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Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata and Blue by Joyce Moyer Hostetter

Dec15


Two books set during World War War II: One takes place in California and Arizona; the other book is set on the other side of the country in North Carolina. Sumiko is twelve years old and lives with her aunt and uncle and cousins on a flower farm; Anna Fay is thirteen and has become “the man of the house” since her daddy’s gone to fight in the war. Both girls are typical older children, responsible, obligated to grow up fast and take care of younger brothers and sisters. Both girls use gardening as a way to work through their problems and challenges. And each must face her own war, her own imprisonment, and her own fight against ignorance and prejudice.

Sumiko, heroine of Weedflower, is a Japanese-American girl; her parents are dead, and she faces prejudice against “orientals” from the beginning of the story when she is dis-invited to a birthday party for a girl in her class. The challenges only get worse after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and all the residents of Japanese descent on the West Coast are gathered and sent to internment camps. Sumiko, her aunt, her two older cousins, and her little brother are sent to Poston in Arizona. There Sumiko must learn to survive and even overcome the heat, the dust, the hostility of neighbors, and even the threat of succumbing to “the ultimate boredom.” The latter is her grandfather’s term for the temptation to give up, to lose your dreams, to surrender hope, a temptation that Sumiko must face and defeat if she is to win her war.

Anna Fay, the main character in Blue has a battle to fight, too. A polio epidemic has invaded western North Carolina in 1944, and Anna Fay’s little brother Bobby falls victim to the dread disease. Later in the story, Anna Fay herself must battle polio, even as she worries about her daddy fighting Hitler in Europe and about whether her family will ever be together again. Anna Fay is trapped in the polio hospital just as Sumiko is trapped in the internment camp, and Anna Fay faces boredom and prejudice, too. The discrimination comes when Anna Fay becomes friends with a “colored girl” who also has polio, but the two girls can’t convince anyone that they should be allowed to share a hospital ward as well as a friendship.

I thought both of these books were excellently well-written. Blue goes for the tear-jerker, drama reaction; the writing in Weedflower is a little more restrained. Sumiko is the stereotypical Japanese, determined to keep her emotions under control and her tears hidden; Anna Fay is comforted by her friend’s word picture of a God who saves each person’s tears in a bottle on a heavenly window-sill. (Anna Fay’s bottle is blue.) Each girl compares herself to a flower: Sumiko is a weedflower, a flower of the field that is both beautiful and resilient; Anna Fay is sometimes as fragile as a mimosa blossom and other times as tough as wisteria.

These books would work well, paired, in a unit study on World War II to give students a good picture of different aspects of the time period. Other World War II books for girls:

Denenberg, Barry. Early Sunday Morning: The Pearl Harbor Diary of Amber Billows, Hawaii, 1941.
Denenberg, Barry. One Eye Laughing, The Other Weeping: The Diary of Julie Weiss, Vienna, Austria to New York, 1938.
Greene, Betty. Summer of my German Soldier.
Osborne, Mary Pope. My Secret War: The World War II Diary of Madeline Beck, Long Island, New York, 1941.
Rinaldi, Ann. Keep Smiling Through.

Weedflower and Blue also have another thing in common; both books are nominated for the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction.

Words, Words, Words

Nov15

Start with a meme; go out with a bang. I borrowed the word meme from Stefanie at So Many Books, a long time ago. I asked a couple of the urchins to give me their word choices, too.

Words that always look misspelled to me:
obscene, obsession, skiing, Qatar, judgment, acquiesce, grieve, posttest

Brown Bear Daughter, age 11: precipitate (It looks as if it has too many i’s.)
Karate Kid, age 9: theirs

Words I enjoy saying:
misanthropic, anthropomorphic, surreptitious, melancholy, parmesan, lackadaisical

BBD: tortilla
KK: pervert

Words I enjoy hearing:
thank you, I love you, yes m’am.

BBD: Daddy’s home!
KK: awesome

Abbreviations I dislike:
lbs. (lubs?), ms. (miz?)

BBD: oz., m, mm
KK: lb., mrs.

