Milo and Jazz Mysteries: The Case of the Stinky Socks
© 2009 by Amy Wummer.

Mysteries provide a perfect entree for exploring a wide variety of critical thinking skills. With their emphasis on clear observation, logical thinking, and well-drawn conclusions, mysteries support many Common Core State Standards (CCSS). They also lend themselves to an array of interesting writing assignments, an important component of the CCSS and one on which many states are placing particular emphasis.

This month’s column features some of our favorite mysteries, along with ideas for expanding the learning possibilities presented by each title and/or series. Employing the Common Core State Standards doesn’t mean that learning can’t be fun. Kids love mysteries, so why not use them to teach new skills in thinking, researching, and writing? We guarantee that these titles will spark student interest.

Elementary School

A to Z Mysteries, Books D-G (The Deadly Dungeon, The Empty Envelope, The Falcon’s Feathers, The Goose’s Gold). Written by Ron Roy. Narrated by David Pittu. 3 CDs. 3:25 hrs. Listening Library. 2005. ISBN 978-0-3072-0735-7. $30. K-Gr 3
From A to Z, these beginning chapter book mysteries maintain a comfortable format with each audiobook combining three or four stories from the series. Each “case” title is a letter of the alphabet and continuity is nicely incorporated with Pittu narrating them all. His conversational and friendly voice fits the pacing as Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose band together to solve each case. Listeners will be asking for all the letters of the alphabet.

Common Core Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.1.2 Ask and answer questions about key details in a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media.

Instructional Extension: Connecting the theme or subject of a story to research can strengthen both the listening experience and learning. For example, to discover more about the birds in The Falcon’s Feathers, use the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All about Birds website (www.allaboutbirds.org). Enter the search term “falcon” to find information about the peregrine falcon, gyrfalcon, and prairie falcon.

Encyclopedia Brown Finds the Clues. Written by Donald Sobol. Narrated by Greg Steinbruner. 2 CDs. 1:18 hrs. Recorded Books. 2007. ISBN 978-1-4281-7221-0. $25.75. Gr 3-5

This title, one in the classic series about 10-year-old detective Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown, features ten new cases for the Idaville mystery solver. Encyclopedia, his police chief dad, and his group of friends follow the trail of each case to its satisfying end. The familiar format of presenting clues for listeners to put together gives opportunities for thinking and problem solving. Steinbruner’s pacing is comfortable, highlighting the simple sentences and pausing before each solution to build suspense,

Common Core Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.9 Compare and contrast the themes, settings, and plots of stories written by the same author about the same or similar characters.

Instructional Extension: The University of North Carolina’s excellent Learn NC website (www.learningnc.org/lp/pages/3031) offers several activities to enliven lesson plans for the first book in this series, Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective. The rubric for a good mystery story and the Mystery Worksheet are adaptable to any book in the series and provide a jumping-off point for writing projects.

The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe’s Very First Case: A Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Book for Young Readers. Written by Alexander McCall Smith. Narrated by Adjoa Andoh. CD. 1 hr. Listening Library. 2012. ISBN 978-0-4490-1142-3. $15. K-Gr 3

Intrepid female detective, Precious Ramotswe, is introduced here as a child, solving her first case. Andoh’s excellent narration presents the lilt, cadence, and authenticity of Botswana culture. Adult fans of the well-known #1 Ladies Detective Agency will be listening along to find out how Precious came to become a world-famous detective. Sure to provide fun for family and classroom audiences.

Common Core Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.2 Recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths, from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text.

Instructional Extension: Classroom discussion and research about Botswana could follow listening to this mystery. Facts and information about the country can be found in many online encyclopedias, books, and the Botswana embassy website (www.botswanaembassy.org) where the country’s history, a video gallery, and visitor attractions are included. Students may choose one topic to share with the class to highlight any study about Africa.

Milo and Jazz Mysteries: The Case of the Stinky Socks. Written by Lewis B. Montgomery. Narrated by Chantale Hosein and Vinnie Penna. CD. 48 min. Live Oak Media. 2012. ISBN 978-1-4301-1199-3. $15.95. K-Gr 3

Milo has just received his Dash Marlow Super Sleuth kit when he discovers his first mystery. Working, somewhat reluctantly, with new neighbor Jazz, these two young detectives set out to determine who stole Jazz’s brother’s lucky socks from his high school locker. The pair use their critical thinking skills to find the socks before the big baseball game. Penna and Hosein’s performances are appropriately young and their pacing heightens the tension and excitement of this first mystery in Montgomery’s series.

Common Core Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy. RL.2.1 Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.

Instructional Extension: Dash Marlow instructs his followers to use these “Super Sleuthing Skills: Observe, Think Logically, Draw Conclusions.” A fun writing project can be built around any one of the “Milo and Jazz Mysteries” by using flow maps to organize the sequence of events with the goal of producing a summary of the story that includes at least three details from the book to answer the questions posed in the standard.

Middle/High School

The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity. Written by Mac Barnett. Narrated by Arte Johnson. 3 CDs. 2:55 hrs. Listening Library. 2010. ISBN 978-0-3077-1042-0. $30. Gr 4-6

When 12-year-old Steve Brixton, a fan of Bailey Brothers detective novels, is mistaken for a real detective, he must elude librarians, police, and the mysterious Mr. E as he seeks a missing quilt containing coded information. Arte Johnson gives Steve’s predicament a matter-of-fact, almost sardonic tone, with methodical pacing and understatement that provides listeners with laugh-out-loud enjoyment of this wholly improbable story. Fans will also enjoy the other titles in this series, The Ghostwriter Secret and It Happened on a Train, also available from Listening Library.

Common Core Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.7 Compare and contrast stories in the same genre (e.g., mysteries and adventure stories) on their approaches to similar themes and topics.

Instructional Extension: Visit this go-to website that provides thorough information and multiple ideas for classroom extensions as well as descriptions of mystery series, novels, and picture books: Carol Hurst Children’s Literature—Mysteries in the Classroom Fiction, Non-Fiction and Activities for Pre-School through Ninth Grade (www.carolhurst.com/subjects/mysteries.html).

Pair the following two titles for an interesting comparison of Victorian and contemporary girl sleuths:

The Case of the Missing Marquess, an Enola Holms Mystery. Written by Nancy Springer. Narrated by Katherine Kellgren. 4 CDs. 4:31 hrs. Recorded Books. 2006. ISBN 978-1-4193-8985-6. $51.75. Gr 5-8

Smart and resourceful, 14-year-old Enola is determined to avoid the finishing school her older brothers, Mycroft and Sherlock, have selected for her when her mother suddenly vanishes. Setting off for London on a bicycle, Enola stumbles upon another missing person’s case—a young marquess who seems to have been kidnapped. Kellgren delves into this adventure with her customary gusto and superb pacing, providing a host of excellent 19th-century character voices. Lucky for listeners, this is just the beginning of a long series, all narrated by the incomparable Kellgren.

The London Eye Mystery. Written by Siobhan Dowd. Narrated by Paul Checquer. AudioGo. 2010. ISBN 978-1-4056-5462-3. $25. Gr 6-10

Ted’s cousin Salim comes to visit from Manchester before moving to New York with his mother, and Salim’s only wish is to ride the London Eye, the massive wheel erected to mark the new millennium. Ted (whose brain is “wired differently”) and his older sister Kat watch Salim board the Eye and are stunned when he doesn’t get off. What follows is an intricate, intriguing, and thrilling race against time as Ted uses his keen observation skills to find his cousin. Checquer’s measured pacing accurately portrays Ted’s personality and reinforces the family conflicts, and his variety of British accents provides context for American listeners.

Common Core Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.7.3 Analyze how particular elements of a story or drama interact.

Instructional Extension: After listening to this mystery, students may be interested to learn more about “Interesting Things You Never Knew about The London Eye” by visiting http://ow.ly/gHXMI. The LondonNet site (http://ow.ly/GHXEM) not only includes facts, but also provides links to other London attractions such as the Tower of London. This is a good place to start a class project investigating London’s most important historical places.

The Red Blazer Girls: The Ring of Rocamadour. Written by Michael D. Beil. Narrated by Tai Alexandra Ricci. 6 CDs. 7 hrs. Listening Library. 2009. ISBN 978-0-7393-7960-8. $50. Gr 4-6

Three friends attending the all-girls Catholic school, St. Veronica’s, become embroiled in a mystery of major proportions when they try to help a strange older woman who lives next to the church. A precious artifact has gone missing and the girls must use their best math and language skills to discover its whereabouts and expose the villain. Ricci personifies the voices of the young sleuths and creates believable voices for the supporting characters. Listeners may want to follow along with or refer to the print edition to see the graphs, charts, and other puzzles that serve as clues. Three more mysteries featuring these girl detectives provide additional fun.

Common Core Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.6.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.

Instructional Extension: Girl detectives are an interesting group, from the classic Nancy Drew to Harriet the Spy to the young women in the previous two examples. Students can prepare a chart to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between girl and boy detectives in their methods of solving cases, leading to an interesting writing project.

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 (ALA Editions, 2011).

