Diary of a Word Nerd

Awesome Young Adult Books/How to encourage reading/News from book business

Three Ideas for Getting Kids to Read

Posted on May 2, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 6 Comments

Looking for ways to get your kids excited about books, especially with summer break approaching? The Word Nerd is here for you. This week (May 2-8, 2016) happens to be Children’s Book Week, and the organizers have tons of ideas for encouraging some bookish enthusiasm. To see them all, visit the Children’s Book Week site. I’ve highlighted three here for you:

Idea #1: Get the right books

The best way to get kids to read? Put books in their hands. On their beds. In their backpacks. Unfortunately, it can be hard to choose ones they’ll like. Enter the Children’s Choice Book Awards, the only national book awards program in which kids and teens choose their favorites. A panel of librarians, book sellers, editors and other literary folk choose finalists, then the kids vote.

The polls are closed for 2016 books, but you can check out the Awards site for past winners (and reading ideas). The 2016 winners will post sometime during Book Week, but here are some of the 2016 finalists, by category:

Elementary school:

Clark the Shark: Afraid of the Dark
To the Sea
I’m Trying To Love Spiders

Middle Grade:

Backlash
The Terrible Two
Hilo Book 1: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth

Teen:

All the Bright Places
P.S. I Still Love You
Red Queen
We All Looked Up

Past winners/finalists include:

Middle Grade:

El Deafo (see my review)
Sisters
The Dumbest Idea Ever

Teen:

We Were Liars (see my review)
One
Cress

Idea #2: Bookish Activities

Bookweekonline.com has a ton of great ideas for book related activites, including:

A down-loadable bookmark created by Cece Bell, author of El Deafo.
Story starters
Word finds and crossword puzzles with bookish themes, like “Author, Author” and Children’s Choice Award Winners.
(I’m going to print up story starters and puzzles for our 10 hour road trip to Florida next month. 😉 )

Idea #3: Stage a Read-In

This is the boldest book activity I’ve seen: an entire high school having a “Read-In” during Children’s Book Week. The site describes everything you’ll need to stage a “Read-In”, including a detailed schedule. The Read-In takes a little over an hour and includes thirty minutes of silent reading time book-ended with teacher/librarians reading aloud. Non-academic staff should participate too, promoting the notion that “everyone reads”.

Although I can see the challenges in this scenario, I think it would be a powerful way to promote reading. Perhaps a local non-profit could provide some books for those who wouldn’t normally have any. Unfortunately, Children’s Book Week always occurs the first week of May, just when my local school system is gearing up for standardized testing. Perhaps I could suggest they do it after all the tests, during those last two weeks of school when teachers are showing movies or running field trips.

When I was in elementary school we had something like Read-Ins: “USSR”- uninterrupted silent sustained reading. Interesting acronym for the 1980s. On designated USSR days, we all read silently in our classrooms for twenty minutes.

Do you know of any special activities to promote children’s reading in your community, especially during Children’s Book Week? Will you try any that I’ve listed?

Thanks for getting bookish with me!

How to encourage reading

Vocab from Washington DC: Stanchion

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 7 Comments

We were a weary, well-traveled crew of parents, administrators, and eighth grade students, trudging through the polished halls of the US Capitol. Our guide led us into the domed “Rotunda” room, filled with statues and paintings of our Founding Fathers, and firmly instructed us to “stand to the right of the stanchion.” Well, if The Word Nerd didn’t know what a stanchion was, I’m sure the eighth graders didn’t.

Luckily, we figured out where to gather. But I had to follow-up.

If you like to learn about new words, join the Wondrous Words Wednesday meme at Bermuda Onion. Bloggers share words from their reading that have caused them to reach for the dictionary. (Or, more likely, the dictionary app.) 😉

Stanchions and velvet ropes in preparation for the 37th G8 summit in the Centre international de Deauville, France. Guillaume Paumier via Flickr CC-BY

Stanchion \ˈstan-chən\ noun, from French Old French estançon, diminutive of estance: stay, prop

an upright bar, post, or support (as for a roof or a ship’s deck)
a device that fits loosely around the neck of an animal (as a cow) and limits forward and backward motion (as in a stall)

Thanks, Merriam-Webster. Now we all know the fancy name for the poles that hold velvet ropes and tell us where to stand or line up.

