Encyclopedia Brown

Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective
           written by Donald Sobol

My students have re-discovered a classic mystery series,  Encyclopedia Brown by Donald Sobol circa late 1980's. One of my teachers started reading them out loud, one story a day, and the class has now emptied out the entire shelf of these mini mysteries. The series is about a boy, Encyclopedia Brown age 10, whose father is the chief of police. Encyclopedia Brown has the gift of a memory that remembers literally anything and everything. He helps his father solve all the crimes in his town, although quietly behind the scenes. In each book there are up to ten mini mysteries to solve, with the actual solutions in the back of the book so the series lends itself to table talk discussions within the classroom or book clubs reading the series. Oldies but goodies!

Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective  ISBN: 978-1417786220

Google for IPad: Voice Search!

Google for iPad: Voice Search Tool
So quite by accident today I found a new app for my iPad and it's Google! Ok... so nothing really new about using Google to search.....but what is new...at least to me....is that I can now search Google on my ipad by speaking my keywords into each search! And I can easily search maps, images, even wikipedia using this new app for iPad! Talk about Ease of Use!

And I'll be using this with my tweens Monday at my projection station in the Library/Media Center where I'll have my students work with keywords to determine the best words to use when searching for their topic assignments from their classrooms, narrowing down focus and best use of keywords. Monday's classes are working on Native Americans, Explorers,  California geography, and States information. Can't wait!

The Missing: Books 1,2,3

"The Missing"  series by Margaret Peterson Haddix
(also the author of Book 10 of 39 Clues!)

In Book One: Found, we meet Jonah, his sister Katherine, and Chip, who have received mysterious letters telling them they are each one of the missing, and that someone is coming to get them.  Together they face the dangers of a smuggling operation, the FBI, and time travel. In Book Two: Sent, the friends  find out that they were kidnapped from different historical periods and experience time travel and the dangers of fifteenth century English royal intrigue. In Book Three: Sabotaged, the adventurers find themselves involved in another historical mystery; this time in the sixteenth century. Book Three was chosen as a Junior Library Guild Selection and the author has won numerous awards for her other adventure and mystery series. Can't keep this series on my shelf!

The Missing
Book One: Found.   978-0-545-11645-9
Book Two: Sent.   978-1-4424-0767-1        
Book Three: Sabotaged.     978-0-545-29007-4

Using eBooks with Tweens

Using E-Books to Motivate Pupils Writing

This  Blip TV session shares a video presentation by Colin Hill an elementary teacher in England who presented this video for the K12.Online Conference in 2009. In the presentation he shares a WebTool called My eBook.com and provides a mini tutorial on how to create and publish an eBook. I was so excited when I found this today because this is a tool that we can truly use with our students to create and publish original eBook content. Imagine what tweens could do with this WebTool when you see examples created by 7-8 year olds!

Here is an e-book with his students' work published for everyone to be able to read:



Here is an example of a class poetry book created within class and then published as an eBook.



Here is an e-book of Cinderella, no longer in print. The future of publishing and preservation?

It's a Mystery Wiki

It's a Mystery Wiki

REVIEW
Click Here to go to our "It's a Mystery Wiki" where you will find all the listings of books we recommend and reviewed for a core collection of mystery titles. The wiki has 20 titles listed.

Major categories of the wiki include:
What is a Mystery?
Why are these for tweens?
Elements of a good collection
Classics
Award winners
Hot New Titles
Transition Books
Interactivity
Tools

Be sure to check out our Voicethread about these exciting Mystery titles!

Mystery Anyone?

It's a Mystery Voicethread project

Here's our Voicethread of Mysteries we recommend to tweens and teens. The biggest challenge we had was limiting the number of great mystery books to include in the presentation! It was a collaborative project and we enjoyed working together!

Edgar Allen Poe's Tales of Mystery and Madness

Four classic tales, "The Black Cat," "The Masque of the Red Death," "Hop Frog," and "The Fall of the House of Usher" by the master of classic horror and mystery Edgar Allen Poe, are retold for the younger set and accompanied by the spidery inked drawings of illustrator Gris Grimly. 

Throughout the telling of each tale, the myriad of drawings lend a graphic novel feel to this delightfully wicked horror collection. Warning! Not for flashlight readers! Be sure to keep your lights on :)

Poe, Edgar Allan. Tales of Mystery and Madness. Revised ed. Simon & Schuster Children's, 2004. 

ISBN 978-0689848377

Are you going to attend?

I'm excited to attend this virtual conference. I'll be teaching, but can attend through their archived presentations and paid only $20.00 as an SLIS student to attend. Recently I surveyed my students and found that 93% of my students are fully connected to the internet at home, and over 45% utilize our Media Center webpages after hours. Leveraging some of my PTA allocations to support reading beyond school hours using ebooks is an idea I have had for some time and I'm hoping that attending this conference will provide additional  ideas and resources to move the project ahead into reality.

Swindle

A card collector "swindles" Griffin Bing out of a valuable Babe Ruth baseball card. Known by his friends as "The Man with the Plan," Griffin puts together a team of amateur sleuths to get the card back no matter the risk, high tech security, guard dog, or danger.

This is the first of a trio series by best selling author Gordon Korman, who has written over 60 novels for middle grades to young adults including the New York Times best selling book, second in the popular series 39 Clues: One False Note.

Korman, Gordon. Swindle. New York: Scholastic, 2009. ISBN 978-0439903448.

101 places You Gotta See Before You're 12

This "Bucket List" book for  tweens is one of the hottest books in our 900 section! It is designed as an interactive scavenger hunt including stickers to use as a rating scale when checking off items from the lists within the book, ranking them "Top 20, Loved it, Yawn Fest, No Way, Awesome, Way Strange, Been There", etc. There's a map to help guide exploring and planning, and a note section to add additional ideas and comments. Also included are some websites and links to support the listed items with directories, organizations, and other resources.

Book circulation increases with additional Book Talks and discussions to stimulate uses for this book, as well as potential lessons/activities:

• Google Earth Trips...even better, develop tours based on choices selected individually to share with others
• Keep it local...Take it National...use with social studies units exploring city, state, and country.
• Take a virtual trip...if you can't actually go to a farm...is there a website with a virtual tour?
• When traveling with the family develop a game to play with the list to see if you can name a site that fits the list... name "a very big thing", "a peaceful place" then read what the book has to say about it.
• Make a personal list of the "10 Things I most want to see this year"...share with family
• Find your 10 favorite places using Google Earth and show your friends.

Sullivan, Joanne. 101 Places You Gotta See Before You're 12. New York: Lark Books, 2006.
ISBN: 978-1-60059-147-1