Chicken Spaghetti

A Chicken's Bad Hair Day

When we bought Lovey the hen at a chicken show back in January, she was a beautifully groomed show chicken. The lovely tuft of feathers on her head made her irresistible to Junior and me. We had to take her home. She is a White-Crested Black Polish chicken; Polish are known for their crowns of feathers, which also prevent them from seeing too well. I suspect that Lovey had not spent a lot of time outside of an indoor pen. She was not worldly. She lacked skills. You can see her remarkable hair-do in the photo, below left.

When it rains, the hair-do is not so easy to maintain. And when a beauty queen has been totally corrupted by a free-spirit Blue Orpington named Fuzzy, the crest really suffers. Fuzzy, our other hen, has taught Lovey this: try to get out of the coop and free-range at all costs. When you see a person/chicken servant coming out of the house, pace back and forth by the gate of the run in a dramatic fashion because people exist to feed you and otherwise enable your constant eating. When it rains, stand out in the bad weather and let your hair-do get ruined because there's a remote chance someone may let you out to look for bugs and other delights.  Also, if you lay an egg, go ahead and step on it with your muddy feet, because who cares?

And thus, we have a situation depicted on the right. After yesterday's heavy rains, today is dry and Lovey's crest will spring back to life, but some of the dirt remains. I think this means and Junior and I are going to have to give her a shampoo one day soon. Having shed her show-chicken ways, Lovey does seem to enjoy worm-hunting and hanging out with Fuzzy; she now scratches in the dirt with abandon. Still, I feel a little like we turned Miss America into a commune-loving hippie.

Readers who enjoy chicken picture books (and, really, who doesn't?) should look for Big Chickens Fly the Coop, written by Leslie Helakoski and illustrated by Henry Cole. It's a very silly story about four hens who take some risks in their desire to get out and about. They all agree about how nice it is to stay home until one says, "We would always stay home...except...we've always wanted to see the farmhouse." And off they go. I'm going to keep this one in mind for a preschool read-aloud. Preschoolers love a raucous good time, which these girls definitely have.

Blogs to Visit, May 8th

Household repairs around here are so loud that the cat has squeezed his big self behind the bread box in an attempt to hide. I hate to tell him how visible he is. At any rate, here are some blogs to check out while I, too, am going to hide from the noise by running around town this morning.

Here in Franklin. That's Franklin, Tennessee, y'all. Observations on life, in the form of short essays like "Gas Is the New Lunch." The blog is written by my cousin-in-law, a fellow cut-up at family reunions. One day you'll have to ask us about the bus to the cemetery. (It wasn't a funeral.)

Read. Imagine. Talk. "Ideas about raising thoughtful readers, children's literature, education, and whatever else comes to mind..." by a Bank-Street-educated teacher and mom.

What Do We Do All Day? This blog about the sweet adventures of a Brooklyn mother and her preschool-aged son reminds me of days with Junior when he was a little guy. The blogger reviews "urban picture books," too, like Adèle and Simon and At Night.

Elsie and Joe Deluxe. A thoughtful blog "in which [they] tell you about [their] many works in progress: homeschooling, teaching, writing, recorder playing, knitting, spinning, home renovation, gardening, anything else that comes up."

Reading Programs: News and Ideas

Over at Educating Alice, Monica Edinger expresses some skepticism about Renaissance Learning's so-called "groundbreaking" report on what children are reading. Monica writes,

Please.  All this report tells us is what books kids are reading for their school’s Accelerated Reader program.

Accelerated Reader is Renaissance Learning's school-based computerized reading incentive program. Last year I ran Deborah J. Lightfoot's "Get Your Books AR Listed," an article that previously appeared in the Authors Guild Bulletin and the SCBWI Bulletin. Given permission by Deborah to reprint it here, I thought her instructive piece brought up issues that authors needed to know about.

“I bought this book for my daughter, but since it wasn’t on the AR book list at school, she never got around to reading it.”

Magyk: Septimus Heap, Book One, by Angie Sage, was the book not read. An online reviewer posted that comment in 2005, shortly after Magyk's  publication.

The reviewer’s remark troubled me. It was the second time I had heard the mysterious “AR book list” blamed for a young reader’s rejection of a book.

The first instance involved work of my own. While visiting a clutch of elementary schools, I asked whether their libraries had (or would acquire) my book Trail Fever, a biography for readers 9 and up. It complements fourth-grade history studies—one of the main reasons I wrote it.