Photo by Hemera

Being out in the field, talking to teachers and librarians about the Common Core (CC), I’ve learned as much as I’ve taught. My world is often centered in my study (where I research and write), or in the graduate classes that I teach, or in the K–12 classrooms that I visit. In those spaces, I’ve learned, secondhand, about students being told they can only read an “L” or an “R” book—and how parents have demanded that libraries rearrange their collections from A to Z, according to carefully determined reading levels, so their kids can read totally non-frustrating texts. But it took being at a workshop out on Long Island, NY, for me to really understand the fundamental clash between guided reading and Common Core—something that many of you doubtless experience daily.

At the workshop, librarians spoke of their schools being, in effect, taken over by guided reading crews with their alphabet soup of labels and rigid instructions. That type of approach made absolutely no sense to me, so I did my homework. I learned that guided reading began as a good idea: breaking classrooms into groups by reading levels didn’t work since poor readers didn’t improve when they were clumped together, so teachers needed a new way to match individual readers, reading levels, and texts. So far, so good. Indeed, as one reading expert told me, providing a space, say 20 to 30 minutes daily, where, as part of the reading diet, a learner experiences clear sailing seems at worst harmless and at best a step toward success.

But this relatively benign approach has turned into an expensive program complete with minatory reading coaches who run around mandating to librarians what kids should be allowed to read. The second problem is that the steroidal guided reading monster is directly at odds with the Common Core.

As literacy expert Timothy Shanahan pointed out in “The Common Core Ate My Baby and Other Urban Legends,” a recent article in Educational Leadership, limiting students to below-frustration texts doesn’t necessarily help them (see, especially, “Legend 4: Teachers Must Teach Students at Frustration Levels”) nor does CC require all kids to tackle weighty tomes far beyond their previous reading ranges. In the early grades, where students are working to become fluent readers, CC doesn’t demand that they read more complex texts. And it’s precisely in that preK-to-2 band that learners may need some reading time where they don’t have to struggle. And that brings us to content.

The key clash between guided reading and CC is that those A-to-Z labels have nothing to do with content—they are about the ease of decoding. Starting in earnest in second grade, CC stresses that knowledge is a key part of literacy. This cuts two ways. Every elementary school librarian knows that a student who’s passionate about a subject isn’t daunted by the text’s difficulty—the multi-syllabic names of dinosaurs being a prime example. Curiosity drives readers on from one record, one wacky fact, one sports stat, one set of rules on how to care for pets, to another—and the text’s length or structure isn’t a formidable barrier. In turn, the Common Core standards emphasize that in order to read a student must identify details that add up to evidence and tap into modes of thinking that add up to argument and point of view. You can’t build those muscles without what librarians used to call “stretch,” or challenging, books.

Whether young people are on a sports team or practice an instrument, whether they play Minecraft or chess, they realize that to be good at something you have to work at it; you have to test your limits. Reading works the same way: you build muscles through confronting and overcoming a challenge, and you’re drawn to that challenge because you have a specific goal. We in library land know of many reading goals that appeal to students—books they want to tackle because they find them engaging, interesting, and exciting. Common Core adds the goal of preparing students for a successful life after school. That is the sort of guided reading that makes sense to me.

content over coverage

How can teachers and librarians work together to model for students how we talk about texts, how we explore topics of study, and what initiates our inquiry into a topic of interest? Educators have long understood that speaking and listening are essential components of literacy.  But all too often, talking is left out of the curriculum, because talking takes time. With the recent emphasis on testing, we have witnessed too many quiet classrooms, with students silently reading, independent of one another.

To fully access what they are reading, students need time to process it, and that processing is often most effective when done out loud. We need to give students time to dig in and explore, to talk with one another and with adults about what they are reading, to grapple with multiple perspectives, to pose questions, and to examine the writer’s craft.

Fortunately, the Common Core State Standards require that teachers at all grade levels focus on the role of speaking and listening within the language arts and the content areas. Teams of teachers working with librarians can therefore look at their grade span standards and use the Speaking and Listening standards as a tool for meeting the Reading and Writing standards. Each informs the other. Students who talk about what they have read, who use conversation, modeled by their teachers, as a tool to access their reading, are better prepared to do the critical thinking around texts that the CCSS asks of them.

Promote Formal and Informal Conversations

What are some of the ways that school librarians can support student efforts to talk about the nonfiction texts they read? The first step is the recognition that nonfiction texts are not simply fill-in-the-blank resources useful for writing reports or studying for tests. Indeed, the best nonfiction reflects the questing and questioning that the author engaged in while crafting it. Nonfiction is not answers, it is exploration–which readers or listeners are invited to join, whether through swiftly moving, page-turning narrative, or the swell of insights, or vistas of new possibility that it opens. The more go-to favorite nonfiction books that engage, stimulate, and challenge in these ways that you have, the better.

Start your preparation by looking closely at your nonfiction and making subcategories for yourself–this one is an I-couldn’t-put-it-down thriller, that one made me see the world a new way, this one invites readers to join the quest by giving them an expert to identify with, this title is filled with the unforgettable facts my kids will want to share with one another. Then plan a nonfiction story time like a meal: an appetizer of the weird and wacky, a first course of adventure, a hearty main meal of intellectual quest, and a fine dessert of websites and games students can explore on their own. That splendid feast should whet students’ appetites for nonfiction and get them started on the kinds of thinking the Common Core requires of them.

In elementary and middle school, where library is often an integrated arts class, librarian and teacher teams can coordinate the exploration of nonfiction and informational text so that it is aligned with topics, themes, or the types of writing that students are studying in their core class(es). Having a school-wide strategy for implementing the Speaking and Listening standards is as important as having a school-wide strategy for the Reading and Writing standards that often get more attention. Grade level teams can decide which Speaking and Listening standards will be introduced in core classes, and which in the library.  At the high school level, where the library is often a place used by classes for particular academic purposes, librarians can plan with the content area departments on how best to support students in speaking and listening about nonfiction texts.

The following are some general strategies to bring more speaking and listening activities into the school library to support students as they read increasing numbers of nonfiction texts.

Nonfiction Conversation Podcasts

We often ask students to write original book reviews. But what about recording a conversation about a book as a form of book review? Pairs, trios, or even groups of students who have read the same nonfiction book can be recorded, in audio or video, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the book. Students would first have to prepare their own reactions to the text, and then compare and contrast with one another to establish an outline for their recorded discussion.

Younger students will need more support than older students in this activity, and could create shorter podcasts. Upload the recording to a “Book Conversation” section of your school library webpage, and it is ready to be accessed by other students in the school. Such podcasts are also a way to bring community members into the school. Adults from your community can read the same book as a group of students, and their conversation can be recorded and uploaded.

Service Learning Projects

Coordinate with faculty who conduct service learning projects within the classroom, or in a volunteer or service club that meets before or after school, or at lunch. Students can start by reading nonfiction books and articles to learn more about the issues that they are working on. For example, if students are trying to fight hunger in your community, they can read a title or two on hunger and nutrition. Next, they can look at digital newspaper and magazine articles. Subscription databases have magazine articles for even the youngest of readers. Finally, students can read and discuss the information contained on the websites for various organizations that work to ameliorate the effects of hunger. Students will then synthesize their reading, consider what strategies may work best for organizing a food drive or fundraiser, and write and record a public service announcement that can be played on a community radio station, local cable access station, or both, sharing their knowledge as well as details about their project.

Creating Content for Younger Students

We know that in general, children can understand more complex information if they hear it or have it read aloud to them. Primary grade teachers often lament not having enough material that is developmentally appropriate for children, at a level that their students can read independently. Have the older students in your school research and record content that can be used by the younger children in your school. This can occur during library class or in conjunction with classroom research projects at the different grade levels.

Individually, in pairs, or small groups, students can research a topic, and create their own multimodal digital text to share. A project like this asks students to read and take notes on a topic and to compare and contrast the information and source material through careful discussion and deliberation. They will then have to outline and plan what the text will look like visually, negotiating details and differences, and finally, record their piece.

If posted on the library webpage, younger students will have access to the information. This is a wonderful project for Book Buddies. Of course, careful attention has to be paid to the accuracy of the student work. While doing all of this reading, writing, speaking, and listening, the older researchers will be enacting many of the Common Core State Standards.

Oral Histories

Turn your school library into an Oral History Center. By working with grade level teams, see if there are one or two willing to conduct oral histories as part of language arts/English class and/or in conjunction with social studies or science. Primary grade students can interview close family members or neighbors, while older elementary, middle, and high school students can interview community members in conjunction with specific units of study.

For instance, a high school chemistry class might interview scientists in the area if you have a local research center, university or manufacturing plant. Middle school students studying World War II might interview senior citizens in your area who were children at the time. For resources, go to StoryCorps or the Columbia Center for Oral History.

From left to rt: Myra Zarnowski, Marc Aronson, Mary Ann Cappiello

Eds. note: In last month’s column, “Deconstructing Nonfiction,” the authors considered the types of nonfiction texts, their purposes, and their use in the classroom.

Common Curriculum

Ready or not, here they come. Currently adopted in part or in full by 45 states, the Common Core (CC) standards are seemingly on everyone’s mind. At almost every school I visited this year, teachers asked me to address the Common Core in my workshops. Planning lessons with CC in mind presents a challenge, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. New sites and services are popping up on the Web every day with the express purpose of helping plan lessons around Common Core. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Online resource Common Curriculum is designed to help educators align their lesson plans with CC standards. Common Curriculum provides an online plan book, which enables you to keep track of your class schedules and write your lesson plans. Enter a lesson into your Common Curriculum planner, then click “search for standard” to find a match for your lesson plan. Including more text in your lesson will improve search results, I’ve found.

