The Buzz: St. Benedict Preparatory School Online Weekly Newsletter

Campus Library News

MRS. LISA  WIEDERKEHR,         ES & SS LIBRARIAN. — MRS. LISA WIEDERKEHR, ES & SS LIBRARIAN.

SBPS Library Links

Check out our blog, The Bengal Book Blog, where you will find information about what is going on in the elementary and secondary library pages. We will also post pictures, videos, and more about books that we are reading and want to share.

Be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. You can also check out the SBPS ES Library page at http://sbps.stbenedict.com/library-home/ for our online catalog, book club info, and more.

What's been happening in the Library?

Week of April 30th

We added a whole bunch of new books this week, which got snapped up pretty quickly! I love that the students are just as excited as me about a fresh batch of new reads! :)

We also got to read a few new books aloud. The first was King Baby by Kate Beaton, which was a hysterical story about how a newborn views himself as the king of the household, while his exhausted parents are there to serve him.

We also read Exclaimation Mark! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld, a sweet story about being excited to be yourself!

We read about Philippe Petit, who walked on a wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the 1970's. His story is an amazing read, and it was made into a film called The Walk in 2015. The book won a Caldecott Medal for the artwork of Mordicai Gerstein, who also wrote the story. We were amazed and wondered what makes people take risks like that in life.

I tried to stump the older classes with some Folktale riddles from around the world, but most of the time they were too smart for me. Then they tried to stump me with some riddles of their own, which were pretty impressive, and fun to solve!

The students checked out some of the teacher favorites and I can't wait to hear the reviews!

Lastly, as much as the library goes through post-it notes, we have a new mascot: Our post-it note kitty! We are still searching for an appropriate bookish name for him/her!

Week of April 23rd

For the last few weeks we have been getting things ready to celebrate National Library Week! It was actually the week of Aspire testing, so with the changes in the schedule, we decided to postpone things until this week. Any week is a good time to celebrate books, reading and libraries, right? :)

For our special Library Week bulletin board, I asked each elementary teacher, CHAMPS teacher and administrative and support staff what their favorite book was as a child. I put their picture up underneath the cover of their favorite book, and the students had to guess which book went with which teacher and lift the flap to see if they were right! Some were pretty surprising! We also have (almost) all of the books available for check out, for those who might be curious readers! 😀

We had a book-themed party, with snacks based on books! Our favorite were the pretzel wands!

The third, fourth and fifth graders have been working on making shelf talkers for our library. We talked about how we choose what books to read, and how many times it helps to get a recommendation from a friend. We also discussed how we choose things that are colorful and bright, over things that are plain and dull. This helped us to make our own book recommendations for the library and write up a good "advertisement" to place on the shelf under the book. We already have some books checked out because of the great way the kids have promoted their books.

We all got a colorful heart and wrote something we love about the St. Benedict Library!

And my favorite part of the celebration, our Elephant and Piggie Photo Booth!

We had a wonderful, book-filled week!!

Week of March 26th

I am happy to announce the winner of our 2018 Bengal Book Bracket is Harry Potter with 173 votes! Our second runner up, Dog Man, received 136 votes! Both titles had a strong campaign, but the Harry Potter camp was a little more vocal! :)

I hope everyone has a wonderful, save and blessed Easter break!

Week of March 19th

Our March Madness Bengal Book Bracket is down to our final four! Harry Potter vs. Guinness Book of World Records! Minecraft vs.Dog Man! Who will make it into the final two! Check back and see!

We are starting our unit on how to use the Dewey Decimal System to find nonfiction books in the library. For the younger grades we had a Dewey Easter Egg Hunt! They had half of an egg with a Dewey category and number and had to find the other half near that area of the library! They all did an amazing job!

The older classes played a few rounds of Dewey Bingo. I call out a book title and the students have to decide what Dewey category it belongs in and put their marker on that spot! We should have those Dewey numbers down-pat soon!

This week I was honored to share the library with out 2018 Librarian of the Day: Callan! He was amazing! He checked books both in and out, he processed books into the collection, he read to the classes, he set up displays and helped with the Book bracket! Whew! Then we had some nice relaxing Jimmy John's sandwiches for lunch! Thanks for your help Callan! :)

We also have been working on Dictionary Scavenger Hunts. The last clue/challenge was to balance the dictionary on your head for 10 seconds, and we had some girls who made it way longer than that! :)

Week of March 5th

We kicked off Women's History Month with a new display of books about some amazing women!