“I’ll check,” said the librarian. Then, with an apologetic shake of her head: “It’s not on the AR list, so we won’t buy it for our library. The students don’t read books that aren’t AR books.” She added: “A lot of authors don’t know that.”

Read the entire article by Deborah J. Lightfoot here. (Note: Magyk is now listed at AR.) The comments section of that post includes positive remarks about the AR program.

Jim Trelease, author of The Read-Aloud Handbook, also addresses these kinds of reading incentive programs in the latest edition of his book. You can read an excerpt here. He writes,

I have written and spoken both favorably and negatively about these computerized programs but in recent years I've grown increasingly uneasy with the way they are being used by districts.

In other reading news,  Reading First, a key component of No Child Left Behind, has been found "ineffective." From USA Today:

A $1 billion-a-year reading program that has been a pillar of the Bush administration's education plan doesn't have much impact on the reading skills of the young students it's supposed to help, a long-awaited federal study shows.

The results, issued Thursday, could serve as a knockout punch for the 6-year-old Reading First program — Congress has already slashed funding 60%. Reading First last year was the subject of a congressional investigation into whether top advisers improperly benefited from contracts for textbooks and testing materials they designed, and whether the advisers kept some textbook publishers from qualifying for funding.

Read the whole article by Greg Toppo here.

From my own, admittedly limited experience as a volunteer in two elementary schools (one a city school where NCLB is very much a factor, the other suburban with generally high test scores), I see evidence of lots of children reading. At the city school, I particularly enjoyed some fourth-graders' essays inspired by Patricia Polacco's Mrs. Katz and Tush. I stopped by a hallway bulletin board and read the neatly typed pieces about the kids' own favorite older people. One girl wrote about her 21-year-old sister, another about her uncle in the Army who had died. (I'm guessing in Iraq.) I loved one from a boy who talked about his grandmother, his "oldest friend" who played "checkers and Xbox" with him. "The best thing she taught me was how to climb a tree," he concluded.

Book Adventures in the City

One of the most fun aspects of blogging about children's books is meeting up with other kid-lit bloggers. On Saturday I met Adrienne of What Adrienne Thinks About That at the South Street Seaport in New York, where we hoped to get aboard the Ambrose. That's the vessel that Brian Floca depicted in the awesome Lightship, winner of the Cybil award for best nonfiction picture book of 2007. Unfortunately for us, Saturday was a cleaning day for the Seaport ships, and we were forced to be landlubbers.

So, Adrienne, her friend Tracy, and I ventured up to Bryant Park, which is behind the New York Public Library (the one with the lions in front) and got to hang out, drink coffee and iced tea, and chat about books and chickens. Adrienne gave me a tip on a new series that she thought Junior would like (Sandra Markle's "Insect World"). We also peeked in at the library's beautiful and impressive main reading room.

I'd thought there was a big kids' book extravaganza at Bryant Park, but that is next Saturday (May 10th), when a bunch of events for Children's Book Week take place. So much for my fledgling business as a tour guide. I was happy to meet Adrienne and Tracy, though, and have a chance to explore the city with kindred spirits.

On the train ride home, I read a lot of Jhumpa Lahiri's new short story collection, Unaccustomed Earth, which is excellent and well-deserving of the great reviews it's pulling in. (At Sepia Mutiny you'll find a review and links to other articles on the book. I'd agree with the Alice Munro comparison that a Village Voice writer made.)

Children's Literature Programs, PEN World Voices Festival

Book lovers in New York right now have a chance to see and hear many authors from around the world at PEN's World Voices festival. Among the participants are Ian McEwan, Michael Ondaatje, Janet Malcolm, Bernhard Schlink, Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie, and Mario Vargas Llosa. For a complete schedule, see the PEN web site; you'll find blog reports there as well. Also, the MetaxuCafé literary site is covering many of the events.

The following are programs that involve authors who write for children.

• Sharon G. Flake, Jutta Richter, Pam Muñoz Ryan, and Peter Sís talk about "the public and private lives of children." Elizabeth Levy moderates. (Scholastic Auditorium, 556 Broadway. Thursday, May 1, at 6. Free. No reservations necessary.)

• Pam Muñoz Ryan and Senegalese author Fatou Diome on the role of storytelling in "growing up a writer." (French Institute/Alliance Française, 22 E. 60th St. Saturday, May 3, at 5. For tickets, call 212/307-4100.)

One roundtable (for adults) I'd like to hear (but won't get a chance to) is "Books That Changed My Life," with Annie Proulx, Philippe Grimbert, Yousef Al-Mohaimeed, Antonio Muñoz Molina, and Catherine Millet. (New York Public Library, Fifth Ave. at 42nd St. Sunday, May 4, at 4. For tickets, call 212/868-4444.)