A free application, Common Curriculum also enables users to attach files and links to their lesson plans, which really makes it easy to organize those digital materials in one place. Common Curriculum also has a built-in blogging feature. Once activated, the blog option will automatically post your lesson plans for you.

The heart of the Mastery Connect (see screencast below) service is an assessment tracker in which teachers and administrators can monitor each student’s progress toward meeting specifically selected Common Core standards. That data can be extremely useful in planning lessons. In an especially nice feature, Mastery Connect offers an app for iOS and Android that makes all of the Common Core standards available for immediate access from a smartphone. The app has been used by teachers more than 5.6 million times, according to the company. And you needn’t go it alone when planning your lessons. Mastery Connect offers an online network in which teachers across the country can connect to share ideas and lessons planned around the Common Core.

Need some inspiration for planning a Common Core-related lesson? There are a couple of places to start your search. The One Laptop Per Child project (one.laptop.org) recently created a wiki of elementary school lesson plans aligned to Common Core standards, XO Plans For You. Select your grade level, then a content area to find sample lesson plans. The lessons are archived as Google Documents, which you can download and or save onto your Google Drive account.

Popular virtual penpal service ePals has recently launched its own Common Core standards resource. The ePals Common Core Implementation Center is a bank of free project plans created by teachers and ePals staff. Search for projects by grade level and content area—currently limited to ELA and science. Many of the projects, though not all, involve using ePals. There are alternatives, if you don’t choose to use the service, but it might take a bit more creative effort on your part to make those particular lessons work.

As you plan your lessons in the new year, remember these free resources and take some of the stress out of aligning your plans to Common Core standards.

Richard Byrne (richardbyrne@freetech4teachers.com), a high school social studies teacher, writes the award-winning blog “Free Technology for Teachers.”

ARNOLD, Caroline. Too Hot? Too Cold?: Keeping Body Temperature Just Right. illus. by Annie Patterson.  Charlesbridge. 2013. ISBN 9781580892766. JLG Level: SCE : Science Nonfiction Elementary (Grades 2-6).

Written in a voice that speaks directly to the reader, Arnold’s text presents facts about body temperature. “You have a layer of fat under your skin. It is like a built-in blanket that helps protect your body and keep it warm.” The author introduces various behaviors that influence natural temperature, such as weather, clothing, and location. Glossary and author’s note provide supplemental nonfiction text features.

MARKLE, Sandra. The Long, Long Journey: The Godwit’s Amazing Migration.

illus. by Mia Posada. Millbrook. 2013. ISBN 9780761356233. JLG Level: NEK : Nonfiction Early Elementary (Grades K-2).

In picture book format, Markle and Posada tell a story about the 7,200 mile migration of a godwit. Hatching in an Alaskan summer, the bird learns to fly, catch its food, and develop its defenses. In October, it will make a long, nonstop journey to New Zealand. Young readers will enjoy the narrative lilt of the text, while older children will appreciate the numerous facts. Appended information, including an author’s note, round out the nonfiction features. Beautiful collage and watercolor illustrations communicate one bird’s lifecycle in migration.

MARTIN JR., Bill. I Love Our Earth / Amo nuestra tierra. illus. by Dan Lipow. Charlesbridge. 2013. ISBN 9781580895569. JLG Level: PS : Primary Spanish (Grades K-3).

Full-color photographs illustrate a poetic tribute to the seasons of the earth and times of the day. This bilingual picture book uses simple language to convey an introduction to nature. Panoramic views depict mountains and seas. Kids of all ages and cultures illustrate the meaning of each line. This simple overview of a child’s world makes it a good selection for even preschool storytimes.

NELSON, Kadir. Nelson Mandela.  HarperCollins/Katherine Tegan. 2013. ISBN 9780061783760. JLG Level: BE : Biography Elementary (Grades 2-6).

Much-loved and respected author/illustrator Kadir Nelson gives children an up-close-and-personal look at Nelson Mandela. From the tight shot of Mandela on the cover to the final shot of the world leader’s fist in the air, powerful images punctuate this introduction to the life of the first black president of South Africa. Expressive verse allows the author to convey a young boy who saw injustice and vowed to make a difference. A must-have for your picture book biography collection.

For ideas about how to use these books and links to supportive sites, check out the Junior Library Guild blog, Shelf Life.

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.

First, a tangent: anyone who has spent time grappling with the Common Core (CC) English Language Arts standards knows that they have significantly raised the stakes on text complexity. Books that, say, we once thought were a challenging choice for fifth graders are now considered appropriate for fourth graders.

Why has the bar been raised, even though, just a few years ago, No Child Left Behind focused on kids who read below the old, less demanding, grade-level standards?

A key reason is that the metrics for upper YA titles—the types of books that teens have been assigned as the ultimate high school challenge—are 200 Lexile points below what high school seniors will be facing the following year in college. If K–12 education is a fire truck ladder, then we’ve built it too short to reach the escape window. In order to make sure that students are prepared for college, we needed to add more rungs to the ladder.

CC increases the text complexity so much that by kids’ final year in high school there are, as far as I know, no YA nonfiction books that meet the new education guidelines. To remedy that situation, students must necessarily read adult books, primary sources, or academic books. Fine. So if that’s where we’re leading students, how do we get them there?

An adult history book assumes that the reader already knows—or can know, or should know—something about the topic. If, for instance, a writer talks about the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts in a biography of John Adams, he assumes that the reader has studied them in school or can quickly Google them. The author’s job is to give an engaging take on what the passage of those bills tell us about Adams, and how this fresh perspective helps us see Adam’s time, and perhaps our own, in a new light. Since the reader knows the basic information, the originality is in the author’s thinking and presentation, and a source note may simply list where he got the primary source.

YA and academic books, though, have different goals. Books for young readers don’t presume our audience already knows the story. Indeed, even as we’re presenting what we hope is an enticing view of either an unfamiliar event (such as the race to make the first atom bomb or the outbreak of an 18th-century Yellow Fever epidemic in Philadelphia), or a familiar one (like the Great Depression or the 1963 March on Washington), we need to make sure that our readers understand both the basics and our new take. We have to treat the information itself as potentially new to them. This puts those of us who write for young adults in the same place as an academic historian, since he or she is presenting original research that’s aimed at shifting how we view the past.

Thus we, like the academic historian, need to let our readers into the process: Where does our information come from? Are there other perspectives? Are our sources reliable? We can’t presume that our readers have the necessary background, so we need to provide them with it; that’s why our citations need to be annotated. We need to show kids how our claims, our knowledge, are cooked.

Authors who merely cite sources without discussing them are seeing YA history as using a story to pass along settled information. This is appealing to fiction fans, who enjoy the narrative flow of a nonfiction book (and are thrilled that it doesn’t resemble a textbook), but for whom the information is the medicine which the spoonful of narrative sugar makes palatable. Not being familiar with either the content or the way that historians construct knowledge, they don’t miss what they don’t know. Those who question, discuss, and compare their sources see YA history as using a story to acquaint readers with the process of how knowledge is created. This is at the heart of historical writing, but may be totally unfamiliar to fiction readers, who often enjoy speculating about character and motivation in novels, but may have never learned that the same kind of thinking must be applied to our understanding of the real world.

I think annotated citations are great even for kids in the youngest grades, because we want them to be pestering us, demanding that we explain “How do you know that?” But by the upper-middle grades and certainly by high school this is no longer a choice. Our books are always as much about the construction of knowledge as about the information itself. To put it a different way, our highest goal isn’t merely that history should read like a novel, but that it should be as much of a puzzle as a math problem and as open to interpretation as a poem.

“Well-written” in nonfiction necessarily means “well-considered.” History is, ultimately, an invitation to the reader to participate in the process of thinking about, and thus re-imagining, who we are and how we got that way. That is what college offers. We can only make the link by sharing our process of discovery with our younger readers.

Coda: Right now, a related debate is going on among prominent historians and history educators. Stanford’s Sam Wineburg recently wrote a marvelous critique of Howard Zinn’s work—featuring his poor use of sources, which was then criticized by NYU’s Robert Cohen. For my take on the debate, with links to the Wineburg essay, see http://nonfictionandthecommoncore.blogspot.com/2013_01_01_archive.html; and for Cohen’s critique, visit http://hnn.us/articles/when-assessing-zinn-listen-voices-teachers-and-students.

When teachers and librarians consider instructional strategies to improve students’ ability to read nonfiction, they often start with text features. Text features are a central component of book construction, but understanding how they work is not the ultimate goal. Teachers also ask students to consider text structures, the larger format or outline with which the book is written. Text structures are important when considering how a book is constructed, but an understanding of text structures is not the ultimate goal, either. The goal is to teach children how the different elements of a nonfiction book work together to contribute to the overall meaning.

Text Types and Structures of Nonfiction Text

If students are unfamiliar with nonfiction texts, they may assume that every nonfiction book serves the same function. This is not the case. Different types of nonfiction books serve varied purposes. Having an understanding of what those purposes are can help students understand why an author selected a particular structure for the book, and how the two work together to create meaning.

The most common form of nonfiction is the survey, which provides an overview on a topic. Surveys often have nouns as their title. Think “Snakes” or “Africa.” Because there are so many of these books in school libraries, students may expect every nonfiction book to do what a survey does. Students need to know that concept books focus on abstract ideas or classifications, such as life cycles; that specialized nonfiction dives deeply into a precise topic and may draw on primary and secondary source material; and that biographies focus on the life of one or several people.

