Adventures Can Be Found In the Pages of a Book

1. Adventures Can Be Found In the Pages of a Book Encouraging and Engaging Your Child to Read Grades 3-6

2. Marilyn Goodrich Reading Specialist/Language Arts Consultant Training and Consultation Midwestern Intermediate Unit IV marilyn_goodrich@miu4.k12.pa.us 724-458-6700 Ext 1290

3. Agenda • Finding an “entry point” book(s) • Encouraging your child to read • Cool books • Activities and ideas to expand on their reading

4. Entry Point Books

5. What are entry point books? The material that children will find immediately gratifying and will want them to seek and read more. (Zambo & Brozo, 2009)

6. Kids like book where they… • Can identify with the characters • Are the same age or the next age/grade up* • Focus on a mystery, problem, supernatural, history, struggle, or dystopian society • Are able to read more about the characters---series

7. Cool Books

8. The Secret Society of Unrelenting Vigilance Theo Saint, suffering from a dangerous illness, is only allowed out of his locked bedroom in Kensington Gore--one of London's wealthiest quarters--once a year, on his birthday. The Three are the only people he has ever known: his guardian, Dr. Saint, his butler, Mr. Nicely, and his deaf nurse Clarice. This year he and Mr. Nicely visit the graveyard in the back of Dr. Saint's estate and Mr. Nicely, ever so nice, decides that they should turn in early. But before leaving, Theo spies a black package with a golden bow resting on a headstone. He surreptitiously takes it and discovers that his name is written on it in silver cursive. The first in a trilogy of Candle Man escapades, The Society of Unrelenting Vigilance introduces a gruesome cast of characters, including garghouls, smoglodytes, and the rancid Dodo. The course is set for a new type of superhero to pave his way (with wax!). Tongue-in-cheek humor is interwoven through every page, and thrilling cliffhangers close each chapter. Kids and adults alike will be rooting for Theo and whichever allies he can trust at that moment. 8+

9. Gregor the Overlander (Underland Chronicles) Gregor's mother needs him to stay home this summer to take care of his two-year old sister, Boots, instead of going to camp. Since his father disappeared, two years, seven months, and thirteen days ago, twelve-year-old Gregor hasn't had a day when he's felt real happiness. Gregor knows his dad isn't dead-he would never abandon the family-and until he finds out where his dad is, he can't think about the future at all. In the laundry room of his New York City apartment building with his two-year old sister, Boots, he hears a giggle from her and a clunk. The metal grate to an old air duct is wide open, and Boots is peering down through the opening. The next thing Gregor sees is a strange vapor drifting out of the hole, and Boots is somehow sucked into the air duct. "No," he shouts, thrusting his head and shoulders into the hole. He, too, falls down, down, down into empty space. That's Chapter 1, Part 1: The fall. Is it a dream? Not a chance.

10. Tumtum and Nutmeg: Adventures Beyond Nutmouse Hall Mr. and Mrs. Nutmouse live in a thirty-six-room mansion called Nutmouse Hall, located in the broom closet off the kitchen of Rose Cottage, owned by a human widower named Mr. Mildew. Mr. Mildew, an inventor, is an absent-minded father to his children, Arthur and Lucy, and the house is in terrible disrepair. The mouse couple, whose pet names for each other are Tumtum (he loves to eat) and Nutmeg (because of her lovely nutmeg-colored fur), don’t think it right that they should live so comfortably while the human children eat food from tins, and shiver in winter because the boiler no longer works. “They need a fairy godmother to take care of them,” says kindhearted Nutmeg.

11. The Adventures of Nanny Piggins Desperate to find a nanny for his three children—eleven-year-old Derrick, nine-year-old Samantha, and seven-year-old Michael—Mr. Green, a parsimonious and dreadfully boring lawyer, pounds a sign for a nanny on his front lawn. After three weeks with no response, he is only too willing to hire the four-foot pig in a blue dress who knocks on the door, especially when she tells him her fee is a whole ten cents an hour. In a Mary Poppins story run amok, Nanny Piggins, whose only previous job experience is as a flying pig at the circus, supposes her new job can’t be any harder than being blasted out of a cannon.The children immediately fall in love with their new nanny who lets them eat chocolate before, after, and instead of breakfast, encourages them to read trashy literature at the dining table, and spends the $500 Mr. Green gives her to buy school uniforms on a joyous day of terrifying rides at the amusement park. Each hilarious chapter is a self-contained, chocolate-smeared adventure, a feast of the absurd, just crying to be read aloud. Who wouldn’t want a nanny like Nanny Piggins?

