April 10, 2009 at 4:29 pm (Uncategorized)
One day, I might just update this blog…I think having to update the SCASL Blog and all other things I must update throughout my days keeps me from updating THIS blog.
It’s the last day of spring break today and I’m going through email and such and thought it would be a good time to just let you know I’m still here and I’m not throwing this blog in the cyber-trashcan just yet…
VBF
January 26, 2009 at 1:19 pm (Uncategorized)
PS- Sorry in advance about spelling, formatting, etc., etc. Just trying to get the information out to you all 
City of Theives by David Benioff
Dragons of Babel by Swanwick
Finding Nouf by Ferraris
The Good Thief by Tinti
Just after sunset by Stephen King
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
Over and Under by Tucker
The Oxford Project by Bloom
Sharpe Teeth by Barlow
Three Girls and Their Brother by Rebeck
March On – Weston Woods
Coretta Scott King / John Steptoe Award for New Talent –
Shadra Strickland; illustrator of Bird
Illustrator Honor Award –
We are the Ship by Kadir Nelson
Before John was a Jazz Giant by Sean Qualls
The Moon Over Star by Jerry Pinkney
Illustrator Award-
Blacker the Berry Illustrated by Floyd Cooper
Author Honor Book –
Keeping the Knight Watch by Smith
Blacker the Berry by Joyce Carol Thomas
Becoming Billie Holiday by Carole Boston Weatherford
Winner-
We are the Ship by Kadir Nelson
Honors –
The Underneath by Appelt
The Surrender Tree by Engle
Savvy by Law
After Tupac & D Foster by Woodsen
Winner-
The Graveyard Book by Gaiman!
Ashley Bryan
Laurie Halse Anderson (!!!)
Kathleen T. Horning
Honor –
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing… by MT Anderson
The Disreputable History … by ???
Nation by Pratchett
Tender Morsels by Lanagan
Winner –
Jellicoe Road by Marchetta
Honor Books –
Garmon’s Summer by Hole
Tiger Moon by Michaelis
Winner –
Moribito by Uehashi
Honors –
Listening Library – Curse of the Blue Tattoo
Listening Library – Elijah of Buxton by Curtis
I’m Dirty McMullan – Weston Woods
Martina the Beautiful Cockroach – Peachtree
Nation Pratchett - Harper Collins
Winner –
Recorded Books – The Absolutely True Diary of a Part – Time Indian
Illustration Honor -
Papa and Me Illustrated by Gutierrez
The Storyteller’s Candle illustrated by Delacrue (?)
What can you do with a Rebozo illustrated by Cordova
Winner Illustrator –
Just in Case illustrated by Morales
Author Honor Books –
Reaching Out by Jimenez
Just in Case by Morales
Storyteller’s Candle by Gonzalez
Author Winner –
The Surrender Tree by Engle
Honors –
A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever by Frazee
How I learned Geography by Shulevitz
A River of Words by Sweet
Winner –
The House in the Night by Krommes
Honor Books –
Bodies from the Ice… by Deem
What to do about Alice by Kerley
Winner –
We are the Ship by Kadir Nelson
Young Children’s - Piano Starts Here: the Young Art Tatum by Parker
Middle Grades – Waiting for Normal by Conner
Teen Book – Jerk California by Friesen
Honor Books –
Chicken Said Cluck! by Grant
One Boy by Seeger
Stinky by Davis
Wolfsnail by Campbell
Winner –
Are you Ready to Play Outside by my boyfriend, Mo Willems (he does not realize he is my boyfriend)
New Award!
Finalists
A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth Bunce
Gracling by Cashore
Absolute Brightness by Lecesne
Madapple by Meldrum
Me, The Missing, and the Dead by Ballentine
Winner –
A Curse Dark as Gold by Bunce
January 24, 2009 at 8:17 pm (Uncategorized)
I am still alive and just not updating very often.
I’m in Denver at ALA Midwinter…doing work and attending lots of meetings.
