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In these books, educators will find solid choices to support some aspect of the Common Core State Standards. Most of the publishers have made a noticeable effort to address the standards and relate math to everyday experiences, giving readers connections that help them engage with the texts.
One thing is certainly clear about this spring’s new nonfiction series: publishers are focused on helping educators understand and deliver on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
The fall of 2012 was a strong season for new series in American history and geography. In comparison, the spring of 2013 has a small turnout. However, that does not mean that these books are also-rans. Quite the contrary is true.
Ever responsive to changing fads in educational theory, nonfiction publishers are, with varying success, already tweaking their new titles to conform to the Common Core science standards. These efforts range from inserting a few vague ideas for activities or demonstrations into otherwise conventional surveys of well-traveled informational territory to festooning texts with review questions, primary-source documents, photos and graphics, and suggestions for ongoing projects or lines of thought.
In the spirit of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, these sports and exercise-related books encourage children to keep active and avoid obesity. Students will find inspiration in titles about their favorite teams, players, competitions, or forms of exercise.
With a few notable exceptions, the entriesin this mixed bag of high-tech offerings are aimed at casual readers enthralled by images of big, noisy machines–preferably the sort that carry guns and bombs.
Biographies are the perfect tools with which educators can engage students and ask them to think critically about how important figures affected the past and the world today. The Common Core State Standards mean that children and teens need strong options from which to choose when faced with having to write reports or research papers.
Any elementary school librarian can tellyou that trying to keep books in the 590s in reasonable order is a herculean task. However, that’s not a negative. Children in this age range devour books about animals.
Kings and queens. Generals and enlisted men. Flamboyant outlaws and gangsters. Intrepid explorers and treasure hunters. Much of the world’s history has been made by people who lived outsized lives, pursued outsized dreams, or achieved outsized deeds.
Animal books are perennial favorites for pleasure reading and report writing. This spring, series about pets, both common and unusual, are prevalent, as are titles about attention-grabbing (big or scary) creatures. While many of the sets cover standard report elements such as habitats, life cycles, and the food chain, others have a more specific focus.
This spring’s life-science entries offer an assortment of possibilities for refreshing your 500 and 600 sections. Most of the series come with the expected set of nonfiction tools (e.g., TOC, index, glossary, bibliography), but in some cases, publishers are including more text cues to aid the youngest readers with decoding and comprehension skills. Series for older readers are adding questions to help students read to learn.
Students are inundated with status updates, tweets, instant feeds, and more. Many children and teens define themselves by whom they are virtually connected to and what they “like” on social media sites.
Some books are read for pleasure, some for study. But the series in this section show kids that books can be real-world instructors as well. Converting manual activity into language is often an overlooked skill, but it is one that helps develop observational faculties and linguistic precision.
While some of the series reviewed here focus on career options we’ve all heard of again and again but could never be bored with–such as being a librarian–others offer a look into work that is fresh, new, or extremely dangerous. From the familiar community helper to the fantastic polar explorer (with a few scientists thrown in for good measure), you’ll find books on a wide variety of careers. Overall, these offerings are adequate and would [...]
While vampires and Greek myths remain popular, they’ve taken a backseat to some perennial favorites. Ghosts, aliens, and mythical monsters appear more than once in this season’s sets. Fairy tales, too, have a foothold.
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities,” says Albus Dumbledore in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. What the wise wizard (and his creator) understands is that children face difficult decisions every day.
Readers of this season’s biographies can expect to travel through time to meet characters from long ago, investigate various careers by meeting stars of today, and be inspired to invent and create.
All of us have a private self with thoughts, ideas, and beliefs that influence our public behavior in many ways–including our religious and political affiliations, the ways we see the world, and our interactions with both those close to us and communities. One of the purposes of education is to encourage students to develop values and attitudes that will help them be happy, productive citizens. Covering everything from bullying to holidays and the future of communication, the books in [...]
Series Made Simple Fall 2012Cover and illustration by Daniel Pelavin
When I get interested in a topic, I become obsessed. I don’t really have hobbies; I have infatuations. I don’t have favorite movies or novels; I have look-but-don’t-touch collections. And when it comes to learning about a new subject, I can’t just read one book on it—I have to read everything I can get my hands on.
And that is why so much of the Common Core State Standards [...]
This season’s animal titles are thoughtfully designed to support Common Core State Standards with good use of nonfiction text features and subject-specific vocabulary. Whether students are requesting books for research or for recreational reading, the abundant photographs and conversational narratives ensure that they will be engaged and will come away with increased background knowledge. Several series explain classification and interaction within a species’ habitat, environment, or group. While many of the animals highlighted are old favorites, students [...]