We also celebrated International Women's Day by reading some inspirational books aloud!

After reading a book with a chapter written in a secret code, we had some fun deciphering our own codes!

We also got to vote for the first round of our March Madness Bengal Book Bracket! It was some intense discussion! Stay tuned for this weeks results and see who makes it into the Elite Eight!

Week of February 26th

It's always a fun time in the library before school! A buzz of activity gets us all ready for the day ahead! Some are checking out or returning books, some want to talk about a great new book they read, some want to answer the Question of the Week, and some just want to take a few minutes before class to sit in a beanbag and read another chapter! Whatever it is, it's my favorite time of day! :)

Both our 4th and 5th grade and Middle School "Booked for Recess" clubs met this week. They both read the book A Wrinkle in Time, because many of us wanted to read the book before we saw the movie coming out this month. We all mostly enjoyed the book, but thought it could be a little confusing in parts. We can't wait to see how the movie might be similar or different.

With some of our Book Fair Scholastic Dollars we just got a new shelf that's just perfect for all our new books! The kids and I are so excited when we get a new box of books, and now we have a colorful spot to show them off!

Our Bengal Book Bracket is ready to go! Which book will be our champion this year? Will the Pigeon hold on to his title? Will it be a Cinderella story for one of our new contenders? Stay tuned...

On March 1st, we celebrated World Book Day by playing a game of Musical Chairs with books! I put a book at every seat before the class came in, and then once they had chosen a seat, I explained that they would have 2 minutes to read the first few pages of the book in front of them. After 2 minutes they would move to the left and I would set the timer for another 2 minutes, until they made it around the whole table. The idea was to look beyond the cover and explore some books they might not usually have chosen. We all (kids, as well as adults) tend to choose the same type of book over and over, because it's comfortable and we know we will like it. The students all found a book that they thought was interesting, even if it wasn't the genre they usually read. A bunch of students checked out their new picks and I can't wait to see what they thought of them. Our experiment was a great success!

Week of February 19th

This week in the library we broke in our new set of Thesauruses we purchased with some of our Book Fair funds! I students were challenged to create a "Mad-libs" type story substituting creative synonyms for the boring ones given. Then they had to come up to the front, read them and act them out! We were all so creative and clever!

We also shared a read-aloud of the sequel to one of our favorite books of last year "Gaston" by Kelly DiPucchio and Christian Robinson. Their new book is called "Antoinette" and it is about what happens next to our mixed-up puppy families!

We also read aloud a lesser-known book by Mo Willems called "Nanette's Baguette" which is a hysterical rhyming story that made us all hungry for some nice, warm fresh-baked bread! Mmmmmmm.... We made lots of predictions of what happened next and paid special attention to the illustrations which were done by creating a hand-colored three dimensional background, taking a photo of it and then drawing the characters on top!

Week of February 12th -This week in the library we have been talking about Black History Month. The fifth graders are finishing up their Freedom Quilt, we read about Bessie Coleman and why she is important to Chicago, and we read the book Ron's Big Mission about Ron McNair. He was a hero two times, once as a child during the civil rights movement, and again when he grew up to be an astronaut.

Some of the first graders are starting to learn why the materials in the library are organized the way they are, and for fiction books we use the first letter of the author's last name. We played a few rounds of "I Have.. Who Has?" to help us remember!

We've also been spending a lot of time hanging out in the treehouse! :)

Both our Middle School and 4th and 5th grade book clubs have chosen to read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle for our February meeting. With the excitement of the new movie being released soon, the American Writer's Museum here in Chicago will be hosting her granddaughters who have written a new middle grade biography about their grandmother, called Becoming Madeleine. It would be a wonderful way to learn more about Ms. L'Engle as an author and as person. If you are interested in attending, here is a link for more information and how to purchase tickets.

https://americanwritersmuseum.org/calendar/

51DPtB+zYqL._SX333_BO1,204,203,200_ (1).jpg

This middle-grade biography explores the life and works of Madeleine L'Engle ―written by her granddaughters.

