And the winner is...

Thank you to the 144 voters who helped chose the 2011 Rebecca Caudill winner for Woodland Middle School. Here are the results:

1st - Hunger Games
2nd - Fablehaven
3rd - Found
4th - 11 Birthdays
5th - Notes from a Midnight Driver

As schools around the state send in their results, the votes will be tallied and we will soon know which book was voted #1 by students across Illinois!!

Blizzard Reading!!

Just before the snow started falling last week, I thought it would be a good idea to grab a few books in case I was stuck in my house for a few days. On the top of my list was a brand new book to our LRC and one that has recently won many national awards. I read and loved One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia.

Here is the review from School Library Journal (3/1/10):

It is 1968, and three black sisters from Brooklyn have been put on a California-bound plane by their father to spend a month with their mother, a poet who ran off years before and is living in Oakland. It's the summer after Black Panther founder Huey Newton was jailed and member Bobby Hutton was gunned down trying to surrender to the Oakland police, and there are men in berets shouting "Black Power" on the news. Delphine, 11, remembers her mother, but after years of separation she's more apt to believe what her grandmother has said about her, that Cecile is a selfish, crazy woman who sleeps on the street. At least Cecile lives in a real house, but she reacts to her daughters' arrival without warmth or even curiosity. Instead, she sends the girls to eat breakfast at a center run by the Black Panther Party and tells them to stay out as long as they can so that she can work on her poetry. Over the course of the next four weeks, Delphine and her younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, spend a lot of time learning about revolution and staying out of their mother's way. Emotionally challenging and beautifully written, this book immerses readers in a time and place and raises difficult questions of cultural and ethnic identity and personal responsibility. With memorable characters (all three girls have engaging, strong voices) and a powerful story, this is a book well worth reading and rereading.

Rebecca Caudill Voting Begins Monday

On Monday, January 31st, students will begin voting for their favorite Rebecca Caudill book from the list of this year's 20 nominees. All 6th, 7th and 8th grade students who have read three or more nominated books will be eligible to vote. Voting will take place during each LA class's regularly scheduled LRC time. If you read all 20 books, be prepared for a special sweet treat when you vote!

Good luck to all the nominated authors. May the BEST book win!!

Welcome to the LRC!

I wanted to welcome everyone to our new and improved school website! As you can see, the Woodland Middle School Learning Resource Center is now accessible from the comfort of your own home. You can search our catalog, access the databases and EasyBib, and read about the LRC's most current events.

I wanted to take this opportunity to congratulate the 14 students who made the 2011 Battle of the Books team. Over the next five weeks, these students will be preparing to compete against other Lake County schools. On March 8th, our team will be traveling to Deerpath Middle School in Lake Forest to show the other schools how much they know about the 2011 Rebecca Caudill books. Hopefully, we will know enough to bring home the first place trophy!! Good luck!!

Back to School

Welcome back to school!

I hope you all had a relaxing and fun summer and read a lot of great books. The best book I read over summer break was Ruined by Paula Morris. It was a fantastic mixture of ghosts, history, New Orleans and suspense!! I highly recommend it if you like ghost stories.

Add a comment to this posting and tell us what your favorite book was from your summer break!!

End of the Year

As we wind down to the last few weeks of school, keep in mind that all LRC materials are due back on Friday, May 21st. In order for students to receive their yearbooks, all materials need to be paid for or returned. Don't wait until the last day!!!

Welcome back!

Welcome back everyone! I hope you had a relaxing spring break! Whether you were sunning yourself on a beach somewhere or sitting in your backyard, I hope you had a good book to read.

My favorite book I read over break was The Day of the Pelican by Katherine Paterson (she also wrote Bridge to Terabithia). In 1999, author Katherine Paterson's church sponsored a family to come to America from war-torn Kosovo. One of the members of her church mentioned to Katherine Paterson the idea that she could write a book about a fictional Albanian Kosovar family and the circumstances that they would have faced in their turbulent country near the turn of the twentieth century. The result of this idea is The Day of the Pelican.

I learned a lot about the struggles Albanian's faced during the conflict and what it would be like to leave your home, family and friends to start a new life in a country where you don't speak the language. I highly recommend this book!