Help Kids Engage with American History at War of 1812 Exhibits and Events

America Recognizes the
200th Anniversary of the War of 1812

National Portrait Gallery Features
"1812: A Nation Emerges" Exhibit

 

A model of Old Ironsides is featured at the "1812: A Nation Emerges"
exhibit. Photo by Evelyn Hockstein for The New York Times.

Museums, organizations, and cities across the country are hosting a myriad of events and exhibits to commemorate the anniversary of the War of 1812. You can help young people engage with this significant historical chapter by checking out events in your area or other locations where you may be traveling this summer.

Of particular interest to those who can make it to Washington, D.C. is the "1812: A Nation Emerges" exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery, which helps visitors see the dramatic consequences of the war. As Edward Rothstein writes in The New York Times article "A Legacy Far Beyond the National Anthem" about the exhibit, "[The War of 1812] shaped a sense of American identity. The Revolutionary War established independence, but the War of 1812 forged a nation."

To read the entire article about this very special exhibit, click here. The exhibit will continue through January 2012. For further details, visit the National Portrait Museum's website. 

Learn More About the War of 1812 in Our White House!

A go-to resource for discovering more about America's history is the NCBLA's interdisciplinary anthology Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out, and it's coordinating educational website OurWhiteHouse.org! An incomparable collection of essays, personal accounts, historical fiction, poetry, and a stunning array of original art, Our White House offers a multifaceted look at America’s history through the prism of the White House. 

"Struggling to Stand"
Copyright (c) 2008 by Wendell Minor

Our White House includes numerous articles, stories, and illustrations dedicated to helping young people learn about and understand the War of 1812. Be sure to share with young people Wendell Minor's stunning illustration "Struggling to Stand," Ralph Ketcham's essay "The White House Prepares for War: 1812," and Susan Cooper's imaginative letter written by a British soldier about the burning of the White House. 

You may also want to check out the exclusive articles and education resources available on the companion website OurWhiteHouse.org. Articles, discussion questions, and activity suggestions include: 

• "Primary Sources: Dolley Madison's Letter to Her Sister About the Burning of the White House" 
• "Star Spangled Presidents" by Helen Kampion
• "Presidential Fact Files" 
• "First Lady Fact Files"

Our White House is available
in both hardcover and paperback from Candlewick Press.
Ask for it at a library or bookstore near you!

Ideas to Keep Your Kids Reading and Writing this Summer

Reading Rockets Offers Reading Tips
Sent to Your Phone

Parents, grandparents, and other adults who live and work with kids may want to check out Reading Rockets' new Reading Tips to Go mobile service, which sends helpful tips and activity ideas directly to your mobile phone! When you sign up, Reading Rockets will send you three to four text messages every week throughout the summer.

It is easy to sign up—simply text READING to 41411.

And for more reading resources and lists of recommended books by theme, check out Reading Rockets' Start with a Book website, which uses books as a launching pad for exploration, conversation, and real world learning adventures.

Summer Learning Adventures Abound

Discover Field Trip Ideas, Reading Lists, and Games for Summer Fun on the NCBLA's Summer Treasure Chest

Whether your summer adventures are taking place on a remote country farm, an inner-city playground, or Aunt Maggie's house, be sure to give reading a starring role! A great place to start looking for summer reading fun is your local library. Almost every public library sponsors special programs, reading contests, book clubs, and free passes to area museums and attractions. And remember that the librarians are also a rich resource. They can offer expert advice about completing summer projects and book suggestions for even the most reluctant readers. 

 

You can also discover exciting summer learning activities on the NCBLA's Summer Adventures Treasure Chest, which is overflowing with field trip ideas, engaging book titles, progressive story games, and resource articles to help you make reading a pleasure for all the young people in your life.

 

To check out the NCBLA's Summer Adventures Treasure Chest, click here.

Presidential Trivia of the Week

Help Your Kids Learn About American History
by Playing Presidential Trivia

Are YOU playing presidential trivia?! In honor of this year's presidential campaign, the NCBLA is posting regular presidential trivia questions here on our blog. Check out this week's questions and have fun sharing the questions and answers with the kids in your life!

If you are traveling or always on the go, you can print the questions and answers before you leave or use a smartphone, tablet computer, or laptop to read them on the spot. You can quickly find all our previously posted questions by typing Presidential Trivia in the search box at the top of this blog.

This Week's Trivia Questions

1. Who is the only president to have been elected to serve two terms, but NOT consecutively?
2. Who was the first president to be elected by the House of Representatives?
3. Who was the first First Lady to speak to the public using radio?

A go-to resource for discovering more about America's presidents is the NCBLA's interdisciplinary anthology Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out, and it's coordinating educational website OurWhiteHouse.org! An incomparable collection of essays, personal accounts, historical fiction, poetry, and a stunning array of original art, Our White House offers a multifaceted look at America’s history through the prism of the White House.