This elegant and insightful biography of Madeleine L’Engle (1918–2007) was written by her granddaughters, Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Léna Roy. Using never-before-seen archival materials that include photographs, poems, letters, and journal entries from when Madeleine was a child until just after the publication of her classic, A Wrinkle in Time, her granddaughters weave together an in-depth and unique view of the famous writer. It is a story of overcoming obstacles―a lonely childhood, financial insecurity, and countless rejections of her writing―and eventual triumph. Becoming Madeleine will speak not only to fans of the icon’s work, but also to anyone interested in writing.

https://americanwritersmuseum.org/calendar/

February 1, 2018

Our 4th and 5th Grade book club met to discuss the book "Book Scavenger" by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman. We loved that the main character loved books as much as we do and we had fun figuring out the secret codes and clues along with her.

Our Middle School Book Club met to discuss the book Zero Tolerance by Claudia Mills. It was the perfect choice for a passionate discussion of the slippery nature of rules and how things are not always black and white. Is it ever wrong to do the right thing? We had lots of opinions and decided we enjoyed that the book was thought provoking, but thought it might have been a little too predictable, which made it less realistic! It was also so lovely to get to hang out together with these awesome kids again! ❤️

There is a quote displayed in our library from Beverly Cleary that says "If you don't see the book you want on the shelf, write it!" and that is just what some of our library classes did this week! The students were challenged to reflect on what kind of book they would love to read, and then write it. Once we are finished the books will be given a special place in our collection so we can all enjoy each other's stories! We already have a wide range of topics, from baseball to mysteries to graphic novels to cookbooks! It was nice to share our early efforts at the Catholic Schools Week Open House on Sunday! :)

The First Graders had a blast putting together puzzles today during library in honor of National Puzzle Day! They did a great job working together and it was interesting to see how each group had their own strategy to help them solve their puzzle the fastest! 😀

Me with some of my twins for Dress Like a Teacher Day! ❤️❤️❤️

Comfy-cozy chapter book read-aloud in the library today! ❤️ "The Unlucky Lottery Winners of Classroom 13" by Honest Lee and Matthew Gilbert. A teacher wins 28 billion dollars in the lottery and gives each of her students one billion dollars each to spend however they want. Each chapter tells how a different student spends their winnings, most in completely hysterical ways! :)

In honor of World Read Aloud Day, some of our classes were lucky enough to have Ms. Gemo surprise them with a read aloud of the book One by Kathryn Otoshi! It's a fun, colorful book with a great message! Hopefully we all take a little time to read to each other today! :)

January 18, 2018

Happy New Year! We have been having a great time in library class! Everyone has been enjoying our new space! We have recently added flashlights to the tree house because who doesn’t love curling up with a pillow and a good book during these cold January days!

We were lucky enough to have the author Jennifer Nielsen visit our 4th and 5th graders to talk about her book series The Ascendance Trilogy, as well as her other books. She gave us her checklist for how to be a good writer and definitely inspired many of us to create the stories we would like to hear!

All the classes are getting down to business reading the Monarch/Bluestem nominated titles for this year! If you aren’t familiar with the awards, they are a reader’s choice award sponsored by the Illinois School Library Media Association. The Bluestem books are for grades 3-5 and the Monarch books are for grades K-2. Every year 20 books are nominated and libraries all over the state have their students read as many as they can and then vote on their favorites. The winners are announced in March. Here are the links to this year’s nominees.

https://www.islma.org/pdf/Bluestem%202018%20Master%20List-1.pdf

https://www.islma.org/Monarch-2018-files/2018%20Monarch%20Award%20Master%20List.pdf

We have all the titles in our collection, but the students can read the books anytime from anywhere.

Our 4th and 5th Booked For Recess Club has met twice this year. Once we read Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty, which we all loved. Then we just finished Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman, which inspired us to share our favorite books in real life and create our own secret messages!

In the days leading up to Christmas we had our own little elf in the library. Everyday he dressed up as a famous book or book character and the students had to guess who he was. If they got it right, they won a mini candy cane. Here are some of his best disguises. Can you guess what book he is?

We have been adding new books regularly thanks to the wonderful success of our December Scholastic Book Fair! Thank you to everyone for your support of our school library! Our students are definitely excited to see the new books on the shelves!

Another exciting piece of news was the surprise announcement of the HSA Grant awarded to the library to get our own Little Free Library here at St. Benedict! I was thrilled and cannot wait to get the students involved in sharing our love of reading with the community!

Grab Your Passports for Dewey's Amazing Race!!

