Great Heights Week - A Giraffe Adventure

Eighty years before Columbus made his incredible journey, a giraffe sailed from his African home to China. It was there that he was named after a mythical Chinese creature that was thought to bring good luck. Chee-Lin: A Giraffe’s Journey is a jewel of a book with drop dead gorgeous illustrations. Children will find parts of it sad. Loosing one’s freedom is always sad. But they will delight in Chee-Lin’s special relationships and their imaginations will be sparked by far away cultures in a long ago time.

Ages 4-8
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Activity: Here is a pretty-nifty easy-to-access animal geography game. You know that giraffes come from Africa, but where do these other animals come from?

Newbery News

The 2011 Newbery Medal winner and the four honor winners have been announced. Of special interest to me is the fact that the winner and three of the four honor books are historical fiction:

2011 Newbery Medal Winner

Moon Over Manifest

by Clare Vanderpool
Twelve-year-old Abilene Tucker is the daughter of a drifter who, in the summer of 1936, sends her to stay with an old friend in Manifest, Kansas, where he grew up, and where she hopes to find out some things about his past.

Ages 9-12



2011 Newbery Honors

Heart of a Samurai 
by Margi Preus
In 1841, rescued by an American whaler after a terrible shipwreck leaves him and his four companions castaways on a remote island, fourteen-year-old Manjiro, who dreams of becoming a samurai, learns new laws and customs as he becomes the first Japanese person to set foot in the United States.

Ages 12 and up

Manjiro’s life story is f a s c i n a t i n g. I reviewed another book about him here.

One Crazy Summer
By Rita Williams-Garcia

In the summer of 1968, after traveling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

Ages 9-12

I noticed over at The Fourth Musketeer that this author is so committed to literature for young people that she offers her own short story contest to encourage and reward young people's writing. Open to kids from 12-19, the winner receives a check for $100, a certificate, and a personal critique by Rita Williams-Garcia!

Turtle in Paradise
By Jennifer L. Holm

In 1935, when her mother gets a job housekeeping for a woman who does not like children, eleven-year-old Turtle is sent to stay with relatives she has never met in far away Key West, Florida.

Ages 9-12

The other Newbery Honor book this year is Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman. It is a collection of twelve poems that celebrate the wonder, mystery, and danger of the night and describes the many things that hide in the dark.

The Newberry Medal is awarded to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children as decided by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association. Given since 1922, it is named after John Newbery, an eighteenth-century English publisher of children’s books. It was the first children’s literary award in the world.

Would You Want to Be In Alexander the Great’s Army?

Apparently being in Alexander the Great’s army wasn't so...great. In the pages of You Wouldn't Want To Be In Alexander The Great's Army!: Miles You'd Rather Not March, the reader becomes an active participant, weighed down with armor while marching, under attack from a fireship while building a causeway to Tyre and struggling to survive the snow-blocked pass through the frozen Hindu Kush mountains. Filled with colorful, comical illustrations and sprinkled with a manageable dose of facts, learning becomes practically effortless.

Ages 8-12
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Activity: Test your Alexander the Great knowledge with this matching game.

There are more books in this series. Get a load of ALL these titles! Looks like the only one missing is …“You Wouldn’t Want to Get Caught in an Avalanche of ‘You Wouldn’t Want To...’ Books!”

