Guess who’s coming to Benchmark?
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| 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.
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Pages from El Deafo by Cece Bell (Abrams, 2014)
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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!
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| 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.”