The library classes have started a series of challenges based on the Dewey Decimal System! Each class was broken into teams that have been working together to complete their challenges before the end of the year!

The first challenge was based on the first Dewey category (000-099) General Works which includes World Record books. The team members had to take turns building the tallest domino tower they could in 30 seconds. We definitely had some kids with super steady hands!

The next Dewey category is (100-199) which covers Philosophy and Psychology, but also Supernatural things. Our challenge was Ghost Bowling!! The students each had to knock down 6 stacked ghosts with their ball to complete their challenge.

Stay tuned for the rest of the race!!

Pinkalicious Day

Pinkalicious author, Victoria Kann visited with our first grade classes to read from her new book Peterriffic! She even let our kids help her write a new story called Schoolalicious! Thanks to the Book Stall for helping us arrange the visit!

Harry Potter Awesomeness!!

Some of the third graders surprised me with a set of Harry Potter characters based on the puppets from the Origami Yoda series of books! I absolutely love them and plan to find the perfect place to display them!

They even made one of me! Who knew I was so cute!! :)

4th and 5th Booked for Recess Club

Our 4th and 5th Book Club met to discuss te 3rd and last book in the Apprentices series, The After Room. We all felt it ended in a perfect way for the characters, but thought the author left the door open for another book if she chose! We would all enjoy another book and have definite ideas about what we think should happen next!

4th and 5th Booked for Recess Club

Our 4th and 5th grade book club met to discuss The Apprentices by Malie Meloy. This was the second book in the Apothecary series and we have loved both so far. We have been enjoying the books so much that we decided to send a tweet to the author telling her thank you for writing such a geat serie, and she tweeted us back!! We are now on to the third and final book in the series. It's pretty special to have read an entire series together, and this group of kids knows it!

2nd and 3rd grade Booked For Recess Club

Our 2nd and 3rd grade Booked for Recess Club met to discuss the book Floors by Patrick Carman. We all decided that the Whippet Hotel would be a pretty awesome place to live, like the main character, Leo, and we are curious to read the next book in the series to see what happens next!

The St. Benedict 2017 Tournament of Books Champion!!

THE PIGEON!!!

Our library pigeon was super-happy to hear the news!!

The Final Two

Pigeon vs. Harry Potter

Now things are getting serious!!

The Final Four

Magic Tree House vs. The Pigeon

Harry Potter vs. Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Who will win???

The Elite Eight!

Introducing our Elite Eight Book Titles! The match-ups are getting super competitive!

The Magic Tree House vs. The Baby-Sitters Club

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus vs. I Survived

Amulet vs. Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Harry Potter vs. A Series of Unfortunate Events

Keep following for our announcement of the Final Four when we return from spring break!

Hope everyone has a safe, relaxing break!!

St. Benedict March Madness: Tournament of Books!

March Madness in the Elementary Library!

We have been been feeling the March Madness in the library this month! The classes have been voting for their favorites among the Sweet 16 match-ups! There has been a lot of spirited discussion about their choices and many stops in the doorway to see if their picks made it through to the next round! These students really know their books and have plenty of opinions to share! Tune in to see who makes it into the Elite Eight this year!

We have been so busy in the library this month!

Our Booked for Recess Club met to discuss Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu. The overall opinions of the book were mixed. Some students enjoyed it, others thought it was an ok read, but nothing outstanding. The discussions are always amazing though! Our next book will be the sequel to The Apothocary, called The Apprentices by Maile Meloy. Notes will be sent home soon.

The Fifth graders read the book The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom by Bettye Stroud. It tells the story of a young slave girl who uses secret codes woven into quilts to help her and her father escape to Canada on the Underground Railroad. After reading such an inspiring story, we were inspired to make our own library Freedom Quilt.

a bunch of librarians for Teacher for a day during Catholic schools week

During Catholic Schools Week I was seeing double when I had a group of mini-mes visit the library. They were perfect, right down to the glasses and armful of books. :)

A December whirlwind in the library!

Our December pick for the 4th and 5th grade book club was The Apothecary by Maile Meloy! Everyone, myself included, LOVED this book, which takes place in London during the 1950's. We plan to make the sequel a future book club selection because we can't wait to find out what happens to these amazing characters!