Answers and Information for Learning MORE!

1. Grover Cleveland. Cleveland served his first term from 1885 to 1889, but was defeated by Benjamin Harrison in the following election. Harrison was faced with continuing domestic disputes regarding high tariff rates that had created a surplus of money. Despite protests from the agricultural community, Harrison signed the McKinley Tariff Act, which raised the average tariff rate to 48%, while also eliminating some tariffs. The increased tariffs were widely unpopular, ultimately leading the Republican Party and Harrison to lose public favor as well as the White House. Indeed, Harrison was defeated by his predecessor, the Democrat Cleveland, in the next election. And so Cleveland served a second term following Harrison's administration from 1893 to 1897. Learn more about Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison in the Presidential Fact Files on OurWhiteHouse.org.
2. Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was elected by the House of Representatives because both he and his opponent, Aaron Burr, each received 73 electoral votes, so the House voted to break the tie and elect Jefferson. The law at that time specified that Burr would become vice president. John Quincy Adams was the second president to be selected by the House of Representatives. Learn more about Jefferson and Adams in the Presidential Fact Files on OurWhiteHouse.org.
3. Lou Henry Hoover.  Lou Hoover served as first lady during her husband Herbert Hoover’s single term in the years 1929-1933. Lou devoted many hours to supporting the Girl Scouts of America. She served as not only a troop leader, but also national president. As first lady Lou invited many Girl Scouts to visit the White House. Lou also helped protect the history of White House furnishings by creating a catalog of significant pieces and also restoring Lincoln's study for her husband's use. Lou advocated for women’s and civil rights and often addressed the nation about such issues on the radio. Learn more about Hoover and the other first ladies in the First Lady Fact Files on OurWhiteHouse.org.

Our White House is available
in both hardcover and paperback from Candlewick Press.
Ask for it at a library or bookstore near you!

And be sure to check out the companion educational website, OurWhiteHouse.org, which provides expanded book content that includes additional articles, resources, activities, and discussion questions related to book topics as well exclusive resources and articles regarding the presidency, presidential campaigns, and presidential elections.

In Case You Missed It!

Writing Is a Child’s Gift to the World Writes Pam Allyn in Education News 

In a recent Education News article titled "Pam Allyn: A Child Writer in Today's Complex World," the author writes: 

"As we ‘grown-ups’ know, childhood can be a challenging place to navigate. When children can write what is going on in their minds, they formulate thoughts they didn’t know they had. A child is able to relive an experience, reflect and gain new insights that might not have been apparent initially. This power of self expression – being able to say exactly what he or she means to say – is an invaluable gift for the child, allowing him or her to make sense of the world and perhaps him- or herself. Not only can the child articulate his or her feelings, he or she has control over his or her own story and how it is told. This is a lifelong coping mechanism that a child can turn to in times of hardship and equally in times of joy."

To read the entire article, click here.

For practical advice on encouraging reading and writing in your home, check out the following articles from the NCBLA:

• Parent and Guardian Literacy Basics
• Kids See, Kids Do! Become a Literacy Role Model
• Creating a Home Atmosphere That Supports Great Writing
• Helping Your Teens and Tweens Edit Their Writing

Summer Learning Fun

Cooped Up in the Car on a Long Summer Trip?

Play a Progressive Story Game!

Parents, guardians, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and camp counselors! When you are looking for fun and FREE summer entertainment with your kids, gather everyone around and play a progressive story game. Whether you are cooped up in the car on a long road trip, banished to the basement on a rainy afternoon, or sitting around the campfire on a cool evening, kids of all ages will enjoy testing their imaginations while creating their own  progressive story.

Be prepared to ignite some summer fun with the following information and instructions on how to get started from the NCBLA:

• A Guide to Progressive Stories
• The Progressive Stories Game
• The History of the Exquisite Corpse Art Form and How It Is Played
• Creating Your Own Exquisite Corpse Story Adventure

For inspiration to kids of all ages, check out the episodic story game The Exquisite Corpse Adventure. The Exquisite Corpse Adventure is a progressive story game just like the one many families play on road trips, at camps, at parties, at home when there is a power outage. It is a game where one person begins a story, stops at a cliffhanging moment, and the next person picks it up, continuing on until everyone in the group has the opportunity to contribute. And just like in those games, in The Exquisite Corpse, characters spontaneously erupt out of our authors’ imaginations; plot lines tumble forth, some realized, some lost; and we are often poised at the edge of a cliff with no logical solution in sight!

