Book Review: Revisiting “The Hobbit” After All These Years

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I’ve been “there and back” quite a few times in my life, as I dove into The Hobbit and cheered on little Bilbo Baggins. But it has been more years than I care to count since I cracked it open. Still, I knew my youngest son would enjoy the adventure, and sure enough, in just a few weeks of read-aloud, we ended the story with Bilbo alive (not dead, as his relatives would like), sitting and smoking his pipe into old age. (And we know Bilbo makes a quick re-appearance with The Fellowship of the Ring before Frodo goes off on his own epic adventure).

So, does the story hold up?

Well, yeah, it surely does. My son and I had many conversations about the story, and he kept peppering me with questions about The Lord of Rings series, which I danced around on tiptoes (Gollum? The ring? Gandalf?) so as not to give too much away for when we shift into that trilogy (which may be soon enough. I used to have two sets of The Lord of Rings and both are missing, given away to book fairs, perhaps. Time for another visit to the library …)

The story really does have the perfect arc of narrative. I hate to reduce a story to its plot outline, but gosh, Tolkien’s story is full of exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. You’d think he had been a teacher. Wait! He was. I know this is often a criticism of The Hobbit — its predictable nature — but reading it aloud to someone who knows almost nothing about the stories that will be unfolding ahead was pure magic for me. I was shifting back in that time, too, with my son, remembering when I first discovered The Hobbit somehow or another (it may have been my mother, who was always pressing books into my hand) and how deeply I became engulfed in the story.

Yes, I enjoyed The Hobbit all over again.

Peace (in the comfy hole in the ground),
Kevin

PS — as a side note, as I was in the midst of reading The Hobbit with my son, I started noticing three or four of my students had also chosen it for their independent reading, which led to more conversations in class. Interesting convergence … or some magic, perhaps?

 

 

Diagramming Sports Plays as Visual/Information Literacy

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The writing prompt I had for my students yesterday tapped into their energy and enthusiasm around our game of Quidditch. They had to design, diagram, name and then explain in writing a “secret” play for their team. I’ve done versions of this prompt before, but this year, I had on the back of my mind a great video by Bee Foster around the literacies of diagramming out sports plays over at the National Writing Project’s Digital Is site. (The video — Football Plays — is part of a larger resource by Bee around Redefining Text.)

And this year, I had my interactive board, so after about 25 minutes of writing and drawing and creating, I turned the class over to my students and let them come up to the board, one at a time, and not only visually share their play, but also explain it in a sort of impromptu “how to” session in front of the class. It was pretty fascinating to watch, and I had Bee’s ideas running through my head about the learning that was going on around visual design, movement on a page, expository writing, public speaking and more.

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The code for positions are:

  • K: Keeper (goalie)
  • CH: Chaser
  • SK: Seeker
  • B: Beater
  • SL: Sidelines

The dotted lines indicate movement of player and the solid lines show passing of the quaffle among the chasers and keepers, or the bludger among the beaters. Got that? (if not, check out our Quidditch Tutorial video).

Peace (on the field),
Kevin

 

Inspired Poetry with Bud the Teacher

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I’m starting to write some poetry this month with Bud Hunt (aka Bud the Teacher). Bud, a friend of mine through the National Writing Project, is posting visual prompts each day, and he asks that we consider a poem inspired by the image, and his short bit of writing. What I have always liked about Bud’s poetry prompts (this is maybe the third year?) is how open the direction can be. It’s always cool to see how other people take the idea embedded in the image, and push it around in different ways.

I did write a poem yesterday, but it wasn’t anything too special.

This morning, he had an interesting image and description about water, and what I think is a pebble or rock. (I’m not quite sure but that’s OK. I saw it as I see it, and used what I think I saw.) I also added a podcast of the poem I wrote, using Cinch.

The pebble drops –
I fall with it
splashing, crashing into surface tension
as my outline echoes from the center
on out.
If I could, I would surf this surface viscosity forever,
and never let me fall
but gravity has other ideas –
family, and school, and the whole wealth of obligations
that keep me grounded day in and day out –
so I drop, the pebble,
twisting and turning until I hit the bottom
and wait.


You come, too. Each morning, Bud will be posting an image and inviting you to write a few lines of poetry.

Peace (in the poems),
Kevin

 

The Stickman Quidditch Video

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Each year, as we approach our annual Quidditch Tournament, a member of our staff works on a video that will get burned into a DVD for all of our sixth graders. Until this year, he has had a group of fifth graders come around and interview us classroom teachers, asking a set series of questions. We, in turn, would come beforehand with nutty answers, spoofing the whole interview process. This year, he wanted to try something new and asked us to create a short video, of any kind.
I decided to try a stopmotion video with Pivot Stickfigure and a few images from my class (We are the blue team: Permafrost). Here’s what I came up with, using the first part of a Quidditch song that I wrote and recorded a few years ago:

Peace (on the stick),
Kevin

Book Review: The Technologists

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The Technologists by Matthew Pearl is one of those books that I kept thinking, I’m getting bored here, and then suddenly, the novel would open up to something interesting and I would be hooked all over again. This cycle happened two or three times. So, I stayed with the story until  the end, particularly because I loved how Pearl used the city of Boston in the late 1800s as his setting and how he used the creation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (and its political battles against Harvard) as the backdrop for a mystery story just as technology and science were taking hold in culture.