PEN American Center, the festival's sponsor, is "an association of writers working to advance literature, defend free expression, and foster international literary fellowship."

April Carnival of Children's Literature

You'll find the April carnival of children's literature at Ellsworth's Journal, the blog of author Candice Ransom.

A blog carnival is a roundup of links to blog posts on a particular theme. In this case, it's kids' books.

The (TV-less) Week That Was

TV Turnoff Week passed quickly, ending last night, and I realized that we must not watch as much TV as I'd thought. It wasn't very hard to make do without the tube. We were helped out tremendously by some beautiful, warm weather, so we were outdoors living it up every day. Biking, hanging out with the backyard chickens, grilling hamburgers (I showed Junior how to grill), and yard projects occupied our time. A little neighbor saw us in the yard after supper, and she came over and played with Junior for a while. One afternoon there was a Cub Scout hike at a local nature preserve, where the group spotted four turkey vultures. Inside at home we set up a jigsaw puzzle and got out the book of word searches. On Sunday Junior slept late, ate breakfast in bed, and read until noon. Noon! I'm not sure what he was reading, though it probably included Calvin & Hobbes, The Lorax, and other favorites. More and more his reading life is his own. I still read aloud to him, but I see bookmarks in various books around his room. He asked to watch television once or twice, and claimed to miss it. All in all, though, I thought it was a good week.

I did not get rid of cable, but I blocked a few channels. Junior can still watch shows on those stations, but only occasionally. He really likes Discovery's "How It's Made" and "Dirty Jobs," but doesn't need to watch them for hours on end.  Also, there are good videos at his school library that he can check out, and the public library has lots, too. With spring here and summer around the corner, I'm hoping that he'll be outside playing as much as he can.

I shut down the computer every afternoon before Junior got home from school, and that was a tremendous help. I wasn't trying to do too many things at once when the computer was off. That was a good thing that I hope to continue.

Find out how others coped during TV Turnoff Week at the blog Unplug Your Kids.

Poetry Friday: Dirda (and Others) on De La Mare

I was intrigued to read about Walter De La Mare (1873-1956) in the April 23rd "Dirda on Books," a live chat with Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda. (The whole conversation is transcribed at the Post's online edition.)

Anonymous: Thanks to you and my fellow posters for your great suggestions for children's poetry. I never would have thought of Emily Dickinson as a child-friendly poet, but the Poetry Foundation does include a couple of her works in the children's section of its Web site.

In an effort to return the favor, to the poster looking for absurd but trenchant books for teens, how about Walter de la Mare? He's English, not American, but it sounds like he otherwise fits the criteria. In fact, I recently read your 2004 review of his Memoirs of a Midget, a great read in itself.

Michael Dirda: Many thanks. Yes, De La Mare is one of the giants of children's poetry. The recent issue of the New Criterion has an excellent essay on his work by Eric Ormsby. [Note from S.T.: It's online here.]

When he reviewed De La Mare's Memoirs of a Midget four years ago, Dirda began by saying that the poet's Peacock Pie is "one of the half-dozen best books of poetry for children ever written." High praise indeed. The local library does not own Peacock Pie, but I can probably track it down through an interlibrary loan.

On Fridays, many of the children's literature blogs talk about poetry. You'll find a roster of today's Poetry Friday participants at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

5 Things I Like About "A Visitor for Bear"

A Visitor for Bear, a new picture book written by Bonny Becker and illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton, is about a grouchy bear, with a "No Visitors Allowed" sign on his door, and a mouse intent on dropping in. It's one of the best books I've read in eons. I chose five highlights to mention here.

1. The mouse. He's insistent in a polite, British sort of way.

"I told you to leave!" cried Bear.

"Perhaps we could have just a spot of tea?" said the mouse.

2. Bear's cozy home, with its cast-iron stove, tea kettle, and tablecloth embroidered with bees. I'd be tempted to keep it to myself, too.

3. The harmony of the author-illustrator team. The writing and art (watercolor, ink, gouache) are smart, funny, and evenly balanced.

4. Bear's transformation. In the end, Bear and the mouse become friends, and Bear tears up his off-putting sign.

5. The book's appeal. The comedy in A Visitor for Bear will tickle both little kids and independent readers.

+ 1 more: Reading on the Candlewick web site that more Mouse and Bear books are in the works.