Last week, our school was honored to have Tom Watson, the author of the Stick Dog series, visit our school! Mr. Watson entertained us with some very funny stories about how he comes up with the ideas for his books, and even let us brainstorm suggestions for his next book. As a bonus, Mr. Watson taught us all how to draw his most famous characters! Thank you to the Book Stall in Winnetka for sponsoring this visit!

This trimester we have added a "Question of the Week" corner to the library. Each week a question is posted, along with a bin of books that may contain the answer. The students research the answer, write it on a slip of paper, along with the book title and page number where they found it, and place it in the box. At the end of the week, a slip is drawn and if that person has the correct answer, they win a prize. The first winner was Oliver in 2nd grade, who chose a poster from the book fair as his prize. He correctly answered the question "How many bees live in a hive?" with 60,000! Great job everyone!

Ready to Give Thanks!

We have been very busy in the library lately. We have been learning about how to use parts of non-fiction books to help us locate information quickly. The fifth graders had a little competition to see how many trivia questions about our past presidents they could answer as a group using only the books in front of them. The winners were Ms. Harris' class! Congrats!

We also learned about the history of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and read about the man who created the awesome balloons we look forward to seeing each year. The book is called Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet and tells the story of Tony Sarg, a puppeteer who started the tradition of having balloons in the parade back in 1927. We learned that during the first few years, once the parade was over, they would just let the balloons go and float around for days. Once they landed, if you found one, you could claim a prize! The students thought they should do the same thing today!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

'Twas the Week Before Halloween...

When we came into the library this week, we found out that a bunch of bats had invaded our library tree! That must mean Halloween is almost here!

The lucky Thursday library classes participated in Jumpstart's Read for the Record Day on Thursday, October 27th. We joined libraries and classrooms around the world in reading the book The Bear Ate Your Sandwich by Julia Sarcone-Roach. We are hoping the break the world record for the most people reading the same book in 24 hours. Fingers crossed!

Ms. Peters' class reading with our friend bear!

We also met for the first 4th and 5th grade Booked for Recess book club! This month's selection was The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall. We had an interesting discussion about which character we felt we were the most like and speculated for a long time about what we hope might happen in future books. Next month's selection is The Apothecary by Maile Meloy. I will be sending home the registration forms next week, and they will be posted on the library site as well.

What a busy week we have had in the Library!

This week all of our library classes started recording the Bluestem or Monarch Award books that they have read so far. The students are so excited to read all the books on their list and prepare to vote for their favorite in March. The books are chosen by librarians all around the state of Illinois and lists are distributed to schools to be read and voted on. Links to the 2017 titles can be found here:

http://www.islma.org/Bluestem.htm

http://www.islma.org/monarch.htm

Grades K-2 will be reading to help choose the winner of the 2017 Monarch Award. The name Monarch was chosen because of the butterfly and its familiarity to K-2 children. It symbolized the growth, change and freedom that becoming a reader brings. The Monarch Award is designed to encourage children to read critically and become familiar with children’s books, authors and illustrators.

Grades 3-5 will be reading to help choose the winner of the 2017 Bluestem Award. The award is designed for students in grades 3-5 who are ready for longer titles than are found on the Monarch list, but not quite ready for the sophistication of some of the Rebecca Caudill titles (grades 6-8). Named in honor of the Big Bluestem, the state prairie grass, the award includes both timeless classics and current titles.

Students may read these books on their own, but we will also be reading some of these titles in library class as time allows. We have at least one copy of each title in the ES library, and students are also welcome to visit their local library and check them out there. Students need to read 4 (Bluestem) or 5 Monarch books to be eligible to vote, but of course can read up to all 20 books on their particular list. They will then come to library class and tell me what books they have read as they finish them. We will be keeping track of their progress together. Then, sometime in late February or early March, the students will vote for their favorite books and we will send in our final choices.

We are very excited about participating in an event with so many other schools and public libraries across Illinois.

The third, fourth and fifth grade classes also learned about how to use a Thesaurus and found out who Peter Roget was and how he came up with the idea for a book to help you choose just the right word by reading The Right Word: Roget and his Thesaurus by Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet.

Happy Birthday Johnny Appleseed!

This week, our library classes celebrated the birthday of Johnny Appleseed on September 26th. We read the book Seed by Seed: The Legend and Legacy of John "Appleseed" Chapman by Esme Raji Codell. We learned that John Chapman was a real person who lived more than 200 years ago. He had 11 brothers and sisters and we learned why he is depicted as wearing a pot on his head. (Easy to carry and kept the rain off!)

