I’m excited. The movie “The City of Ember” will be out in October, and the studio released a trailer from the movie today. The City of Ember is a children’s book, and I read it for the first time just a couple months ago. I started reading it and didn’t put it down until I was finished. It was fascinating.

Click this link to go to The City of Ember website where you can read about it and see the trailer.

the City of Ember is about a city that was built deep underground. The book never tells us why the city was built underground and why there would be no way to leave it for over two hundred years. However those hundreds of years have passed, and Ember’s powerful generator is old and it is getting close to being beyond repair. Now, two young people are in a race against time, and they search the city of Ember for clues that will solve the mystery of Ember’s existence and allow them to leave ember - before the lights go out forever.

Today is Earth Day, and many folks are looking for books that they can share with their children to help them learn the importance of caring for our earth. Here are three great book selections for children on Earth Day:

The Wump World by Bill Peet
Ibis: A True Whale Story by John Himmelman
The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

There are many other books, but these are three that I can personally recommend.

From the first time I read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl many years ago, it has been one of my favorite books.  Viktor Frankl spent three horrifying years at Auschwitz and other Nazi prisons during World War II.  When he gained his freedom, he learned that almost his entire family had been killed.  Man’s Search for Meaning is his description of his experiences and his beliefs about the higher meaning in life.  A really amazing book with so much to make you think.

There is so much basic human truth in it - in addition to being such an incredible story of survival and triumph over the worst that mankind can throw at a person.  Here’s a rather long quote, but one that I feel is important:

“The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportuntiy - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life.  It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish.  Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal.  Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forego the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him.  And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.”

That just reminds me of John McCain and how he handled being a POW during the Viet Nam war.

Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems in one of my favorite children’s books. It was a Caldecott winner a few years ago - and it very much deserved to win. Absolutely wonderful illustrations. The background of each page is an old black and white photograph. However, there are illustrations of Trixie, the little girl who loves her Knuffle Bunny, and Trixie’s family on the old photographs. Very clever. The story is also very heart-warming. It’s a story most children can easily connect with. Trixie and her dad goes to the laundromat (great lesson on that vocabulary word), and accidentally leave Trixie’s Knuffle Bunny there. I believe this is a book that every early reader should have in his/her personal library.

Willems has just published a follow-up book called Knuffle Bunny Too in which Trixie goes to school only to find that another child has a Knuffle Bunny, too.

I love books.  I probably spend quite a few times more money on books each year than the average person.  Since most of the books I buy are for use in my classroom, it is important to keep track of which books I buy with my own money, and which books I buy with school funds.  School systems get real picky about keeping track of their expenditures.   Thus, every time I buy a book with my own money, I either put one of my personal address labels on the inside cover, or I write my name with a (P) beside it to show that it’s my personal book.  Trust me, the labels are the easiest way to go.  When I see my label inside a book, I know it is one I bought myself.

There’s another area in which I use address labels a lot, too.  Unfortunately, I’ve done a LOT of moving the past 10 years.  I didn’t plan on moving so often, but it happened anyway.   Since I really enjoy having personalized items, I especially like having custom address labels because they save so much time when I get ready to pay my bills or to write thank you notes - and they’re wonderful for using with Christmas cards.  I can spend my time and energy on writing a personal message inside inside cards and letters rather than spending time writing my return address each time.  They are just about the least expensive time-saver there is!

I’m an elementary school reading specialist, and so I’m always reading.  I also love quotes.  Thus I’ve done Thursday Thirteens on various topics related to reading and quotes.  There are Thursday Thirteens on quotes about Mothers, quotes from American History,  poems to read with children,  quotes to write in the sand,  my favorite read-aloud books for children,  my favorite quotes about reading, and thirteen books for Read Across American week.  Here is a second set of quotes about reading that I love:

(1)  “To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all of the miseries of life.”   ~W. Somerset Maugham~

(2) “The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.”  ~Christopher Morley~

(3) “Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” ~Emilie Buchwald~

(4) “A house without books is like a room without windows.”  ~Horace Mann~

(5) “To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul.”  ~Cicero~

(6) “Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”  ~Richard McKenna~

(7)  “To read is to empower;

To empower is to write;

To write is to influence;

To influence is to change;

To change is to live.”

~Jane Evershed~

(8) “The more that you read,

The more things you will know.

The more that you learn,

The more places you’ll go! ”

~Dr. Seuss~

(9)  “There is no substitute for books in the life of a child.”  ~Mary Ellen Chase~

(10)  “Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.”  ~Chinese proverb~

(11) ”Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” ~Sir Richard Steele~

(12)  “Books, I found, had the power to make time stand still, retreat or fly into the future.”  ~Jim Bishop~

(13)  “A book is a like a garden carried in the pocket.”  ~Chinese proverb”

Here’s another favorite quote about reading.  This one is from Dr. Seuss.

“The more that you read,

The more things you will know.

The more that you learn,

The more places you’ll go!”

~Dr. Seuss~

This is one of my favorite quotes in rhyme.  Don’t you just love it?

“Oh please, oh please, we beg, we pray,

Go throw your TV set away,

And in it’s place you can install

A lovely bookshelf on the wall.”

~Roald Dahl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory~

It’s time to start shopping for Christmas gifts for the grandgirls.  I was thinking about what they like and use the most, and I immediately thought of the personalized duffle bags I bought each of them when they were babies.  Sunshine is 4-years old and Sweet Stuff is 6-years old, and they are still using those personalized duffle bags frequently. 

I’ve always liked personalized gifts.  In the past I’ve bought personalized pencils, name pads, memo cubes, t-shirts and other items for gifts.  My sister gave me a personalized garment bag a few years ago, and I still use it whenever I travel. 

So now I’m looking for Personalized Gifts for Children.  Identity Direct has hundreds of personalized items for children.  There are personalized bean bags, toiletry bags, artist kits, lunch bags, pencils, memo cubes, children’s picture books, Disney character items . . . and so much more.  They even have personalized rain coats. 

“No matter how busy you think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.”

~Atwood H. Townsend~

I apparently like this quote more than I thought because when I was looking over my reading newsletters for this year, I realized that I used this same quote in two issues - and there are only four issues so far this school year.  Yikes!  How did I let that slip past me?