I’m not sure what kept putting me off. I think it may have been Pearl’s writing style, which intentionally sought to bring the reader into the diction and pace of Beantown in the years after the Civil War as society began to move into the Industrial Age. Science and technology were viewed with suspicion, even as electricity and other inventions were completely changing the world around people. So, maybe it is not Pearl’s fault that I kept wanting to push the plot along. The plot was interesting: a rogue scientist bent on destroying Boston by using their scientific and technological skills to create havoc and mayhem.

The Technologists are a secret group of brainy, geeky college student at the new MIT who are bent on finding and stopping this madman, even as they themselves as the target of suspicion because of their very technological prowess. The last section of the book comes alive with a number of twists and action events that had me racing to get to the end, just to find out how it all ends. I’m happy that I stayed with it. And I may never look at the Back Bay of Boston again without thinking of Pearl’s book, and the way that MIT slowly and controversially came into existence (a helpful note by Pearl at the end of the novel explains his research and origins of the story, which I appreciated).

Peace (in the tech),
Kevin

 

Slice of Life: And So It Ends (sort of)

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March has come to a close, and so, too, does the annual Slice of Life writing challenge. Once again, I went into the month thinking, I probably won’t write a slice every single day — maybe a few days here and there — and once again, I ended up writing 31 slices. (And that is the fifth year of doing it, so really, on my blog, there are more than 150 Slice of Life posts over time. Personal research project: go back and archive them all. Yeah. Right. Eh, maybe.)

I want to thank Stacey and Ruth at Two Writing Teachers for all that they do to facilitate and support writing among teachers and others. The Slice of Life this year just exploded with writers. Some days, the numbers were hovering around 150 writers sharing their posts. Much of that interest has to be attributed to the personal connections that Ruth and Stacey have created over the last few years, and the nurturing voice their blog sends forth to readers, and writers.

There’s a lesson to be learned from Slice of Life for anyone who has ever tried to nurture a writing space: create a space that values all writers, and all bloggers; find a way to build an audience; and people will write. This month proved that, beyond a doubt. (Although I still wonder about the gender gap with Slice of Life. On most days, as far as I could figure, there were maybe four to five male bloggers involved, and only three or four of us were regulars. Why is that? Is the Slice of Life narrative writing something that puts off my fellow men? Is Slice of Life, and Two Writing Teachers, perceived as a “girl” thing? I don’t think so, but the gap does vex me a bit.)

As I wrote early in the month, it became a losing battle for me to try to comment on most of the posts every day, try as I might. I sort of swam around the posts, surfing among the titles that folks left to see what might be interesting and trying my darnedest to read and interact with new bloggers. (Yes, just like books, the words in the titles of posts made a difference to me. I didn’t have time for everyone, so I honed in on the ones that seemed extra interesting). Unlike other years, I don’t feel I was to develop a rich, deep blogging relationship with a small core of new writers. Instead, I was like one of those thousand points of light in the night sky, joining others in creating a constellation of words and experiences (See what the Slice of Life does? It makes you wax poetic. And just in time for Bud the Teacher’s visual poetry blogging challenge for April.)

If you were one of the regular commentors here at my blog, I want to thank you so much for the time you spent with me. I was humbled by the conversations and honored that you would take the time to cast out a few lines and spark a conversation. I want to apologize if I left your comment dangling there, with no response. I was too busy commenting elsewhere (maybe even at your blog). Knowing you were out there, possibly wanting to read my words, inspired me as a writer this month. The Slice of Life makes you notice the world around you. It forces you to step back and wonder about the little moments. It provides a space to share.

If that isn’t all about the power of blogging, I don’t know what is.

Thanks for being on the journey with me this month, and I encourage you to keep writing with Two Writing Teachers as they continue their Slice of Life every single Tuesday at their site. The challenge may have come to a close, but the writing? It continues on.

Peace (and thanks),
Kevin

Book Review: Belly Up

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It was the cover that caught my eye.

A blue hippo, dead, floating on some water. (I knew it was dead because of the X on its eyes). The back cover showed the hippo’s big blue butt. I was hooked. I didn’t pick up Belly Up by Stuart Gibbs at the time I saw it in the bookstore, but I noticed how close it was to the Carl Hiaason display, and I couldn’t help notice how similar the cover art seemed to be to Hiaason books. Yeah, I thought, they are trying to ride some marketing coattails here.