The Exquisite Corpse Adventure appeals to a wide range of kids because it was created by some of their very favorite authors and illustrators: M.T. Anderson, Natalie Babbitt, Calef Brown, Susan Cooper, Kate DiCamillo, Timothy Basil Ering, Jack Gantos, Nikki Grimes, Shannon Hale, Lemony Snicket, Steven Kellogg, Gregory Maguire, Megan McDonald, Patricia and Fredrick McKissack, Linda Sue Park, Katherine Paterson, James Ransome, Jon Scieszka, and Chris Van Dusen.

To help kids engage in The Exquisite Corpse Adventure, be sure to check out the coordinating educational support materials in the NCBLA’s Exquisite Corpse Adventure Education Resource Center. Overflowing with supplemental articles, activities, reading lists, art activities, discussion questions, and more, the Education Resource Center is designed for moms and dads, teachers and librarians, grandparents and guardians—all adults who live and work with young people and have a vested interest in helping kids read more, write better, and create stories and art that expand all of our universes.

The Exquisite Corpse Adventure is available in both paperback and hardcover. It is also available on audio. Ask for it at your local library of bookstore!

To buy The Exquisite Corpse Adventure from the bookseller of your choice, click here.

2012 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards Announced

Awards Recognize Excellence in
Children's Literature

Last week The Horn Book’s editor in chief Roger Sutton and 2010 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award-winning author Rebecca Stead (When You Reach Me, Random House) announced the 2012 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winners. The following lists the three top winners, with book summaries as provided in the hbook.com article "2012 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards for Excellence in Children's Literature."

PICTURE BOOK AWARD WINNER

Extra Yarn

by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen (Balzer + Bray, a HarperCollins imprint)
When young Annabelle finds a small box containing a never-ending supply of yarn of every color, she does what any self-respecting knitter would do: she knits herself a sweater. Then she knits a sweater for her dog. She continues to knit colorful garments for everyone and everything in her snowy, sooty, colorless town—until an archduke gets greedy.

FICTION AWARD WINNER
No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller 

by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie (Carolrhoda Lab, an imprint of Lerner)
Lewis Michaux opened the National Memorial African Bookstore in Harlem at the end of the Great Depression with an inventory of five books and a strong faith that black people were hungry for knowledge. For the next thirty-five years, his store became a central gathering place for African American writers, artists, intellectuals, political figures and ordinary citizens. In a daring combination of fiction and nonfiction and word and image, thirty-six narrative voices are interwoven with articles from the New York Amsterdam News, excerpts from Michaux’s FBI file and family papers and photographs.

NONFICTION WINNER

Chuck Close: Face Book

written and illustrated by Chuck Close (Abrams Books for Young Readers)
Chuck Close’s art is easy to describe and especially attractive to children because he creates only portraits—in almost every possible medium with an intriguing trompe l’oeil effect. This book explores how his life story and so-called disabilities relate directly to his style. In this Q&A–style narrative, Close himself answers with a clear voice without a hint of famous-artist self-aggrandizement or angst.

To read even more about the winners and the honor books, click here.

Congratulations to this year's winners!

Reading Rockets Launches New Summer Reading Website

Start with a Book and
Launch a Young Reader this Summer!

For more than a decade, Reading Rockets, the award-winning national multimedia literacy initiative from WETA, has provided parents and educators with information and free resources on how young kids learn to read, why so many struggle, and how caring adults can help. This summer, Reading Rockets introduces Start with a Book, a companion website that uses books as a launching pad for exploration, conversation, and real world learning adventures.

To ward off the learning loss that many children experience over the summer, Start with a Book offers adults engaging, research-based ideas for getting kids into books all summer and beyond. The free resources from Start with a Book build on what young children already like—dinosaurs, building, animals, sports, superheroes and music—so that parents, camp counselors, and others can have fun and interact meaningfully with children while helping to strengthen their reading skills.

Grown-ups who visit the Start with a Book website will find:

• Twenty-four kid-friendly themes featuring specific ideas for using books and related downloadable activities to build closer relationships with children and to get them thinking, talking, creating and exploring.
• Practical suggestions for using reading time to build a child’s reading fluency—the ability to read a book or other text correctly, quickly, and with expression—with an opportunity to measure progress over the course of the summer.
• Tips for parents in English, Spanish, and other languages to support English language learners. For those who sign up, reading tips in English or Spanish get delivered as text messages, 3-4 times each week.

While designed with families in mind, Start with a Book also has a place in libraries and summer camps. Local organizations working with children in grade kindergarten through third grade are encouraged to take advantage of these free resources and adapt activities to group use.

If you’re a parent, here’s how to get started with Start with a Book:

• “What does my child love to see, explore, and learn about?” With this question in mind, visit www.startwithabook.org.  If you have a young detective, explorer, artist, athlete or superhero at home or a child fascinated by dinosaurs, planes, bugs, birds, building, animals, the moon and stars, tall tales, music, money, nature, water, or thunder and lightning, you’ll find a summer theme that matches his curiosities and interests.