12. The Bloomswell Diaries The Bloomswell Diaries is a steampunk adventure story, centered on eight-year-old Benjamin Bloomswell. (If you’re unfamiliar with the term, steampunk is a new science fiction genre. Think Jules Verne, steam-powered machines, airships, and Victorian aspects.)  While Benjamin is no hero, the events that occur in the novel would test any child’s character, and readers watch as Benjamin rises to the occasion.  A surprise visit to Uncle Lucas in America takes Benjamin from his safe London home when his famous mother and father are called away on unexpected business.  There Benjamin reads in a newspaper that his parents have been declared dead.  Confused and scared, Benjamin asks his uncle, who does not confirm his parent’s death, but rather reveals that there is more to the Bloomswell family than young Benjamin knows.  The family has enemies who want to steal their fortune.

13. The Dangerous Days of Daniel X “I wish that I didn't sometimes, but I remember everything about that cursed, unspeakably unhappy night twelve years ago, when I was just three years old and both my parents were murdered.” That's just the start of Daniel's extraordinary narrative that grabs you by the scruff of the neck and never stops shaking. That night, The Prayer, Earth's most notorious alien, in the guise of a man-sized praying mantis, invaded Daniel's house, in wrathful pursuit of The List of Alien Outlaws on Terra Firma, which Daniel's father, the Alien Hunter, had hidden. The vengeful creature would have murdered Daniel, too, if he could have found him. The quick-thinking little boy transformed himself into a dog tick, crawled atop The Prayer's greasy head, and escaped unharmed.

14. The First Day of School… Forever! It’s not every eleven-year-old who can survive maple syrup squirted into his hair; puddle-splashes leaving spots in indiscrete places on his pants; his dog following him to school and then attacking the principal; and a mishap – no two, make that three – that injures the most popular boy at school.  And that’s before the bell rings.  Later he gets lost in the endless hallways; kills the teacher’s rare and expensive classroom pet scorpion; and discovers gravestones and one seriously weird bookroom attendant in the spooky basement.  All in one day – the first day of sixth grade in his brand new school – Ardmore Middle School.  But somehow, Artie Howard makes it through. Could it get worse?  Yes! When Artie wakes the next morning for the second day of school, the events of the previous day begin repeating.  He is determined to stop them and begs his mother for help when his younger brother squirts maple syrup into his hair again. This time, she just assures him that “it’s only syrup.” 

15. Dave at Night After his adored father dies falling off a roof in 1926 and no one else in the family is able or willing to take him in, eleven-year-old troublemaker Dave is sent to the Hebrew Home for Boys in Harlem, New York. At the HHB, nicknamed the Hellhole for Brats, Dave is accepted by the other Elevens, but Moe, one of the older boys, assigns himself as Dave’s bully, the one who eats half of Dave’s food at each meal. Mr. Bloom, the terrifying headmaster, or Mr. Doom as the boys call him, steals from Dave’s suitcase his only treasure—a wooden carved Noah’s Ark his father made for him. Dave plans to run away, but first tries to reclaim the carving from the cabinet in Mr. Doom’s office, enduring a beating when he is caught. In the meantime, Dave figures out a way to sneak out of school at night. On the street, he is befriended by Solly the gonif, an old Jewish man with a long gray beard and a big gray parrot perched on his shoulder. “Tell for you your fortune,” Solly’s bird says. Solly takes Dave with him to rent parties in Harlem where he teaches the boy to tell fortunes, and Dave is befriended by Irma Lee, an African American girl his age. The eccentric characters—Dave’s classmates at the HHB, the art teacher who sees promise in him, and the partygoers of the Harlem Renaissance crowd—make this atmospheric novel, which is loosely based on the experiences of the author’s father, unforgettable.

16. How to Eat Fried Worms Billy's friends Tom and Alan bet Billy fifty dollars that he can't eat fifteen worms.  Billy's going to need all the discipline and will-power he can muster if he has any chance to succeed.  

17. The Strange Case of the Origami Yoda Tommy begins the first entry in his case file with this: "The big question: Is Origami Yoda real?... Does he really know things? Can he see the future?... Or is he just a hoax that fooled a whole bunch of us at McQuarrie Middle School?" To get solid answers and scientific evidence, Tommy has asked each person who was helped by Origami Yoda, classmate Dwight's paper-folded green finger puppet, to write down his or her account, which he has compiled here, along with his own analysis. He's also asked his friend, Kellen, to supply the many adorable cartoon doodles that decorate the margins of the crumpled notebook paper-like pages.