Literataure-Inspired Playing

In the "From Spider-Man to Smack-Down" chapter of her new book, Taking Back Childhood, Nancy Carlsson-Paige writes about a kindergarten teacher whose students "were consumed with Star Wars play" (the kind of whacking-with-light-sabers stuff that many of us know well). At story time the teacher started reading The Wizard of Oz to the class because she felt like it addressed some of "same themes of power and security" as the Star Wars movies. She also supplied the dramatic play area of her classroom with Wizard of Oz props: red shoes, a witch hat, and so on. (Aside: Dorothy's ruby slippers from the movie version are actually silver in the book, but who needs a fact-checker in the dress-up corner?)

[The teacher] said that the children gradually became immersed in the story of The Wizard of Oz—acting it out with elaborations, drawing it, making their own props—and their more rigid Star Wars play gradually dropped away.

A professor of early childhood education and conflict resolution, the author goes on to say the following, relevant to all of us who think about children's literature a lot:

Many children's books touch on themes of mastery, power, and security but contain no graphic violence, and reading these, especially over and over, can inspire play about mastery and power that comes closer to meeting children's real psychological needs.

I really liked that story of a teacher who knew how to channel her students' interests in a more creative direction. I liked the book, too; I found it informative rather than dire, despite its subtitle, "Helping Your Kids Thrive in a Fast-Paced, Media-Saturated, Violence-Filled World."

Kids' play fascinates me. In my house, a Lego alien now lives in a vegetable-steamer spaceship. ("Mom, if you cook anything in here, will you please take him out?") The alien seems to be involved in a lot of inter-planetary battles. A couple of days ago, though, a younger friend of my son's dropped by, and she and Junior pretended to be butterflies, wafting around the yard for a few minutes.

Updated to add: Nancy Carlsson-Paige is also the mother of actor Matt Damon. Whaddya know. I missed that somehow. Here is a recent profile of Carlsson-Paige from the Boston Globe.

Southern Bookstore Blog

Lemuria Books, my favorite bookstore, now has a blog, and I didn't even know about it until recently. Yay—blog roll update time. If you're ever in Jackson, Mississippi, you absolutely must stop by the store. Driving down I-55 from Memphis to New Orleans? It's right on your way. Travelling from Dallas to Atlanta on I-20? It's just a quick little detour north.

Some years ago when Eudora Welty was still alive, I saw her shopping at the store. The blog features an update on her home in Jackson's Belhaven neighborhood, which you can now tour by appointment. (I know I've mentioned that before. I think I keep talking about it to remind myself to schedule a tour for my next visit to Jackson.)

When I was at Lemuria last week, a couple of the booksellers told me about Poor Man's Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana, by Rheta Grimsley Johnson (NewSouth Books 2008). Here is how the publisher describes the book:

For over a decade, syndicated columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson has been spending several months a year in Southwest Louisiana, deep in the heart of Cajun Country. Unlike many other writers who have parachuted into the swampy paradise for a few days or weeks, Rheta fell in love with the place, bought a second home and set in planting doomed azaleas and deep roots. She has found an assortment of beautiful people in a homely little town called Henderson, right on the edge of the Atchafalaya Swamp.

Right now on the blog, Lemuria recommends a children's book, The Fish Who Cried Wolf, by Julia Donaldson. Sarah Dessen's young adult novel Just Listen also gets a shout out.

More Thoughts on TV

Here are some more thoughts on children and television, via a Washington Post opinion piece by Lisa Guernsey.

But a flurry of new research says we have more to learn. The problem: We're assuming that our children can make sense of what they watch, no matter how old they are. We're forgetting that huge cognitive leaps occur between the ages of 1 and 7.

Researchers, it turns out, doubt that a 1-year-old can even make sense of the sequence of information on the screen, let alone pick up the wholesome messages in "Sesame Street." There's almost no evidence that children under 5 are picking up on the moral lessons in "VeggieTales," not to mention the supposedly character-building themes of many Disney movies. And the children's shows on PBS may be more educational, but that doesn't mean that they're always getting through to young children.

Read the entire article here. Guernsey also talks about what's good for kids to watch.

If you're turning off the set this week and/or looking for a good picture-book read-aloud, check out The Three Cabritos, by Eric A. Kimmel. The Tex-Mex retelling of the Three Billy Goats Gruff stars a maniacally dancing chupacabra instead of a troll. Lots of fun.

