Thank you!

Thanks to everyone who has donated to my project to get books for a Mock Newbery Club. The Donors Choose fundraiser finished and most of the books arrived this week.

I couldn’t order everything I wanted through their program which utilizes Amazon Business. I have a second fundraiser going through a local  school district-based organization, the Beaverton Education Foundation.  I will use that fundraiser to order the rest of the books through Powells Books, who have been great supporters of Beaverton schools.

I am only $250 away from fulfilling that fundraiser. Your tax-deductible donation to the Stoller Middle School Mock Newbery Club,  no matter how small, can help me provide students with the books that will make our Club a wonderful experience. Just click on the link above. 

TGIF: A Monday Retrospective

It was a tough week. I won’t go into all the details. Suffice it to say, I was looking forward to Friday night. And not for the reason you think. Yes, it was the end of difficult week, but it was the night that Leah Thomas and Len Vlahos were going to be at Powells in Beaverton!

It was a small but devoted group of fans who assembled. For us, it was nice because it was less formal. I got to reconnect with Leah and chat with Len, both of whom were William C. Morris Award finalists in different years.

They talked a lot about how they came up with the ideas for their current novels:

Publisher’s Summary: Fifteen-year-old Jackie Stone’s father is dying.

When Jackie discovers that her father has been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor, her whole world starts to crumble. She can’t imagine how she’ll live without him . . .

Then, in a desperate act to secure his family’s future, Jackie’s father does the unthinkable–he puts his life up for auction on eBay. Jackie can do nothing but watch and wait as an odd assortment of bidders, some with nefarious intentions, drive the price up higher. The fate of her entire family hangs in the balance.

But no one can predict how the auction will finally end, or any of the very public fallout that ensues. Life as Jackie knows it is about to change forever . . .

In this brilliantly written tragicomedy told through multiple points of view–including Jackie’s dad’s tumor–acclaimed author Len Vlahos deftly explores what it really means to live.

Publisher’s Summary:Ollie and Moritz might never meet, but their friendship knows no bounds. Their letters carry on as Ollie embarks on his first road trip away from the woods–no easy feat for a boy allergic to electricity–and Moritz decides which new school would best suit an eyeless boy who prefers to be alone.

Along the way they meet other teens like them, other products of strange science who lead seemingly normal lives in ways Ollie and Moritz never imagined possible: A boy who jokes about his atypical skeleton; an aspiring actress who hides a strange deformity; a track star whose abnormal heart propels her to victory. Suddenly the future feels wide open for two former hermits. But even as Ollie and Moritz dare to enjoy life, they can’t escape their past, which threatens to destroy any progress they’ve made. Can these boys ever find their place in a world that might never understand them?

Both have some odd things happening in their book ( a brain tumor as one of multiple narrators in Len’s book and the Blunderkids in Leah’s). I bought both books and got them personalized. I got an arc of Nowhere Near You at ALA and had already read it. I will send the autographed arc to my twin sister. I’m planning on reading Life in a Fishbowl this week during independent reading time at school.

It was a really fun evening and a great way to end a long week.

Custard and Parasols

Instead of spending Monday night glued to my radio listening to the speeches at the Democratic Convention, I went to Powells to meet Gail Carriger.

She is the author of the Finishing School series I finished in April.She was in town promoting her newest novel, Imprudence, the sequel to Prudence, and the second book in the Custard Protocol series.

  

Unlike many author presentations, Carriger gave a very brief presentation, covering topics she is asked about a lot. She spent most of the time answering questions of the packed house. Through the wide range of questions, we got to know Gail Carriger’s sense of humor, writing routine and plans for the future.

I’ve been reading her series out-of-order. I started with the Finishing School series, the began The Custard Protocol.  Now, I have her first series, The Parasol Protectorate,  in my queue.  Each of these series is unique unto itself, but they are all set in the Steampunk world she created and there are some characters that overlap. I loved how Carriger explained that each of these repeating characters seem to be a little different in each series because are shown as perceived by protagonist of the series. I was impressed and that helped explain why the Lord Akeldama of Prudence is so different from the Lord Akeldama of The Finishing School.

Of course, I took my moment to get my books signed and chat for a few moments with Gail.

