Hola!

Hola! This is Michael (also known as the Witty Kid), son of blogger Jenny, and also twelve time award winner of most geekiest at the lunch table (this year was close, since we just moved). So, why on earth is there this "Witty Kid" blogging? Well, let me tell you. Blogger changed the format. Now I can't get in. But, if you want to check out my blog, got to this link:

Smart kids think

I hate changing the format. Now it says my blog doesn't exist. So what can I do? Well, this blog is Tetto Tales, not This blog is Jenny's and no one else's. So, watcha gonna do? (Besides, the password to mom's email is already saved.) Also, ' confuse me. If I get one wrong, please tell me. So, what's up? Well, school ended on Tuesday. I wanted to blog. But guess what? Stupid blogger grumble inuslt. Well, with that out of the way, what's up? Let me tell you: Mom has no reason to not blog. She only started teaching in Fall 2016, and didn't publish during Winter or Spring break. There is no reason for this much inactivity (actually, you could be dead. I now apologize all dead blogger's families.) 

So, who is this 'Witty Kid?' Let me tell you: I'm a 12 year old (13 on August 4th) geek who just moved from a place completely devoid of geeks and controlled by BET, run by incompetent corrupt bureaucratic supervisors. The makeup of the schools was about 79% black, 20% white, 1% other. The people there had no idea about anything that happened in the last 50 years. It was full of teenage pregnancies, BET, swearing, and quite possibly a hatred of white people. They left their minds in the 70's black power movement. I hated it there. Now I live in Augusta County, VA. It's much better. People know what Star Wars is! People read! People watch Harry Potter! BET is nearly nonexistent in public schools! 

But more about me. 

I'm a LEGO fanatic that really good at math (seriously good. I'm in eigth grade next school year and I have to walk to the high school for math class) that is overly sarcastic with a strange fascination for ancient Greek and Egyptian gods. I love works by C.S. Lewis and Bill Watterson. I'm a Mormon. My favorite music groups are the Piano Guys, the Beatles, the Doors, the Animals, and basically anything from the British Invasion with several exceptions (Queen, Nirvana, and Karma Chameleon (but not Culture Club). 

Well, that's it for now! See you soon!

The Book Thief

Title: The Book Thief

Author: Markus Zusak

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2005

ISBN: 978-0375842207 

Summary: Liesel Meminger, age 9, has already stolen her first book by the time she arrives at her foster home outside Munich in 1939 Nazi Germany. She took it from the cemetery where they buried her younger brother on the way to what was supposed to be their new home. Liesel can’t read yet, but when her nightmares about her brother’s death cause her to cry out, her accordion-playing foster father sits with her throughout the night, reading her stolen book aloud to calm her. She slowly learns to read, but books are rare in poverty-stricken Germany, leading her to steal again, this time from a bonfire in honor of the Fuher’s birthday. As Liesel grows she steals more books, helps hide a Jew in the basement, falls in love, and comes full circle by reading aloud in the neighborhood bomb shelter during air raids, calming the living nightmares of those around her.

Critical Analysis: The Book Thief seems like it should be a historic fiction novel, but there’s a twist, Death is the omniscient narrator and his presence as a character places this novel in the low fantasy genre. He is the best character of the novel—witty, descriptive to the point of poetic, and complex. He is fond of putting bold snippets of facts, descriptions, and spoilers centered on the page, just to make sure you see them. Somehow little Liesel captures his attention and he keeps an eye on her whenever he has the opportunity. However, he’s particularly busy collecting souls from the mass carnage that is World War II, so we witness only episodes of her life as she grows to be a teenager. As a narrator Death attempts to be dispassionate, but he never quite manages to be so. 

Liesel is likeable enough, but because of Death’s studied detachment, you never get to really know her. We do know how Death feels about her, his admiration primarily, but also his empathy toward her trials and his sadness about what she still must face. In fact, that is how Death looks at almost all the characters in the novel—whether it’s the incorrigible boy next door, Rudy, Liesel’s foster mother and father, the Hubermann’s, the Jew they hide in the basement, Max, and even the neighbor who regularly spits on the Hubermann’s door. Oddly enough, Death’s vivid descriptions are what makes the characters live. 

Although the subject matter of life touched by war is complex, the plot is not. The conclusion is satisfying and realistic. 

What I found to be most refreshing is Zusak’s treatment of the German people and his clear separation between Germans and the Nazi’s. He allows us to feel sympathy for the German people after decades of studying WWII and falsely classifying Germans and Nazis as one and the same. 

Awards:

 

ALA Notable Book

National Jewish Book Award

Michael L. Printz Honor Book

New York Times #1 Best Seller

Quill Award Nominee

Reviews: 

School Library Journal: “Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax…An extraordinary narrative.” 

