Your students may choose to volunteer for military service; they will certainly become voters and taxpayers. As educators, it is essential that we teach them how to become informed citizens–to examine evidence and argument related to the issues that shape political opinion and decisions.

Missiles launched at Syria are likely to provoke a response that spills over into a future conflict. However, if Assad’s government is not forced to face the consequences of banned weapon use–assuming that it has indeed used them–we are deciding that the immoral and impermissible is acceptable. In the 1930s, in both Spain and Czechoslovakia, we saw that not standing up to dictators only encouraged them and lead to larger, more horrific, conflicts.

To attack Syria is to increase the chance that the rebels–many of whom are the sworn enemies of the United States– will win, or carve out a toxic territory of their own, a haven for global jihadists. This is what the Russians claim. Assad is secular leader, while the forces fighting against him include extreme Islamic militants. Yet to allow this president to murder with impunity is to continue the bloody family business; his infamous father slaughtered tens of thousands of his Muslim Brotherhood opponents.

Which is the world we want to live in?  One in which Syria is a failed state, where Al Qaeda cells flourish close to Israel and Turkey, or a world in which we accept the deaths of tens and even hundreds of thousands of civilians?

It seems to me that this is the topic and debate that our students should be reading about, learning about, and having right now. Evaluating evidence, point of view, and argument is as Common Core as it gets. As global citizens, our students must be able to get beyond headlines, read a variety of complex texts, and form opinions based on evidence. What should the role of the school librarian be in sharing information about current issues? Librarians can lead students to articles from international papers such as The New York Times; news sources such as Al Jazeera that present insights and perspectives that aren’t often visible in American coverage; and the websites of groups that are on the ground, for example, Doctors Without Borders.

How can we tell if chemical weapons were used? A perfect science assignment. Why would Assad use poison gas when he was winning the war and United Nations’ inspectors were about to arrive? A great question for social studies classes. Could the rebels have staged an attack on themselves in order to get international powers to attack Assad? Every child who has an older sibling understands that strategy: provoking the bigger kid to lash out so that s/he will take the blame.

Syria is not so far away–what we decide to do there will directly affect every student in your school. Right in front of our eyes events that may well have decade-shaping consequences are playing out. Librarians can provide the resources that allow students to parse the arguments and find their way to reasoned answers. We cannot stumble into war blindly, nor can we ignore the need for strong responses. We must take the sober, adult, responsibility of making hard choices. By providing students with evidence, librarians can help them to become the responsible citizens our nation requires.

As students around the country return to school, those in New York City are facing a future without certified school librarians, as the NYC Department of Education (DOE) has asked to be excused from a decades-old state mandate on minimum staffing requirements. The request for a “variance” from the law (Commissioner’s Regulation §91.2), filed August 9 with the New York State Education Department (see SLJ’s coverage, “Educators, Parents Fight NYC Bid to Bypass State Mandate for School Librarians,”), proclaims a sad lack of vision concerning the contribution librarians make to this great city. Mayor Bloomberg, surely this is not the kind of legacy you wish for? This is how we wisely invest in our future?

The Wall Street Journal reports that there are a meager 333 certified librarians serving the city’s 1,700 schools, after steady declines for years. We have reached a new, perhaps critical, low.

The timing couldn’t be worse for our schools. It’s been shown that kids in schools with librarians do better than those in schools without—a pretty simple and sufficient case. By whatever name (teacher librarian, media specialist, or librarian), these professionals deliver on basic literacy, digital literacy, research skills, college readiness, and much more. And, now, when all too many teachers lack training on the new Common Core standards, the city continues to defund this key human capital investment. This, just as the reaction to the first scores truly tests the implementation of the standards. We need the skills that media specialists bring to our schools.

The DOE should be positioning librarians to provide on-the-ground support for the implementation of the most significant educational initiative of our generation. School librarians are a natural source of professional development on materials—print or digital—and they can be a vital link to parents in explaining what to expect in the transition. Librarians, including those directly confronted by the NYC DOE’s move, are out front on the Common Core nationally. We’ve published several of them here.

The fact is there has been an ongoing disregard for the mandate itself. This law, in place for decades, articulates the will of the public for the public good. It is an expression of thoughtful process. Undermining it via a series of one-off executive decisions made by principals under immediate budgetary pressure is not how our social contract works best. Perhaps it is not such a bad thing that this penny-wise, pound-foolish cost-savings tactic has been brought out in the open—and back into the political process.

We don’t need what the DOE calls “equivalent service” in its August 9 letter. We don’t need vague assurances of “arrangements” and “steps” that will be taken to cope with this disinvestment. The NYC DOE’s request presents an opportunity for those of us who know what librarians do to challenge what’s been happening and to demand that the department take the lead in producing better educational results by supporting the deployment of the Common Core and those who are key to its success.

Will the DOE provide a vision of how to improve our children’s education? Or will it continue to cut costs in ways that at best seem small-minded?

Welcome back to school, people.

Rebecca T. Miller
Editor-in-Chief
rmiller@mediasourceinc.com

But what I noticed right off—and surely struck many of you—is that we need to stop talking about the Common Core State Standards in the singular. There is a whole set of distinct Common Core challenges, and we need to be clear sighted about what they are, and the tools needed to address them.

I realized some time ago that there was more than one kind of Common Core experience. For young children, in preschool or elementary, Common Core is and will be their school experience. Year after year they will be exposed to content-rich nonfiction and increasingly complex texts and vocabulary, and they will gain skills in close reading and mining textual evidence. But for the students already in middle, and especially, high school, the Common Core Standards present another challenge. The schooling they received and learned to negotiate does not match the assessments that require them to demonstrate the above-mentioned skills. We need to define the needs of students who are in free fall as well as those who are rising through the new system. That is step one. Step two is more difficult.

The New York State results put me in mind of a suggestion a principal made to me earlier this summer: we must disaggregate scores to determine which cohort is experiencing the sharpest decline. This principal, accustomed to the daily triage of deciding where to best use limited resources, recognized that the lowest scores are not seen evenly throughout our schools. The steepest drops in scores seem to be in the most challenged schools. This may seem self-evident, but it is not. The needs of students— and communities—vary. What are the needs of a school where many families have deep pockets and available resources versus the demands of a school where almost all of the support and instruction takes place within the school building? And the issue is not just the burdens the students face, but school policies. In my experience, struggling schools too often turn to programs—teaching scripts, mandated curricula, and (very) limited and structured reading requirements. The cure makes the ailment worse.

Here’s a project for those reading this column: Can we compare the Common Core outcomes of schools with parallel demographics, a first set with accredited full-time school librarians against another that uses aides and volunteers, or in which the librarian essentially checks out books? Does a librarian make a difference in outcomes? How? We all need to know that—but we won’t find out until we look past the headlines and into the numbers.

What’s to be done? In one sense, I think the New York results are encouraging. The Common Core standards were initiated because high school graduates were not prepared for the next stage in their lives. The recent assessments have allowed us to examine those gaps while the students are still in our buildings. We have time to help these students. But what resources must we adopt to do so? How can the deep thinking and engaged reading required by the Common Core standards be effectively taught in the schools where there the pass rate was between 0 to 5 percent? Can we develop Common Core assessments that address vocational needs? I can’t be the first person to ask these questions. I’m eager to learn what kinds of programs and interventions you have seen that are effective, ineffective, or produce middling results. Surely there are innovators and researchers who are blazing trails, testing ideas, and pointing the way for the rest of us.

From any conventional point of view, these are the centuries you can skip on the way to the Crusades, the High Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. But this new scholarship points to an era of lively intellectual exchange. Indeed, from my research on Sugar Changed the World (Clarion, 2010), it’s clear that Hindus, as well as the last of Athenian scholars (whose intellectual lineage leads back to Plato and Aristotle), were also part of this world.

I realize, of course, that however fascinating the recovery the academic reviewer calls “submerged worlds” may be to scholars and interested adults, this period will never make its way into K-12 curricula. Or could it? Just yesterday I read Jonathan Israel’s review of Anthony Pagden’s new book, The Enlightenment: And Why it Still Matters titled “How the Light Came In” (June 21 2013, Times Literary Supplement), which outlines a very different age of intellectual ferment, the Enlightenment. The reviewer is deeply versed in that era and in his essay he lists writers across Europe and North America and two centuries, who, in various camps, were part of that period. Then I came across a third review—that of Sarah Churchwell’s Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of ‘The Great Gatsby.”  Now Gatsby is a novel high school students do read, and Churchwell’s book seems to capture the wide intellectual world that fed F. Scott Fitzgerald as he wrote it—especially the work of the modernist writers T.S. Eliot and James Joyce.

The themes of these essays and the books they examine—ancient theological debate, centuries of humanist and Enlightenment ferment, and the cluster of early 20th-century experimental artists—are that the individuals, inventors, and ideas we offer to students as a sequence of greatest hits were really the expression of much larger moments of upheaval and exchange. What if we shifted our educational focus from “Key People and 5 Things You Need to Know” to an exploration of how such a hub of exchange forms, flourishes, and fades away? What if we said it doesn’t matter if you are teaching about the invention of bronze, the Renaissance, the birth of atomic and quantum theory, or digital innovation today, we want your students to examine and understand how a group of thinkers and creators comes together, argues, debates, steals, shares, competes, builds, and yields exponential leaps in thinking, creativity, and invention?