We then took a poll of our favorite apple treats. The winner by a landslide was the caramel apple, with apple pie a close second!

This week also happened to be National Cat Week, so we pulled a bunch of books about cats for the students to browse.

The St. Benedict "Booked for Recess" club will be starting in October!

Attention all 4th and 5th Grade Students

The St. Benedict "Booked for Recess" Club will meet on Thursday, October 27th during recess. This month we will be reading the National Book Award winner The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall. Flyers were sent home on Friday. If you have any questions or need more information, please email me at lwiederkehr@stbenedict.com.

International Dot Day and Roald Dahl's 100th Birthday

This week in the library we celebrated both International Dot Day and the 100th birthday of author Roald Dahl! We read The Dot by Peter Reynolds and then each student added a dot to our big dot to create a giant dot made out ot dots! Whew! That's a lot of dots! :)

We also read a story written by Roald Dahl's daughter Ophelia that told a bit about what it was like to grow up with a famous author as a father. The favorite part for all the students was the tale of how her father taught her to drive a car when she was 10 years old and used to let her drive alone around the village where they lived! We were all pretty amazed that no one seemed to think twice about it!

Making Class Books

This week, our third grade classes made class books about manners with your library book. They worked very hard to illustrate the right and wrong ways to treat the books you check out from the library. Next week we will share these books with the Kindergarten classes during their library time. Thank you third graders! Great job!!

Happy 100th Birthday Roald Dahl!!

Tuesday, September 13, 2016 marks the 100th birthday of the wonderfully funny and creative British author Roald Dahl. Famous for many clever and magical works, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The BFG and Matilda, Mr. Dahl is considered one of the most popular children's authors in the world. Let's all celebrate with some chocolate and silliness while reading some of his most-loved quotes!

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2016/09/13/roald-dahl-day-100th-birthday-10-best-quotes/90295894/

New Beginnings

Hello everyone! My name is Lisa Wiederkehr and I am the new librarian at St. Benedict Preparatory School. I would like to say thank you to all of you for such a warm welcome! Everyone who stopped me to say hello, introduce themselves, or ask how things were going helped to make me feel very much at home. I am having a blast getting to know all of these wonderful kids and enjoying learning who they are and, of course, what kinds of things they love to read! My interests, as your children know already, includes cheering on the Chicago Blackhawks, enjoying anything Harry Potter related, going to concerts and reading as much as I can!

St. Benedict is an amazing place and I feel very blessed to have become a part of such a wonderful community. I can’t wait to share all of the exciting things we will be doing in the library this year!

Highlights from Mrs. Susina In the Library... it's time to say good-bye!

This week, we have been saying good-bye, signing yearbooks, and giving out LOTS of hugs. *

You have all been so kind when speaking to me in the hallways about my leaving St. Ben's. I appreciate your support and I will somehow let you know where I end up (the kids really want to know!).

I hope to see you again, as I am sure that I will attend St.Ben's events and visit to see how everyone is doing. I'm sure I won't be able to stay away! Thanks again so very much :)

* I have also been taking pictures with each class (except for kindergarten due to scheduling), so if you are interested in my sending you a copy, please email at jsusina@stbenedict.com. I can also send a copy of the book club picture below.

Book Clubs...Unite!

My heart was very full on Tuesday when close to 100 students who have attended book club at some point over the last 5 years stopped into the library for a photo. I asked Mrs. Feely to announce that any student who had been in book club should stop by. In my mind, I thought only students from this year would come, but then they came streaming into the library in larger groups than I expected. We were missing a few friends, but it was a wonderful visual of our time together in book club <3 I will definitely need to print and frame this one!

Illinois Reader's Choice Awards' Lists

Last week week, students in grades K-4 will get a sneak peek at the 2017 Monarch and Bluestem lists. Every year, we have had more students eligible to vote as they have read at least 4 or 5 books off their respective lists. Students in grade 5 previewed the books off of the 2017 Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award list. Grades 6-8 read books off this list and copies of these books will be available in the secondary library next year. We wanted to make sure that the 5th graders knew that SBPS encourages them to continue their participation in the book awards when they visit that library in August. Grades 9-12 read books off of the Abraham Lincoln Award list.

2017 Monarch List (K-2)

2017 Bluestem List (3-5)

2017 Caudill List (6-8)