USA Today: “The Book Thief is unsettling and unsentimental, yet ultimately poetic.” 

New York Times: “Brilliant and hugely ambitious…The hope we see in Liesel is unassailable, the kind you can hang on to in the midst of poverty and war and violence.”

 

More Great Books About World War II:

Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow by Susan Baroletti

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

The Book Thief has been made into a major motion picture. Here are some other movies you may enjoy.

Life is Beautiful. Lionsgate, 1998. PG-13. Directed by and Starring Roberto Benigni. Italian with English Subtitles.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Miramax Lionsgate, 2008. PG-13 Directed by Mark Herman. Starring Asa Butterfield and David Thewlis

Empire of the Sun. Amblin Entertainment, Warner Bros. 1987. PG. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Christian Bale

Questions to Ponder:

What was the first book you remember reading?

Liesel regularly breaks into the mayor’s house in order to steal books. What lengths would you go to in order to read?

Created for Texas Woman’s University course LS 5603.21

Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

Title: Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

Author: Kate DiCamillo

Illustrator: K. G. Campbell

Publisher: Sommersville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-7636-6040-6 

Summary: 10-year-old cynic Flora Belle Buckman lived a boring life—her only excitement came in the form of her comic books starring The Amazing Incandesto—until the day the next-door neighbor’s vacuum cleaner sucked up a common squirrel and he emerged as Ulysses, the super-strong, flying, poetry-writing superhero rodent! As she serves as Ulysses’ mentor and guardian, Flora’s life becomes more interesting. Aside from teaching Ulysses how to use his power for good, Flora has to determine Ulysses’ arch-nemesis. Is his mortal enemy the new boy next door, the cat at her father’s apartment building, Mary Ann, or (gasp) her own mother? Only a series of misadventures will tell!

 

Critical Analysis: DiCamillo’s Newbery-winning Flora & Ulysses transitional novel is a fun jaunt into low fantasy. Short chapters written from two viewpoints and sprinkled with full page illustrations liven the reading.   Flora & Ulysses is told in two different styles—DiCamillo’s text gives way at certain points and is replaced by Campbell’s humorous comic strip-style illustrations to move the comical story along. The combination should appeal to transitional and experienced readers alike. Full of fun-to-say words like “Holy Bagumba,” “quark,” “seal blubber,” and “malfeasance” make this a cheery read-aloud for middle elementary and up. 

The real beauty of the novel is the characters—they are wacky and loveable. The new boy, William Spiver, has a vocabulary beyond his years (as does Flora) and a psychosomatic vision disorder. Flora’s mom is amusingly annoyed and angry; her father is absent-minded; her neighbor Mrs.Tootie Tickham is relatively normal; and Dr. Meescham is upbeat and full of faith. Mary Ann is just smug, a pretty impressive feat for a lamp. They are all great fun, but Flora and Ulysses are the strongest.  

Flora’s cynical mantra is “Do not hope; instead, observe.” At the beginning of the novel she has wrapped herself into a cynical cocoon, escaping into comic books and avoiding her mother. However, her efforts to squash hope prove futile because one can’t help but feel that things will get better with a superhero around. Her confidence in comic books as reference material in coping with everything from training superheroes to CPR is amusing. DiCamillo manages to make her protagonist prickly, tender, and relatable all at once. Ulysses, being a squirrel, is more limited in his depth, yet it makes perfect sense that his thoughts tend to be centered around food and Flora’s lovely round head. 

It all boils down to a laugh-out-loud tale of discovering hope. And a superhero squirrel.

 

Awards:

2014 Newbery Medal

2014 Texas Bluebonnet Award

A Junior Library Guild Selection

Reviews:

 School Library Journal: “Rife with marvelously rich vocabulary reminiscent of the early superhero era…and amusing glimpses at the world from the point of view of Ulysses the supersquirrel, this book will appeal to a broad audience of sophisticated readers. There are plenty of action sequences, but the novel primarily swells in the realm of sensitive, hopeful, and quietly philosophical literature.”

Publishers Weekly: “Despite supremely quirky characters and dialogue worthy of an SAT prep class, there’s real emotion at the heart of this story involving two kids who have been failed by the most important people in their lives: their parents.”

Huffington Post: “laugh-out-loud funny, tender, difficult and hopeful all at once…Cynics beware, this book is meant for those open to joy, wonder, loyalty and friendship of all stripes.”

.Activity and Website:

Create your own superhero. Would you use an animal? If so, what animal would you choose? What awesome name would you give your superhero? No hero would be complete without an arch-enemy. Who would be your hero’s nemesis?