When I got home, I learned I had missed some fabulous DNC speeches, but I didn’t mind. I could watch them online. I had enjoyed a marvelous evening and had a new book to read.

My ridiculousness

Like most mornings, I arrived at school early. I was so on top of things today! I got the papers organized for the quiz the kids would take. I took special care with the papers for the five new students I got in February. They would do a modified test. I marked the questions they didn’t have to do, put a name on each paper and set them in a safe place, where I could access them easily. I sat back down at my desk and started grading the mountain of final drafts I had somehow managed to neglect over Spring Break. I was humming with productivity!

When test time rolled around for the first class, I was a wreck, scrambling to find those papers I had so carefully prepared. Not on the front table. Not on my desk either. I was so sure I’d sent them on the table at the front of the room and yet, they were not there.

Suddenly Marvin’s voice piped up, “Ms. Gillespie, could it be the papers clipped to the front board?” Ah, he knows me well. I nodded and smiled as the class erupted in laughter.

At the end of the day, I was excited because I got an email saying my Powell’s order was ready. It is a perk of living in Portland that Powell’s gives us a 20% discount for anything we buy for school. We just have to pick it up. No problem, the store is only 10 minutes from school and more or less on my way home. I knew we had a big order and I worried about carrying multiple bags out to the car so I planned ahead. I had some boxes I’d saved from a Scholastic book fair and grabbed two, knowing I had a foldable luggage cart in the trunk of my car to carry everything. I was ready.

I walked towards the stairs that lead from my second floor classroom to the main entrance swinging the boxes. It was sunny and I was bound for Powell’s; life was good! I nodded and smiled at the substitute who arrived at the stairs just before me. She was about half way down when she turned and asked if I needed help with the boxes. She’d noticed I had my left arm over the rail, wrist resting there, holding a box.

“Thanks, but they’re empty,” I replied to her kind offer.

“I thought so because I saw you swinging them,” she said. “But you are supporting that one so I thought I might be wrong.”

I blushed and confessed that, because it was sunny, I had packed my coat in my bag. Now, I am a woman of a certain age and I always go down the steep steps, holding the hand rail, but, I don’t actually like to touch it for fear of germs. I usually pull my jacket sleeve over my hand to hold on, but, without a jacket, this was my next best plan to avoid the germ handrail. She laughed, agreeing that she, too likes to hold the handrail on the way down, but had never thought about the germs before. We exited the building together smiling at the sunshine that met us.

When I finally arrived at Powell’s, I loaded the empty boxes on the cart and, since no one was at the School & Library desk, I went to the main counter for help. I told the kind woman there how prepared I was as she walked me over. She  looked on the shelves but couldn’t see anything for Stoller Middle School. And then we both saw it. The large hand truck stacked to the top with 4 huge boxes. Our eyes met and we laughed.

“Let me run my cart to my car and I’ll be back to take this one,” I offered.

“I can’t leave the counter area, but I can wheel it to the door for you,” she replied, smiling.

I was back in a flash and managed to get the very heavy hand truck to my car, load the boxes in the trunk and return the cart. The gentleman at the info desk told me I could just leave the cart with him. I waved at the woman at the counter and went out to my car, ready for a delightful drive home on a sunny March afternoon.

Author Visit: Ken Jennings

Ken Jennings came to my school yesterday. You might remember him as the guy who was on Jeopardy for six months. He also played Jeopardy against Watson the computer.

 

He has a series of kids books out now,  Junior Genius Guides, and he is on a book tour promoting his latest one about space facts.

I was a little worried ahead of time because I didn’t know how well he would relate to kids, but they really seemed to enjoy his presentation. He told them cool facts about space, talked about his experience on Jeopardy, and talked about the kind of kid he was ( a nerdy reader, what a surprise!). He even brought along his own 11-year-old son.

At the end he called up three students to answer questions in a Jeopardy-like way.

When we got back to class, my kids were buzzing with excitement and we talked about his presentation for  a while, before starting Science. During Science, the books the kids ordered arrived, so we finished what we were doing and I let the kids who got books share some things they found interesting in the book they chose. I had a few library copies, too, so kids who didn’t order could also share, and I passed out the books I ordered too. The more the merrier.

All in all, it was a good presentation. I want to thank Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing for thinking of us. They reached out to us ( we are only a few blocks away) and offered us a free presentation.