Identifying the type of book they are about to read can help students develop an understanding of each type’s common traits. When students know what type of nonfiction book they are about to read, they have a sense of the book’s purpose, and can anticipate the range of material within its pages.

Just as there are different kinds of nonfiction texts, there are different types of text structures. Exposition is the most common type, often found in surveys, as it introduces a topic and divides it into subtopics. But some nonfiction titles employ narration, choosing to tell a story. Nonfiction picture storybooks are an example of this, but nonfiction chapter books can also adopt this approach. At times nonfiction takes a linear or chronological structure, and at other times, an external sequence is used, such as the alphabet or numbers, days of the week, or months of the year. Compare-and-contrast, question-and-answer. and problem-solution are other familiar structures.

Having conversations with children about identifying the text type and purpose of a book, as well as its overall structure, will allow them to better understand how print and visual components of a book work together to convey meaning. These conversations will also aid in understanding how the components contribute to meaning-making, strengthening students’ reading and writing.

Examining Text Features Outside, Around, and Inside a Nonfiction Text

Just as there are many ways to structure an entire text in order to give it clarity and coherence, text features can also support comprehension. In Checking Out Nonfiction K-8: Good Choices for Best Learning (Christopher-Gordon Pub., 2000), authors Rosemary A. Bamford and Janice V. Kristo refer to these text features by their location: outside the body of the book, around the text, and inside the text. This is a useful way for educators to discuss with students how the specific parts of a book support and extend its overall design. Since not every book will have all possible text features, be sure to provide a range of materials.

Outside a Nonfiction Text.

Begin by considering these features:

• Table of contents
• Bibliography
• Index
• Glossary

Outside features help readers locate what they want, understand the overall structure of the book, learn the sources used to write it, find additional books to extend their understanding, and enrich or support vocabulary. It’s a good idea to spend some time showing how these features help readers from the start. For example, closely examine the table of contents. Does it reveal the specific topics to be discussed? How are the titles written—as questions, topics, vivid quotes from within the chapter? By stopping to examine a table of contents, readers ready themselves for what is to follow.

Around a Nonfiction Text.

Before delving into the main text, consider how the author has framed the book for the reader by exploring these features:

• Introduction
• Author’s Note
• Illustrator’s Note
• Preface
• Afterward
• Appendix

Around features not only introduce readers to a topic, they also provide additional information about the subject and the author’s experience researching it. By carefully examining an author’s note, for example, students might learn how that person became interested in the topic, the kind of research required to write the book, and what discoveries were made. This information demystifies the process of creating nonfiction and helps readers understand the passion writers have for the topics they investigate.

Inside a nonfiction text.

As you discuss reading a text, explore how these features support the text or extend it by providing additional information:

• Headings and subheadings
• Sidebars and insets
• Photographs and captions
• Diagrams
• Graphs, charts and tables
• Timelines
• Maps

While headings and subheadings can guide students as they read, photographs and captions extend and assist in comprehension. A photograph may show details not included in written text. Captions can go much further by pointing out details, providing additional information beyond the text or the photo, giving opinions, speculating, and posing questions for the reader to think about. It’s a good idea to consider how these features complement and extend the writing.

Both text structure and text features provide ways for writers to organize and introduce information, while keeping the narrative engaging. When we introduce these features of nonfiction to students, they benefit both as readers and writers. Having conversations about texts is a major component of the Common Core State Standards. Discussing how texts are constructed and using examples from quality nonfiction books is both illuminating and essential.

The authors start by outlining legitimate reasons why many teachers express reluctance about getting onboard, such as lack of resources, effects of poverty, and technology challenges. Nevertheless, they recommend that it’s time to put reservations aside, take a positive leap forward, and treat the standards as “gold,” packed with the potential to spark real school reform. Teacher collaboration across and within grades is a key ingredient.

Focused on literacy instruction, Pathways is divided into three main sections: “Reading Standards,” “Writing Standards,” and “Speaking/Listening and Language Standards.” Each begins with a close reading and practical analysis of the related Common Core standards, defining what is and isn’t expected of students and teachers, followed by ideas for implementation.

Collaborative study exercises for teachers are incorporated as needed. Text complexity, “the hallmark of the Common Core State Standards,” and nonfiction reading are given due attention. Readers are assured that the Fountas and Pinnell system for leveling text need not be abandoned, though other methods are cited by the CCSS. And recognizing the challenge of getting more nonfiction (which is not quite so easy to level) into the hands of young readers in a time of squeezed budgets, the authors propose solutions, from adding quality magazines to tapping digital resources. Unfortunately, there’s no mention of drawing on school library resources.

When addressing writing, the authors point out that the CCSS clearly emphasize students’ ability to write evidence-based arguments, and it’s likely that assessments being developed by PARCC and SMARTER Balanced (the authors recommend that teachers become familiar with both agencies) will test those skills. Here the path to instruction and increasing student achievement is not quite so clear-cut, and caution is advised against jumping on packaged materials that promise success. Instead, instruction should begin with evaluating students’ skills (Common-Core-Aligned Performance Assessments for grades K-8 are available at the TCRWP website).

The third piece of the ELA pie, Reading/Listening and Language, is described as clearly intended to make students “independent word solvers and writers and speakers.” Teaching grammar and vocabulary via isolated workbooks isn’t the answer; integrating and developing these skills across the curriculum, as in reading and writing, is a better approach.

Whether or not a school follows the TCRWP model, Pathways analyzes the ELA standards with clarity and makes a convincing case for tapping into the CCSS as a route to thoughtful school reform at a local level spurred by the high expectations of teachers who are committed to honing their craft.

Arriving on the scene together—and even worse, on the tails of declining budgets for schools and libraries nationwide—these two factors present a real challenge. Fortunately, we also have some real opportunities ahead thanks to collaborative, solutions-focused thinking at the Summit. The gathering brings together school librarians, publishers, aggregators, and vendors to talk about vital issues and, more importantly, to discover the answers to today’s big questions.

A key question relating to the perfect storm of collection development is, of course, funding. Where will the money for new CC resources come from? How will we pay for new digital resources? Likely not from a new pot of money. But that doesn’t mean we can’t access funding that’s “new” to the library.

One approach is to look for existing funds within your school and district that can be redirected so that your library can purchase CC resources for the classroom. Eric Fitzgerald, Capstone Publishing’s vice president of direct sales, encouraged Summit attendees to seek out this kind of “blended funding.”

Blended funding means asking the English department to kick in some classroom or textbook money to help support that new literary criticism resource. Blended funding means pointing out to the elementary school principal that many of the new interactive ebook series are replacing science and social studies textbooks… so maybe they should be partially funded by the textbook budget. Blended funding isn’t a foolproof solution, but it’s a solid tactic. One challenge: it requires that you market your expertise in resource selection and collection development so that your value is obvious to others.

You also must, as they say, have skin in the game. Before you go asking for additional funds from departmental, textbook, or classroom budgets, make sure you’re ready to talk about the percentage of the cost that will be covered by the library budget. It’s a lot easier to sell someone on splitting the cost than it is to ask them to pay for the whole shebang.

When crafting your appeal for blended funding support, the other key component to address is efficiency. Remember, the library budget isn’t “our” budget; rather we’re centrally managing funds to enable more efficient purchases of resources to support classroom teaching and learning. Given the widespread need for new CC-aligned resources, libraries can work with publishers and aggregators to deliver wider access to content by going digital. One of our most powerful arguments is that we can save our organizations money by sharing resources and purchasing in larger consortia to reduce costs and increase access. The science teachers in a district or region aren’t set up to leverage group purchasing, but librarians are.

From my perspective as a school administrator, this is the perfect solution to a perfect storm. Everyone is desperate for content; now it’s our time to step up and deliver. We have the infrastructure, business relationships, and great publishers and aggregators to work with us. We just need to apply blended funding to make it happen for everyone.

Christopher Harris (infomancy@gmail.com) is coordinator of the school library system of the Genesee Valley (NY) Educational Partnership.

What is reassuring is that we know that children of all ages can think critically about the world in creative ways, particularly when they are given robust and developmentally appropriate texts as part of a well-crafted, student-centered curriculum. These specific groupings of books or multimodal digital texts are referred to as clusters, or text sets. Situating students within the context of a text cluster allows librarians and teachers to use their collections in new ways. Teachers already have tried-and-true books and can use their library to build outward—moving from highlighting a single text to using a text cluster.

Not only do clusters offer an opportunity to differentiate reading, they create a synergy within the curriculum, allowing students to consider multiple perspectives. When readers see that knowledge is not fixed, that there is no single way to represent an idea, a literary theme, a historical event, or a scientific concept, they see the role of the author in new and exciting ways. When given the opportunity to pen their own works, they can apply what they have learned about a variety of different genres and text types.

Text clusters, or text sets, offer rich opportunities in science, language arts, social studies, and the related arts such as music and art. Here are specific ways to use clusters in your library and classroom, and in your work with grade-level teams.