If growth was our theme, we could get past the  “Plato to NATO” goal of passing on names and dates and explore patterns of innovation. We might end a unit of study by asking students to look around and discover where nodes of creativity are taking shape today. How might they best train to be part of those lively places and spaces? Would that not be a useful approach to education? I’d love to think about how to make this kind of curriculum real.

Librarians are often more comfortable working in the literacy classroom than manipulating mathematical data, but it may be statistics that prove to be our greatest ally. When the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were rolled out two years ago, they were packaged as content standards, and six instructional pedagogical shifts were identified. Those shifts called for additional attention to vocabulary, nonfiction materials, text complexity, literacy across content areas, increased curriculum rigor from kindergarten through high school, and a focus on producing evidence (versus opinion). By drawing conclusions from data extrapolated from the English Language Arts (ELA) CCSS, librarians can build a strong case for a seventh shift: research.

In the world of statistics, occurrence, or frequency, is often used to interpret results. Viewing the CCSS standards through a statistical lens as a body of data and assessing importance based upon word frequency produces results that support that case. Start by assuming that the ELA standards represent the intentions of the authors of the CCSS, and the objectives, learning targets, and pedagogy that they are asking educators to embrace. Investigate the language of the standards and examine the number of times certain words appear; you’ll notice that the term “research” appears 132 times, exceeding the mention of “vocabulary” (79) and “nonfiction” (64), and comes in close to “evidence” (155) and “complexity” (196). The word “information” (244) is used more often than all five, but behind “reading” (388).

Clearly, research is an essential component of the learning process in the CCSS classroom. In most schools, it’s the librarian who teaches the higher-level skills that equip students to access, evaluate, and synthesize information—information that they use to speak and write with accuracy and authority when they produce evidence and draw conclusions for discussions, debates, or written assignments.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, half of this generation’s students will earn their living from the creation, dissemination, analysis, and communication of information. Under the CCSS, students begin exploring multiple points of view and presentations in the elementary years; by sixth grade, they are “researching to build and present knowledge” and by seventh grade are expected to conduct “short research projects to answer a question, drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions for further research and investigation.” These benchmarks broaden and expand until 12th grade, by which time students should be “college and career ready.”

In addition, the pedagogy of evidence—text-based answers and the close reading of text—is part of the research process. Approximately half of the Common Core writing standards acknowledge that research is part of the writing process (see, Writing for Information Standards 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10). In the introduction to the ELA standards, under “Key Design Consideration” is this strong indication of that role: “To be ready for college, workforce training, and life in a technological society, students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize, and report on information and ideas, to conduct original research in order to answer questions or solve problems, and to analyze and create a high volume and extensive range of print and nonprint texts in media forms old and new….”

Perception data (the court of public opinion) can be as powerful as concrete data. It’s time for library professionals to craft a national message regarding research—in the same way that the arts have implanted themselves into the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) movement in education, turning it into STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, + Art/Design). Formally acknowledging a research shift underscores its function in “building and presenting knowledge” and adds weight to the librarian’s instrumental role within the CCSS.

The time has come to raise our megaphones and strut our stuff. This is an evidence-based claim. We have the data to support it.

Paige Jaeger (pjaeger@WSWHEBOBES.org) is coordinator for school library services, Washington Saratoga Warren Hamilton Essex BOCES, Saratoga Springs, NY.

First off, the authors clarify what they mean by a “multimodal, multigenre text set.” Simply put, it’s a group of resources—print, audio, and visual—on a particular topic or theme presented in a variety of genres. Here genre is defined as “a form of writing that serves a socially recognizable purpose”—a designation that includes everything from tweets to recipes to articles to books.

Text sets support the goals of a unit of study, can be used in elementary through high school, and are compiled, ideally, by a team of teachers and a librarian. Librarians familiar with pathfinders might recognize a connection here, but there’s an important difference. As Mary Cappiello explains, “a text set is a classroom tool for a teacher to use strategically…it is not everything but the kitchen sink (though in the gathering and sifting phases it is) but rather an expert culling to structure a specific learning experience.” Students use the skills and strategies being taught to delve into content across the curriculum that grabs their attention (and meets state and local standards), honing their proficiency and knowledge along the way. The authors know this is demanding time-consuming work, but their enthusiasm is infectious, and they lighten the load by supplying detailed how-to’s and models.

In Part II, “Text Sets in Action,” the authors demonstrate the process of putting text sets to work by sharing the collaborative efforts of teachers in two different schools. In one, they detail the enhancement of an already successful but slightly outdated social studies unit on immigration, and the second takes readers through the design of a new unit on the solar system. Each example documents the tasks of collecting resource materials, organizing the texts for instruction, and using the texts with students in classroom instruction that supports inquiry and critical thinking. Sample planning charts, graphic organizers and worksheets, activities for students, and examples of student work are all available to use as a model or jumping off point. (A Digital Resource CD with printable files is included.) Four chapters offer additional resources with sample units on the Great Depression, immigration, space, and honeybees, while a text set for a unit on trees is included in an appendix. Tree units specific to Massachusetts and New York City are also available online.

Within the CCSS framework, everyone is in the vocabulary business. That’s right—everyone, according to Adams, research professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences at Brown University. Adams’s body of research contributed significantly to the six English Language Arts (ELA) Common Core shifts in instruction: the addition of more nonfiction texts, the focus on building knowledge, the escalation of text complexity at every grade level, the increased importance of citing textual evidence, the emphasis on literacy across disciplines, and the attention to academic terminology.

If you read and study Adams’s work, you will note that she distills achievement to its basic elements: the more you read, the greater your vocabulary. The greater your vocabulary, the better you read. The better you read, the more you comprehend. The more you comprehend, the broader your knowledge base, and the broader your knowledge base, the more you can achieve. Therefore, on a rudimentary level, achievement is dependent on vocabulary.

Adams provides plenty of other insights on language, such as the fact that our everyday spoken language is, typically, grammatically incorrect, void of adjectives and prepositions, and includes a mere 10,000 words. In our students’ work, we underscore correct punctuation and grammar, complex sentence structure, and a vigorous vocabulary. This exposes a fundamental dichotomy that we can address by modeling. We need to elevate classroom discussions and articulate and mirror our expectations of our students. Conversely, we need to require a higher level of reading.

The link between poverty and vocabulary deficit has long been acknowledged and accentuates the disparity between verbal and written skills. Librarians actively support programs (Reading Is Fundamental, etc.) designed in part to battle this shortfall. We can further embrace the Common Core vocabulary shift by reenergizing our efforts to select read-alouds with robust language, helping students find engaging (and challenging) nonfiction books that match their interests, carefully choosing titles for reading lists, and initiating independent reading incentives. We can encourage students to “research like a detective and write like a reporter,” as David Coleman, a CCSS ELA author, suggests.

Locally, we have recommended an approach whereby we purposefully integrate academic vocabulary into classroom instruction whenever possible. When students hear unfamiliar terminology, they simply hold up a hand making a “V” sign with their fingers, so teachers will know to flood the conversation with synonyms. It’s a visual assessment technique that enhances instruction without interrupting it. The unknown word becomes part of the student’s receptive vocabulary, and closer to his or her productive vocabulary, leading to comprehension and achievement.

The CCSS also embrace the premise that every subject area has content-specific terms that can be used to assess student understanding, referred to as “tier-three vocabulary.” Content knowledge and understanding is often demonstrated or measured with the correct usage of tier-three terminology. Research has its own content-specific vocabulary such as “credibility,” “bias,” “annotate,” “cite,” and “synthesize.” Terms encountered in the library are the expressions of the Information Age and should not be overlooked.

Librarians can model vocabulary-rich lessons. Start a “word of the day” program. Include games such as Scrabble and Upwords in your lending library. Model a dynamic vocabulary. Simply by holding words in high regard and spotlighting lyrics and language, librarians will begin to embrace the CCSS shift. Even with explicit vocabulary instruction and implicit vocabulary acquisition, most students’ vocabularies fall far below the one million words they encounter in print. It is a mighty high hill for them to climb, but we can be their guides.

Paige Jaeger (pjaeger@WSWHEBOCES.org) is coordinator for school library services, Washington Saratoga Warren Hamilton Essex BOCES, Saratoga Springs, NY.

Deb Delisle, Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, U.S. Department of Education, and Richard Gonzales, Senior Advisor for Early Childhood Development, Department of Health and Human Services, joined Ralph Smith, Managing Director of the Campaign for Grade Level Reading, and Susan H. Hildreth, Director of IMLS, for a joint press event today highlighting the report.

“This report issues a call to action: Now is the time for policy makers and practitioners to fully use the capacity of libraries and museums in their early learning efforts,” says Hildreth in her introduction to the report. “Libraries and museums reach millions of children each year. It is exciting to bring that capacity into focus so that libraries and museums can more effectively engage in early learning strategies at the community, state, and national levels.”