On Monday, ALA will announce the Youth Media Awards and I will be blogging the winners as they happen!
More later,
VBF
October 13, 2008 at 9:41 pm (Uncategorized)
I like to listen to Oprah’s radio station on XM from time to time because you actually learn a lot on that channel. I love Jean Chatzky, the money lady and Oprah’s friend Gail makes me laugh. Yesterday, while cleaning the house, I was little to the Aussie guy who talks about organizing your life. I don’t know his name and am too lazy to look it up. ANYWAY, I got the biggest tip for managing my out of control life.
Take just one thing and tackle it. Take the one thing that you keep saying to yourself, “I need to do this” and just do it. Decide for a moment that you aren’t going to do anything but that. For me, today, that was commenting on the 23 Things participants blogs. Doesn’t sound like a huge deal and there weren’t that many of them but I keep putting it off and putting it off and I’m so happy that I heard that show yesterday and just sat down and did it. Now that I’ve done it once, I will do it more. I have it in my calendar to do now, in fact. So, that was the biggest tip I got yesterday and I wanted to share. If I figure out what my one “must do” for each day is, I think I’ll get much more done than my usual putzing around on Plurk and Facebook and then feeling like I got nothing done.
VBF
September 22, 2008 at 11:25 am (Uncategorized)
Since August 8 (last post), I’ve been busy!
Here’s a run down…I have been blogging at http://scasl.wordpress.com/ and http://npeslmc.edublogs.org/, so I haven’t been so bad with the blogging…just on this page. Perhaps this is telling me I have too many blogs? Each serve a different purpose. But, here we go:
1. New library and new library books! I’ve been busy ordering and putting new books in the shelves as well as getting to know my teachers and students.
2. SCASL. I’m President now. I’m pretty busy. Kicked off our 23 Things program: http://scasl23things.edublogs.org/
3. Dog drama. In my personal life, my hubby and I have had some dog drama. Had to put one dog to sleep, still training our puppy, and my parent’s dog had to go to the animal ER last Thursday. All is calming down on that front, but it’s added to stress and busy-ness, for sure!
Love,
VBF
August 8, 2008 at 12:19 pm (Uncategorized)
The summer has FLOWN by. What have I done?
Overall, a very productive summer!
What goals do I have for the new school year?
That’s it! I can do it!
I hope everyone has a great school year…I really do hope to blog on a regular basis…I think I’m going a good job, considering I’ve got three to keep up with (SCASL, this one, and NPES). So there.
VBF
July 20, 2008 at 2:27 pm (Learning)
WOW! Something else from Doug Johnson’s pre-conference. EDUCAUSE and their 7 things you should know about series. There is quick tip sheet on everything…Nings, Flickr, Twitter. Whoa. I know where I can put these to use…wonderful resource: http://www.educause.edu/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutSeries/7495
VBF
July 20, 2008 at 2:22 pm (Learning)
Tags: PLN
Going through a notebook of “to do’s” today and finding things I want to post to the blog, for no other reason than just to throw them out there and say that I liked ‘em and I bet you will too. Here’s the first, more to follow, probably.
Doug Johnson talked about this in the pre-conference I attended at ALA:
Stages of Personal Learning Networks Adoption by Jeff Utecht
http://www.thethinkingstick.com/?p=652
Stage 1 Immersion: Immerse yourself into networks. Create any and all networks you can find where there are people and ideas to connect to. Collaboration and connections take off.
Stage 2 Evaluation: Evaluate your networks and start to focus in on which networks you really want to focus your time on. You begin feeling a sense of urgency and try to figure out a way to “Know it all.”
Stage 3 Know it all: Find that you are spending many hours trying to learn everything you can. Realize there is much you do not know and feel like you can’t disconnect. This usually comes with spending every waking minutes trying to be connected to the point that you give up sleep and contact with others around you to be connected to your networks of knowledge.