Clustering Concepts: Ecosystems

Text clusters can be used as a tool to teach science content standards as well as the Common Core State Standards for language arts and content literacy. Let’s say you are working with a third grade teacher who is teaching ecosystems or animal habitats. Most likely, your library has a variety of books on different ecosystems and animal habitats to support student inquiry. But to explore that topic with a tighter focus, and model the thinking across texts, the unit could launch with an exploration of how ecosystems change over time.

First, recommend that the teacher read aloud Joyce Sidman’s Song of the Water Boatman (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), illustrated by Beckie Prange. Moving from spring to winter, the book carries readers through four seasons in the life cycle of a pond. On each spread a poem, a nonfiction paragraph, and a woodcut illustration can be found.

Follow that title with the nonfiction picture storybook The Wolves are Back (Penguin, 2008) by Jean Craighead George, about the restoration of wolves in Yellowstone National Park. Students will understand what happens when one animal is removed from an ecosystem, and how that ecosystem shifts its balance when the animal returns.

Finally, the class could explore Thomas F. Yezerski’s Meadowlands (Farrar, 2011), an illustrated history of the wetlands region in northern New Jersey. In small groups, children can discuss how an entire ecosystem can suffer extensive damage and yet manage to rebuild itself over time. Each of these titles offers a different perspective and models a different text structure (poems and paragraphs; narrative; exposition) that youngsters can reference as they they compose in response to the study.

Clustering Biographies: Powerful Pairs and Triplets

Since biographies of the famous and infamous are abundant and ever increasing, it’s easy to put together “bio-clusters.” Start small with two titles that can be compared, and then build larger collections of books, and primary and secondary sources (photographs, prints, letters, newspaper articles, maps, political cartoons). Here are a couple of book clusters to get started.

Powerful Pairs: Beginning with Biographies

The CCSStandards call for us to begin comparing two texts on the same topic with students as early as kindergarten. Picture books are a good place to start because it’s easy for young readers to spot the differences in illustrated works. Using biographies about the same person is one way to show children that informational texts on the same topic are not the same.

For example, two picture books about Jane Goodall, can be used to highlight different approaches to the same information. That is, not all authors select the identical information to spotlight. Me…Jane (Little, Brown, 2011) written and illustrated by Patrick McDonnell ends with a young Jane Goodall going to sleep and dreaming of her future on the continent of Africa where she studies animals. When readers turn the page, Goodall, wakes up as an adult. The dream has been realized.

In contrast, Jeanette Winter’s The Watcher (Random, 2011), children receive a fuller story of how Goodall saved her money, traveled to Africa, and met the scientist Louis Leakey. It was Leakey who suggested that Goodall study chimpanzees in Tanzania.

Both books also provide unique kinds of visual information. Me…Jane contains actual writing and illustrations by the young Goodall, who as a girl, organized a group called The Alligator Society. The Watcher presents pictures of Goodall’s early life in small, tightly framed images. In contrast, once the woman begins working with chimpanzees, the pictures burst out of their frames and become two-page spreads. Her joy and sense of the freedom are obvious.

Terrific Triplets: A Cluster of Biographies

In books for older readers, bio-clusters raise additional questions about how history is written. The following titles bring readers face to face with contradictory information. In Amelia Lost (Random, 2011) author Candace Fleming casts doubt on Earhart’s claim that she saw her first airplane at the 1908 Iowa State Fair when she was 11 years old. According to Fleming’s research, there were no planes in Iowa at that time. She suggests that the aviatrix fabricated stories to suit an image she wanted to project.

Two other books, Amelia Earhart (Abrams, 2008), by Shelley Tanaka, and Corinne Szabo’s photobiography, Sky Pioneer (National Geographic, 1997), report that Earhart saw a plane at the fair as fact. The authors of these titles relied on Earhart’s own writings. Here is an opportunity to discuss with students that the sources authors consult can matter and that they may present conflicting information.

This cluster presents many additional opportunities to make comparisons. There are differences in text organization, visual information, theme, and more. Using these books, educators can initiate important conversations about craft and structure, the use of evidence to support ideas, and point-of-view.

Professional Sources Can Guide You

There are many ways to use text clusters or text sets in the library and in the classroom. What we have offered is a mere starting point. Professional resources are available to provide additional guidance as you begin working with clusters.

Eds. Note- two of the authors of this article have written relevant texts on the subject.

Myra Zarnowski’s History Makers (Heinemann, 2003) outlines how to compare biographies using such criteria as accuracy, style, illustration, theme, and selection and interpretation of information. A data chart is provided for gathering information and student samples show how it is done. In Making Sense of History (Scholastic, 2006) Zarnowski describes a hands-on approach for learning about multiple perspectives in history books.

For an up-to-date source on planning with clusters of nonfiction material, see Mary Ann Cappiello & Erika Thulin Dawes’s Teaching with Text Sets (Shell Education, 2012). This book describes innovative ways to incorporate nonfiction literature, as well as other genres, in the classroom while achieving CCSS and content standards. It provides both ready-to-use ideas and guidance for developing your own units of study using specific text models.

ABIRACHED, Zeina. A Game for Swallows. Graphic Universe, 2012. ISBN 9780761385684. JLG Level: GH : Graphic Novels High

Gr 9 Up—Based on her grandmother’s story, Abirached tells the tale of one long night in Beirut, when the parents of two children cross the line between East and West and get caught in a bombing. Told with simple black-and-white illustrations, in the tone of Persepolis, the children are comforted by their neighbors in their building’s foyer while the world is crashing down all around them. This beautiful story illustrates Florian’s words: To die to leave to return / It’s a game for swallows.

ANTHONY, Jessica and Rodrigo Corral. Chopsticks: A Novel. Razorbill, 2012. ISBN 9781595144355. JLG Level: GH : Graphic Novels High

Gr 9 Up—If there was ever a book that didn’t fit into any particular mold, it’s Chopsticks. More of a mixed-media novel, the story is told through photographs, ticket stubs, postcards, and other ephemera, with a little text in-between. Glory is a child prodigy―a pianist of amazing talent. Her teacher and father books a European tour after she becomes romantically involved with Franco, the new boy next door. As Franco begins to fail out of school, Glory begins to descend into what appears to be madness as she interrupts her playing with “Chopsticks.” In a hauntingly ambiguous ending, readers will have to decide for themselves what really happened in the disappearance of Glory. What is reality? What is madness?

MCCLINTOCK, Norah and Mike Deas. I, Witness. Orca, 2012. ISBN 9781554697892. JLG Level: GH : Graphic Novels High

Gr 9 Up—Being a teenager is hard enough, but when you witness a murder and the next thing you know your best friend is killed in a drive-by shooting, life gets really complicated. Boone’s friends begin to drop like leaves as the dead bodies pile up around him. Thinking that it’s better to keep his mouth shut, he walks into another situation that makes him think twice about not getting involved.

Blood-red ink is used to highlight the mostly black-and-white graphic novel, and with all of those deaths, there’s a fair amount of red. Canadian novelist McClintock enters the teenage world and mixes it with violence and conscience-driven actions. Teens will wonder what they would do if they knew more than they wanted to know.

PETTY, J.T. and Hilary Florido. Bloody Chester. First Second, 2012. ISBN 9781596431003. JLG Level: GH : Graphic Novels High

Gr 9 Up—Petty’s young adult graphic novel debut is a mix of horror, mystery, and the Wild West. Filled with coarse language (and racial slurs), the story tells the tale of a teenage boy who grasps at the chance to start over. Called Bloody Chester (because he constantly gets a beating), Chester must burn down a plague-ridden ghost town in order to earn his salary. It seems, though, that it’s much more complicated than that. He falls for a girl who’s still in town because her crazy, holed-up, treasure-hoarding father won’t leave. Then there are the ghosts or zombies or plague-ridden souls that haunt the town. Chester is determined to do his job and discovers that no one seems to be telling the truth.

From humor to horror, Petty and Florido create an interesting tale with full-color illustrations. A few sketches of the work in progress are also included. There’s even a bit of reflection in the story’s secrets that will cause the reader to ponder.

PHAM, Thien. Sumo. First Second, 2012. ISBN 9781596435810. JLG Level: GH : Graphic Novels High

Gr 9 Up—When his chance for a career in pro football is eliminated and a long-term romance ends, Scott chooses to start over in Japan as a sumo wrestler. Though it’s harder than he expects, his past experiences help him give it his best shot.

Using color to indicate the time and setting, Pham tells a powerful three-part story that builds until the final wordless conclusion. Readers may be able to read it quickly, but will want to reread to absorb the brilliance of the telling.

For ideas about how to use these books and links to supportive sites, check out the Junior Library Guild blog, Shelf Life.

Junior Library Guild (JLG) 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, JLG’s book selections go on to win awards, collect starred or favorable reviews, and earn industry honors. Visit them at www.JuniorLibraryGuild.com.

A view of the “NYC skyline” in Las Vegas, NV, the site of 2012 NCTE Convention

Amid the sparkle of bling and sounds of cha-ching, visitors to Las Vegas, NV, last week caught sight of thousands of educators from around the country wending their way through Metro Golden Mayer Grand complex toward its conference center for the 102nd annual National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) convention November 15-18.

While some (including author Sherman Alexie) confessed to playing “spot the English teacher,” and others admitted to (briefly) straying from the well-marked paths to try their hand with Lady Luck, most attendees stayed on track to reach the 700-plus sessions, Tech-on-the-Go tips and demonstrations, a floor show hosting 160 exhibitors, and hourly author signings.