For IMLS, the report is only the first step in a deeper and expanded commitment to the youngest and most at-risk children in the United States, Hildreth says. She notes, “We will be pursuing special efforts to assure that libraries and museums can reach under-served children and provide opportunities that can make a difference that will last a lifetime.”

According to the report, libraries and museums support learning are by increasing high-quality early learning experiences, engaging and supporting families as their child’s first teachers, supporting development of executive function and “deeper learning” through literacy and STEM-based experiences, creating seamless links across early learning and the early grades, positioning children for meeting expectations of the Common Core State Standards, addressing the summer slide, linking new digital technologies to learning, improving family health and nutrition, leveraging community partnerships, and adding capacity to early learning networks.

The report also outlined areas and questions that deserve further impact study, and specific recommendations for improving early learning outcomes and increasing school readiness through federal, state, and community efforts.

Federal policy makers, for example, should include museum/library grants in funding priorities, support research to identify best practices for early learning in museums and libraries, and invest in professional development for museum and library staff.

Communities, the report recommends, should include museums and libraries in initiatives designed to increase family engagement in school readiness, examine ways to help vulnerable, underserved families access museum and library services, and launch public information campaigns.

For districts and schools, the report calls for joint professional development to teachers and museum and library staff, and the establishment of partnerships between schools and local museums and libraries that support building content knowledge.

The report also highlights and details current successful programs in New York (the Children’s Museum of Manhattan); Idaho; Texas (Children’s Museum of Houston); Washington; Virginia (Richmond Public Library, Arlington County schools); Pennsylvania (the greater Pittsburgh region); Florida (Miami Science Museum); Massachusetts (Boston Children’s Museum); Maryland (city of Baltimore).

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) provide several ways to incorporate what students have learned from listening to classics during the summer as starting points for individual writing and classroom discussion:

[CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.2] Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

[CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.1c] Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that probe reasoning and evidence; ensure a hearing for a full range of positions on a topic or issue; clarify, verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions; and promote divergent and creative perspectives.

A natural extension for listening to these audiobooks is viewing their film adaptations, a compare and contrast study that can be found in several reading, speaking, and listening Standards. The experience offers abundant opportunities for student discussion and writing.

Literary and modern classics are included in many national and regional lists for the college bound, such as the comprehensive list from the Arrowhead Library System in Wisconsin (http://ow.ly/kwSPV). Check with your local public library for copies of classics in print, audio, or DVD formats to round out lesson plans.

All Quiet on the Western Front. Written by Erich Maria Remarque. Trans. by A. W. Wheen. Narrated by Frank Muller. 6 CDs. 7 hrs. Recorded Books. 1994. ISBN 978-0-7887-3441-0. $72.75. Gr 9 Up
This World War I narrative was originally published in 1929, while the senseless destruction of the Great War was still fresh in the minds of those who lived through its horrors. Hearing 19-year-old Paul Baumer describe his experiences as a German recruit, the depth of his deprivation in the trenches, the cruel loss of life, and the cumulative devastation on mind and body is heart wrenching. Muller’s understated performance, with its steady pacing and paradoxically soothing vocal timbre, enhances the lyrical language and elicits a palpable sense of the terror faced by Paul and his friends through the unrelenting close combat. In 1930, the movie adaptation won the Academy Award for best picture and best director and is now in the Library of Congress’s National Film Preservation Board’s Film Registry (http://ow.ly/kwRp2).

The Call of the Wild. Written by Jack London. Narrated by Jeff Daniels. 3 CDs. 3:15 hrs. Listening Library. 2010. ISBN 978-0-3077-1026-0. $30. Gr 8 Up
Originally serialized in The Saturday Evening Post, June 20–July 18, 1903, this classic remains relevant over 100 years later. The universal themes of survival, kindness, cruelty, and natural instinct are strengthened by Daniels’s performance. His voicing provides just the right conversational and friendly tone with a touch of comfortable rasp, adding fresh energy to the timeless story. Buck, a four-year-old St. Bernard–and Scotch Shepherd cross breed, who weighs 140 pounds, has his life changed forever when he is kidnapped and taken to the cold bleakness of the Arctic to work with Klondike gold miners. A film adaptation of this story starring Clark Gable was released in 1935. Comparing and contrasting the audio production and the film will offer students many chances to write about or discuss the two versions.

Dracula. Written by Bram Stoker. Narrated by Alan Cumming, Tim Curry, and a full cast. Digital Download. 15:30 hrs. Audio Theater/Audible. 2012. $29.95. Gr 9 Up
The strength of this audiobook production of the 1897 classic is the performances by a full cast that includes the incomparable Alan Cumming, Tim Curry, Simon Vance, and Katherine Kellgren, all seasoned and award-winning narrators. Voicing the various characters with individual accents and unique vocal stylings makes for a memorable listening experience. Tension builds immediately as listeners become privy to the journal of young solicitor Jonathan Harker, who travels from England to Dracula’s castle and, with a sense of grave foreboding, realizes that he is a prisoner of the undead Count. This chilling narrative opens Stoker’s tale of Victorian moral fears that sparked the vampire genre and furnishes an excellent example of how listening to a terrifying story, performed beautifully, raises text, plot, and characterization to a new level. Viewing the 1935 movie adaptation of Dracula (starring Bela Lugosi, also on the Library of Congress’s National Film Preservation Board Film Registry) will encourage discussion not only of classic literature, but also of classic filmmaking.

Fahrenheit 451. Written by Ray Bradbury. Narrated by Stephen Hoye. 5 CDs. 5:30 hrs. Tantor Media. 2010. ISBN 978-1-4001-4818-9. $24.99. Gr 9 Up
In this foremost example of dystopian fiction, Bradbury twists the heroic role of firefighters. In a futuristic society, firemen don’t put out fires, they start them. Specifically, they burn books and the subversive ideas contained within their pages. The trouble begins when one fireman, Guy Montag, begins to question the system and seeks to escape the control of the city. Hoye is a superb guide through this terrifying world, moving both action and reflection along with exactly the right pacing. First published in 1953, the story remains disturbingly contemporary and the ending, with its determination to keep books alive by memorizing them and speaking them aloud, is well suited to the audio medium. The 1996 film, directed by François Truffaut and starring Julie Christie and Oskar Werner, veers from the original story, making it particularly useful as a student exploration of the differences between Hoye’s interpretation of Bradbury’s words and Truffaut’s greater liberties with the text.

Hamlet. Written by William Shakespeare. Narrated by Simon Russell Beale, Imogen Stubbs, Jane Lapotaire, and a full cast. 3 CDs, 3:25 hrs. AudioGo. 2006. ISBN 978-0-7927-2985-3. $33.95. Gr 9 Up
Perhaps the best known of Shakespeare’s tragedies, this story of destiny and revenge pits a young prince against the murderous uncle who has stolen the throne and queen. Students often struggle when reading Shakespeare, and listening can serve as a bridge, facilitating understanding. This excellent full-cast production includes musical interludes and an insert with scene-by-scene summaries, making it not only a strong listening experience, but also the perfect adjunct to literary appreciation. Fans of the long-running British science-fiction series Doctor Who, and David Tennant’s portrayal of the Doctor, will be mesmerized by the 2010 BBC television production featuring Tennant as Hamlet, with Patrick Stewart as the nefarious uncle, Claudius.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (and The Adventures of the Dancing Men). Written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Narrated by Simon Prebble. 6 CDs. 6:30 hrs. Tantor Media. 2009. ISBN 978-1-4001-1515-0. $17.99. Gr 9 Up
Sherlock Holmes takes on the intriguing case of the heir to the Baskerville estate who seems destined to be the next victim of the mysterious, and deadly, hound thought to have killed several of his ancestors. Dodgy servants, an escaped prisoner, and a supposed brother-and-sister duo test the famous detective’s mettle. Prebble is more than up to the task of directing listeners through myriad characters, clues, and deceptions. Subtle voicing differentiates the large cast and expert pacing heightens the tension. Be sure to have students watch the first-rate British (Granada Television) production starring Jeremy Brett as Conan Doyle’s brilliant, but decidedly peculiar detective.

Things Fall Apart. Written by Chinua Achebe. Narrated by Peter Francis James. 6 CDs. 6:30 hrs. Recorded Books. 1997. ISBN 978-1-4025-4462-0. $72.75. Gr 9 Up
Published in 1958, Achebe’s seminal work heralds the revolution that preceded Nigerian independence in 1960. Designed to teach students about the rich Igbo heritage, it tells the heartbreaking tale of Okonkwo’s single-minded rise to success among his people and the surrounding villages, followed by a heinous act, banishment, and descent into total failure. James narrates this story of the European colonization of Africa, the encroachment of Christianity, and the disintegration of traditional cultures with appropriate gravitas and measured pacing, bringing out all of the nuances of the text. Students can listen to Achebe read a part of the story (http://ow.ly/kwRJe) and then watch a portion of a production that includes the same text (http://ow.ly/kwS2a) for comparison. Round out the unit with PBS journalist Jeffrey Brown’s interview with Achebe on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart (http://ow.ly/kwSpg).

