Toys and candy may top most lists to Santa but a lifetime love of reading is truly a gift that will last forever. For the fifth year, Chronicle Books is asking shoppers to pledge to Give Books for the holidays and share their love of reading with family and friends.
Take the pledge by clicking the photo above or by using the hashtag #GiveBooks on your social platforms. For every pledge, Chronicle Books will donate a book to a child in need, up to 30,000 books this holiday season! Use the hashtag #GiveBooks as many times as you want— each use counts as a new book in the hands of a child, and a testimonial to the magic of reading.
This year, the Give Books campaign is giving holiday shoppers a new way to share the love of reading: every Chronicle website order will be matched with a donation to First Book. As an extra incentive, they are offering 35% off orders placed on chroniclebooks.com with code GIVEBOOKS.
Let’s give books this holiday—to our family, our friends, and those that need them most.
I am a huge fan of Toon Books and their commitment to instill children with a love of reading as well as a love of art and design. Too much stuff meant for kids in the bookstore is visually jarring and just plain ugly. There's no reason why early readers should suffer through garish colors and dumbed-down storylines. They'll have enough visual disappointment in later life…
Thereza Rowe's ♥♥♥ (Hearts) looks like another Toon winner, with bold artwork in a sophisticated palette. The story features foxes, sharks, chickens and kitty guards… and a quest for a lost heart. Beautiful enough to give to your grown-up Valentine, this book is perfect for beginning readers.
Roo has been asking a lot of questions about being Jewish this year. She was excited about Hanukkah as early as Thanksgiving! I'm glad that she is curious about her heritage but I'm a little overwhelmed since my formal Hebrew school and Jewish education stopped when my parents split up when I was 9. (I also quit Japanese school around this time, another regrettable decision.) I haven't been to temple in years and have been fumbling with the Hebrew prayers. Roo asked me to write them down for her, so she could say them, too, and I had to admit that I've been saying them phonetically. Lame!
Yeah, yeah, I know… Wikipedia helps*. But kids want to know more about tradition and culture, real-life stuff, not just the whys and wherefores. I'm a big believer in the concept of family literacy and lifelong learning, so I was extremely excited to learn about the PJ Library, an organization that shares the gift of free Jewish children’s books and the message of Jewish values with families across the globe.
Inspired by Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which sends free books to children in underserved areas of the US, PJ Library founder Harold Grinspoon sought to adapt the same concept to engage Jewish families. In 2005, the Harold Grinspoon Foundation started sending 200 free Jewish children’s books monthly. Now, more than 200,000 books go out each month to children in 155 communities across North America and Israel and the number is growing every day.
"PJ” stands for the pajamas worn at bedtime. Program organizers say a bond is formed between children and their parents during typical bedtime reading sessions and reading these PJ Library books together can encourage learning about the Jewish culture, religion, and traditions for both the parents and children. We received a great box to get started with:
Both kids love the books- especially the silly ones! Roo has already been trying out the Hebrew words from the CD, too. It's been fun to try and explain borscht and the concept of keeping kosher to them. On a monthly basis the PJ Library mails a Jewish children’s book or CD to participating homes addressed to the child, helping them to build their own library and inspire a passion for reading.
Currently 85,000 children between the ages of six months and eight years in more than 155 communities in the United States and Canada are enrolled in the PJ Library program. I was impressed to see that there is a PJ Library community here in Wichita! Check the website to see if there is a PJ Library community located near you.
New York stands out as the largest PJ Library program in the US with 10,000 monthly deliveries – and the expectation is that it will double within the next year to 20,000 families. With two million Jews in New York, the city is second only to Tel Aviv in the size of its Jewish population.
*FYI: My aunt pointed me to the excellent web resource Judaism 101, which I will be cribbing from, liberally, too. She printed out the prayers for everyone to say the other night at my grandpa's.
In accordance to the FTC Guidelines and the WOMMA Code of Ethics, I am disclosing that we received the box of books shown to facilitate our understanding of the PJ Library and their good works. All opinions are my own, as usual.
I was lucky enough to attend the National Conference on Family Literacy last Spring and had an amazing experience. I shared my thoughts with the crew documenting the event and was surprised to be included in their recap video:
There was a lot of information to absorb at the National Conference on Family Literacy, which might be why it's taken me so long to process it all and write down my thoughts. I've been home for a little over a week and mulled over the messages I heard from educators from across the country and from the excellent speakers.* One consistent theme emerged: parents are a child's first and most important teachers. They need to be reminded of that and given the tools to help them become more engaged in that role.