You Wouldn't Want to Be an American Colonist!
You Wouldn't Want to Be an American Pioneer!
You Wouldn't Want to Be an Aristocrat in the French Revolution!
You Wouldn't Want to Be an Assyrian Soldier!
You Wouldn't Want to Be an Aztec Sacrifice!
You Wouldn't Want to Be at the Boston Tea Party!
You Wouldn't Want to Be an 18th-Century British Convict!
You Wouldn't Want to Be Cleopatra!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Civil War Soldier!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Crusader!
You Wouldn't Want to Be an Egyptian Mummy!
You Wouldn't Want to Be in the First Submarine!
You Wouldn't Want to Be in the Forbidden City!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Greek Athlete!
You Wouldn't Want to Be an Inca Mummy!
You Wouldn't Want to Be in a Medieval Dungeon!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Mammoth Hunter!
You Wouldn't Want to Be Mary, Queen of Scots!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Mayan Soothsayer!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Medieval Knight
You Wouldn't Want to Be a 19th-Century Coal Miner in England!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Pirate's Prisoner!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Polar Explorer!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Pyramid Builder!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Roman Gladiator!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Roman Soldier!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Salem Witch!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Samurai!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Skyscraper Builder!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Slave in Ancient Greece!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Suffragist!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Sumerian Slave!
You Wouldn’t Want to Be a Victorian Schoolchild!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Victorian Servant!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Viking Explorer!
You Wouldn't Want to Be a Worker on the Statue of Liberty!
You Wouldn't Want to be Be an 18th–Century British Convict!
You Wouldn't Want to Be Married to Henry VIII!
You Wouldn't Want to Be on Apollo 13!
You Wouldn't Want to Be on the Hindenburg!
You Wouldn't Want to Be Sick in the 16th Century!
You Wouldn't Want to Be Tutankhamen!
You Wouldn't Want to Explore With Marco Polo!
You Wouldn't Want to Explore With Sir Francis Drake!
You Wouldn't Want to Live in a Medieval Castle!
You Wouldn't Want to Live in a Wild West Town!
You Wouldn't Want to Live in Pompeii!
You Wouldn't Want to Meet a Body Snatcher!
You Wouldn't Want to Sail in the Spanish Armada!
You Wouldn't Want to Sail on a 19th-Century Whaling Ship!
You Wouldn't Want to Sail on an Irish Famine Ship!
You Wouldn't Want to Sail on the Titanic!
You Wouldn't Want to Sail With Christopher Columbus!
You Wouldn't Want to Travel with Captain Cook!
You Wouldn't Want to Work on the Brooklyn Bridge!
You Wouldn't Want to Work on the Great Wall of China!
You Wouldn't Want to Work on the Railroad!

Good Knight Stories

The Barefoot Book of Knights is a cleverly presented retelling of seven tales from days of yore. Most of the stories originated in Europe, but the author also includes legends from Japan, Persia and Russia.

The stories are told through the kindly voice of Master William, the Armorer of the castle, who is in charge of several pages, including a young boy named Tom. When Tom doesn’t understand why a future knight, such as he, should have to wash dishes, or is envious of his brothers approaching knighthood, or is not cooperating with a fellow page, or is just homesick, Master William knows just the right story to set him straight.

Your child will gain a sense of what life was like for a ten year old page starting a new life at a castle. And he or she will relish listening in as Master William tells his tales!

Ages 6-12
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Activity: Knights first used decorated shields in battle as a way to identify allies from enemies. Here is a fun, free place to design your own shield and print it out.

You also might like this Knight Word Search from another post.

UNCHARTED TERRITORY WEEK: Marco Polo

TITLE: The Adventures of Marco Polo

AUTHOR: Russell Freeman

WHAT TERRITORY WAS EXPLORED AND WHEN? China and other parts of Asia from 1271 to 1295

WHO DID THE EXPLORING? An Italian merchant family, Marco Polo along with his father and uncle.

HOW WAS THE TRIP? Marco Polo’s father and uncle had been on a trading trip to Russia and met Kublai Khan while trying to steer clear of a war on their return to Italy. The Great Khan requested they return to him with 100 men learned in the Christian religion and some oil from the lamp that burned at the church of the Holy Sepulchre (the tomb of Jesus). They went back towards Italy, collected the oil, two friars and seventeen year old Marco and headed east again. After nearly twenty-four years of rugged traveling mixed with some luxurious living as envoys for Kublai Khan, they returned again to Italy. This time Venice was at war with Genoa and Marco Polo was captured in a sea battle and imprisoned for a year with, as luck would have it, a writer. Marco’s epic adventure became scribed over and over again. It was titled The Description of the World and it’s impact on the medieval mind was HUGE.

WHAT WAS GAINED? The Polo’s gained riches and they spread geographic and cultural knowledge. Prior to their travels, Europeans had never seen coal, or paper money or thought about religious freedom or considered taking a bath more than about once a year.

This is a beautiful book with many first person accounts from The Description of the World.

Ages 9-12
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Activity: We like this game that follows Marco Polo's route as you answer questions about his travels.