Robust programming addressed a wide range of topics including the Common Core, technology, reading and writing, diversity, and notable books.

Among the many highlights was a packed presentation led by Orbis Pictus Award winner Melissa Sweet, and honorees Candace Fleming, Monica Brown, and Julie Paschkis. Attendees flocked to hear authors Libba Bray, Rita Williams-Garcia, James Deem, and Sharon Flake, and shared meals while they listened to speakers Jonathan Kozol, Scott Westerfeld, Blue Balliett,  David Shannon, and Jon Scieszka, among others. Sam Houston State University’s Teri Lesesne chaired a conversation on “Inspiring Readers with the Newest Young Adult Literature Winners.”

The Common Core State Standards was central to several panels, including one led by educators Lucy Calkins, Mary Ehrenworth, and Chris Lehman, co-authors of  Pathways to the Common Core (Heinemann, 2012) and faculty at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University. These and other speakers addressed issues from teaching the skills that align with the standards and integrating them into the classroom, to identifying classic and contemporary literature that will support students as they identify universal themes.

Sessions on apps, Twitter in the classroom, and e-reading, and “Reports from Cyberspace” also drew interest. In one interactive program, facilitators demonstrated how to incorporate technology in each stage of the writing process, while in another, presenters discussed shifting lessons to podcasts and video, among other approaches to the “Flipped Classroom.”

Closing the conference were full-day workshops addressing writing instruction, arts, literacy, civic engagement, “Books That Make a Difference: Kids Taking Action for Social Justice,” and NCTE’s Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) two-day gathering.

This year, the ALAN workshop focused on “Reaching Them All” and delivered with panels and break-out sessions discussing humor, LGBTQ literature, children of the world, war, graphic novels, sci-fi, and romance.

Throughout, authors provided insight into their work. Considering his novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (S & S, 2012), Benjamin Alire Sáenz commented that having come to terms with his sexuality at age 54, “I think these characters have been living inside me for years.”

Poet Lesléa Newman spoke about October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard (Candlewick, 2012), a novel in verse about the 1998 murder of that University of Wyoming student. Donna Cooner, author of Skinny (Scholastic, 2012), discussed her own gastric-bypass surgery. Gabrielle Zevin (All These Things I’ve Done, FSG, 2011) suggested “it’s almost irresponsible not to have a message. I want my characters to be strong, but ‘strong’ has lots of meanings.”

Eric Walters (When Elephants Fight, with Adrian Bradbury, Orca, 2008), Deborah Ellis (My Name is Parvana, Groundwood Books, 2012), and Patricia McCormick (Never Fall Down, HarperCollins, 2012) commented on their imperative to provide contemporary readers with an understanding of life in other countries, particularly the lives of children in war-torn regions.

Conference materials, handouts, and more information about the event can be found on the NCTE Convention website.

Literature Lover’s Lament: Learning to Love Nonfiction: Connecting Real-World Texts to the Common Core Standards

Even though it meant racing directly from the airport to the MGM Grand Conference Center, this session was not to be missed. Featuring the powerhouse trio of UCLA’s Carol Yago, UC-Irvine’s Carol Olson, and Carleton College’s Deborah Applebaum, the audience was treated to a terrific overview of what the Common Core standards really mean to English teachers and their classroom materials. While there was discussion of the use of cognitive toolkits and the Reading Framework for the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which librarians certainly need to be aware of, much of the talk focused on encouraging educators to go beyond the tried-and-true literature they currently use, and to try out some of the excellent nonfiction resources that are now available. For instance, if you’re teaching the classic Grapes of Wrath, why not add some outstanding nonfiction titles to your lessons, such as The Worst Hard Time (Mariner, 2006), The Dust Bowl Through the Lens (Walker, 2009), and the free verse Out of the Dust (Scholastic, 1999)? And if you’re looking for articles to spice up a literature unit, check out Lapham’s Quarterly, a magazine of history and ideas that’s overseen by Harper’s editor emeritus, Lewis Lapham. The theme of embracing nonfiction was certainly evident throughout the conference, and publishers in the exhibit hall evidently have heard the call as well.

English Teachers Igniting Literacy for Incarcerated Students: Inspiring Writing in the Inside to Connect to the Outside

This very compelling session, chaired by the University of San Francisco’s Peter Williamson, featured speakers Sean Neil and Constance Walker, who both teach at Woodside Learning Center, Juvenile Hall, in San Francisco, and Carleton’s Applebaum. Since we know that literacy can help end recidivism (which currently hovers at 86 percent for juveniles), reading and writing can be some of the most powerful tools that you can give incarcerated kids. Neil and Walker described the programs they’ve offered to their teens, with the full support of the Juvenile Hall Library, which is run by the San Francisco Public Library. A project that involved writing letters to ancestors on reflective mylar was mounted at the Alcatraz Prison Museum, and a blog created by students, Songs of the Caged Birds: Caged Bodies, Free Minds, provides an ongoing outlet for their writings. Key readings in class, offered so that teens can understand the prison system better, are The Real Costs of Prison (PM Press, 2008), Are Prisons Obsolete? (Open Media, 2003), and The Politics of Injustice (Sage, 2003).

Applebaum works with adults at the Minnesota Correctional Facility, a high security prison in Stillwater, MN. As a teaching volunteer, she has been able to introduce and nurture creative writing skills in her students, many of whom are serving life sentences. Using liberatory pedagogy, which is a pedagogy of liberation centered around the principles for social change and transformation through education based on consciousness raising and engagement with oppressive forces, Applebaum has seen her students’ intelligence and creativity surface in many ways. From the Inside Out: Letters to Young Men and Other Writing (Creative Space, 2009) is one result of the classes. This anthology features letters, short stories, and poems from incarcerated authors from her facility.

Watch for two articles to appear in the March 2013 issue of English Journal on writing and the incarcerated—“Traveling in the Dark: The Promise and Pedagogy of Writing in Prison” (Applebaum), and “Songs of the Caged Birds: Literacy and Learning with Incarcerated Youth” (Williamson, Mercurio, Walker).

Fae-Tal Attraction: The Timeless International Appeal of Faerie Folk in Young Adult Literature

Young adult fantasies about faerie folk are more popular than ever, and as this panel proved, no two faeries are exactly alike! Authors Janni Lee Simner, Aprilynne Pike, Janette Rallison, and R. J. Anderson captivated the audience with their discussion of the origin of their faerie mythos, the rabid fans that attend FaerieCon (“Do not go dressed up as Tinkerbell!” warned Pike), and the ongoing interest in faerie titles for teen readers. All of the panelists cited An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, & Other Supernatural Creatures (Pantheon, 1978) as the go-to reference for all things faerie. A sampling of contemporary faerie novels can be found in the NCTE 2012 program listings.

Downed tree on the way to New Canaan Library, CT.

The day after Hurricane Sandy, my wife and I walked around our town. We’d been fortunate. Even though a fallen tree blocked our street, with every sort of power line beneath it, we had power and water and even TV and Internet. Our house was filled with neighbors charging their cell phones and craving hot coffee.

As we picked our way past trees and police tape and fallen wires, we saw home after home darkened, trees upended across yards, porches, and roofs. We finally reached my 92-year-old mother, who was trapped in her cold, powerless home, and my mother-in-law, who was even more imprisoned in an apartment with neither power nor running water. I’m sure you’ve all had similar experiences or have seen images such as these, and far worse.

The storm brought change. We all also saw President Obama and New Jersey Governor Christie work together—an image of what our nation could be and should be. And that brings me to the main point of this column. I believe that students in every school in America should address the following question: Are human actions changing our climate? And if they are, how? What can we do about it?

We’re living amidst wild nature. Is that due to climate change? What could be a more perfect Common Core question? What could be more central to our lives, and our students’ futures? To address these questions, kids need to use science, history, economics, ecology, biology, math, and social action—they can read dystopian novels such as Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker (Little, Brown, 2010) or M. T. Anderson’s Feed (Candlewick, 2002). These are questions on which experts disagree. That’s perfect. We’re not preaching to our students, we are engaging them in answering a question that’s as central to their generation as civil rights was to mine. Why should schools focus on anything else? Students will learn every required skill, but not as textbook abstractions, rather as the central issues facing us, all of us, right now and in the future.

I urge you, readers, make the case to your school. Or, if the teachers and administration are too pressed by tests to add a new unit, start a display in your library: Is human-induced climate change leading to catastrophic weather? Include books, print-outs from websites and magazines, and ads. (The New York Times has a fine set of learning resources about Sandy.) Then invite kids to add their notes, comments, and questions. Build it and they will come—and you’ll be the agent asking the key questions that must be asked… and answered.

GREY-WILBURN, Renee. Volcanoes! Capstone. 2012. ISBN 9781429676069. JLG Level: CK2 : Series Nonfiction: Science K-2 (Grades K-2)

In chapter book format, this volume in Capstone’s “First Graphics” series brings science to our youngest readers. Beginning with an explanation of volcanoes and moving into how scientists study eruptions, readers will learn basic facts in a controlled vocabulary. The text also features nonfiction support including an index, bibliography, and a glossary.

HAYES, Geoffrey. Benny and Penny in Lights Out!  Toon Bks. 2012. ISBN 9781935179207. JLG Level: GE : Graphic Novels Elementary (Grades 2-6)

It’s time for bed, but Benny is not ready to go to sleep. His sister, Penny, is rattled by his attempts to stall bedtime. When Benny slips out to look for his pirate hat, Penny tries to be brave and look for him. They have an adventure that is just scary enough for the intended reader.