Stage 4 Perspective: Start to put your life into perspective. Usually comes when you are forced to leave the network for awhile and spend time with family and friends who are not connected (a vacation to a hotel that does not offer a wireless connection, or visiting friends or family who do not have an Internet connection).
Stage 5 Balance: Try and find that balance between learning and living. Understanding that you can not know it all, and begin to understand that you can rely on your network to learn and store knowledge for you. A sense of calm begins as you understand that you can learn when you need to learn and you do not need to know it all right now.
So true! I feel like I’m somewhere between stages 1 and 2. Still. Even though I’ve been putzing around with this Web 2.0 stuff for awhile now. I have gotten to the point where if there is a new one around that I want to try, I drop one. For example, I had a MySpace and Facebook page. Now, I have just Facebook. I cannot keep up with it all and still actually TALK face to face with friends, my husband, my animals. Anytime I venture to my social networks, hours and hours seem to slip by and I haven’t done anything but look at the MySpace pages of people I graduated from high school with and don’t even talk to anymore…so, I have to leave one to accept one, if that makes sense. What’s hard is deciding which one to leave. Oh Web 2.0, you are breaking my heart!
I posted the PLN stages with this permission: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ Haven’t really learned to “cite” that sort of thing, so hope that covers it
VBF
July 7, 2008 at 10:31 pm (ALA08, Conferences)
I’m in the Vegas airport waiting for my flight to Atlanta…there is actually FREE wireless in the Vegas airport (FREE is not so often the case in airports, I’m learning), so I’m taking advantage and blogging. Where to start?
First day of ALA (Friday, June 27)
Went to Doug Johnson’s pre-conference, which I have blogged about already.
After the pre-conference, we had dinner at a very good mexican restaurant and then went to the AASL Affiliate Assembly meeting. These meetings are a time when leaders in state associations all over the nation get together and discuss what is going on at the state level. The meeting is actually pretty interesting, because you meet people who are doing the same things you are (in terms of conference planning and such). After this meeting, it was off to bed.
Saturday, June 28
Saturday was a day to walk around the exhibit hall (which is MASSIVE). Many people collect freebies (advanced copies of books, pens, bags, you name it) and mail them home. The post office in the exhibit hall always has a long line. I have never mailed anything home, because I just can’t pick up bunches and bunches of things that I cannot be sure I will ever use, but I can see how it is tempting to do so. I’ve never been a packrat (imagine!) and I think that just stops me from picking things up. It is fun to see what the publishers are giving away. Some of my favorite finds include a galley of a new Mo Willems books (something about a mole….it’s in my suitcase), a stressball in the shape of a chicken, and pens that change colors – I am very easy to please. In addition to walking around the exhibit hall, I attended a session about extending read alouds with “cute” stuff. This session could have been very good and one that should have sent me home with a bunch of new ideas for my storytimes, but instead, it was actually a little boring. A typical “sit and get” where the speakers showed us what they had done, but did not really involve the audience. They tried, I will say that. The session was late afternoon, after lunch and I think a lot of folks were just worn out by then. After that session, Kitt and I took a tour of Hollywood at night. It was neat to see the strip and all of the interesting people who live in Hollywood! However, our driver was a little scary and I am convinced that California has no laws about driving. You can go as fast as you want and cut off as many people as you want and no one will care.
Sunday, June 29
Busy day! Started with exhibits (again). On Sunday, I visited the ASPCA booth where they were having (what I thought would be) an informational session and Paws-and-Books, a program that brings dogs to schools and hospitals so that children can read to them. I’ve heard about this program before. Children who are reluctant and struggling readers tend to do really well reading to dogs because the dogs can’t correct them or try to get them to read faster…basically, much better listeners than adults or other children. When I went to the booth, I was the only person there. I was there and a dog was there along with someone with ASPCA. I got to read to the dog and I LOVED it. It actually made me cry, because I am really missing my own dogs. But, this is a wonderful idea for children and I really hope that I will be able to do something like this in my own school or perhaps SCASL can partner with the SC ASPCA to promote it in South Carolina…I know that at my new school, there is a kindergarten assistant who volunteers with dogs who may be able to do something like this. I can’t wait to find out! On Sunday, we had another AASL Affliate Assemby meeting. This was a voting meeting where we passed different commendations and concerns brought to AASL by the different regions. I also got to go to the Newbery / Caldecott banquet, where I sat next to Kathleen Krull! Best $89 I ever spent. Selznick’s speech was amazing. Dinner was amazing. Awesome experience.