18. When Life Gives You O.J. In the just-before-she-turns-eleven summer, Zelly Fried’s facing lots of changes: the family has moved to Vermont from Brooklyn; her grandfather – Ace – is living with them after the death of Bubbles, Zelly’s beloved grandma; her best friend Allie is off to sleep-away camp; and a new friendship begins with the even-newer-to-the-neighborhood kid, Jeremy.  But one thing’s been the same for Zelly: for always – she wants a dog of her own.  More than anything! Of all people, Ace has a plan.  It’s a crazy plan, but Ace convinces Zelly that it might work.  In order to prove to her parents that she will be a responsible dog-owner, Zelly’s going to take care of a practice dog – an orange-juice container on a leash. 

19. Diary of a Wimpy Kid (series) The surprise hit of the year, this easy-to-read first person expose of middle school life told by sixth grader Greg Heffley through cartoons and hand-written journal entries has sold more than a million copies. It's throw-yourself-on-the-floor-and-roll-around-howling hilarious, and boys, especially, are inhaling this book. All those 97-pound weaklings out there can really identify with a kid who figures he's somewhere around 52nd or 53rd most popular at school and whose slacker older bother, Rodrick, belongs to a heavy metal band called Löded Diaper. Reluctant readers? Not anymore.

20. How to Steal a Dog Sometimes you pick up a book and it just says, “Read me.” This one has an irresistible cover, a compelling title, and a most unexpected first line that will hook readers and keep them riveted: “The day I decided to steal a dog was the same day my best friend, Luanne Godfrey, found out I lived in a car.” Georgina’s father has bolted, leaving the family with nothing; the landlord has kicked them out of their apartment; and Mama is working two jobs. Georgina and her little brother Toby have been sleeping in the back seat of the Chevrolet for a week now, washing up in the gas station each morning. Then Georgina sees a sign, tacked up on a telephone pole: “Reward. $500. Have you seen me? My name is Mitsy.” Who would pay so much money for a lost dog? Mama says $500 would be enough for them to get a place to live. That’s when Georgina comes up with a plan to find a dog someone loves so much, they’d pay $500 to get it back.

21. The Angel Experiment-Maximum Ride Series Many kids daydream about having wings and being able to soar across the sky. Be careful what you wish for. For the narrator, 14-year-old Max, it’s no dream. “Welcome to our nightmare,” she says in her Prologue to the first book in the electric Maximum Ride series. Maximum Ride is Max’s full name, and she lives with her close-knit “family.” They may not be related to her by blood, but the six of them—Fang, 14; Iggy, 14 and blind; Nudge, 11; the Gasman, 8; and his little sister, Angel, 6—have spent the past four years hiding out at a house high in the mountains. The six kids were bred by scientists who, as an experiment, grafted avian DNA onto their human genes, and kept them in cages in a science lab/prison called the School. They’re 98% human, and 2% avian. They’ve all got wings. And they can fly. The scientists have developed another mutant group, part human, part wolf, called Erasers. They look human, but can morph at will into fanged and bloodthirsty wolf men. When Max’s nightly nightmare of being discovered by Erasers comes true one morning, Angel is kidnapped and brought back to the School. Max and her flock set out on a rescue mission, which, if there are no interruptions, will span 600 miles and 7 hours of flying time. Unfortunately for them, though not for us, there are lots of interruptions, all of which will keep readers riveted from paragraph one.

22. The Homework Machine Starting with a stern statement from the Grand Canyon, Arizona Police Chief Rebecca Fish, meet four fifth graders in big trouble. There's long-haired, rebellious, cool guy Sam Dawkins; fun-loving, unacademic, pink-haired Kelsey Donnelly, African American grind Judy Douglas, and friendless genius Brenton Damagatchi. The whole thing starts because Sam is anti-homework, especially the daily fill in-the-blank worksheets his first-year teacher Miss Rasmussen hands out. Sam is skeptical when Brenton claims he has programmed his computer to search the web and do all his homework each day, but it’s true. Soon the four seatmates are spending every afternoon in Brenton’s bedroom, printing out their daily assignments on the computer they nickname Belch. It can’t do any harm, right? The chronology and confession of their ill-fated escapade is related entirely through a series of transcripts, narrated by the four contrite kids, their parents, classmates, and Miss Rasmussen.

23. The Buddy Files-The Case of the Lost Boy What’s that lovely smell?  Eggs, bacon, toothpaste and dirt.  King, dog detective, will have to sniff it out.  But he’s working alone these days, without his human partner Kayla, since she and Mom and Dad disappeared and King ended up in the P-O-U-N-D, a word never to be said aloud in dog world.  It turns out the smell is a boy, and here he comes now! Connor and his Mom want to adopt a dog.  They choose King.  Then New Mom decides to call him Buddy.  It is most confusing, but on the upside – he has escaped the pound, has some really good dog food, a bed of his own and has ended up in his old neighborhood.  At last he can start solving the mystery of what happened to Kayla. 