Here’s another cool picture of stanchions, taken at the State Capital in Richmond, VA.

Photo Credit: OKFoundryCompany via Flickr CC-BY

I didn’t get a picture of the stanchions inside the Capitol, but I got this nice shot on the outside… I believe we can call the poles framing the tulips “stanchions”…

Word Nerd Workout

Can you share other interesting architectural terms, like parapet or buttress?

Thanks for getting nerdy with me today!

Appreciating Poetry

Poem in Your Pocket Day

Posted on April 21, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 3 Comments

Today, April 21, 2016, is National Poem in Your Pocket Day, another way to celebrate the 20th annual National Poetry Month.

Today, I’m crammed on a bus full of chaperones and 8th graders. We’re on our way to explore the sights in Washington, D.C., but that won’t stop me from trying to convince you that

Poetry is COOL, ya’ll!

Humor the Word Nerd and spend a little time with a poem today. To make it easy for you, I’m sharing this poem and daring you to print it up, put it in your pocket, and pass it along to family members, coworkers, and friends. It’s short, lovely, and uplifting. If the pocket bit is too daunting, at least you can share it on social media!

I’ll be looking for it…

Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

By Emily Dickenson

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea:

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

What poem might you carry in your pocket today?

Thanks for getting poetic with me!

Who I Am

Who I Am Project: How I’ve Changed Since Childhood

Posted on April 19, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 7 Comments

Most mornings, when the “Goodreads Quote of the Day” pops up on my iPhone, I smile, or feel inspired. But this one hit me like an accusation:

The words taunted me: where has your inner child gone?

My name, Julia, means youthful, and true to form, I surround myself with younger people. Through all of my occupations and positions, (teacher, physical therapist, coach), children have been the consistent feature. And yet, I worry my own “child” has gotten lost.

I don’t have any siblings, and although I always wanted more kids around when I was younger, the lack of companionship nurtured a great gift: creativity. Out of necessity, I became very good at entertaining myself. In grade school, I created elaborate schemes that included Barbies, Fisher-Price figures, and random pieces of furniture. When I entered adolescence, my creativity manifested itself in sketch books. Pencil and paper were my favorite mediums, although I fancied acrylic paint as well. Difficult subjects like glass, ribbons, and bubbles fascinated me. I loved exploring the coiled lines of a bow atop a present or how glass bends a flower stem.

The demands of marriage and family buried that part of myself until recently, when one of my children was working on an art project, and I pulled out a few of my old sketch books. As I flipped through the pages of an older book, my son said, “Wow, Mom, these are good.”

My drawings spoke to me too. They whispered, somewhat bitterly, “Where have you been?”

I’ve been changing diapers and doing laundry. Balancing checkbooks and color coding sports schedules.

I closed the sketch book, but I couldn’t forget. The shock helped me realize something:

Yes, motherhood consumes much of my time, and hours spent taking care of my kids are hours well spent, but I can’t lose myself amid the demands. Since I don’t have endless carefree afternoons like I did at age ten, finding time for creativity, which currently comes into my life as lines of fiction or clicks of the shutter, demands self-discipline and self-love, but it’s necessary. It’s who I am.

I will make sure my inner child thrives alongside my offspring.

And someday, when there isn’t as much laundry because there aren’t as many children at home, I will again fill the lonely places with strokes of my paintbrush.

Thank you Dana for the Who I Am writing project. This month’s prompt has been especially timely as busy end of the school year schedules and the demands of soccer season threaten to drown the creative child inside me.

If you’d like to participate in the Who I Am project, visit Dana’s blog, Kiss My list.

How have you changed since you were a child?

Thanks for getting thoughtful with me!

Book reviews

Why You Should Read Orphan Train

Posted on April 15, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 7 Comments

Orphan Train, by Christina Baker Kline, came highly recommended by several friends and blog readers, and it did not disappoint. If you like historical fiction or novels that explore themes of family and finding acceptance, you’ll like Orphan Train. It reminded me of The Language of Flowers, another favorite of mine.