Monday, June 30
On Monday, things were slowing down. Exhibit hall time, another session to help read alouds be more fun and this one was WONDERFUL! The speaker was dynamic, she had fantastic ideas and I do have lots of new fingerplays, string stories, cut and tells, etc. that I can bring to my storytimes. Exactly what I was looking for the first time around. I also helped stuff bags for the Coretta Scott King Breakfast, which was the next morning. I ended up coming back to the bag stuffing room later in the day to help set up the room for the breakfast with the rest of the SCASL folks (and Valerie Rowe Jackson from RCPL). This was actually really fun. After setting up the room, it was time for dinner and rest – we had to get up at 4am the next morning.
Tuesday, July 1
Coretta Scott King breakfast, which is always wonderful. Kitt and I took tickets and Amanda, Valerie Rowe Jackson, and Ida showed publishers to their tables. It is always so exciting to see authors and illustrators like Ashley Bryan, Christopher Paul Curtis, etc. I’m such a nerd when they are around. After the breakfast, it was time to visit Disney Land. We were only 5 minutes away, after all. Disney Land was fun (like you’d expect it to be). Much smaller than Disney World, but still magical. Rode rides, ate a really expensive plate of fruit and had a great time. After Kitt and I returned from Disney Land, the SCASL folks had a conference planning meeting over dinner. There are lots of wonderful ideas floating around…can’t wait to start announcing all the good stuff! Marty flew in late and then it was vacation time!
Wednesday, July 2 – Sunday, July 6
Marty and I had a GREAT time. I’ll spare the day by day details, as it was a typical Vegas vacation. Went to many hotels to see the fab themes they all have, tried our hands at a little bit of Blackjack and slots, but did not win anything. Marty’s theory is that the casinos are trying to save money just like everyone else. We’ve been there a number of times before (this was my 3rd trip; Marty’s 6th) and the casinos just seemed really tight this time compared to other times. Oh well. Marty is very good at budgeting his spending day by day, so all’s well at the Fort home! There were two big highlights of the trip – Marty surprised me by asking me to marry him again. I got some new bling and everything. Elvis married us at the Graceland Chapel. It was the best thing ever, because Elvis was awesome. We also saw LOVE at the Mirage and it was fantastic. Brought tears to my eyes, even.
That’s my trip out west! As I finish this blog, I am no longer in the Vegas airport, but at home. I’ve done laundry all day long and am happy, happy to be home with my dogs.
Hope your summer / conference experiences / etc. have been as wonderful as mine! If not, there’s still time
VBF
July 1, 2008 at 11:54 am (Uncategorized)
I’m happy that I did not promise to blog everyday at ALA…I’ve been too busy!
I’m still wishing for a tiny, tiny laptop that I don’t mind lugging around, so that is part of the problem. My laptop (borrowed from school) is smaller than usual, but not small or light enough to carry around. When I am at the Convention Center, I have had a good bit of time when I was walking through the exhibits and would have blogged, had I had my laptop. All that to say that I am still in ALA and just dropping a line on the blog to say I will catch up. I’ve had many, many great experiences at this conference. I’ve been to the Newbery / Caldecott banquet (where Selznik gave the BEST speech EVER), I’ve been to meetings, I’ve helped with the Coretta Scott King Breakfast prep (headed to the actual breakfast in a couple of minutes), and I’ve learned from others in my field. Can’t wait to reflect and tell you all about it!
Until later,
VBF
PS- Here’s a note I just posted to the SCASL Blogs! page. Act now! Virtual Library Day on the Hill
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