I truly believe that is why the NCFL invited me to experience their annual event: parents need to realize that they are teachers. It's a simple message and perhaps obvious to some of us, who were lucky enough to grow up in families that cherished books and school and the concept of lifetime learning. It's easy to take that for granted but many don't have that background. Some parents may have struggled in school and don't think they have anything to teach their child in the realm of academia. Other parents might speak English as a second language and feel insecure about their contributions in American schools. Many children don't have parents in their lives and their caregivers are uncertain of their place in the classroom. The NCFL works with families to raise the collective bar of achievement. By empowering parents and caregivers to become active participants in the community of learning, the children are given a better opportunity to succeed. It's a win-win situation. Confident, engaged parents make for happier, more engaged kids and also stronger, more educated communities. The concept of family literacy is explained on the NCFL website:
What is family literacy? Essentially, it’s a practical solution that addresses the root of devastating social problems: low literacy rates and poverty.
The family literacy approach offers whole families educational opportunities so that every member is able to improve literacy and life skills. It is based upon the simple, but powerful premise that parents and children learn best when learning together. The benefits span generations: both parents and their children build essential skills to learn and compete in today’s economy.
Breaking it down, literacy is the catalyst that inspires families and communities to raise the achievement bar. Families act as the conduit for long lasting, meaningful change. By intertwining these two concepts, NCFL has developed a winning strategy to work with families, communities and dedicated partners that brings about change to ensure that parents and children achieve their goals for success.
Time and again, family literacy proves to break down other barriers to success, such as poverty, unemployment, poor health and inadequate housing. When parents struggle with literacy and basic life skills, their children have fewer chances for success. Family literacy reverses this destructive cycle by giving families the tools they need to thrive today, and most importantly, by helping them educate generations of tomorrow.
In addition to their many community projects and initiatives, NCFL hopes to reach out to individual families in their own homes. They are a major resource for the Thinkfinity.org website, which offers a wealth of educational and literacy resources for students, parents and after-school programs including lesson plans for K-12 as well as interactive tools and reference materials. I love that they have harnessed the power of the internet to bring resources such as the Smithsonian archives to younger kids and make it fun. One example is using the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to make word art. I was tickled to see a demo of this at the NCFL conference and surprised at how many audience members had not used Wordle before! Obviously, we have to get the word out about online literacy resources.
I was so honored and excited to be given this chance to learn more about the NCFL and hope to work with them more in the future. Hopefully more parent bloggers will be in attendance at next year's conference to learn more and spread the word about family literacy.
*I mentioned many of the speakers in my NCFL recap post but the final day's speakers were fabulous, too. Sir Ken Robinson was erudite and drily hilarious in a way that only British people seem to be. He spoke about the perceived rift between intelligence and creativity and the importance of realizing that they have a symbiotic relationship. Monica Holloway managed to simultaneously elicit giggles and tears with the story of her son's diagnosis of autism and the puppy who helped change his life. I was sorry to have to leave for the airport before her book signing.
One of the best things about blogging has been learning about charitable initiatives and volunteerism opportunities. I am active in my local Junior League and many of the projects I have volunteered with in the past have been literacy-based. The project I am currently working on, Critter Campus, is a joint project between JLW and the Kansas Humane Society. We have created and established the Read to Rover program, which helps beginning and struggling readers gain confidence by reading to trained therapy dogs in a non-judgmental setting. Here is Roo reading to Chance during our pilot session:
I am a firm believer in the concept that reading is the cornerstone of all learning, the foundation on which a child's education is built upon. One of the ways we tried to be proactive in helping our kids to learn was by participating in our school district's Parents as Teachers program, which reinforces their eponymous concept from pregnancy through school age. Unfortunately, in our area PAT only has funding to spend three years with each family- meaning that Jasper stopped getting the home visits when he was about a year old since Roo had them one to three. We still keep in touch with our parent educators and believe strongly in the program. In many communities, there are early childhood programs, such as California's First 5 initiative. Definitely ask around and see what is available in your area.
I was trying to give you an impression about how strongly literacy ties into my personal volunteer efforts and our family life in order to give you some background on why I will be attending the National Conference on Family Literacy, which starts tomorrow in San Antonio. Collective Bias has asked me to attend the conference to give the National Center for Family Literacy some perspective on outreach to non-educators. They are hoping to use the power of social media to bring their message of collaborative and ongoing family learning into our homes directly, so that their powerful literacy tools can be accessed without being dependent on funding from grants and sponsorships. As parents, one of your most important roles is as your child's first educator, and that is something that is unfortunately overlooked too often. Teachers are not the only ones who teach! It's a simple enough idea but one that cannot be overemphasized.
I am so excited to attend this conference! This will be the 19th annual National Conference on Family Literacy and the lineup of speakers is stellar. Michael Oher and Collins Tuohy, the real life inspiration behind the Academy Award winning film The Blind Side (he is the central character and she is his adoptive sister), will be speaking about the power of family support in learning.