Proper nouns I enjoy:
Dime Box, Texas
Bilbo Baggins
Lake Wobegon
General Shalishkavili
Ramona Quimby

BBD: Butterfinger
KK: Milky Way

Words I associate with happiness:
children, chocolate, celebration, flowers, autumn

BBD: flute, lyrical, recital, christmas
KK: win, guitar

Words I always misspell:
obcession, judgement, innoculate, preemptory.

BBD: suprise, imeadiately
KK: their, there, they’re

Words I enjoy spelling correctly, every time:
miscellaneous, embarrass, Philippians, Deuteronomy, congratulations

BBD: iridescent, Wednesday, February, staphylococci
KK: prestidigitation

Words that, though I love their meaning, I’m too embarrassed to say out loud:
Any big long words that I’m afraid people will think pretentious.

Words I can never remember the meaning of no matter how many times I look them up:
biennial, mauve, cerulean

Words that sound like what they mean:
lugubrious, grotesque, bilious, loathe, wheeze, brusque

BBD: chocolate
KK: karate

Words that sound like something other than what they mean:
pulchritude, corporeal, minuend, benignant, cryogenics

What are some of your favorite words? Your least favorite?

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born November 14th

Nov14

IMG_1259Aaron Copland, American composer, b. 1900. We’ll be listening to some of Copeland’s “greatest hits” this week because I really enjoy his music.

Astrid Lindgren, Swedish author, b. 1907. I thought you might enjoy a picture of my own little Pippi Longstocking today on Ms. Lindgren’s birthday.
Here’s a mini-unit study on Pippi for homeschoolers and teachers.
And here are some Pippi coloring pages. The website is in Dutch, I think, or Swedish, but the coloring pages are wordless and well-done.

Claude Monet, b. 1840. Read Linnea in Monet’s Garden.
This webpage has a selection of coloring pages from famous artists’ pictures, including one by Monet, The Walk, Lady With Parasol.
Free unit study on the French impressionists.
Lesson plan: Painting like the Impressionists.

Nancy Tafuri, b. 1946, author and illustrator of Have You Seen My Duckling? Some ideas for extending the learning and fun of this book..

World Geography: Week 11, China

Oct30

Music:
Guiseppe Verdi—Ave Maria from Othello

Mission Study:
1. Bold Bearers of his Name: Lula F. Whilden
2. Window on the World: Newars
3. WotW: Tibetans
4. WotW: Xinjiang
5. WotW: Yao-Mien

Poems:
My Poetry Book: At Our House

Science:
Magnets

Nonfiction Read Alouds:
The Pageant of Chinese History–Seeger
China by Tami Deedrick

Fiction Read Alouds:
Little Pear—Lattimore
A Grain of Rice–Pittman
Tales of a Chinese Grandmother by Frances Carpenter


Picture Books:
The Emperor and the Nightingale—Andersen
The Five Chinese Brothers—Bishop
The Empty Pot–Demi
Ming Lo Moves the Mountain—Lobel
Eyes of the Dragon—Leaf
Tikki Tikki Tembo—Mosel
Emperor and the Kite–Yolen

Elementary Readers:
Homesick—Fritz
Mission to Cathay—Polland
Silkworms—Johnson
Eyewitness: Ancient China
Confucius; The Golden Rule—Freedman
A Boy’s War—Michell
Between Two Worlds: A Story about Pearl S. Buck–Mitchell

Other Books:
Nothing Daunted; The Story of Isobel Kuhn–Repp
The Importance of Living–Lin Yutang

Movies:
Arsenic and Old Lace

Encouragement

Oct26

Brown Bear Daughter: Mom, you have to watch this movie and tell me whether you agree with us that it doesn’t even have a plot until three-fourths of the way into the movie!

Me: Why do you need me?

BB Daughter: Because i need to know if I’m right and if you agree with me because that’s how kids figure out stuff.

Me, thoughtfully: Oh, so you are listening. I’m encouraged.

Potatoes

Oct23

Hold your taters! (books)

Backyard Ballistics: Build Potato Cannons, Paper Match Rockets, Cincinnati Fire Kites, Tennis Ball Mortars, and More Dynamite Devices by William Gurstelle. You can read here about how Engineer Husband and Karate Kid planned to build a potato cannon. I will finish the story by reporting that the potato cannon was a huge success, the potatoes hit the fence with a satisfying thud, and no animals were injured or mistreated in the production or execution of this project.

In Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner, Willy must harvest the potato crop by himself when Grandpa becomes ill. Here’s a teaching activity to accompany the reading of this book. (The book continues as Willy enters a dog sled race to raise money to pay the taxes and to save Grandpa’s farm.)

More Potatoes! by Millicent Selsam is an older, out of print, beginning reader about how potatoes get from the field to the table. It’s told as a story, and it’s a good introduction to food production in general for younger children.

Potatoes, Potatoes by Anita Lobel. Potatoes, love and war all in a picture book.

Blue Potatoes, Orange Tomatoes by Rosalind Creasy. This picture book actually tells how to grow blue potatoes —and other vegetables in rainbow colors.

The Amazing Potato: A Story in Which the Incas, Conquistadors, Marie Antoinette, Thomas Jefferson, Wars, Famines, Immigrants, and French Fries All Play a Part by Milton Meltzer. Also out of print, but worth tracking down in the library or used bookstore, this book tells the history of the potato for upper elementary age children. I like the long title, don’t you?
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Hot potato (quotations):
“What I say is that, if a fellow really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.” —A. A. Milne

“Money is the root of all evil, and yet it is such a useful root that we cannot get on without it any more than we can without potatoes.” —Louisa May Alcott

“Let the sky rain potatoes.” —Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor

“Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.” —Charles Dickens

Pierre had not eaten all day and the smell of the potatoes seemed extremely pleasant to him. He thanked the soldier and began to eat.
“Well, are they all right?” said the soldier with a smile. “You should do like this.”
He took a potato, drew out his clasp knife, cut the potato into two equal halves on the palm of his hand, sprinkled some salt on it from the rag, and handed it to Pierre.
“The potatoes are grand!” he said once more. “Eat some like that!”
Pierre thought he had never eaten anything that tasted better. —Tolstoy War and Peace

“Po-ta-toes,” said Sam. “The Gaffer’s delight, and a rare good ballast for an empty belly.” —JRR Tolkien

Couch potato (links)
History of the Potato

The Potato Museum Blog

Potato links for students and educators.

Of course, Rebecca Writes’ October, 2006, archive page with all the Potato Fest entries will be the go-to place for potato information in the blogosphere from now on.

Mashed potatoes (news)

“The United Nations (UN) has declared 2008 as the International Year of the Potato, in Resolution 4/2005 of the Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, adopted on 25 November 2005.”

Writing Contests for Adults and Children

Oct4

What’s the Story? from SRA/McGraw-Hill is a national writing contest for teachers to win the chance to be published as part of an SRA reading program.
SRA is seeking creative, original, and imaginative stories and poems (fiction and nonfiction) written for students in Grades Pre-K–6—anything you think your own students would enjoy reading.
Story winners will receive a cash prize of $1,000. Poem winners will receive a cash prize of $500. The deadline for entries is December 31, 2006.
I doubt if the term “teacher” includes homeschool teachers, but those who are former public or private school teachers and who enjoy writing should enter.

The Old Schoolhouse, a homeschooling magazine, is sponsoring a short story contest. The deadline is November 1, 2006, and there’s a $7.00 entry fee.

Olive Garden restaurant is asking students in first through twelfth grade: “If you could create a new holiday, what would you name it and how would it be celebrated?” Answers could be worth a trip to New York and a $2,500 savings bond, as part of Olive Garden’s 11th-annual Pasta Tales writing contest.
From Oct. 2 through Dec. 1, Olive Garden will accept essays of 50 to 250 words from students in the U.S. and Canada. Entry forms and complete rules will be available beginning Oct. 2 at local Olive Garden restaurants or by logging on to the Olive Garden website.
The grand prize is a trip to New York, dinner at the Olive Garden in Times Square and a $2,500 savings bond. A winner also will be chosen in each grade category and will receive a $500 savings bond and dinner with their family at their local Olive Garden.

Delacorte Press offers the prize of a book contract for a hardcover and a paperback edition, including an advance and royalties, awarded annually to encourage the writing of a novel of contemporary young adult fiction. Each award consists of $1,500 in cash and a $7,500 advance against royalties.