With additional support material on the publisher website, teachers can easily use their document cameras or interactive whiteboards to share award winning graphic novels for their emerging readers.

LAMBERT, Joseph. Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller. Disney/Hyperion. 2012. ISBN 9781423113362. JLG Level: GM : Graphic Novels Middle (Grades 5-8)

Already a Booklist Top 10 Biography Book for Youth 2012, Lambert’s graphic novel format does more than retell an already familiar story. Alternating the past and present, readers learn more about Annie Sullivan’s background. Readers will also learn about a controversial story that Helen wrote. Authorities questioned whether Helen really wrote the story, as it was very similar to a published story. Through this retelling, readers will discover even more about the powerful bond between a teacher and her student.

L’ENGLE, Madeline. A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel. Adapted and illustrated by Hope Larson. Farrar/Margaret Ferguson Bks. 2012. ISBN 9780374386153. JLG Level: FM : Fantasy/Science Fiction Middle (Grades 5-8)

For fifty years, readers have worn out copies of Newbery-winning A Wrinkle in Time. Larson’s graphic novel version stays true to the original. Using black and white with blue accents, L’Engle’s voice comes through, so readers will not be disappointed. The tome is nearly 400 pages long, allowing Larson the freedom to use plenty of text, but also giving an opportunity for action to happen in the illustrations. Though readers may want to read the book in one gulp, chapters provide good stopping places. Teachers and librarians may want to use this version as an introduction to the classic and lovers of the classic will need no introduction.

NYTRA, David. The Secret of the Stone Frog. Toon Bks. 2012. ISBN 9781935179184. JLG Level: GE : Graphic Novels Elementary (Grades 2-6)

Nytra’s crowquill pen-and-india-ink drawings lend a mysterious tone to this Alice in Wonderland-themed graphic novel for middle elementary grade readers. Leah and Alan wake one morning to find themselves in an enchanted forest. Brother and sister learn to depend on each other when their adventures take them farther and farther from the path that leads to home.

For ideas about how to use these books and links to supportive sites, check out the Junior Library Guild blog, Shelf Life.

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.

Illustration by Amy Wasserman.

This fall, as we’ve traveled around New York State doing workshops for librarians and teachers on the Common Core State Standards, we’ve been living and breathing the new education standards. Common Core’s English Language Arts (ELA) guidelines have become as familiar to us as our morning coffee. We assume that’s true for many of you, too. But just to make sure, we’ll share a little background information on the standards, and then away we’ll go.

At the moment, 46 states (plus Texas, which has adopted similar guidelines under another name) are starting to put Common Core’s ELA guidelines into practice, and that’s great news for school librarians, especially since your skills, knowledge, and collections are essential to its success. In turn, Common Core is your best chance to show your administrators and teaching colleagues how valuable you are—and that’s crucial in a sluggish economy in which many media specialists’ jobs are on the chopping block.

As you’ve probably heard, Common Core’s ELA standards, which aim to prepare students to succeed in college and in their careers, have changed the way that reading is taught in K–12 schools. Instead of emphasizing fiction, as in the past, the new guidelines focus on informational texts (everything from books of facts, dates, and names to record compilations that are fun to browse to surveys, chronologies, and atlases) and narrative texts (nonfiction books in which an author crafts an arc with a beginning, middle, and end, while remaining true to her sources). So rather than encouraging students to respond subjectively to short stories, chapter books, or novels (“I feel this way about that character” or “I can relate to the story”), the Common Core requires students to analyze the evidence they find in fiction and nonfiction texts.

Who’s most likely to know what informational and narrative texts are available in your school library and in its databases? Who’s an expert at identifying books that treat the same subject from different perspectives? Who excels at tracking down and evaluating the best texts for teachers and students?

You, the school librarian.

The art of clustering

Your knowledge of and access to a wide variety of resources makes you the perfect keeper of the Common Core. And “clustering” can be an important ally in this key role.

Clustering is the art of exploring a topic with a number of related resources, and it typically involves arranging those materials in attractive, student-friendly displays. In the land of the Common Core, we see your library, with its print and digital resources, as the true information superhighway, and you as the real-life 3-D search engine. Clustering is one way to make that evident to anyone who walks through your door—from a student who’s casually browsing your collection to a class that’s working on an assignment.

What does this approach look like in action, and how can clustering support Common Core? Let’s start by looking at one of the state standards initiative’s main goals: to help kids think about the “craft and structure” of a text, which can include everything from recognizing a table of contents to understanding the way an author uses chapter titles, subheads, and sidebars to organize information. When we recently visited Dunkirk Elementary School #7, in western New York, we randomly pulled four books about penguins from its library and shared them with a group of teachers. Were all of those titles for K–2 readers the same? Of course not! One had no page numbers, two lacked glossaries, and only one book mentioned that its information had been vetted with an expert. Even if all of these books are intended for kids in the same grade and deal with the exact same topic, we explained to our workshop participants, they each go about it very differently.

Even if you don’t have time to review books like these with a class, a cluster does the work for your students—because now, instead of searching your shelves for “a book on penguins,” kids are exposed to a conversation among various titles on the same topic. The goal isn’t necessarily for kids to say, “Book A is better than book B.” Rather, it’s to get students to think about the different approaches to informational and narrative texts: Why does a certain title present information this way, and another that way? No book covers everything that can be said on a subject, so everything in—or not in—a nonfiction book is the author’s decision. We need to help students recognize those choices.

How can you help kids notice those distinctions? One of the easiest ways is to display three books that have contrasting features and then accompany each title with a Post-it note or a notecard (as in your local bookstore) or with great big arrows or gold stars that point out what’s special about the particular title. For instance, the card might say, “This title has a great table of contents” or “Here’s a book that cites five sources.” By adding—or inviting your students to add—these messages (which we call “shelf talkers”), you can highlight important text structures and features, including author’s notes, captions, and back matter.

Clusters can also add a little zing to your lessons. When Ayodele Ojumu, who’s now the librarian at one of the schools we visited (PS 204 Lafayette High School in Buffalo, NY), was an elementary school teacher, she gave a prize to the student who found the book with the most text features or two titles that treated the same subject the most differently. We’ve also seen media specialists hand each student a scorecard to tally the number of text features they find in nonfiction library books in the collections—and see which child discovers the most.

Clusters can help even the youngest students to become library detectives by searching out the differences in how various authors and books handle the same topics, and those kids may end up feeling even smarter since they’ve learned what an informational and narrative text is expected to include. By taking advantage of clusters of materials, you’re also getting an opportunity to show off your library’s collection and its strengths.

What about older kids?

So far, we’ve been talking mostly about using clusters to teach young students about simple text elements. But things get really interesting in middle school and high school. Starting in fifth grade, the new benchmarks require students to “analyze multiple accounts of the same event or topic, noting important similarities and differences in the point of view they represent.”

Common Core’s focus on point of view is designed to train students to recognize how an author uses evidence and rhetoric to influence readers so that young learners can compare, contrast, and discriminate among arguments—and a cluster is a perfect tool for the task. For example, instead of relying on a single book to examine a complex, controversial topic, like, say, gun control, you can display a whole range of resources—including books, magazine articles, websites, documentary clips, and audio recordings that you’ve carefully selected—which reflect various points of view. Do you see what’s happening? Your library is coming alive. You’re no longer offering students materials that are passively waiting to be read. Instead, you’re putting kids in touch with content creators who are asserting their distinct positions, trying to win the hearts and minds of their readers and listeners, competing for their attention.

That’s exactly what we saw when we visited Buffalo’s City Honors School. A dynamic team of librarians created a cluster on boxing that included the following items: Robert Lipsyte’s classic YA novel The Contender (HarperTeen, 1987) placed next to Mark Kriegal’s new adult sports biography, The Good Son: The Life of Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini (Free Press, 2012); Charles Smith’s Twelve Rounds to Glory (Candlewick, 2007) or Walter Dean Myers’s The Greatest: Muhammad Ali (Scholastic, 2001); a synopsis of HBO’s 2009 documentary Assault in the Ring; an article about women’s Olympic boxing, and a URL for “Rock Steady Boxing” (www.rocksteadyboxing.org), a website that talks about boxing, exercise, and how the training may be useful for some Parkinson’s patients.

Now, when kids walk into the media center, they’ll immediately see a display that features a story about personal growth, a true-life tragedy (Mancini accidently killed another boxer in the ring), and some fascinating information on heroism, racism, corruption, gender, fitness, and the evolution of gladiatorial combat. If the librarians have time, they can guide kids through the various relationships among those resources. If not, the inviting display, with its brief descriptions of each item, will encourage teens to make their own connections—just as the Post-it notes and arrows helped elementary school kids understand text features.

Text trends

For years many nonfiction writers have been careful to avoid showing a particular point of view. But recently, some authors have started writing nonfiction in a more personal way, letting their passions show. For example, Tanya Lee Stone’s Sibert Medal–winning Almost Astronauts (Candlewick, 2009) is explicitly feminist; Kadir Nelson’s We Are the Ship (Hyperion, 2008), also a Sibert Medal winner, features an African American telling the story of the Negro Leagues; and Rebecca Skloot’s award-winning The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, 2010) is both a medical detective story and a personal account of the author’s relationship with the Lacks family.