Monica Holloway is the author of Cowboy and Wills, the story of how adopting a puppy changed her autistic son's life and learning style.
As a blogger, I am perhaps most excited to hear Sir Ken Robinson, PhD literacy advocate and author of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, speak about working with families to meet 21st century education needs and technology’s role in doing so. He is a well known speaker on creativity and innovation and I am sure his lecture will be thought provoking and the start of many conversations.
Disclosure: My travel, lodging and conference expenses are being provided but no additional compensation. I am grateful to Collective Bias and the National Center for Family Literacy for this opportunity to keep learning.
If ever a toy was created to unite Roo and Jasper, this is it: Alphabotz are "Superphonic Decoder Cards" are flashcards using robot characters as a way to engage early readers. Each set features 50 durable laminated cards with bright, colorful graphics that illustrate specific sounds: consonants, vowels, etc. Along with the robot character representing the sound, the card shows the sound written in upper and lower case (can be traced with dry-erase or washable markers for penmanship practice!), visual representations of words beginning with the sound, and a "stats" section that gives background info on the character using word associations with the sound to aid in memory.
Did I mention that Alphabotz are also just plain cute? Roo loves the rhyming stories you can make with the "stats" section: "H my name is Hero and my hippo's name is Homer, we live on a houseboat in Happiness Harbor and I am a helicopter pilot…"
Alphabotz books, CDs and other edutainment concepts are coming soon. Hopefully before Jasper starts reading!
Disclosure: we received a set of Alphabotz cards to facilitate this review.
Roo is in kindergarten this year and the speed with which she has progressed from letter recognition to full-fledged reader has been pretty amazing. I'm glad Jasper is still little and we have a couple more years of big picture books with him but right now Roo is more excited about chapter books for big kids. Our first foray into this exotic land has been the popular Ivy and Bean series, written by Annie Barrows and illustrated by Sophie Blackall, which feature the (mis)adventures of the two grade school best friends.
The newest book in the series is Doomed to Dance. It focuses on the girls' misguided desire to sign up for a dance class and two subsequent realizations: gracefulness is not their forte and ballet classes end in a recital. Shudder. Roo loved every minute of this book since she suffered through her own dance class drama. Every time she asks when she can go back to ballet, I remind her why they call 'em tights and that until she is cool with wearing them without screaming bloody murder at me and whining that they're too tight, there will be no dance lessons. She thought Ivy and Bean's plan to evade their debut as a squid chorus in the marine-themed recital was hi-la-ri-ous. I concur.
Excuse the black hole cinematography… this is Roo reading a story to daddy at bedtime last night, straight from her lower bunk. Yes, she could probably read better with her hair out of her face but you get the gist.
Jasper is always running off with Roo's Leapfrog Tag Reader so we were pretty excited when we heard about the new Leapfrog Tag Junior, a similar learning device made for younger book lovers.
The pen-like Tag Reader is a bit unwieldy for Jasper to use but the Tag Junior is just his size. It was specially designed for children aged 2-4, with an appealingly chubby ad easy-to-grasp shape. The books in the Tag Junior series are smaller and sturdier, too, with glossy cardboard pages that can withstand toddler abuse. And teeth. (Not that either of my kids would ever gnaw on a book…)
Like its older sibling the Tag Junior also allows parents to view their childrens' progress online via the Learning Path. Since the audio component is stored in the Tag Junior, you can see what your child was engaged with and for how long, not to mention what they might be struggling with or be drawn to from an academic standpoint. For example, it tells me that "Jasper recently spent 22 minutes engaged with Tag Junior Included Title- If I Were" and that the skills he has explored include "Reading Basics, Comprehension and Life Science."
I think it's a great device but I have two issues with it and with its predecessor: first, it's a big pain to only be able to access the audio for five books at a time. It's not a big deal or particularly difficult to plug the reader into the USB drive and transfer files but it would be awesome if you didn't have to and could just download the information every time you bought a book. Secondly, I was disappointed that you can't download the audio files from regular Tag Reader books onto the Tag Junior, although apparently you can read Tag Junior books with the original Tag Reader. Since Roo has amassed quite a library of Tag Reader books, it would be great if Jasper could "read" them with his Tag Junior, too. I know there are many titles that appeal to both age levels, especially the classic storybooks like Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, which Roo and Jasper have enjoyed together often. It would be great if Jasper could use his Tag Junior on that one, even though it's technically his sister's book. I'm crossing my fingers there will be a way to do that eventually. Other that that minor quibble, to say that Jasper enjoys the Tag Junior would be an understatement!
Leapfrog provided the Tag Junior for our review but we did not receive any additional compensation. Just so you know.