To Kill a Mockingbird. Written by Harper Lee. Narrated by Sissy Spacek. 11 CDs. 12 hrs. Harper Audio. 2006. ISBN 978-0-06-1808-12-8. $34.99. Gr 8 Up
Spacek, with her lilting Southern accent, perfectly captures the voice of Scout, the young girl whose life is thrown into turmoil when her father, the upright and highly ethical lawyer Atticus Finch, takes on the defense of a black man accused of raping a white woman. Their sleepy Alabama town may never be the same and Spacek’s exceptional pacing propels this Pulitzer Prize-winner—a staple of many high school reading lists—to its inexorable conclusion. The 1962 film, starring Gregory Peck (who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Atticus Finch), was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1995.

Sharon Grover is Head of Youth Services at the Hedberg Public Library, Janesville, WI. Lizette (Liz) Hannegan was a school librarian and the district library supervisor for the Arlington (VA) Public Schools before her retirement. They are co-authors of Listening to Learn: Audiobooks Supporting Literacy (ALA Editions, 2011).

hat will be in your tote as you head out to the beach, a nearby lake, or your own front stoop this summer? Our bags are already heavy with Paula Byrne’s The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things (Harper Collins, 2013), and Mark Bittman’s VB6 (Clarkson Potter, 2013), on his adventures as a part-time vegan. Then there’s Robert Caro’s The Passage of Power (Random, 2013), the fourth volume the author has written about Lyndon Johnson, this one weighing in at a hefty 700 pages, and Emile Simpson’s War From the Ground Up: Twenty-First-Century Combat as Politics (Oxford University, 2013), which Marc insists is a must-read, “to understand the long war that is likely to be before us for at least the next two decades.” Sure, all three of us will also be borrowing novels and short stories from our local libraries. But, like so many children and teens in schools across the country, we also enjoy reading nonfiction for pleasure.

How can we use the summer to provide kids with more opportunities to grow confident as nonfiction readers? Let’s start with the summer reading list at your school. What’s on it? Discussions about summer reading often surface the deep-seated beliefs about students’ reading habits that shape the choices teachers and librarians make throughout the year. Some educators require a specific list of books or a range of genres. Others allow children and teens to make their own selections. Each school has to grapple with balancing students’ interests and teachers’ expectations and make the decision that feels right for its community.

Regardless of what approach your school or district takes, we hope that your required or recommended reading lists include nonfiction. Unless you are in a year-round school district, summer is often the time students have the most freedom and flexibility with their schedules and reading. For avid readers, this is the time to follow their interests. For students who have not been exposed to a great deal of self-selected nonfiction, the summer reading list can point them in that direction and help them discover books they may not find on their own.

If you are recommending summer reading lists to your students and patrons, be aware that nonfiction is not represented equally on all of them. The American Library Association’s (ALA) Association for Library Services to Children’s recommendations are on three graded lists, each annotated, and include a mix of fiction and nonfiction. A great list based on children’s suggestions is the International Reading Association-Children’s Book Council Annual Children’s Choices. The Horn Book Magazine’s recommended reading list also includes fiction and nonfiction, while the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge recommends only fiction on its website.

If you are creating your own summer reading list, be sure to share the 2013 Orbis Pictus Award, 2013 ALA Robert F. Sibert Medal, and 2013 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award winners and honor recipients. These titles, along with the National Council of the Social Studies–Children’s Book Council Notable Trade Books and the 2013 National Science Teachers Association Outstanding Trade Books lists provide marvelous nonfiction offerings of interest to students.

But let’s not forget, for most students it’s the content of the book that will drive their selection, not the shiny award stickers on the cover, or the special display case you so carefully put together. Children choose nonfiction for many reasons. To convince their parents they are ready for a pet, they may select books about taking care of animals. If they’re interested in growing vegetables on their apartment balcony, they may read about container gardening. Some kids spend summers attending sports camps or playing baseball on a local team or in a nearby ballpark, and read up on techniques to improve their skills. Still others collect shells, explore the local pond, or go birding with their families. Some children build go-carts or craft, others are armchair travelers.

During the vacation season, and indeed throughout the school year, students need to see adults reading nonfiction for pleasure. They need to know that their parents and teachers and family friends enjoy nonfiction as a leisure activity, and they should see their own lives reflected in their reading choices whether selecting fiction or nonfiction. Let’s hope that this summer students are encouraged to choose nonfiction both for pleasure and personal enrichment.

Most recently, I have been in New Jersey, where the Common Core assessments will arrive next spring. That state is just entering the territory New York has traveled—and I am sure that when I visit Kansas, Tennessee, and Nebraska later this year I will see some mixture of New York’s advance scouting and New Jersey’s sense that the game is now afoot.

So what lessons are to be learned from the states that have been through a full year of Common Core training, testing, and evaluating? My first suggestion is that if you are in a state new, or relatively new, to the Common Core, hunt around on the Internet. Go to EngageNY, or the Kansas State Department of Education site. There is everything to be gained from people who have already ventured down the Common Core road. Think about how to apply what they have learned, and experienced, to your state, district, and school.

The short form of what I have seen is this: the Common Core brings significant change to a school building. School librarians have the tools and position to be key players in this change—they understand inquiry and are eager to help students engage in research that goes beyond fact-finding missions. But to be essential participants in the Common Core initiative, librarians must know their nonfiction as well as their fiction. Nonfiction does not just mean subject areas, it requires that stakeholders become familiar with the different styles and approaches of a variety of authors.

Our past understanding of the phrase, “good for reports,” is meaningless. Under the Common Core, a report will not be three or five key facts, it will be facts plus sources that yield more than one point of view, or a comparison of approaches, or what one source presents against another. “Good for reports” is now understood to mean “good for thinking, questioning, and examining.”  In addition, under the Common Core librarians must become even more assertive. Teachers and administrators must see the librarian as an agent active in meeting the standards, not a passive assistant to another’s plans.

I urge those of you who have been through a year or more of training and testing to share your experiences. What worked? What didn’t? What was difficult? What was satisfying? What did you learn? What would you do differently next time?

One of the wonderful things about the Common Core initiative is that we are in it together. We can and should model for our students our willingness to share, to learn from others, and to teach from experience. We face this challenge as a nation, not alone. One of the key experiences of the consciousness raising of the late 1960s was understanding that many of the problems we faced were systemic, not personal. Common Core offers us a national exercise in mutual education. I hope to hear your insights.

The question for educators: what types of instruction help students develop these skills? In an ideal world, it’s instruction that asks students to do something with information: the raison d’être of librarians.  So how do librarians insert themselves into the critical discussions taking place around these instructional shifts?

Professional development is a good place to start—in the best cases, across institutions. In 2011, the New York City Department of Education Office of Library Services formed a partnership with the City University of New York to do just that—to design a community of practice around the Common Core and the high-school-to-college transition.

Participants—teachers, college faculty, and librarians—began the work by identifying the challenges first-year college students face. These included different knowledge demands and task requirements (for example, secondary schools often require students’ reactions to texts as opposed to thinking about texts within the disciplines), the movement from assignments with built-in supports to independent work, and the increasing volume and complexity of readings. (An opportunity to express some of their frustrations allowed participants to build trust and, thereafter, to focus on instruction as the method to change student outcomes.)

A detailed agenda with clear goals kept everyone engaged and focused at each meeting. Five sessions were devoted to revising and aligning a high school curricular unit on Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (Algonquin, 1991) to the CCSS and college demands. An instructor introduced the unit and received feedback using a set protocol. A summary, which included the findings and listed next steps, was shared by a documentarian for further learning and reflection.

The Common Core prepares students for college by having them discover and apply critical approaches to complex texts to other primary texts and writing assignments. Participants commented on how this unit, focused on a novel, presented many opportunities to integrate informational texts similar to those a college faculty member used in his class. The librarians provided literary analysis from databases such as Contemporary Literary Criticism and Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism (both Gale) to incorporate into the unit, which reflected the types of well-structured arguments students will analyze and write in a first-year college course.

Participants suggested various pedagogical methods for integrating text excerpts from the articles. In this case, the group decided to create its own graphic organizer to model the critical reading approaches they wanted students to incorporate, including space for text excerpts, directions for identifying the author’s main points, and unfamiliar vocabulary. A second organizer posed questions to facilitate textual analysis. During the final session, participants structured the order of the texts for the unit and discussed how to use the same graphic organizers to address the increased complexity of the texts.

The Common Core challenges teachers to look beyond the novel or a textbook as the primary instructional source in favor of collections of texts. Students must build strong content knowledge by reading complex texts and developing the critical thinking skills involved in evaluating arguments and evidence. Participants left the workshop knowing that they can turn to librarians for support in identifying materials for instruction and developing assessments.

The Common Core provides no easy answers or ready-made lesson plans because it focuses on the tough task of making students think. This collaborative model is effective because it outlines a process articulating how librarians contribute to this essential work—collaborating across institutions and disciplines to align curriculum and instruction to students’ sense of wonder and curiosity—and to good old-fashioned inquiry.

