recording the goings-on of the McKinley Library, serving PreK-5th grade students at PS 363
(The Neighborhood School) and PS63 (The S.T.A.R. Academy) in NYC.
It was a delight to have author/illustrator Monica Wellington as our guest yesterday. Monica has written and illustrated Apple Farmer Annie, Pizza at Sally's, Mr. Cookie Baker, and other food-related picture books. (Each of these has recipes at the end of the book and have, hence, become part of our cookery collection). Laura's and Erica's class had very insightful questions to ask her.
We learned that the first sketch is done in pencil and is called a "dummy".
Next comes the color. Monica uses colored pencils and gouache paint. We spotted the differences between the original sketch and the final version.
"Squeaking of Art" includes references to many of Monica's favorite works of art.
Our new SmartBoard* was delivered this week, replacing an "old" model that required a cart and projector that stood in the way of good viewing. The new one has an integrated projector and is low to the ground, enabling our smallest learners to get involved with interactive whiteboard learning. We use the SmartBoard to play fun literacy-centered games in the Library. A favorite this week for grades 3-5 is "Order in the Library", an interactive sorting game that reinforces alphabetizing skills. The students are loving it! *thanks to a grant from our City Councilwoman, Rosie Mendez
Third-grade students have been busy making comics here in the library with artist Neil Numberman (author of the popular Joey Fly series). The kids' comics will be displayed at the Dixon Place Theater during the performance of "Carousel for Kids!" I hope you can make it to the performance on November 20th.
Grades One through Three are drawing about what they like to read. Here are some examples (below). If you want to see more, please visit the bulletin boards outside the Library.
This hungry caterpillar creation comes from Face Food Recipes: A How-To Guide by Christopher D Salyers, a gift from the publisher, Mark Batty Publishers. This little guide to making charaben (character themed) bentoboxes is guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser!
We are planning a happy hour to celebrate our library's fifth birthday and to raise funds to keep it going. There will be great music; $2 BEERS and $3 MIXED DRINKS; SNACKS; RAFFLE PRIZES; and a short READING by Wendy Shanker (called “irreverent and refreshing” by Publisher’s Weekly, “a bubbly diva” by Harper’s Bazaar and “ “fierce and funny” by Ms. Magazine), author of The Fat Girl's Guide to Lifeand Are You My Guru?: How Medicine, Meditation & Madonna Saved My Life Thanks to parent Richard Manitoba (NS parent of Jake) for hosting! WHEN: June 9, 6-8pm WHERE: Manitoba's, 99 Avenue B. Please come and support our library!
Author/cartoonist George O'Connor was our special guest on May 28th. He presented a "how to draw" workshop, taking students through the step-by-step process of creating a Cyclops or Athena figure. What a great way to wrap up Rachael & Kenton's class study of mythology and also capitalize on kids' passion for graphic novels and Greek mythology in Ms. Baron/Ms. Nye's 5th grade class. There are 10 more books planned in this exciting series.
George has promised to post all of their drawings on his website, www.olympiansrule.com.
I had the fortune to attend School Library Journal's "Day of Dialog" a full-day program for librarians, critics, publishers, and other book people at the Book Expo America convention. A fascinating panel discussion on "Steampunkery" (a literary genre and subculture). If you are not familiar with this phenomenon and want to learn more, you can watch the panel right here: http://vimeo.com/12054016 "Drawing the Line Between Picture Books and Graphic Novels," an amazing conversation about the boundaries between the two genres. An interesting distinction for me was stated by illustrator David Wiesner, who said that picture books are (usually) meant to be read aloud whereas graphic novels are to be read alone. Agreed. Lastly, I attended the panel "The Care and Feeding of Tweens: Who are they, where are they, and what do they respond to?"
If you are so inclined, you can watch videos of two of these panels here:
Cornelia Funke (The Thief Lord, The Inkheart trilogy) read the first chapter of her new book Reckless, to be released in September. She is as magical and captivating as her books!
One of the other perks of going to Book Expo is coming out with as many posters and advanced readers' copies that you can stuff into the free literarily-decorated giveaway bags. I'm eager to read Tony Diterlizzi's Wondla as well as Inrid Law's Scumble and David Tanis' Heart of the Artichoke and Other Kitchen Journeys (for my personal cookbook collection)
Andrew Glass, illustrator--and parent of Catherine ('15)--talked to Katie's and Debbie's classes about his work as an illustrator, beginning with showing how every pocket he had was filled with a little notebook, so he is always prepared to sketch his ideas and what he observes. Andrew is currently working on a historical fiction picture book about flying cars!
Geoffrey Hayes, creator of the Benny and Penny series for Toon Books, visited with Laurie's PreK/K and Ms. Zaccardi/Ms. Lee/Ms. Hernandez' 1st graders in the Library. He read and talked about Benny and Penny and the Toybreaker. (Many of us can think of a cousin or younger sibling toybreaker in our lives.) Geoffrey also treated us to a demonstration of his drawing techniques.
Joann Hill, Art Director at Disney-Hyperion Books (and K mom) visited Sofia's 4/5 class in the library to talk about the production of book jacket design. She treated us to a presentation of typeface all around us--in signage for restaurants, ice cream trucks, and other businesses, as well as the process of book jacket design, from concept to final product. We learned that it is a collaborative effort and the jacket design usually goes through many changes and edits before a final is selected.