Premise

Orphan Train weaves two stories from different time frames. In the “present”, jaded teenager Molly, who has bounced through the foster care system for years, agrees to help an elderly woman clean out her attic for community service hours. In the “past” narrative, we learn the story of Irish immigrant Niamh, a girl who loses her parents to a fire in New York City and ends up on a train headed west, with hundreds of other orphaned children, to find a family willing to adopt her. These two very different characters end up having a lot in common.

What I liked

I’d never heard of “Orphan Trains” and found this piece of American history fascinating. Apparently, from 1854 to 1929, over 200,000 orphaned or abandoned children traveled into the Midwest for adoption . Many times, the families who took orphans were merely looking for free labor. It’s an excellent illustration of an idea with good intentions that goes terribly wrong.
With the use of a modern narrative, Orphan Train successfully creates an emotional connection to events from the past. I especially liked how the author brought together two characters with seemingly nothing in common and created a bond between generations. I also like YA and enjoyed having a teenager in the narrative.
Although I’ve never been abandoned or orphaned, I found the main characters easy to relate to. Here’s a quote from Molly’s story:

But it kind of feels nice to nurture her resentment, to foster it. It’s something she can savor and control, this feeling she’s been wronged by the world.

Ouch, I know I’ve been guilty of nurturing some resentment. Here’s the good news: both characters learn to rise above this human tendency.

The switch between narratives/ time frames did not confuse and helped to keep the pace of the plot moving. The author includes small surprises and twists that make the story compelling, but not ridiculous.

What I didn’t like

The “past” narrative is told in first person point of view by nine-year old Niamh, but often, she sounded more like a teenager to me. My book club buddies suggested that since Niamh went through such difficult experiences, it aged her, and that came through in her voice. I’m still not sure I buy it.

Notes on content

One of Niamh’s foster parents attempts to sexually abuse her. The scene is handled tactfully, but is fairly graphic (mentions male anatomy).
Have you read Orphan Train? What did you think? Can you recommend other historical fiction?

Happy reading!

Improving vocabulary

Vocab From Go Set a Watchman: Gulosity

Posted on April 13, 2016 by Julia Tomiak / 5 Comments

I’m still enjoying Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee. Just last night, I read the hilarious passage in which Scout recalls how she first learned about her “monthly curse” and planned to throw herself off the Maycomb water tower because she thought she was pregnant. Ah, the naivety of youth. 😉

Harper Lee certainly had a rich vocabulary. If you want to build up your word repertoire, join the Wondrous Words Wednesday fun with Kathy at Bermuda Onion. Bloggers share new words from their reading or ones that interest them.

Last night, Ms. Lee stumped me with gulosity. Have you heard of it before? Here’s a fun passage that shows some of the personality of the main characters of Watchman:

In spite of herself, Jean Louise [Scout] grinned. [Aunt] Alexandra could be relied upon to produce a malapropism on occasions, the most notable being her comment on the gulosity displayed by the youngest member of a Mobile Jewish family upon completing his thirteenth year: Alexandra declared that Aaron Stein was the greediest boy she had ever seen, that he ate fourteen ears of corn at his Menopause.

gulosity \g(y)ü-ˈlä-sə-tē\ noun from the Latin gulosus gluttonous, from gula gullet

excessive appetite; greediness

According to Merriam-Webster, gulosity is a word for gluttony that is rarely used anymore.

Word Nerd Note: Were you stumped by malapropism? It means: an amusing error that happens when someone uses a word that sounds like another word but has a very different meaning. It’s derived from Mrs. Malaprop, a character prone to such verbal mishaps in the 1775 play The Rivals. The author, Richard Sheridan, got her name from the French term mal à propos, which means “inappropriate.” [Merriam-Webster] Often, young children are susceptible to such mix-ups. My youngest likes to call his comforter his “comfortable”. 😉

Word Nerd Workout

Can you think of a synonym for gulosity or a character from books or movies that demonstrates gulosity? How about Smaug the dragon’s gulosity over the treasure he hoarded in The Lonely Mountain in Tolkien’s The Hobbit? Or, please share a malapropism you’ve heard.

Thanks for getting nerdy with me.