Will the Heimlich Maneuver work on a squirrel? Find out how to do the Heimlich Maneuver

 

Created for Texas Woman’s University course LS 5603.21

The Arrival

Title: The Arrival

Author: Shaun Tan

Publisher: New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2006

ISBN: 978-0-439-89529-3

 

Summary: The Arrival is Shaun Tan’s graphic novel about the journey of an everyman as he leaves his beloved wife and daughter in order to immigrate to a strange land, meets and befriends many other immigrants in various stages of integration, and finally brings his family to the new home he has created.

Critical Analysis: With the cover pages containing rows of familiar-seeming individual immigrant faces, The Arrival at first blush seems to be another treatment of the well-known exodus from Europe and Asia to America and Australia from the 1890’s and into the 1910’s, but it isn’t.

 

Tan’s wordless odyssey traces the steps of an unnamed man as he establishes himself in a new land and integrates himself into a new culture.  Our everyman hero needs no language as his actions and expressions acutely indicate his emotions and experiences. Tan’s amazing artwork speaks for our hero. 

Realistic sepia illustrations convey not only the underlying purposes of emigration (such as escaping danger or economic hardship), but also the jarring immigrant experience. Tan manages this by incorporating science-fiction elements into illustrations reminiscent of period-style photographs. The result is sheer brilliance as the unexpected elements bring the shock and bewilderment a new immigrant may feel to the heart and mind of a reader in a way words cannot, allowing a deep level of immersion in the story.  

The flow of the story is smooth, beginning with visual details, expanding to wider scenes, and then shrinking back to the details. It is through the smaller illustrations that the pacing of the plot is established. The illustrations for the most part are arranged as a movie story-board, although key moments of peace, understanding, and occasionally terror, are illustrated in panoramic two-page spreads or full panels.  The stories of our immigrant’s friends are treated in the same manner but with a different border style around the panels, making each friend’s back-story distinct within the larger novel. 

The characters are drawn together by more than just a common immigration experience. They are drawn together because of a shared goal--creating a better life for one’s family. We are drawn into their circle because, immigrant or not, it’s a goal we all seek. 

 

Awards:

2008-2009 Virginia Young Readers

2007 New York Times Best Illustrated Book

2007 School Library Journal Best Book

2007 World Fantasy Award, Best Artist

Reviews: 

Kirkus Review: “An astonishing wordless graphic novel blends historical imagery with science-fiction elements to depict—brilliantly—the journey of an immigrant man from his terror-beset land of origin to a new, more peaceful home….It’s an unashamed paean to the immigrant’s spirit, tenacity and guts, perfectly crafted for maximum effect.”

School Library Journal: “Young readers will be fascinated by the strange new world the artist creates…More sophisticated readers, however, will grasp the sense of strangeness and find themselves participating in the man’s experiences. They will linger over the details in the beautiful sepia pictures and will likely pick up the book to pore over it again and again.”

Also by Shaun Tan:

Lost and Found: Three by Shaun Tan. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2011. ISBN: 978-0545229241

Tales from Outer Suburbia. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2009. ISBN: 978-0545055871

Sketches from a Nameless Land: The Art of the Arrival. Lothian Children’s Books, 2012. ISBN: 978-0734411648

Activities:

Discover your family’s immigration story or other key moments by interviewing relatives and/or searching your family history on websites such as familysearch.org or ancestry.com.

Check out Scholastic’s Ellis Island immigration activities at http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/immigration/tour/index.htm

Created for Texas Woman’s University course LS 5603.21

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

Title: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

Author: Jacqueline Kelly

Publisher: New York: Macmillan, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-312-65930-1

Summary: Calpurnia Tate is your average Southern eleven-year-old girl in a houseful of brothers, a mother trying to teach her to be a lady, a cantankerous grandfather, and a taste for forbidden books. Actually, this budding scientist isn’t ordinary at all as she strives to learn all she can about the natural world with her grandfather and Mr. Darwin’s help and as she strives to avoid her mother’s attempts at bringing up a proper young lady in 1899.

Critical Analysis: Jacqueline Kelly’s debut novel is full of character and science. Calpurnia and her grandfather are the main characters but Calpurnia’s world does contain others; her parents, brothers, and servant Viola—all well-loved people. To a lesser extent you have a few friends and a love interest of Calpurnia’s brother, characters used primarily to move the book along.

Calpurnia is a great character and narrator; she’s spunky and entertaining. Her grandfather is gruff and mysterious. They’re both interesting and multi-faceted, but together they are dynamic. Calpurnia is polite in a genteel Southern way—mam’ and sir being second nature. The talents and skills expected of her as a Southern lady are accurately described, as well as her distaste for them.