The Trollope Society has established an annual short story competition. The emphasis is on reading – and writing – for fun.
The worldwide competition is open to students twenty-one and younger. The winner receives a cheque for £1,000 ($1,750 USD) and his or her story is published in the Society’s journal, Trollopiana.

The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, in partnership with Target Stores and in cooperation with affiliate state centers for the book, invites readers in grades 4 through 12 to enter Letters About Literature, a national reading-writing contest. To enter, readers write a personal letter to an author, living or dead, from any genre– fiction or nonfiction, contemporary or classic, explaining how that author’s work changed the student’s way of thinking about the world or themselves. There are three competition levels: Level I for children in grades 4 through 6; Level II for grades 7 and 8, and Level III, grades 9 – 12. Winners receive cash awards at the national and state levels.

I happen to think contests are a wonderful way to motivate students to write—and even adults can use some motivation sometimes. So write that short story or YA novel, and send it in. Be sure and come to tell me if you (or one of your children) win any of these contests.

I’m adding this post to the Works-for-Me Wednesday list. Mosey on over to Rocks in my Dryer to find out how to make coke roast and to look at a list of links to lots of other nifty ideas.

Week 8 of World Geography: Japan

Oct2

Music:
Robert Schumann—Symphonic Etudes
Robert Schumann and Mascot Ziff–Wheeler

Poems:
More haiku

Science:
Physical Science: Force, work, and energy

Nonfiction Read Aloud:
Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun–Blumberg

Fiction Read Alouds:
Li Lun, Lad of Courage–Treffinger
Born in the Year of Courage–Crofford

Picture Books:
What Does the Rooster Say, Yoshio?—Battles
How My Parents Learned to Eat—Freidman
Count Your Way Through Japan—Haskins. There is a whole series of these count-your-way-through books, and I think they’re lots of fun for little ones and elementary age children.
Tree of Cranes—Say. Allen Say is an amazing Japanese American picture book author and illustrator.
Tea With Milk—Say
Grandfather’s Journey—Say
Welcome to Japan–Auch
An Illustrated History of Japan–Nishimura
This Place Is Crowded: Japan–Cobb

Elementary Readers:
A Samuraii Castle—Macdonald
The Cat Who Went to Heaven—Coatsworth
The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn—Hoobler
Shipwrecked! The True Adventures of a Japanese Boy–Blumberg

For Your Listening Pleasure

Sep22

Kiddie Records.

“Kiddie Records Weekly is a three year project celebrating the golden age of children’s records. This brief but prolific period spanned from the mid forties through the early fifties, producing a wealth of all-time classics. Many of these recordings were extravagant Hollywood productions on major record labels and featured big time celebrities and composers.
Over the years, these forgotten treasures have slipped off the radar and now stand on the brink of extinction. Our mission is to give them a new lease on life by sharing them with today’s generation of online listeners. Each recording has been carefully transferred from the original 78s and encoded to MP3 format for you to download and enjoy. You’ll find a new addition every week, all year long.”

Singing Science Records.
From the creator of the webpage:

“When I was a kid my parents got this six-LP set of science-themed folk songs for my sister and me. They were produced in the late 1950s / early 1960s by Hy Zaret (William Stirrat) and Lou Singer. . . .The Singing Science lyrics were very Atomic Age, while the tunes were generally riffs on popular or genre music of the time. We played them incessantly.
In February 1998 I found the LPs in my parents’ basement. I cleaned them up, played them one last time on an old turntable, and burned them onto a set of three CD-R discs. In December 1999 I read the songs back off the CDs and encoded them into MP3, so now you can hear them on the web.

I already told you about LibriVox, a site which “provides free audiobooks from the public domain.” You can download these mp3 files of books (and poems) into your computer or iPod, or you can listen at the website. I’m enjoying it immensely.

American Rhetoric is a website with a “database of 5000+ full text, audio and video (streaming) versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events, and a declaration or two.” I’ll be visiting this website frequently this year as I teach US History and American Literature at our homeschool co-op.

The Genevan Psalter. This webpage includes versified psalms in English and midi files to listen to the original (used in Calvin’sGeneva) melodies.

Isn’t the internet wonderful?