Leanne Ellis is a library coordinator for the New York City School Library System, NYC Department of Education, Office of Library Services. To submit an On Common Core opinion piece, please contact Rebecca T. Miller at rmiller@mediasourceinc.com

As anyone who has followed our work in School Library Journal knows, Sue and I are advocates of clustering books (“Wondering How to Put Common Core into Practice? It’s Easier than you Think.” SLJ, Nov, 2012). But the focus on rereading short passages suggested a new idea: constellations. A constellation is a linked set of brief passages that librarians can select and offer to teachers as a course pack, or to students as an example of what close reading can yield.

It is one thing to juxtapose related materials such as books, databases, websites, and YouTube videos (as suggested in the above article), but quite another to choose and present excerpts, passages, and chapters that both link together and serve to support the kind of close reading and rereading that Common Core demands. While an experienced—or highly motivated—teacher can pull together such resources, clearly this sort of mining is within a librarian’s expertise. And it is this type of work that will become ever more important in the school environment as more print materials are available in e-formats. So, from a pure show-your-value-to-teachers-and-admins point-of-view, constellations are worth your time. Their real reason for being, though, is students.

Here are some examples of constellations:
For teachers: access a print of Dorothea Lange’s black-and-white photo “Migrant Mother (available free of copyright from the Library of Congress). Find a passage about the image from a series title about the Great Depression; juxtapose that text with the appropriate pages from Martin W. Sandler’s account of the photo in The Dust Bowl Through the Lens (Walker, 2009), Elizabeth Partridge’s Restless Spirit (Viking, 1998), Don Nardo’s Migrant Mother (Compass Point, 2011), and Albert Marrin’s Years of Dust (Dutton, 2009). These resources will provide at significantly different descriptions of how and where Lange took the photo and of the people portrayed in the photo, as well as distinct accounts of how (or whether) the image was retouched, cropped, and framed. This one constellation offers lessons in visual literacy, history, and historiography, and an opportunity for a close reading of texts and an image.

For students and teachers: Write down the first five words of the Gettysburg Address: “Fourscore and seven years ago.” Consider what those words mean, and why Abraham Lincoln chose them. Teachers can reference Gary Wills on YouTube discussing his Lincoln at Gettysburg (S & S, 1992), in which he masterfully analyzes that speech. For Lincoln’s listeners who knew their Bible, the word “fourscore” recalled Psalm 90:10: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” (King James Version)

Digging deeper, what does “fourscore” mean? Check your Oxford English Dictionary and you’ll discover that “score” as a 20-year period comes from the same root as to “shear” as a sheep, and to “mark or notch.” At one time, when counting his sheep, herders would score, or notch, a stick after the 20th creature passed by. “Fourscore and seven years ago,” closely read (and reread), offers links to the deep resonances of a famous phrase, a modern interpretation, and a trip into etymology.

To prompt thinking: Try this: open up Jim Murphy’s The Real Benedict Arnold (Clarion, 2007) and Steve Sheinkin’s The Notorious Benedict Arnold (Roaring Brook, 2010) and select passages where the authors each explain bad Ben’s motivations. Or, open up a random book on your shelves—I grabbed Russell Freedman’s Kids at Work (Clarion, 1994) and found this: “Boys began working as doffers when they were seven or younger. It was their job to remove the whirling bobbins when they were filled with thread and replace them with empty ones.” Link to definitions of “doffers,” “whirling,” and “bobbins, as well as books on Iqbal Masih,  or M.T. Anderson’s recent Op-Ed in the The New York Times on the Bangladesh clothing factory fire.

Get the idea? Find a passage or passages, a phrase or an image, and then search for related links that can be excerpted and/or highlighted. As you do so, you’re training young people to discover more in the starting place (thus close reading and rereading) and to follow what can be a endless—and exciting—trail of curiosity and inquiry. Let me know how it goes.

Because the standards require reading and rereading texts closely, the books must be engaging enough to keep students interested and substantial enough to merit close study. Our shelves have many books that suit those needs, such as those highlighted by this list. Each of these books is paired with a standard for a specific grade and meets the CC reading formula measures for that grade. All are multifaceted enough to lend themselves to other standards and a range of grades. And they’re only a small sample of the great nonfiction that finally has a chance to share center stage.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Barretta, Gene.Now & Ben: The Modern Inventions of Benjamin Franklin. illus. by author. Holt. 2006. ISBN 978-0-80507-917-3. Gr 2–5

Byrd, Robert. Electric Ben: The Amazing Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. illus. by author. Dial. 2012. ISBN 978-0-8037-3749-5. Gr 4–7

Fritz, Jean. What’s the Big Idea, Ben Franklin? illus. by Margot Tomes. Putnam. 1976. ISBN 978-0-698-20365-5. Gr 3–5
Schroeder, Alan. Ben Franklin: His Wit and Wisdom from A to Z.illus. by John O’Brien. Holiday House. 2011. ISBN 978-0-82341-950-0. Gr 2–5
CC Standard RI.4.9 Integrate information from two texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably.

Ben Franklin wore so many hats that he merits many biographies. These illustrated books at different reading levels take a variety of approaches to his life and work. Barretta uses a “Now/Then” structure, focusing on Franklin’s inventions in his day and how they’re used now. Schroeder uses an alphabetical arrangement that mixes miscellaneous facts; the letter “B,” for example, covers Boston, bifocals, and balloon. The Fritz and Byrd biographies are chronological structures, but have different tones and levels of detail. Students can compare emphases and structures, perhaps using a graphic organizer, and also compare the varied illustration styles and what they add to each text.

Gibbons, Gail. Monarch Butterfly. Holiday House. 1989. PreS–Gr 2
Marsh, Laura F. Caterpillar to Butterfly.National Geographic. 2012. ISBN 978-1-4263-0920-5. PreS–Gr 2
CC Standard RI K.9 With prompting and support, identify basic similarities in and differences between two texts on the same topic (e.g., in illustrations, descriptions, or procedures).

The amazing transformation from caterpillar to butterfly is conveyed in different ways by these two colorful books. Kindergarteners will be able to identify similarities in the information and differences in presentation such as photographs versus paintings. Both books use labels in the visuals to highlight body parts. The Marsh book has a table of contents, numbered chapters, a glossary, and tips for a butterfly garden. Gibbons’s book features a map of migration routes and explains how to raise a monarch butterfly.

Kudlinski, Kathleen V. Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs! illus. by S. D. Schindler. Dutton. 2005. ISBN 978-0-52546-978-0. Gr 2–4
CC Standard RI.4.8 Explain how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text.

It was once believed that dinosaurs dragged their tails; now fossil finds indicate that they held their tails out straight. This upbeat book with humorous illustrations provides a valuable lesson in how science uses new findings and ideas to reevaluate accepted beliefs, comparing what scientists used to think about dinosaurs with what they think now. Students can make a chart listing each past belief, each new belief, and the evidence that prompted the change, and judge whether the evidence seems sufficient. The book explains that scientists still don’t have all the answers, often due to insufficient evidence, and they don’t always agree with one another in interpreting evidence. Students can look for language that indicates uncertainty, such as “there is no way to be sure.” Some students might like to compare this book to Kudlinski’s Boy, Were We Wrong about the Solar System! (Dutton, 2008) which has a similar structure.

Leedy, Loreen. Seeing Symmetry. illus. by author. Holiday House. 2012. ISBN 978-0-8234-2360-6. Gr 2–4
CC Standard RI.3.7 Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur).

Bright computer-generated pictures use familiar objects like food, animals, and people to show examples of vertical, horizontal, and rotational symmetry. The simple text explains the concepts and introduces new vocabulary like line symmetry, mirror image, horizontal, vertical, and rotate, terms which will require going over more than once. Students can then seek out examples in school and at home to demonstrate their understanding of the types of symmetry. Teachers may also want to use the two craft activities given at the back of the book to reinforce the concepts.

Macaulay, David, and Sheila Keenan. Castle: How It Works. illus. by David Macaulay. Roaring Brook/David Macaulay Studio. 2012. ISBN 978-1-59643-744-9. Gr 1–3
CC Standard RI.2.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 2 topic or subject area.

The master of architectural books turns his talents to a younger crowd with this easy reader that meets the CC need for texts on technical subjects. With a slight fictional story line, the appealing text and pictures introduce castle residents, parts of the building, and different weapons, using technical terms in context like siege and portcullis, which are also defined in the glossary. At certain points the voice is second person, such as, “You are deep within the castle.” Students can note where that’s used and what it adds. Another book in the series by the same authors is Jet Plane: How It Works, which has similar features and approach.

Mann, Elizabeth. Empire State Building. illus. by Alan Witschonke. Photos by Lewis Hine. Mikaya. 2003. ISBN 978-1-93141-406-7. Gr 4–8
CC Standard RI.5.3 Explain the relationships or interactions between two or more individuals, events, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text based on specific information in it.

The Empire State Building dazzled New York City when it was built in 1931. This engaging Orbis Pictus Honor Book employs cutaways and numbered diagrams to demonstrate how it was constructed. Students can analyze how the text and visuals, including paintings and historical photographs, convey the process, noting that building skyscrapers depended on technological advances such as the inventions of steel and the automatic elevator brake. Another central idea is that during the Great Depression the Empire State Building was an important symbol of hope to New Yorkers, who were proud of the height made possible only by those technological advances. Check out other books in the “Wonders of the World” series, too, which satisfy the CC call for technical content.