Her grandfather is not only a character, he is also the driving force behind the science contained in the novel. His interest in nature began when he made friends with a bat during the Civil War. The story of the bat in his tent is the only war story you get to here this veteran tell. He pushes Calpurnia’s scientific studies by allowing her to work with him in his field studies.

The book is episodic in its plotline. Short, primarily funny, vignettes occur and in-between the stories Calpurnia grows a little. Kelly’s writing is smooth and vivid, drawing you into the sweltering Texas summer or tension-filled piano recital.

The author makes no reference to sources used for the book, although the acknowledgments section thanks several people and institutions connected with science and history. Kelly was a practicing medical doctor for many years before switching careers; she draws on Charles Darwin’s Evolution of Species and her personal knowledge of the natural world for the science in The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate.

Although the novel has a specific setting and time period, it is not focused around a historic event. The historical aspect of this novel comes into play primarily in the attitudes and expectations of society toward young women. Calpurnia’s chafing against those expectations is universal and continues to this day as we push against what society expects of us.

Awards:

2010 Newberry Honor Book

2010 YALSA Best Book for Young Adults

2010 ALA Notable Book

2009 Chicago Public Library Best of the Best

Reviews:

Kirkus Reviews: “Readers will finish this witty, deftly crafted debut novel rooting for ‘Callie Vee’ and wishing they knew what kind of adult she would become.”

The Horn Book: “Kelly, without anachronism, has created a memorable, warm, spirited young woman who’s refreshingly ahead of her time.”

The New Yorker: “…the most delightful historical novel for tweens in many, many years…Callie’s struggles to find a place in the world where she’ll be encouraged in the gawky joys of intellectual curiosity are fresh, funny, and poignant today.”

Neat Stuff to Learn:

Learn more about Grasshoppers:

http://bugguide.net/node/view/73/tree/all

This is a picture of a flower similar to that discovered by Calpurnia and her grandfather. What would you name a plant?

Check out my Book Trailer:

Cotton:

Cotton is THE cash crop of Callie’s Family. Learn more about where your t-shirt comes from by watching this prezi by Matthew Green. Then go to  kqed.org  for more great information about your t-shirt.

review created for Texas Woman’s University course LS 5603.21

The Earth Dragon Awakes: The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

Title: The Earth Dragon Awakes: The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

Author: Laurence Yep

Publisher: New York: Harper Trophy, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-06-000846-8

Summary: Two friends, Henry and Chin, live through the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. The earthquake and resulting fires take all their material possessions, but not their families, not their heroes, and not each other. And not the umbrellas.

Critical Analysis: Henry and Chin are boys connected not only because Henry’s family employs Chin’s father as a houseboy, but also through a love of penny-dreadfuls and a yearning for excitement. They get both a dreadful and exciting event when the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 literally rocks their hometown. However, another character drives the novel—the earth itself, described in Chin’s Chinatown neighborhood as the Earth Dragon.  It is his shaking that causes the earthquake, and it stands to reason that the great fires that sweep through the city in its aftermath are its fiery breath. However, the earth is not personified; Yep explains tectonic plate movement in a way that draws tension to the book as well as to the earth underneath San Francisco.

Yep’s novel is written for young children beginning chapter books. The sentences are short, the chapters are short, and the words are simple. Each chapter begins with a date, time, and place as an orientation. The Earth Dragon Awakes is an adventure novel with lots of action verbs, lots of movement, and just enough characterization to keep the action going. You do not look for deep messages or societal conflicts in this novel. The conflicts are there, but the third person narrator is distinctly child-like in his view, not focusing on details that would reveal any underlying concerns. The theme of this book is discovering heroes. Whereas previous to the earthquake Henry and Chin depended on cheap novels about lawmen and explorers for their heroes, the earthquake reveals real heroes in their parents and neighbors.

Author Laurence Yep’s reputation for well-researched novels continues in The Earth Dragon Awakes. He includes photographs of the fires and aftermath at the end of the book, another reminder that this terrible event is real. His captions under the photos describe the locations in which the photos were taken and where Chin and Henry’s families’ connections to those places. The afterword of The Earth Dragon Awakes continues the story of the quake in an informational text and his personal experiences with more recent quakes in the area. Yep includes a bibliography of research books and reputable websites for learning about the earthquake.

Awards:

2008 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award

Texas Bluebonnet Award Nominee

Newbery Honor Author

Reviews:

ALA Booklist: “Provides a ‘you are there’ sense of immediacy and will appeal to readers who enjoy action-packed survival stories.”

