to your drinking straws.
to your broken printer.
to your last box of toothpicks.
to the Lego bricks in your house. Make magazine not only shows the reader how to make certain items - it inspires them to creative new items of their own. It's been great fun to watch our son imagine the possibilities. What would your young creative genius build?
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I love to read. It’s an action that informs, entertains, inspires, and connects. I’m happy to report that my oldest son shares this love as well. 
During the heat, he and I could happily pass every hour of the day in the cool of our basement moving only from chapter to chapter. My youngest son, however, requires actual physical movement (which brings us all upstairs and into the backyard), but he too is disappointed if we start the week with an empty book bag. We don’t buy the books we read (as that bill would quickly outpace our grocery bill), so it’s off to the public library each and every week. Sometimes these visits are leisurely and include browsing the shelves, long conversations with our favorite librarians, and 30 minutes of game time on the children’s computer stations. Other times, our visit is a mad dash in and out (with the driver behind the wheel parked at the closest curb). Our best bet for getting the books we want (when we want them) is the online library catalog. Easy and free to use, we can use this search engine to find books any day, at any time, from the comfort of our own home. Here are links to two brief videos that will show you how to make this free, online, library service work for you: Click HERE for a full-screen version of this video.
I love a good mystery. Always have.  Growing up I remember reading the Encyclopedia Brown series and (you guessed it) I’ve passed them along to my own boys. In each Encyclopedia book, readers will find a handful of short mysteries starring the smart, teenage detective. All the clues are in the story with the answers revealed in the back pages of the book - so folks can make their own guess before the solution is unveiled. Other ideas for mystery lovers…  HBO had a TV series based on these books in the late 80’s. Those shows can now be found on VHS tape at the local library and are fun to watch after completing the book series. These videos are hokey, cheesy, and all around painful to watch if you are a lover of quality acting. My boys failed to notice my groans however, and instead paid close attention to the clues hidden within each mystery. Bug Meany’s gang does resort to name calling (and Sally lands a few well-aimed punches in defense of her friend), so I wouldn’t call these videos squeaky clean, but as a follow-up activity to reading the books I’d give the videos a B- for entertainment purposes.  This 30 Second Mysteries board game is for children ages 8 and up. Each game card features one case, a question to be answered and four clues that will lead players to the answer. Two readers can play or two teams of readers can compete.  For older readers (high school +), Ken Weber has a series of Five Minute Mysteries that follow much of the same format of short-story with final question and answers in the back of the book. Fun for road trips, campfire chats, and short reads that make you use your noggin to discover “Whodunit?”  And for online reading: Mystery.net provides short online stories for children, teen and adults. Read the mystery, click on the answer you believe to be true and then read the revealed answer (as well as the stats for how many other people got it right). Have you heard of Flat Stanley? He’s the role model for all those determined to turn lemons into lemonade!  Stanley was peacefully dreaming in bed one night when the bulletin board above him fell – and flattened him. Just as in the very best mystery novels, this tragic act is not revealed in any great detail. It happened… don’t dwell… let’s move on to solve the mystery/problem. (I love fiction.) Stanley (now flat as a pancake) goes on to have all sorts of adventures. Drop you keys through a street grate? No worries; Stanley can just slide thorough and grab them for you. Inter-continental airfare to high? Never fear; Stanley can just be sent through the mail in an envelope. There are no frequent flier miles, but there are also no security lines. (Lemonade, I tell you; Lemonade!!)  Teachers have been using this book in the classroom for years. For more that a decade the Official Flat Stanley Project has been on the web and continues today to document just how much Stanley is loved. He travels the globe and rubs elbows with some of the most famous people in the world. Look closely, that’s Stanley with President Obama. (And dressed appropriately too!)  There are six Flat Stanley Books in the series. Author Jeff Brown died in 2003, but Flat Stanley lives on. The boy even has a theme song!
(That’s hitting the big time!) Go Stanley! As a mom of a kid who burns through books like there’s no tomorrow – I’m always on the search for the net good read. When I’m stumped I turn to friends, the web and (no surprise here) my favorite LIBRARIANS!!  The Salem Public Library Youth Desk has handouts of book recommendations for all ages and types of readers. They have a family read-aloud brochure as well as Best Bets for Girls and Boys by grade. Just ask at the Youth Services desk – the brochures are free of charge and a great place to jump-start a book search.  Just this month the Salem Library also announced an online search tool for recommended children’s book. I tend to love the old-fashioned art of browsing the shelves, but for the tech savvy and the late-at-night-browser NovelList Plus K-8 could be a handy tool. Use your active Salem Public Library card to search both fiction and nonfiction books for children and teens. One last place I should mention as a good place to search for the titles of good books.... NW Kid Chaser. Share your favorites here! Have you heard about Library2Go? It’s the free, easy way to download library books to your personal mp3 player. A few months back, I used my library card to ‘check out’ Charlotte’s Web, Harry the Dirty Dog, and Dr. Suess. My four year old enjoyed listening to the stories as I completed my grocery shopping. While adding bananas to my shopping cart, I carefully counted my blessings:  My kiddos love it when I bring a stack of books home from the library that all focus on the same theme. We've had weeks of just sea mammals. One week, we devoured every word ever written by Byron Barton. And this week, it was Clifford. I called it the Clifford Marathon: Big Red Dog all-day, every-day. One secret to making this celebration of books easy is the Chemeketa Cooperative Regional Library Service's online library catalog. Using this handy web-based tool; you can search for books from 19 regional libraries, request your selections, and (with just a click of the mouse) ask that they be delivered to the pick-up location of your choice. Fast, easy, and free for all library card holders. It's just one reason I think librarians are the superheroes of my community. Happy Reading! |
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