Pinkney, Andrea Davis. Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters. illus. by Stephen Alcorn. Harcourt. 2000. ISBN 978-0-15201-005-8. Gr 4–8
CC Standard RI.5.2 Determine two or more main ideas of a text and explain how they are supported by key details; summarize the text.

From Sojourner Truth, born around 1797, to Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, born in 1924, this collective biography introduces 10 remarkable black women. A striking full-page color portrait of each individual precedes about 10 pages of text that describe her life and accomplishments. Pinkney emphasizes the strength of the subjects and the importance of fighting for change. An author’s note, which could be read aloud, points to these themes and to her motivation in writing about them. Students can approach the book as a whole or focus on one chapter to explore the main ideas and identify details that illustrate the women’s contributions and their commitment to freedom.

Rappaport, Doreen. Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. illus. by Bryan Collier. Hyperion. 2001. ISBN 978-0-78680-714-7. K–Gr 3
CC Standard RI.1.2 Identify the main topic and retell key details of a text.

The lyrical words and expansive pictures in this stunning award winner make it an excellent read-aloud. After listening to the book more than once or reading it independently, students can discuss its title and subtitle, which point to the main topic about the power of words in Dr. King’s life. As a class or in small groups, they can find details in the text, including the quotes in a colored typeface, that relate to the theme. Enrich the experience by listening to a clip from one of Dr. King’s speeches at Stanford’s MLK website.

MIDDLE SCHOOL/HIGH SCHOOL

Aronson, Marc and Marina Tamar Budhos. Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science. Clarion. 2010. ISBN 978-0-61857-492-6. Gr 8 Up
CC Standard RI.9-10.8 Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is valid and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; identify false statements and fallacious reasoning.

“Only 4 percent of the slaves taken from Africa were brought to North America, which means that 96 percent went to the Caribbean, Brazil, and the rest of South America, mostly to work with sugar.” This surprising fact points to the authors’ contention that the enormous growth in the sugar trade in the 17th and 18th centuries was the major factor in slavery. They argue, too, that sugar was instrumental in spreading the idea of freedom, an idea that changed the world. Like other books by Aronson, this work prompts readers to question previous assumptions and delve into the arguments presented, and encourages them to think like historians.

Burgan, Michael. Breaker Boys: How a Photograph Helped End Child Labor. Compass Point. 2012. ISBN 978-0-7565-4510-9. Gr 6–9
CC Standard RI.6.5 Analyze how a particular sentence, paragraph, chapter, or section fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the ideas.

Photographs can change history. So contends this and other entries in the valuable “Captured History” series. Breaker Boys’ straightforward text focuses on a 1911 photograph by Lewis Hine of a group of boys who sorted coal at a Pennsylvania mine for 10 hours a day. The four chapters discuss coal mining, children in the mines, Hine and his work, and the slow changes in child labor laws. Students will be able to identify the structure as cause and effect, and analyze the role of the four chapters. They can also look for sentences and paragraphs that develop the idea of the political influence of photographs. To extend the topic, have students find more Hine photographs about child labor at the Library of Congress website or Flickr.com that can be used in presentations.

Burns, Loree Griffin. Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion. Houghton. 2007. ISBN 978-0-61858-131-3. Gr 6–9
CC Standard RI.7.3 Analyze the interactions between individuals, events, and ideas in a text (e.g., how ideas influence individuals or events, or how individuals influence ideas or events).

This fascinating photo-essay presents the work of an oceanographer who studies ocean currents by following the movement of debris like rubber ducks and hockey gloves spilled by container ships into the Pacific. Students can identify the central ideas about principles of ocean movement and issues around pollution, and trace their interaction through the text, noting how information about the scientist’s work and scientific methods are integrated with those ideas. Students can also consider how photographs, diagrams, and maps are crucial in developing the concepts. Other entries in the excellent “Scientists in the Field” series also lend themselves to use with Common Core.

Freedman, Russell. Who Was First? Discovering the Americas.Clarion. 2007. ISBN 978-0-618-66391-0. Gr 7 Up
CC Standard RI.11-12.5 Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging.

In looking at beliefs about who first discovered America, Freedman starts with Christopher Columbus and moves backward in time to examine claims about earlier explorers. He shows that some claims don’t have adequate evidence, but also looks at one from an amateur historian that is now accepted. The book’s unusual structure makes it perfect for analysis to see if the reverse chronological organization is effective in making points about how historians evaluate new information and sometimes adjust their beliefs about the past. The chapter-by-chapter bibliographic essays are also models for research and documentation.

Hoose, Phillip. Moonbird : A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95. Farrar. 2012. ISBN 978-0-374-3046803. Gr 7 Up
CC Standard RI.9-10.6 Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose.

For the past 20 years, a bird nicknamed the Moonbird has flown annually from Patagonia to the Arctic and back, a round-trip of 18,000 miles. Unfortunately, the remarkable species of rufa Red Knots is diminishing in number for several reasons. Hoose brilliantly weaves together the Moonbird’s story, the threats to the species, and the international effort to save these birds. He engages readers with one bird’s amazing journey that’s dependent on a complicated web of ecological factors. Students can look carefully at the choice of words and content as well as Hoose’s background as an environmentalist to try to determine his purpose in writing the book and consider if that affects how a reader should approach the text.

Macaulay, David. Mosque.illus. by author. Houghton. 2003. ISBN 978-0-61824-034-0. Gr 7 Up
CC Standard RI.11-12.7 Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem.

Mosque explores in detail the building of a fictional mosque in the Ottoman Empire starting in 1595. Each generous spread combines sophisticated text with appealing large and small illustrations including maps, cutaways, diagrams, floor plans, and numbered step-by-step processes. Labels identify specific aspects of the building and introduce new vocabulary such as alem, pendentive, and dershane. The question addressed is how such a large structure was built so long ago. Students can consider the different and related roles text and art play in addressing that question and in presenting complex technical information. For a different media source on the same topic, listen to Macaulay’s NPR interview about Mosque.

Schlosser, Eric and Charles Wilson. Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food.Houghton. 2006. ISBN 978-0-61871-031-7. Gr 7–10
CC Standard RI.8.8 Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is sound and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; recognize when irrelevant evidence is introduced.

Fast food—good or bad? In adapting Schlosser’s best seller Fast Food Nation, the authors thoughtfully added material relevant to teens about how fast food is marketed to young people and about teenagers who work in fast food restaurants. They point to problems with working conditions at the restaurants and with inhumane treatment of animals at companies that supply meat. They also argue that fast food harms the environment and consumers’ health. Students can consider whether the authors provide credible evidence for their arguments and if they acknowledge competing arguments about benefits of fast food such as convenience and low prices.

Stone, Tanya Lee. Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream.Candlewick. 2009. ISBN 978-0-76363-611-1. Gr 6 Up
CC Standard RI.8.6 Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how the author acknowledges and responds to conflicting evidence or viewpoints.

In the early 1960s, 13 women highly qualified to become astronauts were excluded by NASA from the Mercury space program. This appealing Sibert Award winner, notable for the author’s strong point of view, explores the reasons and biases behind the decision. Students can examine the text for language and other evidence that show Stone’s position on the topic and the people involved. For example, what words does she use to describe the women, some of whom she interviewed? How does she present opposing viewpoints that argued that women shouldn’t be included? One of the book’s main themes is that society minimized women’s abilities and restricted their opportunities. Students can consider how photographs and artifacts like advertisements are used to make that case, and if it’s presented fairly.

Kathleen Odean, chair of the 2002 Newbery Award Committee, presents workshops on new young adult books and Common Core nonfiction. She’s the author of Great Books for Girls (2002) and Great Books for Babies and Toddlers (2003, both Ballentine).On May 21, she will be moderating a free webcast on materials selection in light of the Common Core State Standards.

Here are some ways authors typically engage readers through their writing styles:

• Strong Introductions. Engaging leads can grab readers from the start. They also help to instill curiosity, create a sense of immediacy, and make readers feel a connection to the subject. This connection may be obvious or subtle. In American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (Clarion, 2003), Jim Murphy establishes the setting as he describes a hot and humid Philadelphia on August 3, 1793. “The sun came up, as it had every day since the end of May, bright, hot, and unrelenting.…Dead fish and gooey vegetable matter were exposed and rotted, while swarms of insects droned in the heavy, humid air. In Philadelphia itself an increasing number of cats were dropping dead every day, attracting, as one Philadelphia complained, ‘an amazing number of flies, and other insects.’ Mosquitoes were everywhere, though their high-pitched whirring was particularly loud near rain barrels, gutters, and open sewers.” (p. 1). But Murphy does more than simply paint a portrait of a foul-smelling city at the height of summer. He plants clues for readers, who may or may not be aware that mosquitoes carried the yellow fever virus.