24. The Trouble With Chickens: A J.J. Sully Mystery The hero – and Jonathan Joseph Tully would be the first to tell you that’s precisely what he is – is a retired search-and-rescue dog, living a life of leisure with his trainer in the countryside. J.J., as he’s known, is a bit full of himself, what with having had parades thrown in his honor after pulling tornado victims out from under crippling debris, and flying first class to the French Alps to rescue skiers. So when a mother hen seeks help in finding her two lost chicks, J.J. is initially dismissive. Chicken rescue is not his thing. He agrees to do it only if Moosh, the name he gives the mother hen, pays in cheeseburgers.

25. The Knights of the Kitchen Table: A Time Warp Trio Book In this very first book of the series, best friends Joe, Fred, and Sam find themselves being threatened by the Black Knight after a magic book Joe receives at his birthday party sends them back to King Arthur's time, complete with a smelly giant and a fire-breathing dragon. OK, this is not exactly factual, but it sure is merry.

26. Roxie and the Hooligans Whenever Uncle Dangerfoot, the world adventurer, comes to visit, nine-year-old Roxie Warbler sits at his feet hanging on every word of his hair-raising stories. She has virtually memorized the text of that famous book, Lord Thistlebottom's Book of Pitfalls and How to Survive Them, written by her uncle’s traveling companion, from which she has learned what to do if she is ever lost in the desert or if her parachute doesn’t open: Do not panic. Yet nothing in that book has prepared her to fend off Helvetia Hagus and her mean band of hooligans, four classmates who tease and torment her on the playground every single day. On the morning they stalk her, planning to glue a pair of boy’s underpants to her head, and pelt her with raw eggs, Roxie climbs the Dumpster to escape, and falls into the garbage. The four bullies fall in, too. Before they can escape, the Dumpster is lifted onto the back of a flatbed truck, driven to a garbage barge, and dumped in the ocean. How Roxie and her enemies swim to an island and fend off two armed bank robbers makes for an exciting and melodramatic chapter book filled with helpful survival tips. As Lord Thistlebottom would say, A jolly good adventure, that.

27. Owen and Mzee Amidst the newspaper coverage of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004, there was a remarkable photo of a baby hippo snuggling against a giant tortoise. Moved by the story of Owen, the orphaned baby hippo who bonded with Mzee, a 130-year-old giant tortoise, Craig Hatkoff and his then six-year-old daughter, Isabella, contacted Dr. Paula Kahumbu, General Manager of Haller Park in Kenya, and the three collaborated on this striking color photo essay. In it, you see how hundreds of villagers from the small coastal town of Malindi worked together to rescue the 600-pound baby hippo from the coral reef where he was stranded and brought him to Haller Park, an animal sanctuary 50 miles away, where he encountered Mzee.

28. Wild Tracks! A Guide to Nature’s Footprints In this information-packed guide to animal tracks, with striking paintings done in pencil and acrylic, he identifies the tracks, actual size, of hoofed mammals, bears, small mammals, felines, canines, reptiles, and birds. Readers will especially love the four gatefolded pages that open up into three panels showcasing comparative sizes of each family's tracks. Accompanying pencil drawings show the parts of an animal's hoof or foot, plus the differences in the footprints made when walking versus running. The biggest tracks are from bears, with the polar bear having the largest bear feet of all.

29. Friends! True Story of Extraordinary Animal Friendships In zoos, wildlife refuges, and animal hospitals from China to Florida, Siberia to Cincinnati, unlikely friendships between animals are captured in simple rhymes and stunning photographs.  Longer captions fill in the details of the friendships:  An old orangutan was lonely and showed no interest in living after she lost her mate, until the zookeepers brought in a stray tabby cat – and a comforting friendship developed; a wounded basset hound was befriended by a tawny owl, and for five years (and counting) the two snuggle together on a couch; a twelve-year friendship between a big Asiatic bear and a cat has made it through the test of time.  The differences just don’t matter in these true stories that make the gentle point that, if animals can figure this out, surely children can!

30. Out of My Mind Melody describes herself as a little girl with short, dark, curly hair; brown eyes, one of which is slightly out of wack; a head that wobbles a little; thin legs that have never been used; and feet that sometimes kick unexpectedly. "Not a lot of control there," she notes wryly. Melody has cerebral palsy, and though she has never spoken a single word, she has a prodigious memory, recalling word-for-word everything she sees and hears. When she gets frustrated, she screeches and flails her body in what she calls "tornado explosions," and not even her own mother knows what's wrong. Despite one doctor's pronouncement that Melody is severely brain-damaged, her mother believes she is intelligent and enrolls her in a special needs class in a local elementary school, where she is strapped in a wheelchair all day and uses a primitive communication board to point to phrases like "yes," "no," and "maybe" with her thumb. As Melody explains in her remarkable narrative, "It's like I live in a cage with no door and no key, and I have no way to tell someone how to get me out.