TV Turnoff Week, April 21st-27th

We like television here at Chicken Spaghetti, but the time has come to try turning off the set for a little while. If I get brave, I am going to cut way back on the cable subscription, too. Because of homework (or, rather, his delay in doing it), Junior does not have much time to watch TV after school, but most of what he does watch does not benefit him. At 8, he's gotten too old for programs like "Arthur" and "Clifford," and that leaves us with the edgier world of cable, with its endless parade of bleeped out cursing and, er, digestive problems, not to mention advertising. (The "News at 5" shows/car wrecks/scandal-reporting are no better.) Plus, I think the frantic pace of some of the shows does not have a good effect on my fella's impressionable little brain. I have seen too many dips in behavior after TV-watching not to believe this.

The truth of it is this. Junior's TV watching benefits me. It occupies him while I cook dinner or type on the computer or read. But I had a wake-up call recently when he asked for  Sealy Posturpedic Mattress because they're more comfortable than the one he has. "What?" I said, and he repeated his request. We then had a talk about ads and how they try to sell things to people. It was not the first of this kind of talk, but somehow the message had not sunk in.

Junior groaned when I told him about TV Turnoff Week. Then he said, "That's not fair!" Not exactly the reaction I'd envisioned, but that's okay. I hope that a week without TV will help us figure out something better for him to do when he needs to entertain himself. I don't plan on outlawing the tube forever, but a week will give Junior's dad and me some time to figure out alternatives and perhaps a better TV routine.

Our plans? Spend as much time outdoors as possible. My personal goal is to spend less time on the computer. I'll just have to blog, um, more efficiently.

If you want inspiration to shut off the set at your house, I highly recommend The Big Turnoff: Confessions of a TV-Addicted Mom Trying to Raise a TV-Free Kid, by Ellen Currey-Wilson (Algonquin Books, 2007). It's a really funny, non-preachy memoir written by a veteran watcher of "Gilligan's Island" and countless other programs. The author knew that she watched too much TV (and had watched too much all her life), and did not want the same for her son. Her biggest obstacle is not her son's viewing habits but her own—and the reasons for them. I came across the book at Lemuria, a bookstore in Jackson, Miss., and ironically, read a lot of it on the plane home when Junior was plugged into a DVD movie. Clearly I have a way to go, too.

The blog Unplug Your Kids offers suggestions for a TV-free week, and people are registering there to participate in a blog challenge. I notice that Ellen Currey-Wilson herself signed up. Although it's not updated that often, her blog has good resources and information; don't miss it.

Good luck to all the others participating this week. When the Turnoff turns back on, I'll let you know how we fared. In the mean time, I'll keep talking about books.

Poetry Friday: "Monosyllable"

There we were in the sunny South, spring-breaking for most of the week. That's why posting was so light around these parts. We had a great time, and Junior and I covered my parents' neighborhood on bicycles. My Southern accent returned, and I heard myself saying, "Good mornin'!" to people I didn't even know.

Anyway, since today is Poetry Friday, I'm going to send y'all back to the Poetry Foundation for one more poem by Josephine Jacobsen. This one is "Monosyllable." I wanted to mention it last week, but that post was long enough. Click here to read "Monosyllable."

Our schedule is nutty until school resumes on Monday, at which point I'll rest from our vacation.

You'll find the roundup of all the Poetry Friday posts at The Well-Read Child.

In Which I Was a Read-Aloud Rock Star

But only because of Coleen Salley & Janet Stevens and Mo Willems.

Last week brought Read Aloud Day to the urban school where I volunteer as a tutor. Lots of people came in to read to each class, pre-K through 6th grades, and the book assigned to the first-grade readers was Epossumondas Saves the Day, written by Salley and illustrated by Stevens. Set in Louisiana, the book stars an opossum and resembles a Cajun Three Billy Goats Gruff. Plus, it features a whole heap of wacky Southern expressions. If you haven't tried this one at story time, I highly recommend doing so because it's such fun for a reader to ham it up. What seemed like too much shtick on an initial read-through made a rollicking read-aloud. I enjoyed hearing the first graders guffaw and chant along.

I then moved on to Mo Willems' Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, which I'd taken along in case Epossumondas didn't fly. That was far from the case, but why stop when you're on a roll? Willems' book grabbed thirty kids' attention right off the bat and held it until the end. The Pigeon books beg for interaction, talking directly to the listeners, and the kids ate it up, yelling "No!" each time the Pigeon asked to drive. They even wanted to hear it again, so I left the book with their teacher. (And had to buy my son a new copy on the way home.)

I love tutoring, but the first-graders occasionally struggle and get discouraged. Read Aloud Day, though, well, it rocked. Everyone could join in on the fun that reading brings.