School Library Journal: "Its ‘natural disaster’ subject is both timely and topical, and Yep weaves snippets of information on plate tectonics and more very neatly around his prose.”

Footage of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake:

Review created for Texas Woman’s University course LS 5603.21

One Crazy Summer

Title: One Crazy Summer

Author: Rita Williams-Garcia

Publisher: New York: HarperCollins, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-06-076090-8

Summary: “How can you send them to Oakland? Oakland’s nothing but a boiling pot of trouble cooking.” 

–Big Ma

It’s the summer of 1968 and Delphine and her two younger sisters are sent by their father and Big Ma (their grandmother) in Brooklyn, NY, to Oakland, CA, to visit their mother. But their California dreaming crashes down on them as they realize they will not be visiting Disneyland and surfing as they had hoped. Instead they are busy avoiding the crazy mother who abandoned them as babies, attending summer school taught by black panthers, and a learning a few truths they never knew. Just don’t tell their Big Ma.

Critical Analysis: Rita Williams-Garcia creates not so much a world (that was already there) as the people that inhabit it—especially the women. Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern are sisters ranging in age from 11 to 7, each with her own strong personality. Their mother, Cecile or Nzila, is crazy and distant, a poet quietly caught up in the black power movement of the 1960’s. Their grandmother, Big Ma, is heard throughout the story as a conservative voice in the head of our narrator.

The story is told through the eyes of 11-year-old Delphine. When their mother abandoned them Delphine took on responsibility for her younger sisters. The reader senses her vigilance in guarding Vonetta and Fern, her big-sister ability to press the right buttons in her younger sister’s attitudes, and her resentment toward her mother for leaving them. We see Delphine’s comprehension about the way the world works slowly shift as she is exposed to the ideals of the Black Panthers and her evolving role as a black woman.

The novel revolves around the sisters, especially Delphine, and their relationship with their mother. While the girls essentially wait for their mother to acknowledge their existence beyond people who need to be fed and sleep somewhere, they become involved in a summer education program run by the Black Panthers at the People’s Center.

Their adventures at the People’s Center are just like any other children’s in any summer school; there are friends to be made from enemies, playground games, teachers trying (sometimes succeeding) to help. Then Nzila is arrested with a couple of Black Panthers and the girls are left on their own. Instead of calling Pa and Big Ma, Delphine decides to wait for Cecile to be released from jail. The sisters stay busy with preparations for a rally in the park. The girls discover a poem written by their mother and decide to recite it as their part in the rally. The plot is quickly but powerfully resolved as Cecile finally speaks to Delphine about why she left.

Rita Williams-Garcia writes not only from her personal knowledge of growing up during the civil rights movement, but also from extensive research from a variety of sources. The descriptions of the time and area are accurate. Even the stereotyping is accurate—meaning that some of the characters view other characters as stereotypes, such as one of the Panthers continually calling the police “pigs”.

The book may be written in a certain time and a certain place, but the characters could be in any setting. The girls’ pain and confusion as a consequence of abandonment and how they deal with facing the unknown are emotions we are all familiar with to one extent or another. Delphine is not alone in having to come to terms with the underlying motivations to action; it is something we all must face.

Awards:

Newberry Honor Book

Coretta Scott King Award

National Book Award Finalist

Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction

ALA Notable Book

NAACP Image Award Nominee

Parent’s Choice Gold Award

Reviews:

Monica Edinger, New York Times: “In One Crazy Summer Williams-Garcia presents a child’s-eye view of the Black Panther movement within a powerful and affecting story of sisterhood and motherhood.”

Horn Book: “The setting and time period are as vividly realized as the characters, and readers will want to know more about Delphine and her sisters after they return to Brooklyn.”

Linda Sue Park, Newbery Medal-winning author of A Single Shard: “A genuine rarity: a book that is both important in its contents and utterly engaging in its characters…with the tremendous bonus of being beautifully written.”

Author Quote:

“I wanted to share an era in which I had enjoyed my childhood—the late 1960’s…My siblings and I indulged in now-vanishing pastimes. We played hard. Read books. Colored with crayons. Rode bikes. Spoke as children spoke. Dreamed our childish dreams…[our parents] gave us a place to be children and kept the adult world in its place—as best as they could.”

--excerpt from Rita Williams-Garcia’s Acceptance Speech for the Coretta Scott King Author Award for One Crazy Summer

Activity and Websites:

Make a playlist including songs from 1968

Pretend you are eating Mean Lady Ming Takeout by trying this recipe for fortune cookies: kidspot fortune cookies

Find out more about the Civil Rights Movement:

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movement

Created for Texas Woman’s University course LS 5603.21