• Varying Sentence Structure. Prose writing, whether fiction or nonfiction, benefits from a writer’s careful attention to sentence structure, and the ways in which varying lengths creates a sense of rhythm, dramatic appeal, and emotional tension. Robert Burleigh does this in Night Flight (S & S, 2011), his verse biography of Amelia Earhart, when he writes: “Everything she has ever learned courses through her blood./Now or Never. All or nothing.” Readers feel the suspense equally through the sentence structure and the content of the sentences. Jean Craighead George also accomplishes this masterfully in The Wolves are Back (Dutton, 2008). “Where had they been? Shot. Every one. Many years ago the directors of the national parks decided that only the gentle animals should grace the beautiful wilderness. Rangers, hunters, and ranchers were told to shoot every wolf they saw. They did.” Readers feel the impact of those shots in the short, staccato sentences.

• Similes and Metaphors. Some are quick to associate similes and metaphors with the flowery language of poetry and fiction, and consider them a luxury that informational text cannot afford. But similes and metaphors help young readers understand newly encountered concepts. When a simile or a metaphor is clear, and the comparison is made to something familiar to children or young adults, it allows readers to attach new information to their pre-existing schema. Consider the comparisons that zoologist Nicola Davies makes in in her picture book Big Blue Whale (Candlewick,1997). The author uses similes to describe the whale’s skin: “It’s springy and smooth like a hard-boiled egg, and it’s as slippery as wet soap.” Simile is also used to establish a sense of scale, as the whale’s ear is “as small as the end of a pencil.” Deborah Hopkinson employs the use of simile in her verse picture book Annie and Helen (Random, 2012): “Helen was like a small, wild bird, throwing herself against the bars of a dark silent cage.” The comparison is concrete and clear, and conveys to young readers a new way to consider emotion, and how trapped Helen Keller could have felt without sight, hearing, or speech.

• Alliteration and Onomatopoeia. Poetry and fiction are not the only arenas in which writers can have fun with language. Alliteration and onomatopoeia are particularly effective in nonfiction picture storybooks that can be read aloud in one sitting. The repetition and approximation of sounds provides young listeners and readers with a sensory experience with which to connect to the new information they are learning about, while making the reading experience playful and pleasing. April Pulley Sayre frequently employs the use of both alliteration and onomatopoeia in her nonfiction picture book writing. In Here Come the Humpbacks! (2013), she writes: “The mother and calf swim over underwater hills and valleys. They see seaweed and sailfish and squid. They pass turtles and trash.” Here, alliteration creates imagery for readers. In Trout are Made of Trees (2008, both Charlesbridge), Sayre uses both devices to recreate life in a stream: “Crane flies, caddisflies, shrimp and stone flies shred leaves. Rip and snip!”

• Verse. Nonfiction need not be written in the traditional format of prose paragraphs. Many picture book and even chapter-length nonfiction books are written in verse. Marilyn Nelson’s Fortune’s Bones (2004) and Carver (2001, both Front Street), are wonderful examples of full-length biography in verse. The author provides readers with rich information about her subjects. This information, in combination with the white space on the page, asks readers to consider the gaps that are an inherent part of any life story, particularly for enslaved men such as Fortune. Doreen Rapport’s collection of picture-book biographies are told in verse format, along with quotes excerpted from the written or spoken words of her subjects. The juxtaposition of verse, blank space, and pull-quotes offers readers ample opportunity to consider the subject as the narrative is constructed.

• Strong Conclusions. Clear conclusions do more than simply wrap-up the main idea of a work of nonfiction. Conclusions can carry readers out of the book and into the world, prompting action. They can prompt inquiry, reminding readers of what else there is to learn about a subject. Conclusions can also establish one final emotional connection to readers. Consider the last paragraph in Russell Freedman’s Who was First? Discovering the Americas (Clarion, 2007). “Perhaps one day soon, somewhere in the Americas, someone walking across a field will discover a surprising new clue—an ancient stone tool made with care and left in that very spot by a human being who was alive once. Behind that ancient tool will be a hand reaching out of the past and taking ours.” (p. 81).

The more students consider a writer’s craft in nonfiction, the more they will see that elements of good writing overlap. The above examples of similes included alliteration. Strong introductions and conclusions are often comprised of several of these elements working together. Good writing occurs in the combined use of these stylistic moves. Reading nonfiction with an eye for these choices, and discussing a writer’s craft in class with a connection to the content of the texts, will allow your students to see the interplay between reading nonfiction and writing nonfiction.

ANDERSON, Tanya. Tillie Pierce: Teen Eyewitness to the Battle of Gettysburg. Twenty-First Century Books. 2013. ISBN 9781467706926. JLG Level:  NM : Nonfiction Middle (Grades 5-8).

Punctuated with diary entries from fifteen-year-old Tillie Pierce, Anderson tells the story of the events leading up to the infamous Battle of Gettysburg. In the summer of 1863, the residents of Gettysburg were worried that the Rebels were coming. They hid their valuables, shipped heirlooms to relatives, and took their animals to the mountains. When their worst fears came true, the foot soldiers needed hats and shoes more than anything else, though they took whatever they could find. Not long after, tens of thousands of Union troops entered the town. Tillie’s next door neighbor came over, asking if Tillie could accompany her to her parents’ farm to care for her young children. Thinking she would be safer there, Tillie’s parents agreed. What happened next was not what anyone expected. Little did they know they would spend the next three days feeding and nursing the wounded, surrounded by the most horrific battle in the Civil War.

Historical photographs and documents, an extensive bibliography, and a Google Earth activity provide excellent resource material in this nonfiction account of what we now refer to as the reason for Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

GRATZ, Alan. Prisoner B-3087. Scholastic. 2013.  9780545459013. JLG Level: HH : History – High School (Grades 10 & up).

Though the work is fictionalized, Gratz recreates the story of Jack Gruener, who as a child of thirteen was taken from his village in Krakow, Poland, by Nazi soldiers. His parents had already been taken the year before. All his aunts and uncles had since disappeared. Jack knew that one day, they would come for him. Jack was loaded onto a truck, and taken to Plaszow. It was the first of many concentration camps to which he would be sent. Briefly reunited with his uncle, he learned to be anonymous. Daily shootings of prisoners, backbreaking senseless work, and lack of food made him even more determined to survive. Death march after death march, the young boy fought to stay alive. Sent to Wielczka Salt Mines, Tazebinia, Auschwitz, and finally Dachau, Gruener survived the camps until he was rescued by American soldiers. The Allies had reached them at last! “Everything is going to be all right,” they said. For the first time in six years, he finally felt that it was true.

HERNANDEZ, Daniel and Susan Goldman Rubin. They Call Me a Hero: A Memoir of My Youth. S & S. 2013. ISBN 9781442462281. JLG Level: CH : City High School (Grades 10 & Up).

Daniel Hernandez never intended to be a hero. Growing up in a Latino community in Tucson, Arizona, he always liked school, and wanted to become a doctor. In the fifth grade, he ran for student council president and won. An avid reader, he also took a nursing class in high school and participated in HOSA (Health Occupations Students of America). In college he began an internship and got involved in politics.

On the morning of January 8, 2011, Daniel was doing what he loved most―volunteering in the campaign to re-elect Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. A lone shooter opened fire on the constituents and others who came to meet the politician. Giffords took a gunshot to the head. Hernandez ran through the chaos, applied pressure to her wound, and kept her engaged while he waited for medical assistance. Honestly written, David’s memoir shares his thoughts about what happened that day and how his own life changed as a result.

KIDDER, Tracy. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World. Adapted by Michael French. Delacorte. 2013. ISBN 9780375990991. JLG Level: NM : Nonfiction Middle (Grades 5-8).

Dr. Paul Farmer could have practiced medicine anywhere he wanted to. He had multiple degrees from prestigious colleges and was well-respected in the Boston area. Yet, his heart drew him to Haiti. There he would work with the poorest of poor, treating those who couldn’t afford medicine, never turning anyone away. He raised money for programs that would support his work, and researched methods of decreasing the mortality rate for TB patients. An adaptation of an earlier work for adults, Kidder tells the story of a man driven to help those without a voice. His work in countries like Peru, Haiti, and Rwanda, and his success at obtaining funds to treat his patients, is unsurpassed. Founding Partners in Health, the country doctor found a way to clean the water, heal the sick, and encourage philanthropists like Bill Gates to fund his projects. Though he couldn’t  heal everyone, he was known to say, “I don’t care if we lose, I’m gonna try to do the right thing.”

STONE, Tanya Lee. Courage Has No Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles. Candlewick. 2013. ISBN 9780763651176. JLG Level: HH : History – High School (Grades 10 & up).

“What did it take to be a paratrooper in World War II? Specialized training, extreme physical fitness, courage and―until the 555^th Parachute Infantry Battalion (the Triple Nickles) was formed―white skin.” Though black men could be in the Navy or Marines in 1940, they could only perform in service roles―building roads, digging ditches, cooking, or doing laundry. In the fall of 1943, Walter Morris led a black Army battalion with a morale problem. His solution? Give them the same training white paratroopers received. Within weeks of leading the drills, he saw changes in his troop―sharp uniforms and men who acted like soldiers. Sergeant Morris would become the leader of the first black paratroopers, the 555^th Parachute Infantry Company. Though their skill was unsurpassed, these men continued to face racism. They weren’t allowed to enter the same recreational facilities as their white counterparts, and hotels, movie theaters, and restaurants wouldn’t serve them. Yet, they continued to volunteer and fight for a military that segregated them. “I have to go…. Part of it is so I can say, ‘This is my country. I fought for it and you can’t deny me.’”

