Top Reads

 I love the new bulletin board outside of the library. Thanks to Lisa P. for making the iPod, and to Bess Gonglewski for the inspiring idea found on Library Displays. Book covers and the number of checkouts are posted on the board as aps.






The books in the iPad are our top checkouts so far this year.

1. Wimpy Kid #5--Ugly Truth (161)
2. Wimpy Kid # 2--Rodrick Rules (109)
3. Dragon in the Sock Drawer (105)
4. Football Genius (102)
5. Melonhead (98)
6. No Girls Allowed (Dogs Okay) (98)
7. Wimpy Kid #3--The Last Straw (96)
8. The Adventures of Ook and Gluk (90)
9. Wimpy Kid #4--Dog Days (89)
10. Stonekeeper--Amulet (84)
11. Stolen Children (79)
12. Getting Air (76)
13. Found: The Missing (73)
14. Dork Diaries #3--Tales From a Not-so-talented Pop Star (72)
15. Please Write in this Book (70)
16. Wimpy Kid #6--Cabin Fever (69)
17. Deep and Dark and Dangerous (64)
18. Big Nate #3--Big Nate on a Roll (63)
19. Captain Nobody (62)
20. Club Penguin: Shadow Guy and Gamma Gal (61)

We're on Big Nate's Website

After an exciting day with author Lincoln Peirce, he wrote about his visit to our school on his blog. He even noticed that it was spirit day.


Check it out! We made Lincoln Peirce's Blog!!!

Lincoln Peirce

Lincoln Peirce author of the Big Nate Series visited Brimhall today. What an exciting day for our students and staff.  I love seeing the smiles on kids faces as they see a person they admire. It always surprises me when I meet authors to realize that they are just normal people like the rest of us. I love that kids today get this opportunity--it gives them great role models, and provides them with ideas for their futures.

Lincoln creates the Big Nate comic strips for the paper as well as his books. He taught us some cartooning today. It was incredible to see what a few lines could do to completely change a picture.

We learned that Cartoonists like to show in simple ways things that happen in real life. For example, they might draw a light bulb to show ideas, of a 'z' in a speech bubble to show that someone is sleeping. Lincoln also showed us a lot of symbols that cartoonists use to show that different things are going on. Many of our students knew a lot about cartooning.

We played "The Scribble Game" to warm up--turning a scribble into a drawing. Lincoln then helped us draw a picture of a guy getting hit in the head with a baseball--we practiced using all sorts of different uses of lines, symbols. and facial expressions. Then we learned how to draw Nate from his books using a routine.

We all learned a lot, had fun drawing, and had a great day in the library.  (Look for a link in an upcoming post...Lincoln said he would feature us in a blog post this weekend!!)

MHL Voting

BRIMHALL STUDENTS IN GRADES 3-6:

Door Decorating

For I love to Read Month. Brimhall classrooms decorated their classroom doors to represent their favorite class book. Our school looks incredible.  Check out our doors. Today, Mrs. Bidne-principal, M. -student council secretary, K.-student council president, and myself-librarian judged the doors with a criteria of:

• Kid Created
• Class Involvement
• Visual Appeal
• Neatness
• Creativity

It was a difficult choice--but we were able to agree upon winners for each hallway.  Mrs. Bidne will be bring each winning class a new book, and reading it to them. Great job Brimhall students!

Dr. Seuss

This was just too cute not to share. Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss (Friday)!

Wink the Ninja that Wanted to be Noticed

For 15 Books we read Wink the Ninja That Wanted to be Noticed by J.C. Phillips. This fun story about a Ninja that is unlike his peers and wants people to pay attention to him was a hit with grades K-2. After reading the story, we learned some Ninja moves and sang and danced to Koo Koo Kangaroo's song "Ninja Training." It doesn't get much better than dancing and singing in the library.

Check it out:

Hubbs Conference

Last weekend I attended the Hubbs Conference for Childrens's Literature. Newbery Winners Linda Sue Park and Christopher Paul Curtis were key note speakers.  Wow! I also got to meet Kelly Barnhill a Minnesota author--who was extremely nice.

Meeting people that I feel like I know because I love their books is like a little slice of Heaven--truly authors are my rock stars.

Linda Sue Park and Christopher Paul Curtis gave inspiring speeches filled with emotion.  After lunch, I went to breakout sessions with each author with groups as small as ten people and got to have conversations with real live authors about their books and their writing process.  What an experience!

Some of my favorite quotes of the day:

"Any kind of writing you do is practice." --Curtis explaining why writing each day is important.
"It doesn't cost a penny to be kind."--Curtis

"I want reading to take me somewhere else." --Park when discussing reading books that were different than her own life experience.
"Gosh mom, think of all the kids who are now going to be forced to read your book." --Park telling us what her son said to her when she recieved the Newbery Medal. 

Photo Editing Tool

Tonight in my Digital Literacies class, Linda N. taught us how to use gimp photo editing--a free online photo editing tool similar to Photoshop. Linda showed us how to turn an image into a stencil that could screenprinted.  I need a little practice, but I think it is pretty cool. I turned this photo of O. reading in his superman cape into a stencil like image with text. I can't wait to download this program onto my computer and try it with more images and a little more time.

Here are some tutorials that Linda directed us to: 

• Stencil Tutorial
• Stencil Tutorial
• General Gimp Tutorials

 update....I downloaded Gimp to my home computer and tried another image. This is really fun! 




*Original photo by will biscuts flikr creative commons.

It's a Book Swap

This past week, students have been bringing in their old books that they are done reading and trading them in for something new. Bring in one, take one home, bring in five--take five home...Brimhall kids have been cleaning off their shelves! We have a lot of books here.



We organized the books in categories and students have been stopping in to find something new. Tomorrow all students that have not yet gotten to take a book will get to come to the library and take one book home with the leftovers.

Thank you to all of our volunteers that have checked students out at our trading book store.