•  When you’ve selected your theme, you’ll be directed to great fiction and nonfiction titles about your theme, hands-on activities that support reading, writing, and critical thinking skills, and links to other great websites and apps with related content. Decide which activities you’d like to try and make sure you have the materials you need on hand.

• Print a book list and head to the library to pick up recommended titles. Bring your child along and sign up for your library’s summer reading program. If you are visiting a DC public library, ask the children’s librarian for your Start with a Book bookmark.

• Before you start reading together, check back in with the website for tips on reading aloud, including dialogic reading techniques, comprehension strategies, and fluency.

• Start reading! When you know you’ll have at least 20 minutes, grab your child and a book, and dive right in. Talk about the cover of the book with your child. Can he guess what it is about? Have they ever read a book by the same author or about the same topic? Read the book to your child. Take time to ask and answer questions, explore the pictures, and wonder together what will happen next.

• As you are reading, or afterward, talk with your child about characters or facts you find interesting or questions you have. Keep the conversation going as you begin one of the activities with hands-on learning or make-believe fun. Exploring new ideas alongside you lets your child see you learning—and reading—too, and gives your child personal experiences to support his growing knowledge.

• Make plans to extend the learning and give your child a real world connection to the things you read together. Whether it is an unhurried trip to grocery store to explore unusual fruits and vegetables, an evening stroll to watch the night sky or a visit to a museum or zoo, activities that get you out and about with your child help build important literacy skills.

• Choose more themes and more books for an entire summer’s worth of discovery!

    The Start with a Book project is funded by the Park Foundation.

Summer Reading Fun!

Help Your Kids Start a Summer Book Club

You can help your kids prevent the summer learning slide by encouraging them to start their own book club this summer!  

Ask your kids to invite a few of their friends to participate. Kids can start by having the first "meeting" to talk about one or two books they would like to read together. You could host the first meeting in your home or backyard, or you could invite the kids to meet at your local library. Let the kids talk about their favorite books and authors and make their own suggestions! If they need help coming up with ideas, you can enlist the aid of your local librarian. You and your kids might also want to browse the themed booklists that are listed below. 

Once the first book is selected, kids and their families can check out copies of the book from their local library. If your library does not have enough copies, ask the librarian to help you order additional copies from another branch. Encourage the kids to figure out a good time to meet once or twice a week and chat about the book. Let your kids make the plans for their book club, but feel feel to provide snacks and encouragement to keep them reading!

Themed Booklists Appeal to Kids' Interests
Check out the following themed reading resources offered by the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance and other authoritative literacy and literature organizations:

American Heroes Series I: Folklore Legends

American Heroes Series II: Historic and Cultural Heroes in Bibliographies for Young People

Great Books for Boys

Dog Day Reading

Home Run Reading: Baseball and Books for Kids

Discovering Fantasy Beyond Harry Potter

The Horn Book's Summer Reading Lists
Reading Rockets Summer Reading Lists

Ad.Lit.org's Reading Lists for Teens

 

A Perfect Kids' Book Club Selection!

A perfect book with massive appeal to kids is the episodic story game The Exquisite Corpse Adventure.  

 

The Exquisite Corpse Adventure is a progressive story just like the one many families play on road trips, at camps, at parties, at home when there is a power outage. It is a game where one person begins a story, stops at a cliffhanging moment, and the next person picks it up, continuing on until everyone in the group has the opportunity to contribute. And just like in those games, in The Exquisite Corpse, characters spontaneously erupt out of our authors’ imaginations; plot lines tumble forth, some realized, some lost; and we are often poised at the edge of a cliff with no logical solution in sight! 

The Exquisite Corpse Adventure appeals to a wide range of kids because it was created by some of their very favorite authors and illustrators: M.T. Anderson, Natalie Babbitt, Calef Brown, Susan Cooper, Kate DiCamillo, Timothy Basil Ering, Jack Gantos, Nikki Grimes, Shannon Hale, Lemony Snicket, Steven Kellogg, Gregory Maguire, Megan McDonald, Patricia and Fredrick McKissack, Linda Sue Park, Katherine Paterson, James Ransome, Jon Scieszka, and Chris Van Dusen.

To help kids engage in The Exquisite Corpse Adventure, be sure to check out the coordinating educational support materials in the NCBLA’s Exquisite Corpse Adventure Education Resource Center. Overflowing with supplemental articles, activities, reading lists, art activities, discussion questions, and more, the Education Resource Center is designed for moms and dads, teachers and librarians, grandparents and guardians—all adults who live and work with young people and have a vested interest in helping kids read more, write better, and create stories and art that expand all of our universes.

The Exquisite Corpse Adventure is available in both paperback and hardcover. It is also available on audio. Ask for it at your local library of bookstore!

To buy The Exquisite Corpse Adventure from the bookseller of your choice, click here.