31. Blood on the River: Jamestown 1607 In his clear-eyed, harrowing account of the first year of the Jamestown Settlement, eleven-year-old orphan Samuel accompanies Captain John Smith to Virginia as his page. Samuel starts out an angry and resentful loner, prone to picking fights with the other boys in the group. Captain Smith has his own problems-the wealthy and imperious noblemen on board the ship loathed him as a commoner who was trying to rise above his station and tried to have him hanged. Even so, Captain Smith takes time with Samuel, demanding the boy become part of the group, instead of always trying to "stand on one foot." Living through a deadly attack by Powhatan warriors and the murder of one of the boys, facing starvation, constructing a fort and watching it destroyed by fire, and burying too many men dead of sickness, Samuel soon comes to understand the lionhearted Captain Smith's insistence on cooperating with others, including the inscrutable Chief Powhatan.

32. Malice There's a ritual the kids all know that is supposed to call up Tall Jake who will then take you to Malice. Luke doesn't believe in it, of course. To prove to Heather that there's nothing to be afraid of, he goes through the ritual, ending with the chant, "Tall Jake, take me away!" It's said that Tall Jake comes for you when you're alone. Two days later, Luke disappears from home, inexplicably leaving his cell phone behind. A panicked Heather seeks out Luke's best friend, Seth, to confide in him what she witnessed that night. Seth and another friend, Kady, search Luke's bedroom for clues and find a map on his computer, pinpointing a shop in London, and the comic book, Malice. Incredibly, every single page is now blank. They decide to take the train to London to check out that shop, though Kady is skeptical. She says, "It's beyond stupid, Seth. You're telling me you think he's been taken by a character in a comic book?"

33. We Were There, Too! ;Young People In U.S. History If you are tired of history texts describing the accomplishments and wars fought mainly by white men, Hoose's riveting look at American history through the eyes of its activist youth is a revelation. Two to eight page profiles, based on primary sources, diaries, and interviews, along with reproductions of prints, paintings, and portraits, acquaint the reader with a diverse examination of 68 courageous children and teenagers who participated in groundbreaking events.

34. How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous Readers with a taste for the gross and grotesque will find How They Croaked, a consistently disgusting, gleefully ghoulish chronicle of the gruesome deaths of nineteen famous people, irresistible. Georgia Bragg opens with King Tut, discussing, in gory specifics, the embalming and mummification processes of the ancient Egyptians. Among the many macabre details is an explanation for why mummy eye sockets look empty: "Eyeballs shrink to almost nothing during the drying process." Bragg notes that if mummy eyeballs are rehydrated, they return to almost normal size.

35. We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball Until you hold it in your hands, you can't imagine the impact it will have, starting with the stoic gaze of Negro League superstar Josh Gibson in the painting on the red-bordered cover. Kadir Nelson's full-page oil paintings are beyond breathtaking. They make you feel like you know these guys, like you're right there in the stadium with them, or crammed in an old bus heading to the next town for a game, singing barbershop numbers.

36. Encouraging your child to read

37. Encouraging Your Child • Visit your library—card, story hour, book groups, kids clubs • Having a quiet place to read • Modeling of books/materials that you like • Having “book talks” when you both read the book • Do activities or ideas from the books—scientific experiments, crafts, additional research or travel about a specific place

38. Additional Activities • Check out author web sites • Comic book creation • Journal writing • Historical research and discovery • “Field trips” on summer break • Watching author videos • Talking about the movie and the book • Cooking/creating recipes • Listen to new music/read a different genre of book/watch a different genre of movie

39. Additional Ideas • Trips to the museum, zoo, aviary, library, historical society • Talk to grandparents and family about your history • Create pottery, jewelry, scrapbook (your family history or your life so far!) • Begin a new hobby—watch someone else work on their own hobby • Try a new sport • Go see a baseball, football, soccer ….etc..game to learn the rules • Volunteer on a farm, at a kennel, or at a day camp • Tutor someone in a subject you are good in!

40. Book Resource Read Kiddo Read-a Website from James Patterson encouraging kids to read!! www.readkiddoread.com

41. Find more information about reading and encouraging your child to read more…*www.miu4.k12.pa.us and/orhttp://littlebookworms.wikispaces.com