014-2015 visiting author, Debbie Levy, will be here on Friday, February 27, with a snow date of Friday, March 27. 

Her newest entry into the children’s market is Dozer’s Run, a picture book based on the true story of a Goldendoodle who unintentionally joined a charity half-marathon and ended up raising over $50,000 for a cancer center in Maryland. Other children’s books by Ms. Levy include a poetry collection called Maybe I’ll Sleep in the Bathtub Tonight, several biographies and books about historic events, a kids’ guide to Washington, D.C., a picture book based on the song “We Shall Overcome,” and young adult novels Underwater and Imperfect Spiral. 


Ms. Levy also wrote The Year of Goodbyes, which is lovingly based on her own mother's experiences in 1938 Germany and on the autograph book in which were recorded the inscriptions and drawings of family and friends as they tried to lead normal lives amidst the growing tide of anti-Semitism.

Prior to becoming an author, the multifaceted Ms. Levy was a newspaper editor and an attorney.  BPA chairperson Caroline Cahill tells us that our author will be bringing a very special four-legged guest with her on the 27th, so be ready for a treat!

And speaking of visiting authors …

We always like to keep up with the authors and illustrators who have presented at Benchmark in previous years, and there's much to report about our most recent visitors.  When Martha Freeman was here last February, she told us about a new book she was writing and even read us a chapter from her rough draft.  That book, The Orphan and the Mouse, was published just a few months later, and reviewers say it has the "feel of a classic."  Set in 1949 Philadelphia, it is packed with mystery, adventure, and most of all friendship. You can find it in the orange (level 4) section of the Benchmark library.

The year before, we had a visit from gifted author/illustrator Matt Phelan, who told us about his latest project, a graphic novel based on the silent film star Buster Keaton.  It, too, hit the shelves a few months later, and you can find Bluffton: My Summers with Buster Keaton in the tan (level 3¹) section of our library. This is Mr. Phelan's third graphic novel, preceded by The Storm in the Barn and Around the World.

Another former visiting author we like to keep up with is Jen Bryant.  She has previously partnered with illustrator Melissa Sweet on books about Horace Pippin (A Splash of Red) and William Carlos Williams (A River of Words), and their latest collaboration is The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus.  According to a review in Booklist, this book is a celebration of "curiosity, the love of knowledge, and the power of words."  

In addition to buying the Roget book (level 3²) for the Benchmark library, I bought a copy as a Christmas gift for my nine-year-old grandson, a young man who loves to use the perfect word when he writes a story.  Ms. Bryant’s book inspired me to compile a three-page chart for him called “What to Say When You Don’t Want to Say Said," and he is now peppering his stories with words like “alleged,” “retorted,” and “implored.”  I’d be happy to email a copy of the chart to anyone who’s interested. 

A gratifying trend in children’s literature

Last fall one of our parents, Pat Hacik, told me about a children’s chapter book that she’d just read.  The book was Out of My Mind, a novel written in the “voice” of a 10-year-old girl who has never spoken, a condition brought about by congenital cerebral palsy. I was so blown away by this compassionate (but not remotely sentimental) book by Sharon Draper that I immediately recommended it to our middle school.  Turned out that language arts teacher Ruth Kelemen was one jump ahead of me.  She had already discovered it and was going to be using it with her first-years. The good news is that her students really responded to this magnificent book about a disabled child and totally “got it.”  I’d noticed the same thing the year before when middle school students were reading Wonder, a novel about a boy born with severe facial deformities.

Disabled kids are nothing new in literature (Clara in Heidi, Colin in The Secret Garden, Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol ), but such characters were generally one-dimensional, peripheral to the story, and often cloyingly sentimentalized.  The aforementioned new books about children with disabilities are a stunning contrast to the old literature. In both of these books the disabled child is the central character.  The disability is presented with gritty realism, and the character’s success in life stems from internal strength and supportive adults rather than from some sort of a miracle cure. Technological advances even play a part in both books, something that the old literature could not draw upon.

Pages from El Deafo by Cece Bell (Abrams, 2014)

And these two books do not stand alone.  Another new book, Rain Reign, is written from the point of view of a girl with high-functioning autism; The Running Dream is about a teenage athlete who loses her foot and part of her leg in an auto accident; and El Deafo is a wryly humorous graphic novel that fancifully spins off from the author’s own school experiences after losing her hearing to meningitis.  A couple of series that have been around for a while are the Joey Pigza and Hank Zipzer books about boys with ADHD and dyslexia respectively. Both series are funny, but they also have the ring of reality based on their authors' firsthand knowledge of learning differences.

As a children’s librarian and a person who believes in the power of books to shape character, I am delighted to see this progress in how disabilities and special needs are addressed in literature.  It's an honest approach that seems to resonate with our young people, and I am certain that it will impact positively how they deal with their own differences and the differences of others.

Countdown to mush time!

www.pixgood.com

As soon as the temperature drops, our minds start turning to one of the most popular events of the school year: the mile-by-mile, checkpoint-by-checkpoint tracking of the Iditarod, the annual dogsled race that pits dog and musher against Mother Nature at her fiercest.  Every year, we put up an informational display in the library, assign a musher (complete with mini-bio) to each child and teacher, and post real-time results several times a day.  With the advent of SmartBoards in the classroom, it’s an easy matter for teachers to show Iditarod videos and play songs like “I Did I Did I Did the Iditarod” by Hobo Jim.  Last year we even posted the various Iditarod checkpoints along the library bookshelves and kept track of when the mushers arrived at each one.

The countdown is on. This year’s Iditarod starts on Saturday, March 7, and I for one am starting to feel the lure of huskies and mushers, snow and ice, and the competition and sportsmanship that make up the “Last Great Race on Earth.”