Another emerging trend that we’ve seen is that more and more writers—including Sy Montgomery, the author of The Quest for the Tree Kangaroo (Houghton, 2006), and Marc Tyler Nobleman, the author of Bill the Boy Wonder (Charlesbridge, 2012)—are adding notes to their nonfiction books that explain why they wrote the book and how they did the research. Some writers also include slide shows or films on their websites, and many of them will visit your school via Skype. (For a list of some of the accomplished nonfiction authors who use Skype, visit Ink Think Tank [http://inkthinktank.com].)

There are also an increasing number of books that wear their ideology on their sleeves. For example, the Zinn Educational Project (http://zinnedproject.org), which recommends Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (Harper Perennial, 2005) to teach middle and high schoolers about their nation’s history, also features young adult books that are in sync with the author’s leftist approach to social history. By contrast, Regnery’s Little Patriot Press (www.littlepress.com), which publishes books for kids ages five to eight, explicitly takes a conservative approach. These and other titles provide great opportunities to show your students that history often comes with a particular POV.

On the simplest level, clustering means displaying books together with signs that highlight their differences. But to do that, you need to know your informational and narrative texts well enough to pinpoint their distinct approaches and how they relate to each other in interesting ways. To help you get started, we’ve included some clusters that have been created during our workshops (see “Are you ready to cluster?” on opposite page). As you create your own, visit us at our blog “Clustering,” and let us know what you’ve done. Beginning this month, we’ll post your ideas at “The Uncommon Corps.” Remember, we’re are all in this Common Core experiment together, and we all need to learn from one another.

Marc Aronson (l.) is the author of Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover and America in the Age of Lies (Candlewick, 2012) and a longtime advocate of including information on how and why a book was written in one’s nonfiction works. Susan M. Bartle (r.) is the school library system director at New York’s Erie 2-Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES.

There was a clear pattern to the week: the crowds increased each day—and by Thursday, there was a waiting list for people who wanted to get into our packed sessions. (We’re scheduling a new event for them.) As the crowds grew larger, the attendees’ backgrounds got more diverse. When Sue and I began offering these workshops in August, almost all of the people who came were school librarians, and that held true earlier in the week. But by Thursday, more than half of the guests were public librarians, teachers, supervisors, and administrators. Geography played some part in this: the more rural the area, the smaller the crowd and the higher percentage of school librarians; as we moved into larger cities, more people attended and they worked in a wider variety of jobs. Yet, even if location was one reason for the change in attendance, there was a clear theme in the questions, discussions, and overall mood that matters to all of us: CC is no longer coming someday, it’s here.

As each day went by, the discussions became ever more practical and pragmatic. People were no longer questioning whether CC was a good idea or what it is or where to find basic information about it. Instead, they were talking about implementation: What can I do to make sure that Common Core is part of my next lesson or unit? It was this real-world practicality that made the event seem worthwhile to teachers and administrators. Perhaps the single most exciting aspect of the week was seeing these school teams arrive together and work together—the idea that Common Core will only succeed when everyone in the building works together (and the local public library is an informed, integrated, resource) was no longer an aspiration, it was an unfolding reality.

Of course, with the practical comes frustration. Here are some of the kinds of questions we heard:

“How can I do all of the wonderful work on evidence, argument, point of view, and juxtaposed sources that CC wants, when my shelves are filled with books that all use the same layout and same huge color images, and say little about their sources?” Our answer is to use multimodal resources—another CC mandate—juxtapose an article from a magazine or database with a book on your shelves. Look carefully with your students, are the books really identical? Do they all have page numbers, tables of contents, and references to experts that were consulted? Do the experts or the institutions they work at have websites where you can get new information? Do their sites recommend a book on the same subject written for older readers to compare and contrast?

Another important question we heard was, “How can I use longer nonfiction books by excellent authors in my class when the books are only in hardcover and cost too much?” One strategy to meet this challenge is to divide up your class into “literature circles” in which students thoughtfully discuss a work. Twenty-five kids can be divided into five groups of five: one might use that costly hardcover, which the library may have or be able to get through interlibrary loan; another group can use a paperback; a third can use an ebook that’s available to multiple users; a fourth can work from a magazine and a related database; and a fifth group might even find a relevant graphic novel. With this approach, the cost problem has been transformed into a differentiated learning opportunity. Of course, this means the teacher has to work closely with her librarian to select resources that fit together.

And then there was this dilemma: “Having a display on ghosts, are they real?, would be great, but I have too many parents in my community who would protest. I pick my battles and that is one I don’t want.” That isn’t a Common Core question—it’s an issue for how you run your library. But it’s true that in opening the door to evidence, argument, and point of view, Common Core will bring more controversial questions out in the open. The issue is no longer about giving one novel to one child, it’s about showing students the many ways in which library resources look at issues, including everything from global warming and fracking to animal testing and using instant replay at Major League Baseball games. Some parents are likely to object when they see a view they dislike on display. Where, I would respond, do you want your children to see these debates, on the Internet or in an environment where adults help them recognize different points of view and evaluate their arguments?

And finally, here’s another question that many in our audience grapple with: “I’m a public librarian and teachers come here, hand me a list of books that they say is Common Core–approved, and are mad when I can’t find them. Indeed, many are out of print.” That list is the infamous Appendix B to the Common Core English language Arts Standards. As the list clearly states, these books are exemplars, not selections (for more on this topic, see “The Problem with Common Core’s ‘Appendix B,’”). Push back by pointing out that nonfiction, in all areas, can’t be frozen in 2009. Instead, check out recent selections by the National Council for Teachers of English’s Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children, the National Council for the Social Studies and the Children’s Book Council Carter G. Woodson Book Awards, the National Science Teachers Association and the Children’s Book Council’s Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K–12, the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal, the Association for Library Service to Children’s Notable Children’s Books, and the Young Adult Library Services Association’s Award for Nonfiction for Young Adults. See if any of their award-winning books can meet the same needs.

Each of the above questions reflects real problems that aren’t easy to solve. But that’s what is so wonderful about them: they arise because Common Core is real, it’s here, it’s happening, and we’re learning, together, how to make it work.

Moderator Mary Ann Cappiello leads the author panel “Nonfiction at the Forefront of the Common Core,” at the School Library Journal Leadership Summit.

Among other mandates, the Common Core State Standards (CC) require students to “gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources” and “assess the credibility and accuracy of each source.”

At the School Library Journal Leadership Summit held October 26-27, four authors of children’s nonfiction—Deborah Hopkinson, Barbara Kerley, Steve Sheinkin, and Sally M. Walker—came together to share their views on what they do, how it relates to these requirements, and how they, as authors, address CC principles while conducting research for their books.

Moderator Mary Ann Cappiello of Lesley University led the author panel, “Nonfiction at the Forefront of the Common Core,” an October 26 discussion about the development of content, the use of primary and secondary sources, the balance of perspective, and writing style as it relates to the standards.

Authors from the Nonfiction panel sign books for attendees.

The authors opened by discussing the content of their books as it relates to current events, from the U.S. election to a dysfunctional Congress to the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons. Sheinkin discussed the relevance that his book Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon (Roaring Brook, 2012), a National Book Award finalist, has for today’s kids regarding the specter of Iran’s developing nuclear weapons. Barbara Kerley noted that her book, Those Rebels, John & Tom (Scholastic, 2012), which focuses on the relationship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, shows that although Congress has often disagreed, historically, it can still function for the good of the people.

Sheinkin characterized his research as “nerdy detective work,” while Kerley said that her exploration of primary resources made her characters come alive. Who knew that John Adams was a “foodie”, or that Thomas Jefferson was a shopaholic?

Kerley also addressed how she and the book’s illustrator, Edwin Fotheringham, worked to present a balanced perspective—an issue relating to CC’s mandate that students  “assess how point of view… shapes the content and style of a text.” Fotheringham revealed Adams and Jefferson’s differences visually: Jefferson is shown as well dressed, while Adams wears tattered clothes, and the two men are portrayed standing back-to-back to emphasize that they disagreed. Kerley showed how the men differed through straightforward description, such as, “John liked to talk” and “Tom was shy, and dreaded speaking in front of crowds.”

Walker, author of Their Skeletons Speak: Kennewick Man and the Paleoamerican World (Carolrhoda, 2012) explained that her research revealed conflicting archaeological conclusions as to whether a spear wound caused the death of a man, based on 9,000-year-old remains. Newer technology and research indicated that he recovered from the wound, while older research findings differed.

Authors Deborah Hopkinson and Barbara Kerley display their books.

Hopkinson, author of Annie and Helen (Schwartz & Wade, 2012), about Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, used Sullivan’s letters as a primary source of her research. However, it was her choice of verse to tell Sullivan and Keller’s story that participants honed in on in relation to the Common Core. The Craft and Structure specifications of CC ask students to “interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.”  Hopkinson’s reason for choosing verse? “I live in language,” she said.  “Read like a writer and write and a reader.”

After the presentation, summit attendees were encouraged to become more savvy regarding the Common Core. Krista Brakhage, a media specialist at Poudre High School in Fort Collins, CO, tweeted afterward:  “Note to self: Buy more non-fiction historical/scientific picture books for my high school ELA students.”

Walker had a message to relay to student researchers: “Librarians are your new best friends.”