Because the Army wasn’t willing to integrate the soldiers, these paratroopers served their country on U.S. soil as the first smokejumpers. They jumped from planes to fight fires and search for Japanese balloon bombs in the Pacific Northwest. In Europe, they fought on the ground, side by side with white soldiers in the 82^nd Airborne. In December of 1947, the Triple Nickles were officially recognized for their work and integrated with the 82^nd, marching in a victory parade as the 3^rd Battalion of the 555^th Parachute Infantry Brigade. No longer part of a two-color army, these soldiers were finally a team.

For these and other fabulous books for teens, search Junior Library Guild.

Junior Library Guild is a collection development service that helps school and public libraries acquire the best new children’s and young adult books. Season after season, year after year, Junior Library Guild book selections go on to win awards, collect starred or favorable reviews, and earn industry honors. Visit us at www.JuniorLibraryGuild.com.

Maggie B.’s Spine Poem from 100 Scope Notes

April is National Poetry Month, and School Library Journal has compiled a list of tools and creative ideas for celebrating. From poetry slam best practices to Common Core curriculum connections, this roundup is chock-full of ways to approach the poetic form with kids all yearlong.

Why Poetry?

National Poetry Month is upon us, but why limit the celebration of poetry to April? SLJ editor-in-chief Rebecca Miller speaks to the value of regular exposure to poetry.

Expert Opinions

Who better to discuss their perspectives on poetry than those in the know? School Library Journal asked several poets to share their favorite collections for children. Naomi Shihab, Doug Florian, and others list anthologies near and dear to their hearts.

And poet Joyce Sidman talks about the impact poetry has had on her life, as well as her teaching experiences.

Finally, author and poet Lesléa Newman discusses with SLJ how she used various poetic forms to

explore the intricacies of a tragedy–the murder of Matthew Shepard.

Poetry…and the Common Core?

Exploring the Common Core Standards doesn’t have to mean stripping poetry of its beauty or joy. SLJ’s e-newsletter Curriculum Connections lists a variety of poetry collections that will spark students’ imaginations while also providing them with a strong grounding in informational texts.

Poetry: It’s in the Details

Meeting the CCSS Through Poetry | Professional Shelf

Finding poetry collections may not pose a problem, but how to go about teaching students to read and analyze poems, or to produce their own works? This piece specifically tackles the CCSS and presents professional development titles that facilitate creating lesson plans and teaching units centered around poetry.

For more, visit our Poetry Month resources page.

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Cannadine’s thoughtful essay outlines some of the debates in the United Kingdom. He is one of the authors of a survey of history education in his country and this careful study has distinct echoes here. The authors map the many wars that have been waged over whether history education has leaned too left or too right, too rigid or too progressive. (For a hint of the U. K. debates, as seen through a U. S. lens, follow this thread on the Core Knowledge website. Cannadine, however, is not focused on that debate.

“The Future of History” argues that there hasn’t been a great decline from a prior golden age of history education and that different local conditions have influenced how well or how poorly history has been taught. Cannadine generally favors a national history curriculum, but thinks the current debates miss the key point; the problem is not whether more or less time is spent on topic A or person B, but rather that too little time is spent on history. In the United Kingdom, it is not a required subject after the age of 14. In the United States we have the opposite situation. Social studies and science share limited time slots in elementary classrooms and students arrive at middle school having learned and relearned the same small bits of U. S. history, with barely any awareness of a wider world.

Our Common Core emphasis on evidence, argument, and point-of-view will be helpful in remedying the gaps in our students’ knowledge since these are key skills for investigating history. And the increased use of nonfiction may well mean more compelling history books in ELA classes. Indeed, it seems that the Common Core encourages teachers, librarians, and schools to recognize that content matters—that educators need greater depth of knowledge in subjects to match and guide students as their nonfiction reading blossoms. But Cannadine’s essay also suggests a need for educators to expand their horizons beyond local challenges and opportunities.

Why are so many nations considering a national curricula? Because they can, and because they must. They can because our ability to gather and track data is expanding exponentially, which influences everything in our lives—from health-care records to the number-crunching analyses of politics and sports that Nate Silver’s 538 columns in the New York Times have made so popular.

Education is a series of benchmarks on the way to graduation. Those benchmarks are already data points under analysis. We can gather and analyze national educational data, and we will. We must. Because the final impetus for national standards comes from those who receive our students after they graduate—the trades, the military, and the institutions of higher education. This is true from state-to-state and nation-to-nation. Let’s study this global moment—to compare how nations struggle with and implement curricula to prepare their students for global challenges.

“If you think about math teachers, they’ve always been able to give assignments in which students are required to show their work. That makes it easy for them to check individual understanding, pretty much on a daily basis. English and humanities teachers who give extended reading assignments have never had that luxury. Instead, they’ve comparatively been flying blind, taking it on faith that most students have done the required reading, without knowing for sure, and moving along daily without solid evidence that kids are really ‘getting it.’”

That’s what Jason Singer, the CEO and founder of Gobstopper, told me was the central issue his product is designed to address: the challenge of ensuring that every student is meaningfully moving forward in a given reading assignment—and not just faking it. Gobstopper is an ereading application that also promotes ongoing feedback between teachers and kids. How does it do that? By giving teachers the ability to embed customized, Common-Core-based, formative assessments right into the etexts that they assign to their kids. Teachers can also insert scaffolded support in the form of annotations, Web links, or links to video-sharing sites. (Imagine the power a teacher would have if she posted videos that explained her own reactions to and interpretations of portions of a text.) Teachers can also add polls and quizzes, turning those assigned texts into ongoing class conversations and providing students, through Gobstopper’s reporting tools, with both qualitative feedback and quantitative snapshots about individual and group progress and comprehension.

Just by glancing at their Gobstopper dashboards, teachers can see what percentage of kids in a specific class did their homework, how much time they spent reading, and what percentage of questions in a given Common Core standard such as “determining author intent” or “understanding historical context” their students answered correctly. Not only does that option eliminate the immense amount of time a typical humanities teacher wastes in class just trying to get a basic feel for who has actually completed and understood their assigned reading, but it cuts down on manual grading and attendant paperwork as well. Teachers needn’t necessarily enhance the etexts they assign from scratch, either. Instead they can select from among what Gobstopper calls “curriculets,” adding layers of ready-made content and assessments based on the skills they want to cover, and then tweaking the items to taste. For more information or to sign up and try Gobstopper, visit the welcome page for SLJ readers.

Subtext, launched a year ago and currently available as a free iPad and Edmodo app, is another application that doubles as a collaborative reading platform that focuses on Common Core skills. Subtext’s ereader has all the features—including text-to-speech capability, full-text searching, font selection, and a built-in dictionary—that you’d expect from a modern ereader app. Plus, in the right-hand margins of assigned selections, you’ll find teacher and student comments, links, embedded YouTube videos, quizzes, and polls, all indicated by familiar Facebook-like avatars that transform the normally solitary act of assigned reading into a friendly, ongoing social exchange that encourages students to “talk to the text” and to talk to one another. At the end of each chapter of the novels I previewed, students were asked—in Facebook’s thumbs up/thumbs down fashion—to rate the section. They were also invited to add a comment or prediction, start or join a discussion thread, or blog about the chapter they’d just finished reading.

Subtext works with any native or converted EPUB document, integrates with Google Books and Feedbooks, and Web pages can also be imported. According to Heidi Perry, Subtext’s marketing VP, lots of instructors choose to share assigned texts—and all of the ongoing classroom sidebars—on their interactive whiteboards during class time, not exactly “flipping” the typical ELA classroom, but certainly turning it inside out in a way that exposes the collective metacognitive underpinnings of the reading experience. Teachers can set up classes in Subtext from scratch or students can log into Subtext using their existing school-provided Google or Edmodo accounts. Subtext is working on creating an Android app and Web reader for the 2013-2014 school year. To find out more or to download the free app, visit www.subtext.com.

Both Gobstopper and Subtext are currently free at their most basic levels and when used with public domain texts. Neither has set a pricing plan for premium service levels that they’ll be offering in the future. Both companies, though, plan to monetize, in part by sharing profits on ebook sales. Subtext already partners with Google Books to offer convenient in-app ebook purchases that can be seamlessly delivered to entire classes, and Gobstopper is looking to have publishers on board by next fall.

Subtext and Gobstopper excite the English teacher and school librarian in me, opening up lots of new possibilities for collaboration and curation. And both applications completely blow the tired old book report options out of the water and instead encourage reading, analysis, and writing on a formative, rather than a summative, basis.

Plus, I can totally imagine using either app to remotely administer a summer reading program… preferably as I relax on a private island somewhere in the tropics. Sound good?