Later, though, I kept thinking of the dead hippo. I ordered Belly Up, knowing in the back of my mind how many of my students loved reading Flush. This might be another book to press into their hands. I was not disappointed.

Belly Up is a sort of Hiaason-inspired story arc, with a 12 year old kid (Teddy) who lives in an animal park called FunJungle trying to solve the murder of the ornery and violent Henry the Hippo (the park mascot who fires poop at anyone and everyone) and uncovering some other nefarious deeds being done by some odd characters who inhabit this story.

Gibbs packs a lot of adventure and humor into the book, and I spent a lot of time puzzling over the “who done it” part of the story. The story unfolds at a quick pace, too. Teddy is a likeable character, and his first person voice as narrator is nicely done. Teddy is caring but full of smart-aleck observations about adults. He also meets Summer, the daughter of the FunJungle park, but he wonders about her motivation to uncover the truth about the murder of the hippo. There are interesting narrative detours into the marketing of a park like FunJungle and the impact of pop culture overexposure (the press follow Summer everywhere).

Gibbs peels the cover back on the inner workings of the animal park (including some fun maps in the inside covers). I thoroughly enjoyed the ride with Belly Up, particularly as I was reading it while awaiting Hiaason’s new book, Chomp (which arrived last week and promptly disappeared into my middle son’s room. He proclaims it the “best” Hiaason book yet.)

Peace (never goes belly up),
Kevin

 

Slice of Life: The Ms. Frizzle Incident

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I blame Ms. Frizzle.

My first grade son got the idea for his school’s Science Fair (which had more than 100 student projects) from reading one of the Magic School Bus books. It’s the story about rainbows and colors, and pinball machines. In the book, the kids divide up the color spectrum using a prism and a burst of light in order to escape the pinball machine they are stuck inside. My son wanted to recreate that for a display about light and color.

That idea sounded great to my wife and I. We were thrilled he wanted to partake in the Science Fair. His older brothers had had no interest at all, for some reason. My wife worked with him to get his display put together, went out to the local science store to buy a prism, and coordinated the activity, although he did much of the work (you can see that is not the case with some of the displays but I won’t get into that).

The problem was … the light through the prism didn’t quite work.

Maybe we were expecting too much.  We had this vision of a lovely rainbow shooting out of the prism and shining onto the whiteboard. That’s how the Magic School Bus kids and Ms. Frizzle did it. (What? Books aren’t real?) Instead, it took a  lot of twisting of the prism and manipulating of the light to finally create a tiny little teeny rainbow. Talk about letdowns.

You know what, though? My son didn’t care. He loved seeing the color spectrum he created. And the kids who came to his display? They didn’t care, either. They twisted and turned that flashlight and prism and then uttered “cool” when a little rainbow finally appeared. And maybe they learned a thing or two about light and color. Who knows. It was mayhem in the school cafeteria with all of those projects and all of those kids and all of those family members.

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I was happy to leave and gulp down some fresh air, and then my son, wife and I stood and stared at the stars for a few minutes. It was a beautiful moment. Lights were all around us, twinkling up in the sky. Science and discovery really is all around you. Maybe that Ms. Frizzle really does know a thing or two about the world.

Peace (and thanks for visiting all this month with Slice of Life),
Kevin

More Facebook Follow-Up: Reaction from Parents

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I’m in the third day of writing about an event at our school that began on Facebook and spilled into our school. (See the first post about the event and then the second post about my note to families). Yesterday, I wrote about the informational email I wrote that we sent home to all of our sixth grade parents. So far, the response from families back to us has been overwhelmingly positive, thanking us for the guidance and the resource links to help them guide their children in the networking space.

Here are a few comments that parents sent to us:

“…. although I did not  agree with Facebook, my husband and I talked and I allowed it with stipulations.  My husband and I are friends with him on Facebook  but  more than that, 13 or not, it is so important to not only be friended but also to have their username AND password. This way you can see  what’s posted to people you are not friends with.”

“Thank you for sending out this very insightful message, and thank you for looking out for our children.  I feel very strongly about children and social websites and I am grateful to you, Mr. Hodgson and the sixth grade team for addressing this issue.”

“We are very strict about media in our family, including tv and computer usage; (our child) certainly is not ready to be surfing the web or using social media outlets, but I realize that others may not see the threat to innocence…”

There were a few more simple “thank yous,” too. My hope with the note home is that we would hit a nerve with families and allow them a reason to get proactive with their children in the online spaces they inhabit. My wife and I are doing the same thing at home right now with our son (luckily, no problems) and so I understand how difficult it can be, and time consuming, too, but also, crucially important.

Check out this quote that came through my RSS reader this morning. Does it not have implications for this entire discussion and issue?

Words are to be taken seriously. I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion. I’ve seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges. I’ve felt them doing it. Words conjure. I try not to be careless about what I utter, write, sing. I’m careful about what I give voice to.

TONI CADE BAMBARA

Peace (in this space and beyond),

Kevin